Obama admin. to require drug firms to report payments to docs

I don't know if this flurry of 99%-friendly announcements is election-motivated or not.  It doesn't really matter.  What matters is that this is the kind of thing the President should be doing more of, and is doing more of, of late.  He needs to keep it up, even if he wins a second term.  It's not just good politics, it's good governance (and in fact, the only way to govern with an opposition that isn't interest in playing fair).  More from the NYT. Read the rest of this post...

Wikipedia to join Reddit and others for anti-SOPA blackout

SOPA appears to be dead thanks to the heavy opposition, but PIPA is still alive thanks to Democrats like Chuck Schumer. (With friends like that...) Until Congress backs down, the tech industry is voicing it's opposition and some are even planning a blackout this Wednesday, to highlight the issue.

Wikipedia is going black on Wednesday, January 18, to help fight the contentious Protect IP Act (PIPA), which is set to go for a vote before the Senate on January 24. The move, first reported by Neal Mann, digital news editor at Sky News, was confirmed by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of the far-reaching online encyclopedia, on Twitter. Wales says the blackout was a “community decision.” The blackout will only apply to English-language articles on Wikipedia — all 3,847,673 of them. It will run from 12am ET on Wednesday, through 11:59pm, says Wales, who estimates that as many as 100 million people will view the blocked protest pages.

In case you had any doubts about how bad the two bills are, Rupert Murdoch has been slamming Obama and the tech industry for raising questions about the legislation. Read the rest of this post...

Chris Hedges: Why I’m suing Barack Obama over NDAA

The counter-assault continues.

NDAA, if you recall, is the National Defense Authorization Act, the bill that Barack Obama signed as his personal gift to a sleeping nation on New Years Eve. It authorized indefinite detention of U.S. citizens by the military — since the battlefield is everywhere, you can be arrested anywhere. You read that right.

There has been quite the groundswell of reaction, including at our site. Here's the latest, from Chris Hedges (my emphasis and some reparagraphing):

Why I’m Suing Barack Obama

Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31.

The act authorizes the military in Title X, Subtitle D, entitled “Counter-Terrorism,” for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing.

With this bill, which will take effect March 3, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until “the end of hostilities.” It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.

Hedges, a veteran war reporter (and one of the best before he stopped), then talks about his experience in countries with "military gulags":

I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have “disappeared” into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism. ...

I met regularly with leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. I used to visit Palestine Liberation Organization leaders, including Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad, in Tunis when they were branded international terrorists. I have spent time with the Revolutionary Guard in Iran and was in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey with fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. All these entities were or are labeled as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. What would this bill have meant if it had been in place when I and other Americans traveled in the 1980s with armed units of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front guerrillas in El Salvador?

What would it have meant for those of us who were with the southern insurgents during the civil war in Yemen or the rebels in the southern Sudan? I have had dinner more times than I can count with people whom this country brands as terrorists. But that does not make me one.

To that last question, I can answer the implied answer ("Well, we would not have arrested you") with two words — selective enforcement. What better way than selective enforcement to achieve this goal:

But I suspect the real purpose of this bill is to thwart internal, domestic movements that threaten the corporate state. ...

Please do read the whole thing.

As he says, the gesture may be quixotic; but if you don't push back, you lose for sure. Thank you for your service.

[Update: Fixed bad link.]

GP Read the rest of this post...

Florida policymakers trying to privatize entire state public school system

You read it right; "vulture capitalism" coming to a public school system near you.

This is from Eileen Roy, a member of the Alachua County (Florida) School Board and published in the Gainesville Sun (my emphasis):

Make no mistake, there is a determined, coordinated effort to dismantle public schools. June Girard’s Jan. 2 Speaking Out (“For Profit Virtual Schools A Bad Deal for Kids”) is right on target in exposing the machinations to privatize public education. The plan is to allow venture capitalists to step in with for-profit virtual schools, cut the costs of traditional public schools, and make bundles of cash ... education on the cheap at the expense of children’s education.

Who cares that these virtual schools may have a poor or non-existent track record, or that virtual school teachers often have hundreds of students each? While “attending” virtual school, many students have no adult supervision. Profit, not educational excellence, is the motive.

The Florida Legislature in the past two sessions has passed a flurry of bills to distract educators and parents by requiring every student to take and pass a college prep curriculum to graduate high school, eliminating teacher tenure, requiring end-of-course exams for every subject taught (without providing funding), and requiring every student to take at least one virtual school class to graduate. ... The writing is on the wall.

I came by that article via this one, whose writer adds:

Roy provides another example which explains why Jacksonville Sen. Steve Wise proposed a bill last session to end school board member salaries. It was a cynical ploy to eliminate opponents and weaken local control.

It is from school boards where Florida’s republican privateers are getting their most significant opposition. Roy’s not alone. Flagler’s Colleen Conklin has taken the legislature to task for unfunded mandates and their general failure to fund. Orange county board member Daryl Flynn wrote last month that “the school choice movement may be leading us to unaccountable forms of corporate-run models for educating students.” Another Orange county school board member, Bill Sublette, accused Charter USA of attempting to “stockpile charters.” The state’s association of school boards is calling for an end to unfunded mandates and to provide proper funding. ...

How alone are the privatization crowd? Maybe they realize it. It sure explains why legislative efforts are often stealth or seek to impose phony, artificial choice triggers.

A couple of notes:

■ This is an editorial, not a news article. In fairness though, Gov. Rick Scott is fully capable of this kind of pro-corporate radical plan; and the writer is a school board member, not just a citizen.

■ The article referenced in the second sentence of the first quote — “For Profit Virtual Schools A Bad Deal for Kids” — is a good read also. Please click through; it's not long.

■ Radically restructuring government and society by taking maximum advantage of power has a strong Hungary ring to it. These Republican governors — if you think about it — may be writing the template for the next Republican president.

(Don't be foolish enough to dismiss that. The governor is the president of a state, and Republicans love power like a drug.)

■ Watch for these "Parent Triggers" — cynically branded as "Parent Empowerment" bills. It's the backdoor way to get parents to pull the trigger that hands over their schools:

The “Parent Trigger” is a common ploy that has been attempted around the country. This legislation cynically uses parents and their love for their children as a tool to pull the “trigger” and hand their neighborhood school over to a private entity with no true guarantee of gaining anything better for the children. The net result is that schools are taken away from the jurisdiction of duly elected district officials and the physical property of the school is seized and handed over to a for-profit management company.

"Parent Empowerment" — perfectly Orwellian, and a perfect example of the 180 Tell. It's exactly 180° opposite to what it claims to be.

■ This has all the earmarks of an ALEC operation. Read through the two Florida articles and note how many of the enabling details are similar to the Missouri proposal linked here.

(For the newly born or just awakened, ALEC is the national Republican–corporate law-writing shop that creates almost all of these radical state proposals. This link will get you started — our baseline ALEC post. For more, the google is your friend, for now at least.)

Huge props to progressive Florida activist Susan Smith and education activist Rita Solnet for the catch. Activism pays, folks. This is not a done deal. (This is also why you want to get on school boards. It's very local, and these are your children after all.)

GP Read the rest of this post...

Economy in China slows down

Some are saying 2012 is the year the Chinese economy will fall but that sentiment has been around for a few years. The high growth years will come to an end eventually and the problems now are both self-inflicted (the real estate and construction bubble) and beyond their control (the global economy.) Bloomberg:

Gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced, rose 8.7 percent from a year earlier, the slowest pace since the second quarter of 2009, according to the median forecast of 26 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The data, and indicators for investment, retail sales and industrial production, are scheduled for release tomorrow in Beijing. The fourth straight quarterly slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy adds to concerns that global expansion is faltering, with the International Monetary Fund warning of near- zero growth in Europe and a “substantial” cut to its global forecast. China’s exports rose the least in two years in December and inflation eased to a 15-month low, bolstering the case for Premier Wen Jiabao to loosen policies. “The worst is yet to come and more easing measures will be in the pipeline in coming months,” said Zhang Zhiwei, Hong Kong-based chief China economist at Nomura Holdings Inc., who previously worked at the IMF. “Increasing downside risks in China will hurt the outlook for other economies especially commodities exporters such as Australia and Brazil.”

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Syria's Assad offers amnesty for opposition protesters

Does anyone really believe that his word is good? Assad has to know that he has a massive challenge ahead with the protests as well as increasing pressure from some of his neighbors and trading partners. Al Jazeera:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has offered amnesty to anyone accused of alleged crimes in connection with the last 10 months of anti-government unrest and resulting violence. Assad has made similar decrees on three previous occasions in May, June and November. Sunday's announcement was made on the official SANA news agency and broadcast on state television. Since the outbreak of the uprising against Assad's rule in March, Assad has freed 3,952 prisoners, according to SANA. The opposition claims there are thousands more in Syrian prisons and said that 26 people had died on Sunday, including a policeman and soldier killed by security forces for refusing to fire on protesters.

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UK probably back in recession

This is not the way anyone wants to start a new year. This year was going to be difficult for the UK no matter who was in power, but the Cameron austerity program is not helping. 2012 will be the year when the pain of austerity really starts to hit families, so the generally kind approval for Cameron is likely to start slipping as the year goes on. The Guardian:

Professor Peter Spencer, chief economic adviser to the Ernst & Young ITEM Club, said: "Figures for the last quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of this year are likely to show that we are back in recession and we are going to have to wait until this summer before there are any signs of improvement. But it's not going to be a repeat of 2009 – we are not going to see a serious double dip." The ITEM Club report forecasts GDP growth of just 0.2% this year before increasing to 1.8% in 2013 and 2.8% in 2014. The ITEM Club said deteriorating levels of confidence will see business investment stagnate in 2012, while export prospects have already slowed.

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