December 2007

Monthly Archive

December 31, 2007

Miami Herald Shipping American Jobs to India

Posted by voiceoffreedom under Consumer Advocates, Corporate Entities, Economics, Education, Government, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Whistleblower
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bizjournal The McClatchy Co. is moving more newspaper jobs to Asia with a decision to outsource some work from The Miami Herald to a company in India, the Associated Press reported Friday.

It’s the second such move this month for the Sacramento-based newspaper publisher (NYSE: MNI); The Sacramento Bee also is moving some advertising production work to India.

The Herald, McClatchy’s second-largest newspaper by average weekday circulation and largest by Sunday circulation, will begin sending copy-editing and design work in a weekly section of community news and of some special advertising sections to Mindworks Global Media, based in New Delhi, the AP story reported. Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal told the news organization that Mindworks also would monitor reader comments on online stories, and that the program was being tested so no decision has been made on whether Florida jobs would be affected.

You say that “no decision has been made on whether Florida jobs would be affected.”

Really? That is a wonder. Who did those jobs before the move? Will they still be doing the same job? How?  When the work they would have been doing is now going to be done in India?

No decision on jobs being affected…wow.

Who writes this stuff?

Why do you expect the reader to believe this?

Do you believe the reader to be so stupid or ignorant as to think that if a piece of work once done here, but now done in India that NO ONES job in America will be affected?

And its the “second such move” THIS MONTH?

You folks must have some pretty stupid readers if they believe what you have written in that article!

Remember Ross Perot the guy that ran for president some years back….who predicted a “giant whooshing” sound of jobs being taken OUT of America and sent to “Mexico” He was HALF right…..the whooshing sound is here, but the whooshing out of the US is going all over the globe not just to Mexico!

You guys keep on thinking there is not a problem with America’s economy.

You guys keep right on thinking there is not a problem ….and, that corporate America is not harming this country….yep keep on thinking that, move along, nothing to see here.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8TQHUSO0.htm
Starting in January, copy editing and design in a weekly section of Broward County community news and other special advertising sections will be outsourced to Mindworks, based in New Delhi.

And so…also very amusing (Not!) that “community news in Florida, USA” will be now produced in India!!!

 

December 20, 2007

Think Again: Reporting on Warming, Dropping the Bali

Posted by voiceoffreedom under Books, Bush Admin, Civil and Human Rights, Corporate Entities, Disease, Disease Outbreaks, Economics, Education, Food, Government, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Science, Whistleblower, federal agency
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Think Again: Reporting on Warming, Dropping the Bali

By Eric Alterman, George Zornick
December 20, 2007

As Greenland shrinks daily and Artic sea ice disappears faster than Roger Clemens’ fan base, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change met this month in Bali to look for ways that the global community can act in concert to deal with the urgent threat that scientists overwhelmingly agree we face from man-made climate change.

The meeting’s agenda included setting specific greenhouse-gas reduction targets, as opposed to the undefined “deep cuts” preferred by the Bush administration’s delegation; discussing the management of carbon-trading; and looking for solutions to the problem of resource management in poor third-world nations. In terms of the seriousness of the issues faced, it was a conference on par in importance with the famed summits of Tehran, Yalta, and Pottsdam during World War II.

Yet what was broadcast on American television was a debate about whether Al Gore may have said something naughty. After the newly minted Nobel laureate observed in Bali that the United States was holding up progress at the conference, CNN brought the incident up on eight different shows over two days, according to a Lexis Nexus search.  (Americanprogress)

 

December 19, 2007

FAIR? WISE? You be the judge.

Posted by voiceoffreedom under Bush Admin, Civil and Human Rights, Consumer Advocates, Corporate Entities, Courts or Justice, Economics, Education, Elections, Government, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Science, Whistleblower, federal agency
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Morton Mintz: Questions of Fairness and Wisdom

Posted at 12:06 am, December 17th, 2007

Morton Mintz MugTwo one-word questions for presidential, House and Senate candidates are suggested by a Dec. 15 New York Times article.

Here’s how David Cay Johnston began the piece, which deserved page A1 but ran on B3:

“The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.”

Fair? Wise?

Second graf:

“The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.”

Fair? Wise?

Third graf:

“The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.”

Fair? Wise?

Fifth graf:

“Earlier reports, based on tax returns, showed that in 2005 the top 10 percent, top 1 percent and fractions of the top 1 percent enjoyed their greatest share of income since 1928 and 1929.”

Fair? Wise?

Fifteenth graf:

“On average, incomes for the top 1 percent of households rose by $465,700 each, or 42.6 percent after adjusting for inflation. The incomes of the poorest fifth rose by $200, or 1.3 percent, and the middle fifth increased by $2,400 or 4.3 percent.”

Fair? Wise?

Ok, let’s be more prim and proper:

Would you change or continue tax policies that, in 2005, helped to enable 3 million Americans to have combined income of more than 18 percent of the total income of all Americans, and that approximated the combined income of 166 million Americans—55 times as many—at the bottom of the ladder?

 

December 19, 2007

An Observation I can Appreciate!

Posted by voiceoffreedom under Bush Admin, Civil and Human Rights, Consumer Advocates, Corporate Entities, Economics, Education, Elections, Government, Hate Speech, Media, Politics, federal agency
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Altercation, by Eric Alterman

I read in the Times, here, that “Mitt Romney called Sunday on Mike Huckabee to apologize to President Bush over criticism of his foreign policy. … Writing last week in the journal Foreign Affairs, he said, ‘American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out.’ … ‘That’s an insult to the president, and Mike Huckabee should apologize to the president,’ Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, said Sunday on the NBC News program ‘Meet the Press.’ “

The above story leads to two observations that I would appreciate if everybody kept in mind so that we can begin to have a decent country again soon.

George W. Bush is a Republican president. These guys are running to be a Republican president as well. None of these candidates has come close to repudiating Bush, save Ron Paul, who barely counts. Huckabee’s criticism was rather indirect and he ran away from it almost as soon as he was even gingerly challenged. Thing is, given how unpopular Bush is with everyone in the country save a few diehard conservative Christians, neoconservative ideologues, and Fortune 500 CEOs — in other words, the far-right Republican base — it’s in no one’s interest in the party to remind people of this fact. Right-wing Republican leadership = catastrophe for this country. And yet, the right wing of the Republican Party demands more of the same. Hence, Huckabee utters a syllable of slight dissatisfaction and Romney goes off as if he’s just sat down on a whoopee cushion.

My point in raising this is the following: The mainstream media cover presidential elections as if they were, literally, beauty contests, though they have a funny idea of beauty. To most of the reporters and producers covering the election, Bush’s presidency is already over. They are focused entirely on minutiae of the personalities of those running and the ins and outs of their campaigns. It is up to rest of us, therefore, to remind reporters, and by extension the rest of the country, that these guys are running to replace George W. Bush and are promising more of the same. Bush is not just their past, he is their future unless, like Paul, they explicitly repudiate him. If that simple lesson could be made clear, the Democrats could nominate Paris Hilton and still win the election. But the media aren’t going to make it easy …

Second, and this is just as key: The congressional Democrats and most of the presidential candidates are failing miserably to communicate to the country just what an extreme party the Republicans have become of late. I was able to stomach about a half-hour of the Iowa debate last week, and I noticed a discussion of global warming in which the Republican candidates were all standing firm to make sure that the U.S. did not take the lead on helping to address global warming while other countries took a pass. Of course, back here on earth, it is the U.S. alone, among advanced nations, that is standing in the way of global agreement on taking serious action to address the problem. Iraq is what happens when a bunch of nutty people try to address a problem in their head rather than reality, and it is the same story across the board with these guys. I don’t understand why congressional Democrats don’t force them to filibuster the popular legislation they oppose and make their nutty arguments plain for everyone to see. Democratic politicians might not be that popular with the country but they look pretty darn sensible compared to the flat-earthers running amok with the Republican Party’s once-good name.

 

December 5, 2007

Criminal Civilians, or Unjustified Cops?

Posted by voiceoffreedom under Civil and Human Rights, Courts or Justice, Government, Media, Politics, Propaganda, federal agency
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Chicago police shoot a civilian on average once every 10 days. More than 100 people have been killed in the last decade; 250 others have been injured. But only a tiny fraction of shootings are ruled unjustified — less than 1 percent, police records and court testimony indicate.

Despite these rulings, police shootings have led to $59 million in settlements and civil judgments against the city in the last decade, including nearly $8 million from just two jury verdicts in recent months.

READ THE SHOCKING STORY

Are all of the police shootings justified? For sure some of them are justifiable, but it seems in Chicago, that the police stick together right or wrong.

For those that don’t know the going’s on after a civilian has been shot by authorities in Chicago, I suggest you read this article. Then if you are accosted by authorities there, lay down for crying out loud and pray you are not a paraplegic.