In These Times

[Ralph Nader]'s 97,421 votes may have spoiled Gore's chances, but those votes represented many citizens' desire for an alternative. It is past time that progressives recognize that the Democratic Party never intends to represent them. After dropping In iT-iese Times years ago due to the magazine's relentless battering of Ralph Nader and the Green Party, I decided to give you another try. I received the first issue and the first sentence of your appropriately headlined editorial re-asserts tha...

Quid Pro Quo

The Center for Competitive Politics (CCP) was founded in 2005 by Bradley Smith, a former Republican commissioner of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The CCP and Smith are dedicated to opposing limits on corporate campaign contributions. This year.

In Vermont, Shades of Mccarthy

AT A SEPTEMBER 23 debate, Republican candidate for Vermont governor Brian Dubie waved a sheaf of 8.5 ? p printouts in the air. He announced he was holding a "list" of inmates "who need to be incarcerated," and said his Democratic rival Peter Shumlin's proposed corrections reform plan would free the criminals. Fanning the papers, Dubie charged: Some see the sniping as "not the Vermont way" and point to Dubie's hiring of outside guns including campaign manager Corrie Bliss, who headed the faile...

Excommunicated Over Abortion

[Margaret McBride]'s excommunication has raised questions about the quality of reproductive care women receive at Catholic Healthcare facilities. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) cited the case in a July ? letter requesting an investigation by the federal Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services (CMS) into whether religiously affiliated hospitals provide adequate emergency reproductive care. "Sister McBride's subsequent treatment and the diocese's unambiguous statement sends the ...

Dear Itt Ideologist

First things first. I always say. It looks like Iran's mercurial mullahs are up to their protean ploys again. The current U.S. assessment is that they are suicídaífy seeking to nuke Israel and enjoy 20 minutes of thigh-slapping schadenfreude before retaliatory strikes by Israel and the United States turn Tehran into talcum. Previously, the Bush administration also posited that Iran's proleptic missiles posed a virtual threat to northern Europe, and Iceland in particular. In the immortal phras...

Let's Act

[Jon Stewart]'s proposal is a comedie yet reasonable response to Glenn Beck's "Rally to Restore Honor," the conservative, faith-focused event held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August.

The Truth About Civil Servants

An analysis of New England public employees by the Center for Economic Policy and Research and Political Fxonomy Research Institute dispels the myth of the "spoiled" government worker. Researchers found that the region's state and local workers are comparatively disadvantaged. After accounting for variables like age and education, "state and local workers actually earn less, on average, than their p r ivate -sector counterparts." The study found that "the typical middle-wage worker earns abou...

Snapshot

PARIS-French unions staged mass protests and strikes on September 23, a day of national action against drafted retirement reform legislation.

Wooing the White Working Class

Not everyone shared [Virginia Kimble]'s views, even if they were also disappointed. Down the street, and to her right politically, 77-year old retiree Barbara Kolodey thought [Barack Obama] was "like a communist," but didn't vote for [John McCain] because "he was more of a Democrat than Obama." "The country is in sad shape," she says. "I think the president hates the country and will do anything to destro)' it." Maybe Kimble, like her neighbor Paula Farlow, will stay home this year. "I'm not ...

Minding the Enthusiasm Gap

DFA holds"night school" classes online, where [Jim Dean] says anywhere from 700 to 2,000 progressives log on weekly to get tips on grassroots organizing strategy. Recent weeks' messages have included "Mobilizing Key Constituencies," "Mobilizing Progressives with Google" and "Getting Out the Progressive Vote." Amy Showalter, president of The Showalter Group, a consulting firm for organizations looking to increase their grassroots effectiveness, says organizers need to "re-educate" these segmen...

Has Barbara Boxer Met Her Match?

[Barbara Boxer] also suffers from a nationwide "enthusiasm gap" among Democrats, says writer Robert Cruickshank, Public Policy Director of the Courage Campaign. "Voters, especially the so-called Obama surge' voters from 2008, have seen the U.S. Senate in particular fail to implement an agenda of change," and are turned off. "All Senate Democrats are suffering as a result of the obstructionism employed by Democrats such as Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln and Joe Lieberman," says Cruickshank, and s...

Cracking the Cancer Consensus

Why institutions dedicated to defeating cancer would recommend a single, flawed screening method for breast cancer rather than focus on known causes of the disease, like radiation, is a question of interest to lanette Slierman, a former adviser to the NCI. Slierman, who has written three books on the links between chemicals, radiation and cancer, has a definite idea why prevention is ignored, '"!here's no money in it," she says. "Believe me, there really, really isn't." Michael Thun, vice pre...

Corporate Profits Vs. Cancer Prevention

Along with his brother Charles, Koch owns nearly al/ of Koch Industries, a sprawling corporate empire with annual revenues estimated at $100 billion. Despite his substantial financial and personal involvement in cancer research, in August Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker that Koch Industries has lobbied against the designation of formaldehyde as a carcinogen.

8 Myths of Justice

IN THE 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Kansas v. March, justice David Souter and Justice Antonin Scalia conducted a public debate within their opposing written opinions. Discussing the fates of death row prisoners, Souter opined that in such high stakes cases, innocent men and women are too often found guilty. The "unusually high incidence of false conviction" is probably caused by "the combined difficulty of investigating without help from the victim, intense pressure to get convictions in ho...

Torture Revealed

The women in Spero's work, which begins by exploring torture in Sumerjan myth, embody the agony unpacked in the text. They are visions of fear, resistance and squalor.

'Voter-Man' and Other Political Delusions

Never before had there been an election campaign with so much propaganda deployed and so much money spent. The amount of funding obtained by the rightist coalition easily exceeded that of the radicals and the leftist parties. .... It was also a passionate campaign, with the mobilization of Catholic voters in defense of order and religion, and a socialist left that was beginning to show that it had lost touch with the bourgeois Republic. .... The anarchists of the CNT and the FAI .... from the...

The Surreal World

From Fox's Hie Simple Life ?? ivedding- intinsi rial complex series such as WeTVs Platinimi Weddings, reality TV has skewed our economic realities, overemphasizing the shortterm pleasures of "having nice things" while hiding the longterm economic consequences of our nation's overconsumption. "I don't understand saving for the rainy day," celebrity stylist Rache! Zoe said earnestly on Tin' Rachel Zoe Project. Never mind that Americans are drowning in debt - we need couture. "Live like it's you...