Under the Radar Videos and News: Videos // Current

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The critical unraveling of US society

You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Before exposing the root causes of this breakdown, let’s look at some vital statistics and facts:

* The inequality of wealth in the United States is soaring to an unprecedented level. The US already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis. Since the crisis, which has hit the middle class and poor much harder than the top one percent, the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99% of the US population has grown to a record high.

* As the stock market went over the 10,000 mark and just surged to a 13-month high, the three big banks that took taxpayer money and benefit the most from the government bailout have just set a new global economic record by issuing $30 billion in annual bonuses this year, “up 60 percent from last year.” Bloomberg reported: “Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, had a record profit in the first nine months of this year and set aside $16.7 billion for compensation expenses.” Goldman Sachs is on pace for the best year in the firm’s history, they are also benefiting by only paying 1% in taxes.

* The profits of the economic elite are “now underwritten by taxpayers with $23.7 trillion worth of national wealth.”

As the looting is occurring at the top, the US middle class is just beginning to collapse.

* Workers between the age of 55 – 60, who have worked for 20 – 29 years, have lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. During the same time period, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans went up by $30 billion, bringing their total combined wealth to $1.57 trillion.

* Home foreclosure filings “hit a record high in the third quarter [of 2009]… They were the worst three months of all time… 937,840 homes received a foreclosure letter” in this three month period. “3.4 million homes are expected to enter foreclosure by year’s end, with some experts estimating that next year will be even worse.”

President Obama has enacted a $75 billion taxpayer funded program that has been a spectacular failure in stemming the foreclosure crisis and has proven to be another massive waste of billions of taxpayer dollars.

* 25 Million people are unemployed or underemployed.

This means we have 25 million people who urgently need to increase their income, and they’re quickly running out of options. The unemployment rate is expected to rise further and remain high for several years. “The president’s chief economic adviser warned that the nation’s unemployment rate could stay ‘unacceptably high’ for years to come.”

[More at link] http://pubrecord.org/commentary/6084/critical-unraveling-society/

http://current.com/items/91511835_the-critical-unraveling-of-u-s-society.htmYou may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Before... more

SleepDirt
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13 hours ago

Chaz Bono: Gender is between your ears not your legs

It was heartwarming to see Chaz in this interview. So often our media portrays the trans community as negative stereotypes. Rarely... more

uroborus8
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2 days ago

UCLA v. Cops: 14 Arrested, 1 Tasered Over 32% Tuition Hike

Students gone wild. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl8XYMoD5tk&feature=sub

JonRaymond
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3 days ago

The Scandal of the Working Poor

by Holly Yeager The ranks of America’s hungry are expanding—including double-income families in some of the richest... more

Future_America
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3 days ago

The Senate Evisceration of Roe v. Wade: Hyde on Steroids

NOW (National Organization for Women) warns that the Senate will vote on an amendment similar to Stupak-Pitts that would prevent millions of women from obtaining insurance coverage for abortion under their version of health care reform, S1796. Is that the bill number or the year they intend to regress to?

It appears advocates will use this amendment to hold health care reform hostage unless this affront against women is included. http://www.capwiz.com/now/issues/alert/?alertid=14342106

This comes on the heals of the passed house Stupak-Pitts, anti-abortion amendment and the more recent mammogram media blitz tactic that blamed the White House for an independent private sector task force recommendation. It appears the health care insurance industry and their friends in Congress are out to target women in an all out effort to discredit health care reform. http://lafilmonline.com/oitsf/?p=74

NOW posted the following to it members on their website:
______________________________________________________
Reportedly, Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Bob Casey (R-Penn.) may offer a version of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to be attached to the Senate bill. That means, in all likelihood, if the Senate adopts this harmful amendment, it will remain in the final Senate-House conference bill and become law. Alternatively, a modified variation of Stupak-Pitts could be incorporated into the bill. Either way, millions of women lose -- big time.

Please Take Action NOW!

The Stupak-Pitts amendment explained:

* The ban on abortion coverage in insurance would apply to both the proposed public option and to private health insurance plans sold in the new regional health insurance exchanges. It is estimated that some 36 million uninsured persons would be purchasing insurance policies through new exchanges and would be eligible for federal affordability subsidies.
* Health insurers may not sell plans that cover abortion to customers who are paying without a subsidy, if even just one person who is receiving the federal affordability credits (the subsidy) were to purchase a plan. In other words, even if you are paying 100 percent of your insurance costs, abortion coverage would not be available in your plan if anyone with affordability credits joins the same plan.
* Women may purchase a separate abortion "rider" for coverage, though many doubt that these riders would be offered by the insurance companies.
* Small companies (fewer than 100 employees) would also likely purchase health insurance through the exchange, but if any of their employees received affordability credits no abortion coverage could be included.
* Eighty-seven percent of employer-based insurance plans now cover abortion services, but if employers withdraw coverage and send their employees to the health insurance exchanges, those employees would likely lose abortion coverage under these new prohibitions.

There may be a modified version of this harmful amendment that is included in the Senate health care reform bill that will be debated next week. We want to make sure that Stupak-Pitts language is not used and that no variation of this harmful amendment is passed. Please send a message to your senators that you oppose any restrictions on insurance coverage of abortion. Thank you for all the work you do for women's rights.
________________________________________________________NOW (National Organization for Women) warns that the Senate will vote on an amendment similar to Stupak-Pitts that would prevent... more

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3 days ago

New mammogram recommendations don't put most women at increased risk

This New York Times article gives the same scary media narrative repeated everywhere else in the past few days: 'Despite... more

Future_America
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5 days ago

Let Them Eat Zoloft

As the Senate takes up health care reform, we’re sure to be treated to yet more scenes of our elected officials bending over backwards to kiss the gold-plated butts of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. So far, just about every new turn in the health care battle is confirming what many have known for some time: The US health care system is run largely for the benefit of these corporate giants, rather than for the American people, and no piece of legislation is likely to change that fact.

But to fully appreciate the license these industries have been given to run roughshod over the public interest, you have to take a trip to Connecticut. The state is a longtime home base for the insurance industry, with 72 companies and the nation’s highest concentration of insurance jobs. It also has more than its share of drug and biotech companies. What luck then, for these industries, that the man who appears to hold a swing vote on health care reform is their own Senator Joe Lieberman, who has enjoyed enormous financial support from the insurance companies and plenty from Big Pharma, as well.

While Connecticut may be loyal to its health care companies, the opposite clearly is not true. This week the giant drugmaker Pfizer sent shock waves across the state when it announced its decision to shut down its huge research facility in New London. While some workers will be transferred to a facility in a nearby town, the closure represents a devastating loss of industry and tax base for this working-class coastal city. It also marks the disintegration of an elaborate publically financed urban development scheme that began a decade ago.

After the closure of a naval installation in the mid-1990s left New London in desperate economic straits, Pfizer swept in with promises to revitalize the city with a state-of-the-art R & D headquarters. To serve the company’s interests, the state government decided to use eminent domain to seize private property, uproot residents, and destroy a neighborhood in order to revamp the surrounding area. The state won the right to do so in a landmark Supreme Court case, Kelo vs. New London. But it built nothing on the vacated land. And now Pfizer, as the Wall Street Journal put it, has decided to "bug out." One local resident told the New York Times, "They stole our home for economic development. It was all for Pfizer, and now they get up and walk away."

Continued at link . . .

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/11/let-them-eat-zoloftAs the Senate takes up health care reform, we’re sure to be treated to yet more scenes of our elected officials bending over... more

pjacobs51
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5 days ago

Under Current.... The Current Alternative

Current has announced it's restructure to become more like every other cable channel with a 30 and 60 minute format instead... more

JonRaymond
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6 days ago

Current Staffer Jumped Off Bridge

Former Current staffer, Charles Lawrence, discusses his experience at Current, their lack of professionalism and how another laid off staffer jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge:

"Let me tell you something about CurrentTV. I worked there for 3 months in late 2007. I was on the upstairs online team(we were maintaining the old website while the guys on the Embarcadero team in the basement were working on the new one). I came in to work on Sept 14 and was there for about half an hour when I was led into Al Gore’s office(he wasn’t there) and was let go. They offered no explanation and refused to tell me why I was being laid off. My experiences working there were good at the time, but I got the overall sense the company didn’t have any direction. The worst part of being laid off wasn’t the fact that they treated me INCREDIBLY unprofessionally, it was that they laid off several other people the same day in much the same manner. One of the guys that was on my team was in QA. A couple of days after they fired him (again, without giving cause), he jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge to his death."

Charles Lawrence's blog: http://trending.us/

http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/picture-71.png

Update: Another comment from Dave, also apparently a Current staffer:

"As I read my severance agreement, I realized that Current is not mentioning an important bit of information. Their actions have triggered the WARN Act. Moreover, when Current says that they’ve laid off 80 employees, they’re not mentioning that they plan to lay off, at least, 20 more. One of the factors that triggers the WARN Act is when a company lays off a third of its workforce. Current had about 300 US employees before today’s layoffs, so letting go of 80 employees does not set off WARN. Letting go of 100 would.

Why do I think that Current’s workforce reduction falls under WARN? Because in addition to a promised severance payment, I continue on Current’s payroll for 60 days with benefits – even though I have no obligation to perform work. What Current is doing is getting around the 60 day notification provision under WARN by continuing pay and benefits for laid off workers. In addition, my Termination Agreement states that I would release the company from any claims that it has violated the WARN act.

While Current deflects questions about more lay offs in the coming months, they’re actions cannot hide the fact that they plan to, at least, have a total of 100 employees gone by the next few months."

WARN Act: http://www.doleta.gov/programs/factsht/warn.htm

See Charles Lawrence's and Dave's comments in the comments section of this article "Current TV Staff Suffer a Major Bloodbath as 80 Employees Lose their Jobs":
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/current-tv-staff-suffer-a-major-bloodbath-as-80-employees-lose-their-jobs/Former Current staffer, Charles Lawrence, discusses his experience at Current, their lack of professionalism and how another laid... more

JonRaymond
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7 days ago

UU Minister supports Separation of Church and State in SC

When South Carolina's DMV began producing license plates with a cross and the words "I believe," UU Minister Rev.... more

fernweher
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9 days ago

Recycling is Bullshit Redux: Let's Declare Nov. 15 Buy Nothing Disposable Day

We said it last year: Lets call recycling what it is- a fraud, a sham, a scam perpetrated by big business on the citizens and... more

pjacobs51
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5 comments

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11 days ago

The Fort Hood Shock: Coincidence or Photo Op?

Someone clue me in here. Are the people in our intelligence agencies complete idiots?

It’s November 10th, 2009, the day before Veterans Day. President Obama visits Ft. Hood to mourn with those military families who lost friends and loved ones at the hands of a domestic “terrorist,” who just happens to be a Muslim and who committed this crime so close to Veterans Day and while Obama is on the brink of making a decision to send tens of thousands more troops to the war in Afghanistan (against Muslims) amidst very strong public opinion to get out of that war. Well it was strong, until this shocking “terrorist” act took place. http://stopwar.lafilmonline.com//?p=166

This is absolutely amazing. We have the most well equipped military and intelligence agencies in the world and yet they can’t stop known terror suspects with simple box cutters who even trained in U.S. flight schools - they can’t stop those guys from hijacking five planes and crashing into the Pentagon and the twin towers; and they can’t stop this guy Hasan, who they have known evidence on as well with his relations with a known terrorist sympathizer and they even employ him on a military base.

OR

There are those who question the whole legitimacy of 9/11 as a purely terrorist act. There were no aircraft engine parts found at the Pentagon on 9/11. Instead they found what appeared to be a hole in the building made by a missile. Some demolition experts believe the twin towers were destroyed with explosives by demolition experts - like our highly trained military who specialize in such things perhaps? There are questions about flight 93 that crashed in a farm field in Pennsylvania, supposedly headed for Washington D.C. piloted by U.S. military trained “Muslim terrorists” (Was it shot down by the military as is standard military policy when a hijacked aircraft becomes a threat, especially a threat to national security?). Why was there so much media analysis of what happened on that flight, which we couldn’t possibly know of for certain, to the point where a Hollywood movie was made depicting such nebulous speculation and conjecture in vivid high definition detail?

Now we have this highly suspicious terrorist act by Hasan, where we know he was thwarted and harassed to the breaking point, and we know he had an internal conflict between his ethnicity and people versus his military service, while working for a military that slaughters innocent Muslims with extreme ethnic prejudice (if you were a white guy working for an Arab army that did this to Americans, do you think you’d have a few internal conflicts too? How about a few dead collaterally damaged Texan babies? Want to work for those guys?).

Yet our military with its vast resources can’t figure this stuff out until after a great American tragedy happens, coinciding with Veterans day and on our American soil - all the talking points of making a case for war against a foreign enemy. What a great photo op for Obama at Ft. Hood the day before Veterans Day. Can you think of a better commercial for going to all out war?

Naomi Kline’s book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine), points out ever so clearly the history of the United states government in using disasters to make a case for war, not only in our country but first in South American countries which were the proving ground for this policy. And we see this happening over and over again. Here we are with Obama on the brink of sending ten’s of thousands more troops off to fight and die in vain for a war without end, without purpose, without strategy. A war that targets innocent civilians because our crack cutting edge military can’t figure out the difference between civilians and terrorists, and in the process of killing the innocent, proliferates more terrorism.

It is very highly likely, in light of this historical fact, that our intelligence agencies employed persons from the Muslim connections that Hasan had, to his neighbors that harassed him to his wit’s end, with the sole purpose of perpetuating and coercing him to commit these crimes, so that they would have an awesome ongoing news story (one that will now last for months since they went to extreme measures to keep him alive) to make a case for perpetual war in Afghanistan and to sway public opinion away from it’s current sentiment against staying in Afghanistan.Someone clue me in here. Are the people in our intelligence agencies complete idiots? It’s November 10th, 2009, the day... more

JonRaymond
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12 days ago

Surprise! Unknown Asteroid Buzzed Earth

A previously undiscovered asteroid came within 14,000 km of Earth last week, and astronomers noticed it only 15 hours before... more

pjacobs51
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13 days ago

Ft. Hood Shooter was Mistreated

"Everyone else just sat down there and drunk their beer and looked at him and giggled at him," the woman said, starting... more

JonRaymond
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221 comments

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14 days ago

Kucinich's No Vote on Healthcare Explained: HR3962 is Pro-Insurance Industry

Congressman Dennis Kucinich after voting against H.R. 3962 addresses why he voted NO, stating (http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=153995):

"We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system."

"Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick."

"But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies - a bailout under a blue cross."

"By incurring only a new requirement to cover pre-existing conditions, a weakened public option, and a few other important but limited concessions, the health insurance companies are getting quite a deal. The Center for American Progress' blog, Think Progress, states, 'since the President signaled that he is backing away from the public option, health insurance stocks have been on the rise.' Similarly, healthcare stocks rallied when Senator Max Baucus introduced a bill without a public option. Bloomberg reports that Curtis Lane, a prominent health industry investor, predicted a few weeks ago that 'money will start flowing in again' to health insurance stocks after passage of the legislation. Investors.com last month reported that pharmacy benefit managers share prices are hitting all-time highs, with the only industry worry that the Administration would reverse its decision not to negotiate Medicare Part D drug prices, leaving in place a Bush Administration policy."

"During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back. The 'robust public option' which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies."

"Recent rises in unemployment indicate a widening separation between the finance economy and the real economy. The finance economy considers the health of Wall Street, rising corporate profits, and banks' hoarding of cash, much of it from taxpayers, as sign of an economic recovery. However in the real economy - in which most Americans live - the recession is not over. Rising unemployment, business failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures are still hammering Main Street."

"This health care bill continues the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street at the expense of America's manufacturing and service economies which suffer from costs other countries do not have to bear, especially the cost of health care. America continues to stand out among all industrialized nations for its privatized health care system. As a result, we are less competitive in steel, automotive, aerospace and shipping while other countries subsidize their exports in these areas through socializing the cost of health care."

"Notwithstanding the fate of H.R. 3962, America will someday come to recognize the broad social and economic benefits of a not-for-profit, single-payer health care system, which is good for the American people and good for America's businesses, with of course the notable exceptions being insurance and pharmaceuticals."

Please know the struggle for real health care reform will continue. Contribute, we can make a difference.

Thank you.
The Re-Elect Congressman Kucinich Committee
http://kucinich.us/hcpetitionCongressman Dennis Kucinich after voting against H.R. 3962 addresses why he voted NO, stating... more