Media

A few weeks ago, Desmogblog.com released a series of internal documents from the Heartland Institute, one of the leaders of the climate denial movement, which shows the Institute’s strategy for pushing their climate denying message.

“I’m against very wealthy ­people attempting to or influencing elections” 

You might think this statement was made by Buddy Roemer, or a member of Occupy Wall Street. But you’d be wrong.

It's not entirely clear what Rick Santorum was thinking in going after President Obama this past week for wanting more young people to go to college. Perhaps he thought that bashing college is a great way to bond with the blue collar voters Santorum needs to win Michigan. Or perhaps he thinks that bashing colleges as liberal "indoctrination mills" -- as he did on Glenn Beck's show -- is a great way to bond with the conservative base.

With the Michigan primaries just one day away, the spotlight has been put back on the economic pain felt across the state. On MSNBC's "Up with Chris Hayes" this Saturday, Demos' Bob Herbert posed the million dollar question to advocates and civic leaders from the hard-hit city of Detroit:

In a speech today before Third Way, the centrist Democratic think tank, Steny Hoyer -- who is the second highest ranking Democrat in the House as Whip -- said that a big deficit reduction agreement would "provide the biggest single stimulus to the economy we could achieve. Setting our economy back on a sustainable, predictable fiscal path will help us create jobs by restoring certainty for businesses and enabling them to plan for a future without the brinksmanship that has characterized this Congress."

Get ready, after today's shooting at Chardon High School in Ohio, for yet another round of superficial analysis of what lies behind these deadly episodes. Media accounts of school shootings almost always focus on the availability of guns or, sometimes, on the influence of violent video games or other media.

Physically large and in charge, Mike Daisey’s performance style suggests a peculiar combination of the late Spalding Gray and Lewis Black of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He sits at a table on a bare stage with some notes and a glass of water and simply tells his story; at times hysterically funny, at others, poignant, withering and accusatory. Some might find his manner a bit loud and overbearing: the night we were there last fall, media moguls Barry Diller and David Geffen were sitting a couple of rows in front of us and walked out after the first fifteen minutes or so.

Sometimes a bad statistic just won't die. Case in point: the endlessly repeated claim that half of all Americans pay no taxes and that this fact underscores how a dwindling band of hard working citizens is supporting a growing horde of free-loaders.

Just this week, this Hertigate Foundation released yet another report that stressed how many people aren't paying taxes. The report, The 2012 Index of Dependendence on Government, notes that:

In November of 2010, New York state’s Domestic Workers Bill of Rights—the first such law in the nation—went into effect, giving some 200,000 nannies, health aides, housekeepers, private cooks, and other at-home workers considerable power to address the poor conditions they often encounter in their unusual workplaces. Around the same time, the Urban Justice Center began holding a monthly legal clinic to help domestic workers file complaints.