Your Independent Journal from the Heartland

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The PROGRESSIVE POPULIST,
the People's Voice in a Corporate World.

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Selections from the August 15, 2010 issue

COVER/Dennis Bernstein
Who goes to jail? BP CEO or shrimper?

EDITORIAL
Deficit bamboozle; Wall St. fight goes on


LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Get to work, kids

DISPATCHES
GOP blasts Dems for sticking to GOP plan;
Cost of post-9/11 wars tops $1T;
More spooks, less results;
Key piece on Gulf blowout rig overhauled in China;
Obey has regrets;

Mass. health plan working;
Tea Party motivated but not populist;
GOP choice: Base or independents;
Reid pulling away from teabagger;
Louisiana-style family values;
ACORN hoax victim sues pranksters;
White House duped by Fox News hatchet job — again;
Polls show Senate majority narrowing;
Trouble in River City;
GOP gets official Tea tie;
Numbers show Senate majority narrowing;
Galbraith: Panel has no business urging entitlement cuts;
GOP claims felons tipped Franken win;
GOP hints at impeaching Obama over immigration;
Irish austerity doesn't lure investors ...


MARK MANSPERGER
Drill Baby Drill and other disasters


JIM VAN DER POL
Farmers need fair prices more than broadband


JOHN BUELL
Fiscal policy, culture wars


HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Chinese drugs

SAM URETSKY
Ghost writers in the medical spin cycle

D.H. KERBY
Blowback threatens Wikileaks

WAYNE O’LEARY
BP and the perils of privatization

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Be bold, be progressive


N. GUNASEKARAN
Outrage against corporate anarchy in Bhopal


BILL JOHNSTON
Why I’m not a Republican


BOOK/Seth Sandronsky
North Star

DON ROLLINS
Baseball has been very good to me

ROB PATTERSON
Play guitar, go to jail

POPULIST PICKS
Cable is home for quality TV

and more ...

Plus, a web special:

The Tea Party and The Olympians! by Keith Baker. If you consider yourself both elite and egalitarian, then you just might be an Olympian, but you're not in the Tea Party.

See our health reform resource page.

For those who wish Obama would finally issue a resounding indictment of corporatists, see Franklin D. Roosevelt's acceptance of his renomination by the Democratic Convention in 1936.

Progressive Populist columnists:

Americas/Patrisia Gonzales & Roberto Rodriguez
Dean Baker
Margie Burns
Alexander Cockburn
Corporate Focus / Robert Weissman
Joe Conason
Amy Goodman
Jim Hightower
Arianna Huffington
Tribute to Molly Ivins
• Jesse Jackson
Hank Kalet
Donald Kaul
Garrison Keillor
Naomi Klein
A.V. Krebs
Labor Talk/Harry Kelber
Gene Lyons
Ralph Nader
Nathan Newman
John Nichols
Greg Palast
Ted Rall
Norman Solomon
This Modern World
Mark Weisbrot
Dave Zweifel

Alternative News Sites

See these web sites with breaking news and commentary from progressive writers and publications around the world:


Brave New Films creates and hosts political videos on the web.
Buzzflash, the left's answer to Matt Drudge
Common Dreams News Center, with selected articles from newspapers and periodicals. See also the concise list of national and international news services, newspapers and periodicals.
In These Times, updates from the monthly magazine.
MotherJones.com, daily updates from the bimonthly muckraker.
The Nation, liberal weekly has daily updates.
Salon.com (requires a subscription to read many articles).
TomPaine.com, rousing rabble in the spirit of the Revolutionary pamphleteer.
And you never know what will turn up on
C-SPAN
.

 

See previous postings in our weblog archives:

2009
2008

2007

December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006

January 2006
December 2005

November 2005

October 2005

September 2005
August 2005

July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005

February 2005
January 16-31, 2005
January 1-15, 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004


"We believe people are more important than corporations"

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Copyright © 1995-2010 The Progressive Populist

By the way, the name is Progressive Populist, not populous, populace, papalist or populisp.

Please note that we don't control who advertises on our site. (Ads are placed with independent ad placement services such as Google.com.) However, we don't get paid for the ad unless you click on it. So if you see what appears to be a right-wing ad that doesn't appear to belong here, please click on it (just don't give them any personal information). Otherwise, check out our bona-fide advertisers.

The Progressive Populist is an independent newspaper that reports from the Heartland of America on issues of interest to workers, small business people and family farmers and ranchers.

We produce our newsprint edition and email versions twice monthly with updates and resources online.

 

We hope you enjoy our website, which includes the blog below as well as other resources, including samples of articles from our current newsprint issue, recent editorials, online essays and resources you might find useful and a summary of what we're all about.

We also hope you'll try a subscription to our twice-monthly tabloid newspaper or email version of the paper under our special discount introductory rate of $15 for six months (11 issues). That rate is good for addresses in the US as well as our email version. And if you're not satisfied with the first three issues we'll refund the entire $15.

Do your gift shopping with us:

See our new Progressive Populist Gift Shop with items for men, women and children.

Read a Good Book:

If you can't find the book you're looking for at your local independent bookstore, Powell's Books is an indy bookseller in Portland, Ore., with whom we have partnered. Get your book there and help support our website. See our book page for more suggested titles.

 

A Few Good Weblogs
to keep you from getting your work done:

Eric Alterman's Altercation
The American Prospect
Buzzflash
Center for American Progress
Juan Cole's Informed Comment on Middle East politics, history and religion.
Daily Kos (Democratic politics)
Daily Scare exposes fearmongering and scare tactics in government and media.
Democratic Strategist journal of public opinion and political strategy by William Galston, Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira.
Eschaton by Atrios (politics)
FightingBob.com, progressive voices in Wisconsin
Bob Harris, smart aleck lefty.
Iowa Indepndent what's up in the Hawkeye State.
Liberal Oasis
Media Matters for America
MyDD, progressive politics
Nathan Newman (mainly labor law)
The New Republic
Progressive Review Undernews
Political Wire by Taegon Goddard
Raw Story
Romenesko's Media News (journalism scuttlebutt)
Salon's War Room
Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall
Talk Left, the politics of crime.
This Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow
TomPaine.com, progressive insights • Washington Monthly, by Steve Benen

For international news which the US media such as the Chicago Tredibune, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post might not see fit to print:

From Canada
Globe and Mail of Toronto, for Canadian news and perspectives on its southern neighbor.
Toronto Star, a liberal Canadian newspaper.

From Britain
The Guardian, a liberal newspaper in London (formerly the Manchester Guardian). See also its US-oriented website, Guardian America.
The Independent, a liberal newspaper in London
Daily Mirror, liberal tabloid in London.
New Statesman, British Socialist weekly.
• BBC World News

From Elsewhere:
Al Ahram, English-language weekly based in Cairo, for Arab perspective on Mid-East
Dawn, of Karachi, centrist English-language Pakistan daily.
The Frontier Post of Peshawar, Pakistan, for news from the front lines of the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.
Haaretz, Israeli liberal daily with English language edition
International Herald Tribune, Paris-based daily operated by the New York Times.
Le Monde Diplomatique, English language monthly digest of the French daily newspaper.
Mail and Guardian, daily web edition of South African liberal weekly.
Mexico City News, the English language daily in our neighbor to the south.
South China Morning Post, independent Hong Kong and Pacific news (registration required).
Spiegel, English version of
German newsweekly.
Sydney Morning Herald, for news from Down Under.
Watching America, links to articles in foreign press about the USA, with translations of articles originally written for foreigners about the US. Updated daily.
World Press Review, a monthly magazine with analyses and English translations of articles in the international press, as well as an excellent directory of publications by nation, with ideological leanings.

--------------------------------

They say a picture is worth a thousand words; well, here are some good cartoon sites:

Jules Feiffer

Jeff Danziger

Mark Fiore

Forever Dada, an animated political cartoon created by California artists Louis Dunn & Steve Campbell.

This Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow. (And he has a pretty good links page.)

Ted Rall, our cartoonist/columnist.

Tom the Dancing Bug, by Ruben Bolling

Matt Wuerker

Also see our Links to Independent Media

See links to health care reform

--------------------------------

See our recent editorials

--------------------------------

This World Wide Web site not only features selections from the newsprint edition of the Progressive Populist, to which we hope you will subscribe. It also gives you another crack at selected articles from back issues as well as texts of populist speeches and essays on populism that we could not otherwise fit into our printed edition.
Watch our Global Trade site for information on the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and citizen efforts to check the globalization of corporate power. And after you have bookmarked our site, go to the Links for pointers to other web sites that you might find of interest.

WARNING: Be wary of any email message you might receive from someone purporting to be from "support" or "admin" at populist.com, regarding "Notify about using the e-mail account," and suggesting that you use an attached "free anti-virus tool to clean up your computer software." In the first place, we're not nearly organized enough to help you clean your software or your computer. The "antivirus tool" is an attempt to spread a computer virus by email. We would never send you bug fixes attached to email messages. Do not open it, but delete the attached zip file immediately. If you have already run this thing, see real free antivirus solutions at www.austintx.com.

More on our features:

Featured in the Essays section are collections of articles and resources on Health Care, Social Security and Voting Security, among other topics. Also see our collection of resources on 9/11 and the aftermath of terror attacks on the United States.
We mainly cover current events, but in an effort to provide historic background, our Populist Reader offers texts such as the Preamble to the People's Party Platform, which formed the rhetorical underpinning for the Populist movement, the People's Party Platform of 1896, which represented the Populist demands at the peak of the agrarian/labor revolt, and more. And Mark Twain's "War Prayer," written in response to the Spanish-American War, is as relevant as ever.
Also featured in the Essays section is "Democratic Money: A Populist Perspective", with Lawrence Goodwyn, William Greider and Tom Schlesinger of the Southern Finance Project discussing the Populism of the 1890s and how those historical lessons relate to the prospects for financial reform today.
Also see reminiscences by two former Alabama journalists about the late George Wallace, the former Alabama governor who transformed American politics with his combination of racism and populism. Claude Duncan remembers the good George Wallace in "George Wallace Joins the Ghost Brigade", while Peggy Roberson reminds us of the bad George Wallace in "Remembering George Wallace"
We also offer Eugene J. McCarthy's remarks on his career in politics on the event of his 80th birthday, as well as his remembrances of Chicago as the Democrats returned to the scene of the crime in 1996 after 28 years. See James McCarty Yeager's remembrance of McCarthy, some notes on McCarthy by Sam Smith and a short film on McCarthy, "Sorry I was Right," at Free Speech TV. Also see a website devoted to McCarthy's legacy.
Another feature that we hope you will check out is Dan Yurman's Samizdat: Militia News from Idaho; Blood Oaths and Fish Stories Swim in Political Waters. This collects a series of dispatches, analysis and commentary by Yurman on militias, wise-use and white-supremacist movements in Idaho and the Rocky Mountain states. Please tell us what you think.

The Progressive Populist started in November 1995 as a monthly newspaper with editorial offices in Austin, Texas, and business and production offices in Storm Lake, Iowa. In October 1999, after four years, The Progressive Populist switched to twice-monthly publication. Our editorial offices moved to Manchaca, Texas, just south of Austin, in 2005.
We aim to make the Progressive Populist the antidote to the monopoly daily news, throw a lifeline to progressives who feel like they are stranded in a sea of conservatives, and maybe play a role in reviving political and economic debate. We hope this web site is useful to you.

If you would like to hear more about our project, or if you would like to comment on our web site or receive a sample copy of the Progressive Populist, drop me a line by email or regular post.
Also, register below to receive email updates on news and features or to donate to our enterprise.
-- Jim Cullen, Editor

E-mail populist@usa.net
PO Box 819
Manchaca TX 78652