Archive for July, 2010

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs showed poor press management skills in handling the whole Shirley Sherrod saga. He allowed the media frame to shift quickly to the missteps of the administration rather than emphasizing the underhanded, contrived, and racist actions of Andrew Breitbart and his fellow travelers at Fox News.
Instead of explaining to the… »

In an article in today’s New York Times, “Senate Records Show Doubts on ‘64 Vietnam War Crisis,” senior national security correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller writes: “Even at the time, there was widespread skepticism about the Gulf of Tonkin incident . . . ”
Wait a minute! Is that so?
“Widespread skepticism?”
The New York Times and… »

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently submitted a “budget” to the legislature that eliminates CalWORKS, the state’s highly successful welfare-to-work program that is needed now more than ever. This move would make California the only state in the nation to dismantle its safety net. He’s even willing to throw away the federal matching funds CalWORKS receives… »

In her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, Diane Ravitch, who was a devotee of No Child Left Behind-type policies when she served as Assistant Secretary of Education under Poppy Bush, shows that the data are in and the corporate educational “reforms”… »

After nine years of war the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan lacks support at home and is widely recognized as a drain on the domestic economy in a time of severe economic contraction. The billions of dollars in U.S. economic assistance to the Hamid Karzai government has created an unsustainable class of Afghans who are dependent… »