Click here to view this and past newsletters online. Please add "messenger@truthout.org" to your email contacts to ensure delivery.  Friday 15 June 2012 Marijuana Decriminalization Won't Kill DiscriminationNatasha Lennard, Truthout: "New York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said something very interesting last week about Gov. Andrew Cuomo's efforts to decriminalize the public possession of marijuana. With respect to the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk practices, Bloomberg said that decriminalization would 'certainly end some of the objections.' It's an odd turn of phrase, whether Bloomberg put much thought into it or not, to state that a measure would 'end objections' as opposed to, say, fix problems." Read the Article Obama to Stop Deporting DREAM-Eligible Youth, Protecting One Million Undocumented Students Amanda Peterson Beadle, ThinkProgress: "President Obama will announce a new immigration policy this morning that will allow some undocumented students to avoid deportation and receive work authorization. Under the president's 'deferred action' executive order, students in the U.S. who are already in deportation proceedings or those who qualify for the DREAM Act and have yet to come forward to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials, will not be deported and will be allowed to work in the United States." Read the Article Department of Justice Accused of Undermining FOIA Ombudsman Jason Leopold, Truthout: "The Obama administration continues to disseminate a flawed narrative about President Obama's commitment to open government. Just last week, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters during a press briefing that President Obama has taken steps, 'unprecedented in American presidential administration history,' to 'enhance transparency.' But Carney's rhetoric is not supported by the facts, as has been documented time and again over the past three years." Read the Article Chris Hayes | 1% Pathologies Chris Hayes, Crown Publishers: "Nearly all of the commentary on America's growing inequality focuses on the ways in which skewed distribution of income and wealth is bad for those on the bottom of the pyramid: the way it leads to stagnating wages and competition for scarce positional goods; the way it alienates the middle and working classes and the poor. But we largely ignore the effect of extreme inequality that is, in the long run, the most destructive: the way it makes those at the top of the social pyramid worse." Read the Excerpt Health Insurance Companies Plowed Over $107 Million Into Electing Speaker Boehner's Anti-Health Reform Congress Lee Fang, Republic Report: "Chris Frates of National Journal broke the story that health insurance companies secretly funneled over $100 million into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for advertising. The Chamber, during the period in which the money was accepted, orchestrated one of the largest electioneering outside money efforts in American history to help weaken health reform and elect lawmakers, mostly Republican, running on platform to repeal health reform." Read the Article Veteran Suicides: A Predictable Epidemic Rae Abileah, AlterNet: "Last month I was riding BART to SF and read a statistic in TIME: 18 veterans die by suicide every day - that's one every 80 minutes. As the subway pulled up to my stop, I saw a large poster advertising the Out of the Darkness Overnight Walk to break the silence about depression and suicide. Then a couple of weeks later, Newsweek ran a feature story on veteran suicide.... So now that our troops are actually coming home from Iraq, many are killing themselves. Why?" Read the Article Novelist Uses Fiction to Depict War's True Aftermath Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout: "Kristin Hannah's twentieth book, the novel 'Home Front,' zooms in on the aftermath of war by telling a deceptively simple story. In it, Jolene Zarkades, a member of the National Guard and a wife and mother of two, is called to Iraq. The narrative not only charts her 2005 deployment to Balat, but also describes her life in country. It further chronicles her return home after devastating arm, leg and facial injuries - compounded by PTSD - make it impossible for her to continue fighting." Read the Article Campaign Cash: The Gift That Keeps on Giving Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Co.: "If you're visiting a candidate this summer and looking for a thoughtful house gift, might we suggest a nice super PAC? Thanks to the Supreme Court and Citizens United, they're all the rage among the mega-wealthy. All it takes is a little paperwork and a wad of cash and presto, you can have, as The Washington Post describes it, a 'highly customized, highly personalized political action committee.'" Read the Article Robert Reich | A Back Door to the Public Option Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "In striking down the least popular part of Obamacare - the individual mandate - the Court will inevitably bring into question one of its most popular parts - coverage of pre-existing conditions. And in so doing, open alternative ways to maintain that coverage - including ideas, like the public option, that were rejected in favor of the mandate." Read the Article Click here for more Truthout articles
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: "It might appear to be an outlandish thesis to claim that national leaders in government and other fields, who arrived at their positions due to an age of meritocracy, could actually prolong inequality in the United States, but Chris Hayes (of MSNBC and The Nation) makes a provocative and persuasive case that this is exactly what is happening." Read the BuzzFlash Commentary Revealed: Sixty-Four Drone Bases on American Soil Feingold: Citizens United "Framework for Corruption Cannot Stand" How to Defeat Romney: Chain Him to the GOP Elizabeth Warren: Americans "Understand the Game Is Rigged" Hold That "Hot" Fukushima Sushi GOP Begins Blockade of Judicial Nominees Former Romney Adviser: Republicans Are "Rooting Against the Economy" Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines
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