Progressive Review

• Rebuilding America: Do it from the bottom up
  Another in our series on Rebuilding AmericaSam Smith - From the American revolution to the underground railroad, to the organizing of labor, to the drive for universal suffrage, to the civil rights, women's, peace and environmental movements, every significant political and social change in this country has been propelled by large numbers of highly auto […]
• Hillary Clinton on torture
  BEN SMITH, NY DAILY NEWS, 2006 - Despite her apparent opposition to torture, Hillary Clinton said in a Daily News editorial board meeting yesterday that the practice is acceptable in some circumstances. . At yesterday's Daily News editorial board meeting, it emerged that she's not actually against torture in all instances, and that her dispute with […]
• Children losing contact with outdoors
  From the National Wildlife Federation Children are spending half as much time outdoors as they did 20 years ago. Today, kids 8-18 years old devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes using entertainment media in a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). In a typical week, only 6% of children ages 9-13 play outside on their own. Children who play outside ar […]
• What was Homeland Security doing when it could have been checking on the Boston bombers?
  Progressive Magazine - Thousands of documents obtained by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy show how Homeland Security and local law enforcement were obsessed with the Occupy movement and other activists.They treated Occupy activists as potential terrorists.They infiltrated Occupy meetings.They tracked Occupy activists online.They kept an eye […]
• Entropy update: Elite New York parents using nannies for school functions
  New York Post -  Wealthy New Yorkers are shunning their parental duties — choosing instead to send nannies to their children’s private schools to take part in everything from “safety patrol” to accompanying the kids on their entrance interviews.“They’re sending nannies for bake sales, book clubs, for the ice-skating group,” Amanda Uhry of Manhattan Private S […]
• Obama's criminal war against journalists
  Glenn Greenwald, Guardian, UK - Under US law, it is not illegal to publish classified information. That fact, along with the First Amendment's guarantee of press freedoms, is what has prevented the US government from ever prosecuting journalists for reporting on what the US government does in secret. This new found theory of the Obama DOJ - that a journ […]
• Obamacare encouraging employers to cut health services
  Wall Street Journal - Employers are increasingly recognizing they may be able to avoid certain penalties under the federal health law by offering very limited plans that can lack key benefits such as hospital coverage.Benefits advisers and insurance brokers—bucking a commonly held expectation that the law would broadly enrich benefits—are pitching these low- […]
• GOP hypocrite of the day
  Alternet - Stephen Fincher, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, is very angry that the federal government is committed to preventing poor people from starving to death:Republican Congressman Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, who supports cuts to the program, had his own Bible verse from the Book of Thessalonians: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not […]
• Underground water supply dropping at much larger rate
  Reuters - Water levels in U.S. aquifers, the vast underground storage areas tapped for agriculture, energy and human consumption, between 2000 and 2008 dropped at a rate that was almost three times as great as any time during the 20th century, U.S. officials said .The big rise in water use started in 1950, at the time of an economic boom and the spread of U. […]
• PBS pulls documentary out of fear of Koch brothers
  Truthout - "Citizen Koch," a documentary about money in politics focused on the Wisconsin uprising, was shunned by PBS for fear of offending billionaire industrialist David Koch, who has given $23 million to public television, according to Jane Mayer of the New Yorker. The dispute highlights the increasing role of private money in "public […]
• San Diego mayor urges jury nullification in medical marijuana case
  Hit & Run - San Diego Bob Filner ... held a press conference to encourage potential jury members to reject federal charges against Ronnie Chang of San Marcos, who was arrested by feds in 2009 for operating a medical marijuana dispensary, legal under state law. NBC San Diego reports:"This is way overdoing it when local laws, state laws allow compassi […]
• An award winning principal runs into Gates Foundation child (and teacher) abuse
  Valerie Strauss, Washington Post - Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York [writes] her newest post on Year Two of New York’s controversial educator evaluation system. Burris, named the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State, is the co-author of the New York Principals letter o […]
• Morning Line: Three decidedly different controversies mushed into one
  Sam Smith: If you feel confused about the real story in the hat trick of controversies overwhelming the media these days, don't feel bad. There are an extraordinary number of officials manipulating these tales for their own use, with the help of an extraordinarily manipulated media. In happier times, the media would have seen its job as coming up with t […]
• Rebuilding America: A movement, not a campaign
  Sam Smith - In 1997, WW Norton published my book the Great American Repair Manual, a title that, sixteen years later, seems overly optimistic. Repair is no longer enough. Today, America needs to be rebuilt. Here is the first in a series of ways we could go about it, based in part on a remix of earlier writings. A movement is not like a campaign. No one gets […]
• US arrests about 400,000 immigrants a year
  TRAC - On a typical work day Immigration and Customs Enforcement took 1,509 individuals into custody, according to the latest available ICE data from November and December 2012. If activity continues at this pace, ICE will detain around 400,000 individuals during the current fiscal year.      Seven out of every ten individuals were originally detained in sta […]