The Hollywood Liberal

Newsom Already Eyeing Another Bid
Less than three months on the job and California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is already prepping to run for governor again, according to Matier and Ross.

“A city insider who asked not to be named tells us the new lieutenant governor approached him at a charity fundraiser the other day with a request for help to start raising money for a renewed gubernatorial bid.”

Judge Halts Wisconsin Law (Again)
The judge who recently issued an injunction halting the implementation of Wisconsin’s collective bargaining law has told the state for a second time to stop implementing the measure, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports.

Said Judge Maryann Sumi: “Apparently that language was either misunderstood or ignored, but what I said was the further implementation of Act 10 was enjoined. That is what I now want to make crystal clear.”

AP: “Walker and the GOP have aggressively pushed forward their effort to remove the bargaining rights of state workers, using a surprise parliamentary maneuver to break a weeks-long stalemate to get it passed and then finding another route to publish the law after Sumi’s order blocked the secretary of state from doing so.”

Obama Approval Hits New Low
A new Quinnipiac poll finds American voters disapprove 48% to 42% of the job President Obama is doing and say 50% to 41% that he does not deserve to be re-elected in 2012, both all-time lows.

Presented By:

Why Gov. LePage Can’t Erase History, And Why We Need a Fighter In The White House
Maine Governor Paul LePage has ordered state workers to remove from the state labor department a 36-foot mural depicting the state’s labor history. Among other things the mural illustrates the 1937 shoe mill strike in Auburn and Lewiston. It also…

Japan’s Earthquake May Shake World Economy
The world is witnessing a horrible tragedy in northern Japan, an earthquake followed by a tsunami and now the risk of a nuclear catastrophe. Even if the nuclear threat can be contained we will still see a humanitarian disaster, with…

The Perils Of Corporate Media: MSNBC Makes Few Mentions Of Tax Avoidance By Parent Company GE

Last week, the New York Times ran an explosive front-page story revealing how General Electric (GE), despite making over $14 billion in profits in 2010, paid absolutely nothing in federal corporate income taxes. It even received a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

ThinkProgress provided substantial coverage of the story, offering further analysis and insight into the firm’s behavior:

– Despite Paying No Income Taxes, GE CEO Lauded His Company’s Patriotism In 2009 West Point Speech [3/25/11]

– Sen. Johnson’s Reaction To General Electric Paying No Taxes: Cut The Corporate Tax Rate [3/25/11]

– After Paying Zero Income Taxes, GE Plans To Ask Its Union Workers To Make Wage And Benefits Concessions [3/28/11]

Reviewing the television coverage of GE’s tax avoidance, ThinkProgress found that the story was covered 23 times by Fox News between March 25 and March 28. Certainly, with an anti-Obama axe to grind, it is not surprising that the network chose to excoriate a company that is considered close to the Obama administration and whose CEO is the head of an outside White House jobs panel.

Yet, as FAIR’s Peter Hart points out, this blockbuster story received scant coverage on another major cable news outlet: MSNBC. A review of MSNBC coverage finds that, over the same three-day period, the General Electric story received relatively little mention. It was only mentioned three times on MSNBC — one of these mentions was by host Rachel Maddow during a conversation with the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson and another mention was made by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a guest on the network.

To his credit, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell extensively covered GE’s tax dodging. O’Donnell ran a whole segment about the company on his show last Friday night, saying that in a fair world the network’s parent company would pay the most taxes, because it’s the country’s biggest corporation. Watch it:

O’Donnell went on to actually dissect GE’s tax filing on air, providing a useful service to viewers who may be amazed that the tax code allows a mega corporation like GE to avoid paying federal corporate income taxes.

The wider failure of MSNBC to report about GE’s tax avoidance provides a cautionary tale about the dangers of over-reliance on corporate conglomerates to provide news to the American people. And it also highlights the importance of not-for-profit media and public media — like the public broadcasting conservatives are trying to defund.

President Obama to call for one-third cut to oil imports
In a speech Wednesday, the president will call for a one-third cut in oil imports by 2020, a step toward less reliance on foreign petroleum amid turmoil across the Middle East.

Obama’s Libya speech answers some questions, but concerns remain
President Obama appears to have answered some of the questions about his decision to intervene in Libya’s civil conflict, but concerns remain.

Clinton calls for united action on Libya

Thousands rally for Syrian leader

In Libya, Inaction Was Not an Option
Richard Cohen, Washington Post
In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed an international conference at Evian-les-Bains, France, to deal with the urgent problem of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Representatives from 32 countries met for nine days, trying to come to grips with a humanitarian calamity. At the end, only the Dominican Republic agreed to admit additional Jewish refugees, and Hitler, observing matters from Berlin, concluded that the world would permit him to do with the Jews as he wished. He murdered 6 million of them.The Evian conference is not much mentioned anymore — although it should…

Obama’s Missed Moment of Clarity

Too Big to Fail: Huge Banks Even Bigger
Michael Hirsh, National Journal
In contrast to a lot of Wall Street CEOs, Vikram Pandit seems quite human. Vulnerable, even. No one ever heard Pandit say, “Let’s go kill someone,” as John (Mack the Knife) Mack of Morgan Stanley reportedly used to bark to his derivatives team at the start of a trading day. It’s hard to imagine the soft-spoken CEO of Citigroup as a “vampire squid… relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” as in writer Matt Taibbi’s notorious description of Goldman Sachs.

President Still Murky on Libya
Victor Davis Hanson, National Review
President Obama just gave a weird speech. Part George W. Bush, part trademark Obama - filled with his characteristic split-the-difference, straw-man (”some say, others say”), false-choice tropes.His support for those “yearning for freedom all around the world” was the sort of interventionist foreign policy that a Senator Obama — if his past reaction to the removal of Saddam Hussein is any indication — would have objected to, especially in the case of sending bombers over an Arab Muslim oil-exporting country. Since Saddam was a far…

Big Questions, Not Answered

Late, Late Night FDL: My Life Would Suck Without You
Kelly Clarkson - My Life Would Suck Without You

Kelly Clarkson – My Life Would Suck Without You

My life would definitely suck without the Lake…! *g*

What’s on your mind tonite…?

?

Obama Addresses His Third Muslim War
The president made an effort Monday evening to explain, and perhaps to sell, his Libya strategy, saying “when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.”

The president made an effort Monday evening to explain, and perhaps to sell, his Libya strategy, saying “when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.”

Related Entries

• March 28, 2011 The Sleeping Giants of Tiny Bahrain
• March 28, 2011 This Friend Was a Fighter

More Than 100 Killed in Explosion at Yemen Factory
The country is already in turmoil, to say the least, so Monday’s explosion at an ammunition factory in Yemen, which killed more than 100 people, had political ramifications even if the blast itself was accidental, as local sources reported.  —KA The Independent: The explosion came as talks to broker an end to the 32-year authoritarian rule of President Saleh stalled amid continued warnings that the country was sliding into armed conflict. After weeks of protests against his rule, President Saleh has claimed that if he left power al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) could begin to take hold throughout the country with Yemen a “time bomb” nearing civil war. The accident yesterday appeared to have been triggered by a lit cigarette, according to local sources, as residents picked over the remains after several dozen armed and hooded men looted the factory and made off with cases of weaponry. The state news agency claimed AQAP was responsible for the blast at the plant, just outside the city of Jaar in the province of Abyan. Read more  

The country is already in turmoil, to say the least, so Monday’s explosion at an ammunition factory in Yemen, which killed more than 100 people, had political ramifications even if the blast itself was accidental, as local sources reported.? —KA

The Independent:

The explosion came as talks to broker an end to the 32-year authoritarian rule of President Saleh stalled amid continued warnings that the country was sliding into armed conflict. After weeks of protests against his rule, President Saleh has claimed that if he left power al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) could begin to take hold throughout the country with Yemen a “time bomb” nearing civil war.

The accident yesterday appeared to have been triggered by a lit cigarette, according to local sources, as residents picked over the remains after several dozen armed and hooded men looted the factory and made off with cases of weaponry. The state news agency claimed AQAP was responsible for the blast at the plant, just outside the city of Jaar in the province of Abyan.

Read more

?

Related Entries

• March 28, 2011 The Sleeping Giants of Tiny Bahrain
• March 28, 2011 This Friend Was a Fighter

South Carolina Lawmakers Take Dim View Of New Light Bulbs
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina lawmakers are taking a stand in favor of states’ lights. With incandescent bulbs being phased out under federal law in…

Erica Payne: Fighting the Enemy Within
What would you do if someone told you that America was in grave danger — that a powerful enemy with almost unlimited resources had infiltrated…

Michael Hais and Morley Winograd: Obama Goes to War the Millennial Way
By focusing on the issue of civil liberties, and not on implementing American-style political institutions, Obama pointed the way toward a cause that young people could embrace.

James Denselow: Syria’s Never-Ending State of Emergency
Unable to blame foreign powers, Assad’s next move is the greatest test of his ability to reform Syria The modern Syrian republic is a chimera…