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Monday 4 June 2012

Will Scott Walker Get a Pink Slip, an Orange Jumpsuit or a Second Chance?
Mary Bottari, PRWatch: "On June 1, 2012, the [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel] broke the story that Milwaukee County prosecutors were forced to move from a regular investigation to a secret 'John Doe' criminal investigation more than two years ago after being stonewalled by the County Executive's office. Court records released in the trial of one of the defendants showed that prosecutors said Walker's office had been 'unwilling or unable' to turn over requested records.... As of today, this ongoing criminal investigation has resulted in six indictments, 15 felony charges, and two convictions.... [F]ive people are awaiting trial."
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Wisconsin Recall Campaign Spending Tops $60 Million
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "Wisconsin voters will go to polls on Tuesday for a special recall election after enduring one of the most grandiose campaign seasons in the state's history. What started in early 2011 as a popular uprising of students and workers against Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his anti-union 'reforms' has morphed into big-money campaigns that have spent a record-setting total of more than $100 million in pursuit of the governor's mansion and four state Senate seats."
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An Interview With Medea Benjamin About the Life-and-Death Decisions of Drone Warfare
Mark Karlin, Truthout: "One poll shows that eight out of ten Americans support the use of lethal drones. That's because drones have been posed as a cheap alternative for killing our enemies that puts no American lives at risk and only hits the 'bad guys.' In reality, they are not all that cheap (especially since they are constantly crashing), they kill lots of innocent people, and while they don't put pilots at risk, they stir up anti-American sentiment and provoke new attacks against us."
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Florida Official Behind Gov. Rick Scott's Voter Purge Linked to $1 Billion Campaign Effort Against Obama
Lee Fang, Republic Report: "On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice asked officials in Florida to suspend the controversial voter purge conducted by Gov. Rick Scott's (R) administration, citing possible violations of voting rights law. Florida officials had been purging a list of suspected non-citizen voters, estimated at one point to include at least 180,000 people, despite evidence that the list is riddled with errors.... [A] great deal of the individuals also happen to be Hispanics and Democratic-leaning voters, suggesting the effort is deeply partisan."
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Merrill Losses Were Withheld Before Bank of America Deal
Gretchen Morgenson, The New York Times News Service: "What Bank of America's top executives, including its chief executive then, Kenneth D. Lewis, knew about Merrill's vast mortgage losses and when they knew it emerged in court documents filed Sunday evening in a shareholder lawsuit being heard in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The disclosure, coming to light in private litigation, is likely to reignite concerns that federal regulators and prosecutors have not worked hard enough to hold key executives accountable for their actions during the financial crisis."
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Chris Hedges | Quebec's Fight Is Our Fight
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "The mass student strike in Quebec ... has metamorphosed into what must swiftly build in the United States - a broad popular uprising.... The Canadian students have gathered widespread support because they linked their tuition protests to Quebec's call for higher fees for health care, the firing of public sector employees, the closure of factories, the corporate exploitation of natural resources, new restrictions on union organizing, and an announced increase in the retirement age."
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Dean Baker | Alan Simpson: The Washington Elite's Attack Dog
Dean Baker, Truthout: "Alan Simpson, the foul-mouthed former senator, has been back in the news again. He once again launched an obscenity-laden diatribe against those who oppose his plans to cut Social Security and Medicare. Unfortunately, the focus of the media attention has been on the senator's use of obscenities.... The real issue is the senator's open contempt for the portion of the population that is either dependent now on Social Security or Medicare or will be in the future."
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Lessons From the Victory at Sotheby's
Gary Roland, Waging Nonviolence: "Last September 22, when Occupy Wall Street was just five days old, labor activists from the encampment at Zuccotti Park disrupted an auction at Sotheby's in support of the locked out art handlers of Teamsters Local 814. This action began a collaboration that lasted nine months, eventually leading to the ratification of a new three-year contract that ended the lockout on May 31."
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The Planet Wreckers: Climate-Change Deniers Are on the Ropes, but So Is the Planet
Bill McKibben, TomDispatch: "It's been a tough few weeks for the forces of climate-change denial. First came the giant billboard with Unabomber Ted Kacynzki's face plastered across it: 'I Still Believe in Global Warming. Do You?' Sponsored by the Heartland Institute, the nerve-center of climate-change denial, it was supposed to draw attention to the fact that 'the most prominent advocates of global warming aren't scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.' Instead it drew attention to the fact that these guys had over-reached, and with predictable consequences."
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Yes, Virginia, We Can Do Something About the Drone Strikes
Robert Naiman, Truthout: "There's a conventional wisdom in Washington that there's nothing we can do politically to stop the US government from killing innocent civilians with drone strikes. But it ain't necessarily so. Speaking only for myself, I'm willing to stipulate that killing 'high value terrorists,' who are known to be actively preparing to kill Americans is wildly popular, regardless of whether it is constitutional and legal. Here's what's not wildly popular: killing innocent civilians."
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The Transparently Secretive Chamber of Commerce
Robert Weissman, Public Citizen: "Well, the Big Business guys are transparent about one thing: They can't stand the idea of the public holding them to account for their attempts to buy elections and influence policy, or even that they be prevented from corrupting the government contracting process through campaign spending. The latest: They are so terrified even of having their political spending disclosed that they are pushing in Congress legislation that would prohibit the government from requiring contractors to disclose their campaign-related spending."
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Five Facts About the Massachusetts Economy Under Mitt Romney
Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress: "Republican Mitt Romney's presidential campaign whipped out a new number over the weekend to dispute federal government data that ranked Massachusetts 47th in job creation during Romney's time as governor there. Three campaign surrogates used the Sunday morning news circuit to claim that the state was actually 30th in job growth in Romney's final year in office. Of course, moving the state to 30th would still mean it was in the bottom half of the nation ..."
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Jim Hightower | In Fight With Monsanto, Mother Nature Doesn't Quit
Jim Hightower, OtherWords: "Rather than find ways to cooperate with the natural world, America's agribusiness giants reach for the next quick fix in a futile effort to overpower nature. Their attitude is that if brute force isn't working, they're probably not using enough of it.... But Mother Nature, darn it, has rebelled. So much of Monsanto's poison was spread in the past decade that weeds naturally began to resist it."
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Illinois Law Makes It a Felony to Record Comments of Police in Public
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: "That's right. There is a law in Illinois that can put a person in jail for up to 15 years for recording the remarks of a police officer in public. That means if you are videotaping police beating up protesters with your cellphone, you can be arrested and charged with a serious crime.... In May, however, the precedent-setting and ominous Illinois law was struck down by a federal appellate court."
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Wealthy Individuals and Corporations, Not Middle-Class Wage Earners, Have Taken Your Money
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Glenn Greenwald: US Again Bombs Mourners
Read the Article at Salon

Bernie Sanders Urges Obama to Replace Oil Market's Regulator
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Contraceptive Health Insurance Bill Awaits Missouri Governor's Decision
Read the Article at The Kansas City Star

Can We Accept Becoming a Nation of Low-Minded Racists and Self-Serving Billionaires?
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

New Web Site Tracks Politicians' Deleted Tweets
Read the Article at Roll Call

Why Warren Buffett Still Buys Newspapers as the Industry Sinks
Read the Article at The Daily Beast

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