Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

James Richard "Rick" Perry (Clip)
"There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."
He said when Texas entered the union in 1845 it was with the understanding it could pull out. However, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Texas negotiated the power to divide into four additional states at some point if it wanted to but not the right to secede.
Austin City Hall
April 15, 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Perry
http://www.governor.state.tx.us
http://www.valuesvotersummit.org
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/142787
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(MP3 Format)
*****/ril15-2009.mp3

Angry Patriots Confront Turncoat Senator Arlen Specter at Town Hall Meeting
Lebanon PA
FOX News
August 11, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/142787
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/lazarus/20090312.html
http://www.faithinpubliclife.org/tools/polls/faps
http://www.valuesvotersummit.org
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/lazarus/20090312.html
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/politics/142737
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV1jmvMHsS0
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(.AVI Format)
*****/August2009.avi

Obama = Hitler
Depicting the similarities between obama and Hitler.
October 04, 2008
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS2rJP-udUs
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ber04-2008.avi



http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&sour...,0.018239&z=15
http://tinyrevolution.com/mt
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.c...1E4F1A01E6CFC3
http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/F...8FBB818DE.html
http://robertreich.blogspot.com Other Sources:

Everything You Know Is Wrong
From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everyth..._Know_Is_Wrong

Every Ideology Is Right
I've come to believe that every ideology is right. Liberalism is right, conservatism is right, radicalism is right, fascism is right, communism is right, Catholicism is right, Rastafarianism is right, Pastafarianism is right. Any ideology that survives more than ten minutes in the ferocious Planet Earth laboratory is right.
What I mean by "right" is that is each one is responding to a genuine problem within human existence. And their prescriptions for how to deal with that problem "work," at least in the short term in limited circumstances.
Obviously, there are unforeseen consequences because each ideology looks at a limited aspect of reality, and then tries to apply its solution for that part of reality to ALL of reality. The important thing is to try to have your ideology "look" at as much of reality as possible.
When you're dealing with people with other ideologies than your own, it's difficult not to try to persuade them they're wrong. But you can't, because their ideology does correspond to some of their direct, lived reality. They're not just imagining it. And they'll fight hard against any attempt to tell them they haven't experienced what they've experienced. So instead of telling them they're wrong, you have to demonstrate that they're only seeing part of the picture.
That's the theory, anyway. It seems to work as much as 2% of the time.
--Jonathan Schwarz, October 07, 2009--
http://tinyrevolution.com/mt

Andrew Perrin
Is seeing believing? Sociologist Andrew Perrin on why we believe what we believe and the social psychology of false beliefs.
Andrew Perrin is a cultural and political sociology professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of Citizen Speak: The Democratic Imagination in American Life.
TVO The Agenda
Host Steve Paikin interviews Andrew Perrin
September 21, 2009
http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theag...1%2020:00:00.0
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/...e2=tf_ipsecsha
http://www.newsweek.com/id/213625?digg=1
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ber21-2009.avi

No Treason
The Constitution of no Authority.
No. VI.
By Lysander Spooner
1870
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/node/44
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner
http://www.starkman.com/hippo/histor.../phillips.html
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/...the_Senate.htm
(PDF Document)
http://www.keepyourassets.net/NoTreason.pdf
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*****/hority1870.pdf

Empire Of Illusion - The Cult Of Self
Unitarian Universalist Congregation Of Binghamton
Social Justice Lecture
350.org’s Worldwide Day of Action
By Chris Hedges
October 24, 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges
http://essentialdissent.blogspot.com...on-part-1.html
http://uubinghamton.org/calendar.html
http://www.350.org
http://www.bcpeaceaction.org
http://essentialdissent.blogspot.com...o-lessers.html
Part I of III
(Flash Video)
http://essentialdissent.blogspot.com...on-part-1.html
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ber24-2009.avi
Part II of III
(Flash Video)
http://essentialdissent.blogspot.com...on-part-2.html
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ber24-2009.avi
Part III of III
(Flash Video)
http://essentialdissent.blogspot.com...on-part-3.html
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ber24-2009.avi

StoryCorps: National Social History Project Records Ordinary People Telling Their Stories to Each Other
We hear the voices of people, citizen and non-citizen, old and young telling their stories to each other. A grandmother tells her grandson about her own childhood. A young man proposes to his girlfriend. A soldier talks about his experience in war. A father remembers a loved one who passed away….All of these are stories told by ordinary Americans. Now, thousands of them are preserved forever–in sound.
Three years ago, award-winning radio producer Dave Isay created a national social history project called StoryCorps. It now has the potential to become one of the largest documentary oral history projects ever donated to the Library of Congress.
Dave Isay, radio pioneer and founder of StoryCorps. He is author of the new book “Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project.”
Democracy Now
Host Amy Gooman interviews Dave Isay
December 25, 2009
Transcript:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/...roject_records
http://www.storycorps.org
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ber25-2009.avi

Civil Disobedience
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Original Title: Resistance to Civil Government
By Henry David Thoreau
1849
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)[url]
Chapter I of II
(MP3 Format)
http://www.archive.org/download/civi...01_thoreau.mp3
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*****/dience1849.mp3
Chapter II of II
(MP3 Format)
http://www.archive.org/download/civi...02_thoreau.mp3
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*****/dience1849.mp3

What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?
New York University
By Tony Judt
October 19, 2009
http://remarque.as.nyu.edu/object/io_1256242927496.html
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23519
(RealPlayer Presentation)
rtsp://netvideo.nyu.edu:554/nyutv/20...e_Tony_Judt.rv
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*****/ober19-2009.rv

The End of the Dream?
In the second of two films to mark the anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration, Simon Schama asks what has happened to the fabled American Dream - the promise of prosperity for all.
At the start of 2009, Obama took office in the midst of an economic and financial crisis unparalleled since the Great Depression. One of his key election pledges was to make the American money machine work for everyone. To many, the United States is synonymous with freebooting capitalism, but, as Schama discovers, since the birth of the republic there's been confusion over the role of banks. Are they the creators or the destroyers of the American Dream?
President Obama now finds himself confronting what is not just a historical but also a political dilemma. Will he act decisively to rein in Wall Street and end the cycle of boom and bust which has destroyed the lives of ordinary Americans, or is he too timid to tamper with the goose which lays golden eggs? It's a question which will determine whether the President is a political radical or a cautious pragmatist, and how he responds will shape America - and the face of capitalism - for years to come.
BBC2
January 14, 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00q08wy
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(.MP4 Format)
*****/ary14-2010.mp4

Masks In A Pageant (e-Book)
White, a journalist, worked for various Kansas newspapers before purchasing the Emporia Gazette, which he edited for the next 49 years. A staunch Republican, White's Masks in a Pageant is his account of leading politicians including Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and William Hale Thompson.
By William Allen White
January 1928
http://www.amazon.com/Masks-Pageant-.../dp/0781260337
http://www.archive.org/details/masksinapageant009055mbp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Allen_White
(PDF Document)
http://www.archive.org/download/mask...t009055mbp.pdf
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*****/anuary1928.pdf

Stand By Me
Our first Song Around The World that bridges the physical distance between the many musicians and cultures of this planet.
From the award-winning documentary, "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music", comes the first of many "songs around the world" being released independently. Featured is a cover of the Ben E. King classic by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it travelled the globe.
Roger Ridley and his music embody everything that music is : soul, perseverance, and talent. He has often been called "the voice of God" by the other street musicians on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California. His dedication to his audience is clear, traveling from his home in Las Vegas, Nevada to his spot in Santa Monica every Saturday and giving his best performance before returning home that night. It was Roger's performance of Stand By Me that sent Playing for Change off on its mission to connect the world through music by adding other musicians to his recording.
One day while walking down the promenade, Mark heard Roger singing "Stand By Me" in the distance. He ran to witness the performance and realized that Roger's voice, soul, and passion had to be shared with the rest of the world.
Featured: Roger Ridley
November 06, 2008
http://www.playingforchange.com/jour...5/Roger_Ridley
http://www.playingforchange.com
(YouTubeVideo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ndByMe2008.avi

Bring It On Home
After we discovered Roger Ridley performing on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and asked him if we could record him singing the John Lennon version of Stand By Me, we were so blown away with his presence and enthusiasm toward music and people that we wanted to film his entire set. This song, Bring It On Home, Roger dedicated to Mark in that moment.
May 01, 2009
Roger Ridley
http://playingforchange.com
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/playingforcha.../7/QPN764drG2Y
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(.AVI Format)
*****/OnHome2008.avi

U.S. Government Lacks Legitimacy
A monumental address urging the poor deal effectively with the right wing's grip on power, counter their fascistic racial targeting of Islam and other scapegoats like immigrants, gays, feminists, and lefties, by getting the public to see it's a deliberate distraction to prevent our realizing the need to replace obsolete economic institutions, a corrupt media, and a criminal government lacking in legitimacy.
Dan Jones of Philadelphia Student Union, gives his thoughts about the role and importance of these gatherings.
The Poverty Initiative
James Chapel at Union Theological Seminary
Chris Hedges Lecture
April 10, 2010
http://povertyinitiative.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUKn19Sg0vo
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ril10-2010.avi

Jim Hightower
Bill Moyers sits down with populist Jim Hightower to look at the history and legacy of people's movements and discuss how ordinary people can reclaim political power.
....
"BILL MOYERS: You've no doubt figured out my bias by now. I've hardly kept it a secret. In this regard, I take my cue from the late Edward R. Murrow, the Moses of broadcast news.
Ed Murrow told his generation of journalists bias is okay as long as you don't try to hide it. So here, one more time, is mine: plutocracy and democracy don't mix. Plutocracy, the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy.
Plutocracy is not an American word but it's become an American phenomenon. Back in the fall of 2005, the Wall Street giant Citigroup even coined a variation on it, plutonomy, an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer with government on their side. By the next spring, Citigroup decided the time had come to publicly "bang the drum on plutonomy."
And bang they did, with an "equity strategy" for their investors, entitled, "Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer." Here are some excerpts:
"Asset booms, a rising profit share and favorable treatment by market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper...[and] take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years..."
"...the top 10%, particularly the top 1% of the US-- the plutonomists in our parlance-- have benefited disproportionately from the recent productivity surge in the US...[and] from globalization and the productivity boom, at the relative expense of labor."
"...[and they] are likely to get even wealthier in the coming years. [Because] the dynamics of plutonomy are still intact."
And so they were, before the great collapse of 2008. And so they are, today, after the fall. While millions of people have lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings, the plutonomists are doing just fine. In some cases, even better, thanks to our bailout of the big banks which meant record profits and record bonuses for Wall Street.
Now why is this? Because over the past 30 years the plutocrats, or plutonomists — choose your poison — have used their vastly increased wealth to capture the flag and assure the government does their bidding. Remember that Citigroup reference to "market-friendly governments" on their side? It hasn't mattered which party has been in power — government has done Wall Street's bidding.
Don't blame the lobbyists, by the way; they are simply the mules of politics, delivering the drug of choice to a political class addicted to cash — what polite circles call "campaign contributions" and Tony Soprano would call "protection."
This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet. According to a study from the Pew Research Center last month, nine out of ten Americans give our national economy a negative rating. Eight out of ten report difficulty finding jobs in their communities, and seven out of ten say they experienced job-related or financial problems over the past year.
So it is that like those populists of that earlier era, millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable. Then, the remedy was a popular insurgency that ignited the spark of democracy.
Now we have come to another parting of the ways, and once again the fate and character of our country are up for grabs.
So along with Jim Hightower and Iowa's concerned citizens, and many of you, I am biased: democracy only works when we claim it as our own."
PBS - Bill Moyers Journal
Host Bill Moyers interviews Jim Hightower
April 30, 2010
Transcript:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04...anscript2.html
http://www.jimhightower.com
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/democra...ree_silver.php
http://www.reason.com/news/show/122082.html
http://vlib.iue.it/history/USA/populism.html
http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/articles/...ippi-1870-1900
http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0600/...0601_0303.html
http://history.missouristate.edu/wrm...toon/index.htm
http://www.iww.org
http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...021002451.html
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/03/...e-not-populism
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12112009/profile.html
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog
(Flash Video)
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04302010/watch2.html
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ril30-2010.avi

Iowa Citizens
The Journal also travels to Iowa where one group, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI), has been helping ordinary citizens fight for change for more than three decades.
"The only solution to any problem is to get to work on it."
That phrase is the motto of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) profiled on The Journal. In its 36 year history the CCI has addressed a number of issues through grassroots organizing — and political action.
Like the original populists of the 19th century south and west, the CCI began its organization around the battle between individual farmers and corporate farming interests. Today they are trying to battle a bill that would allow industrial-scale farms to spread liquid manure on top of frozen or snow-covered fields, a practice deemed hazardous to the environment and a potential health risk.
The CCI has also taken on the challenge of preserving a core aspect of the American dream — fighting abusive lending as well as offering financial classes and counseling to encourage and safeguard home ownership. And the CCI is embracing the changing demographics of their state by supporting the many Latino immigrants who are working the in meatpacking industry. The CCI has taken on labor, discrimination and immigration issues. And again hearkening back to those early populists — the group is a firm supporter of getting big money out of American politics through it's arm, Voter-Owned Iowa.
As member and farmer Larry Ginter puts it, the founding fathers liked a good fight — so should their heirs.
"There's a saying, 'Revolution begins in a peasant hut.' You got to fight for the justice. You got to fight for the fair wage. You got to fight for housing. You got to fight for healthcare. Fight for the elderly, fight for family farmers and workers. Fight for the environment. And that's what Iowa CCI does."
PBS - Bill Moyers Journal
Iowa Citizens For Community Improvement - CCI
National People's Action
April 30, 2010
Transcript:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04...anscript1.html
http://www.iowacci.org
http://www.npa-us.org
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04.../profile2.html
(Flash Video)
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04302010/watch.html
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ril30-2010.avi

Clint Webb for Senate
Clint Webb. A brutally honest politician
The Whitest Kids U'Know
June 19, 2010
http://www.whitestkids.com
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gwr8KJO0Fc
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(.AVI Format)
*****/une19-2010.avi

The Death of Criticism?
The Doreen B. Townsend Center For The Humanities
Terry Eagleton Lecture
April 05, 2010
http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/w...Eagleton.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Eagleton
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-20dZxUAfu0
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ril05-2010.avi

When Corrections Fail:
The persistence of political misperceptions
An extensive literature addresses citizen ignorance, but very little research focuses on misperceptions. Can these false or unsubstantiated beliefs about politics be corrected?
Previous studies have not tested the efficacy of corrections in a realistic format. We conducted four experiments in which subjects read mock news articles that included either a misleading claim from a politician, or a misleading claim and a correction.
Results indicate that corrections frequently fail to reduce misperceptions among the targeted ideological group. We also document several instances of a “backfire effect” in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.
By Brendan Nyhan
2008
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...091402375.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...090300933.html
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/id...facts_backfire
http://www.theonion.com/articles/are...magines-c,2849
(PDF Document)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bnyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf
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*****/ckfire2008.pdf

Public Opinion and Political Interests
"The political ignorance of the American voter is one of the best documented data in political science.”
This essay outlines a systematic methodology for imputing policy interests to political actors. Underlying interests are equated with "enlightened preferences," which may differ from the preferences an actor actually expresses. Given some measure of "enlightenment," the underlying interests of any specific individual are inferred from the observed pattern of expressed preferences among actors in similar social locations with varying degrees of enlightenment. The model is used to examine issues of false consciousness, class structure and group identity, representation, and "the public interest."
By Larry M. Bartels
August 28, 1996
http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/papers.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Bartels
(PDF Document)
http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/opinion.pdf
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*****/ust28-1996.pdf

Reconsidering the Rational Public: Cognition, Heuristics, and Mass Opinion
An influential experiment in which more than 1,000 Illinois residents were asked questions about welfare — the percentage of the federal budget spent on welfare, the number of people enrolled in the program, the percentage of enrollees who are black, and the average payout. More than half indicated that they were confident that their answers were correct — but in fact only 3 percent of the people got more than half of the questions right. Perhaps more disturbingly, the ones who were the most confident they were right were by and large the ones who knew the least about the topic. (Most of these participants expressed views that suggested a strong antiwelfare bias.)
By James H. Kuklinski and Paul J. Quirk
December 31, 1998
http://www.pol.illinois.edu/people/profile.asp?kuklinsk
http://rogercostello.wordpress.com/2...right-syndrome
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/j...TRY=1&SRETRY=0
(PDF Document)
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...=rep1&type=pdf
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*****/ber31-1998.pdf

The Automaticity Of Affect For Political Candidates, Parties, And Issues:
An Experimental Test of the Hot Cognition Hypothesis
We report the results of three experimental tests of the “hot cognition” hypothesis, which posits that all socio-political concepts that have been evaluated in the past are affectively charged and that this affective charge is automatically activated within milliseconds on mere exposure of the concept, appreciably faster than conscious appraisal of the object.
We find support for the automaticity of affect toward political leaders, groups, and issues;
Specifically:
-- Most Ss show significantly faster reaction times to affectively congruent political concepts and significantly slower response times to affectively incongruent concepts;
-- These facilitation and inhibition effects, which hold for a cross-section of political leaders, groups, and issues, are strongest for those with the strongest prior attitudes, with sophisticates showing the strongest effect on “harder” political issues.
-- Even semantically unrelated affective concepts (e.g., “sunshine,” “cancer”) have a strong effect on the evaluation of political leaders, groups, and issues.
We conclude with a discussion of the “so what?” question – the conceptual, substantive and normative implications of hot cognition for political judgments, evaluations, and choice. One clear expectation – given that affect appears to be activated automatically on mere exposure to socio-political concepts -- is that most citizens, but especially those sophisticates with strong political attitudes, will be biased information processors.
By Milton Lodge and Charles S. Taber
2005
(PDF Document)
http://www.stonybrook.edu/polsci/mlo...tomaticity.pdf
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*****/thesis2005.pdf

Noam Chomsky lectures on nation’s problems
Topics presented to packed crowd included role of government, public relations
Renowned linguist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky spoke to a packed house Tuesday night.
An emeritus professor of linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky opened the lecture by telling the audience he wanted to address "some serious problems we're having here at home."
"The guiding principle (for American government) is that as long as the public is under control, everything is fine," he said. "(The traditional argument is) the powerful should gain ends by any possible means. As long as the public is kept under control, public will doesn't matter."
Chomsky referred back to this principle many times throughout his lecture and said it was the base of many of the nation's problems.
He said the principle was a security threat to the U.S. and was at the root of both terror and the huge military budget that is strangling the economy.
"The military budget is half of the deficit," Chomsky said. "The other half is the heavily privatized health care system. We would not have debt and might even have a surplus if we did not have (the health care system)."
Chomsky also discussed terrorism and the post-Sept. 11 United States.
"Bush said terrorists committed crimes because they hate our freedoms," he said.
Contrary to this statement, Chomsky said that Muslims actually hate our policies, not our freedoms.
Chomsky said United States' policies actually benefit Jihadists.
"The U.S. remains Bin Laden's only ally," he said.
Chomsky discussed the United States' support of dictatorships in Egypt, Tunisia, Georgia, Jordan and Colombia. He said this too falls under the "guiding principle."
"A post-Sept. 11 poll showed anger because of U.S. support of dictatorships and blocking democracy," he said.
Though Chomsky said the "guiding principle" was apparent in all aspects of government, he also said it could have very severe consequences.
"The most serious case is in Pakistan where there is a threat of radical Islamists getting a hold of nuclear weapons," he said.
Chomsky said this "guiding principle" is not a recent thing, though.
"Throughout American history, there has been a constant struggle over who should control and who should obey," he said. "The Founding Fathers were ambivalent about democracy."
Chomsky added that James Madison, one of the framers of the Constitution, was concerned that if voters could determine policy, it would challenge the privileged.
"This is why he put the power in the hands of the Senate, whose primary task is to protect the opulent minority against the majority," he said.
Chomsky also discussed the history of the labor movement and how it applies to issues today.
"The United States has a violent labor history," he said. "The rallying cry of the late 19th-century labor movement was, 'Those who work in mills should own them,'" he said.
Chomsky said this holds significance today, specifically with the automobile industry.
"Obama took over the auto industry, so the government owns it," he said. "The government is closing plants when they could turn them over to the workers and let them run it for profit."
He also discussed how history plays a role in today's public relations and marketing industries.
"By World War I, the business class realized that because of new freedoms, it was impossible to control the public by force, so they need new means," he said. "They tried to control of opinion and attitude to divert people from the public arena. This is why the public relations industry was started."
Chomsky called elections today "public relations extravaganzas."
"You don't want to provide information about the candidates; that's the last thing you want to do," he said. "So you delude people with slogans."
In regards to political parties, Chomsky said they have shifted sharply to the right.
"Democrats today are what used to be moderate Republicans, and today's Republicans are so deep in the pockets of business, you have to have a magnifying glass to find them," he said.
Chomsky also discussed tax cuts and their benefit to the wealthy.
"There has been a spectacular increase in wealth in the top 1 percent of the population," he said. "The Bush tax cuts of 2011 were made to benefit the rich but were crafted so people would not realize what was happening."
He said Social Security also plays into this.
"Social Security is actually in good shape, despite what you read," he said. "The rich want to get rid of Social Security, because it is based on the principles of compassion and solidarity, and (the spread of these principles) could be dangerous for the rich."
Students said they gained valuable insights from Chomsky's lecture.
"I though he did a very good job of historically representing what has been covered up in this country," Cori Kunberger, senior in psychology, said.
Chomsky ended his lecture with a question for the audience.
"Will we subject ourselves to the guiding principle?" he said.
--Kristian Smith--
University of Tennessee, Alumni Memorial Building's Cox Auditorium
Noam Chomsky Lecture
January 25, 2011
http://readersupportednews.org/off-s...-under-control
Part I of VI
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkufWeCN0ao
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ary25-2011.avi
Part II of VI
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZN2X53_vYc
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ary25-2011.avi
Part III of VI
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlS4DtlVyew
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ary25-2011.avi
Part IV of VI
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBy6Wpn6WkQ
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ary25-2011.avi
Part V of VI
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stTwxxVJtQs
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ary25-2011.avi
Part VI of VI
(YouTube Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-8JsdsuoCQ
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ary25-2011.avi Other Sources:

Representation and redistribution in federations
Many of the world's most populous democracies are political unions composed of states or provinces that are unequally represented in the national legislature. Scattered empirical studies, most of them focusing on the United States, have discovered that overrepresented states appear to receive larger shares of the national budget. Although this relationship is typically attributed to bargaining advantages associated with greater legislative representation, an important threat to empirical identification stems from the fact that the representation scheme was chosen by the provinces. Thus, it is possible that representation and fiscal transfers are both determined by other characteristics of the provinces in a specific country. To obtain an improved estimate of the relationship between representation and redistribution, we collect and analyze provincial-level data from nine federations over several decades, taking advantage of the historical process through which federations formed and expanded. Controlling for a variety of country- and province-level factors and using a variety of estimation techniques, we show that overrepresented provinces in political unions around the world are rather dramatically favored in the distribution of resources.
By Tiberiu Dragua and Jonathan Roddenb
May 09, 2011
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/21/8601.abstract
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0526091802.htm
(PDF Document)
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/tdragu/www...agu_rodden.pdf
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*****/May09-2011.pdf

Is it time to update the U.S. Constitution?
We all know how Americans revere the Constitution, so I was struck by the news that tiny, little Iceland is actually junking its own Constitution and starting anew using an unusual - some would say innovative - mechanism.
The nation decided it needed a new Constitution and it's soliciting ideas from all of Iceland's 320,000 citizens with the help of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This social media method has worked. Ideas have been flowing in. Many have asked for guaranteed, good health care. Others want campaign finance systems that make corporate donations illegal. And some just want the country to make shark finning illegal.
There is a Constitutional Council. It incorporates some of these ideas, rejects others, but everything is done in plain sight on the web. As one member of the Constitutional Council said, the document is basically being drafted on the Internet.
Now, why do they need a new Constitution anyway? Well, after Iceland was crippled in recent years by the economic crisis, they all wanted a fresh start. And, anyway, they felt the document was old and outdated, drafted all the way back in 1944.
You might be tempted to say that Iceland doesn't have any reasons to be proud of its political traditions in the manner that the United States does. Well, think again.
We all know how Americans revere the Constitution, so I was struck by the news that tiny, little Iceland is actually junking its own Constitution and starting anew using an unusual - some would say innovative - mechanism.
The nation decided it needed a new Constitution and it's soliciting ideas from all of Iceland's 320,000 citizens with the help of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This social media method has worked. Ideas have been flowing in. Many have asked for guaranteed, good health care. Others want campaign finance systems that make corporate donations illegal. And some just want the country to make shark finning illegal.
There is a Constitutional Council. It incorporates some of these ideas, rejects others, but everything is done in plain sight on the web. As one member of the Constitutional Council said, the document is basically being drafted on the Internet.
Now, why do they need a new Constitution anyway? Well, after Iceland was crippled in recent years by the economic crisis, they all wanted a fresh start. And, anyway, they felt the document was old and outdated, drafted all the way back in 1944.
You might be tempted to say that Iceland doesn't have any reasons to be proud of its political traditions in the manner that the United States does. Well, think again.
Iceland is home to the world's oldest parliament still in existence, the Althing, set up in 930 A.D. The rocky ledge on which they gathered represents the beginnings of representative government in the world. So Iceland has reasons to cherish its history, and yet it was willing to revise it.
By contrast, any talk of revising or revisiting the U.S. Constitution is, of course, seen as heresy. The United States Constitution was, as you know, drafted in a cramped room in Philadelphia in 1787 with shades drawn over the windows. It was signed by 39 people.
America at the time consisted of 13 states. Congress had 26 senators and 65 representatives. The entire population was about one percent of today's number - four million people.
America was an agricultural society, with no industry - not even cotton gins. The flush toilet had just been invented.
These were the circumstances under which this document was written.
Let me be very clear here, the U.S. Constitution is an extraordinary work - one of the greatest expressions of liberty and law in human history.
One amazing testament to it is the mere fact that it has survived as the law of the land for 222 years.
But our Constitution has been revised 27 times. Some of these revisions have been enormous and important, such as the abolition of slavery. Then there are areas that have evolved. For example, the power of the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, is barely mentioned in the document. This grew as a fact over history.
But there are surely some issues that still need to be debated and fixed.
The electoral college, for example, is highly undemocratic, allowing for the possibility that someone could get elected as president even if he or she had a smaller share of the total national vote than his opponent.
The structure of the Senate is even more undemocratic, with Wisconsin's six million inhabitants getting the same representation in the Senate as California's 36 million people. That's not exactly one man, one vote.
And we are surely the only modern nation that could be paralyzed as we were in 2000 over an election dispute because we lack a simple national electoral system.
So we could use the ideas of social media that were actually invented in this country to suggest a set of amendments to modernize the Constitution for the 21st Century.
Such a plan is not unheard of in American history.
After all, the delegates in Philadelphia in 1787 initially meant not to create the Constitution as we now know it, but instead to revise the existing document, the Articles of Confederation. But the delegates saw a disconnect between the document that currently governed them and the needs of the nation, so their solution was to start anew.
I'm just suggesting we talk about a few revisions.
Anyway, what do you think? Should we do this? And if we were to revise the U.S. Constitution, what would be the three amendments you would put in?
Let us know in the comment thread and we'll post the best ones on the Global Public Square.
CNN - GPS
Host Fareed Zakaria
June 19, 2011
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn....constitution-2
(Flash Video)
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/vi...ution.cnn.html
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(.AVI Format)
*****/une19-2011.avi

Amendments for the American Constitution
FAREED ZAKARIA: Last week, we brought you the story of Iceland crowd sourcing its new constitution using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to determine what the Icelandic people want to see in their new, all powerful document.
So we thought we'd experiment in crowd sourcing some amendments for the American Constitution. That inspired perhaps the strongest reaction that we have ever gotten here at GPS. Thousands and thousands of e-mails, tweets, Facebook messages and posts on our message board.
About one-third of you thought no revision was necessary and some expressed that opinion rather colorfully, to say the least. Among the other two-thirds, there were some very popular ideas for amendments. Eliminating the Electoral College, which is probably on top of the list.
Other popular amendments included a ban on corporate donations in elections. A six year presidential term with no allowance for reelection. There were some more controversial ideas, a fat tax on unhealthy food, an upper age limit on elected officials, a ban on discrimination of left-handed people. I wasn't aware that that was a big problem. And my personal favorite was limit Zakaria to two stupid comments a month, which I take in to court is over already.
Anyway, to dig deeper on this, the legalities of amending the Constitution and whether or not it's really feasible, Jeffrey Toobin, CNN Senior Legal Analyst.
Jeff, we're unusual as a country, we're a very young country, but we have a very old Constitution, and political system, if you think about it, our Constitution, our political system is older than every European country.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: We have the oldest written Constitution of any democracy in the world. And it's only been amended 27 times and it stood us in very good stead, but I think, you know, it is not sacrosanct and it is a good idea to think about what shouldn't have been done in the first place and what -- how you can improve it.
FAREED ZAKARIA: Now, when you look at the, you know, I mean, the German Constitution apparently as I've read it once, is very similar to the American one, but it's sort of more modern, more streamlined. It doesn't have some of the kinks you know, for example, people point out that the Second Amendment is a grammatical mess, whatever you may think of the right (INAUDIBLE).
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Nearly incomprehensible as a sentence, yes.
FAREED ZAKARIA: Right. And so are there things that constitutional scholars look at and say, you know, these were really -- these have been problems for 222 years.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, certainly when it comes to the American Constitution, the two biggest controversies have always been in terms of the structure of the document, the Electoral College and the Senate, both of which give powers to states as states as opposed to individuals.
FAREED ZAKARIA: And, you know, the issue with the Senate, of course, is that you end up giving Wyoming's six million --
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Four hundred thousand people -- I just did the math. Wyoming has 400,000 people and two senators and California has 36 million people and two senators. It is hard to justify that.
FAREED ZAKARIA: And the justification for that and for the Electoral College was, as you said, that states as states have some kind of inherent quality that deserves representation. And maybe that was true in -- in the 18th Century, but today, I mean, you go -- drive from one state to another, it's very difficult to see why they should have political rights as states.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Right, and particularly small states. Even at the very beginning, the concern was at the time of the framing of the Constitution that New York and Virginia and Massachusetts, which were the big states, would overwhelm the smaller states. It's very hard to see how that applies today, particularly when comes to the Electoral College.
Now, the argument in favor of the Electoral College, it used to be that -- well, it gives small states a certain amount of power. When was the last time you saw a presidential candidate campaign in Wyoming or in Vermont or in Delaware? You know, we presidential elections in about four or five states. You know, Ohio, Florida, a few other states in the Midwest, and that's it. All the rest of the states are completely irrelevant, including the small states.
FAREED ZAKARIA: There was no real conceivable way in which that could change?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: I think the Electoral College, there is a conceivable way it will change, because there really is very hard to justify this crazy system where people in New York, in California, in Texas, are essentially irrelevant throughout all presidential campaigns except as fundraising sources.
Just the way contemporary American politics is. New York, California are overwhelmingly democratic states. No Republican is going to waste time campaigning there. Texas is a Republican state. So these states are ignored.
And there are millions and millions of voters in these states who get no attention and, you know, it really does affect our politics. The substance of our politics, as well. You know, for decades, we subsidized ethanol in Iowa -- because Iowa, where they grow a lot of corn, was such an important presidential state. I mean -- so this has substantive impact as well as just sort of political science impact.
FAREED ZAKARIA: Would it be fair to say that our Senate is probably the most unrepresentative upper House of the advanced democracies with the possible exception of Britain's House of Lords?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, actually, Britain, ever since Tony Blair is much more representative. Tony Blair got rid of the hereditary peers, whereas we still have this ludicrous disproportion in terms of small states and big states having the same amount -- same number of senators. So I think we're actually worse than the House of Lords.
FAREED ZAKARIA: And it's interesting. You know, I taught briefly and one of the things I taught was a class on the American Constitution and the debates that came out of the American Constitution which went on for 200 years to the present. And America is unique in that it is founded not on blood and soil nationalism, but on political ideas and the Constitution is the heart of that, and that's why I think people are so sensitive to the idea of changing it.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: People are so sensitive, but -- and, you know, no one has greater reverence for it than do, but it is worth remembering that in 1787, this wonderful convocation that we celebrate, they also enshrined slavery. And for it took 100 years and a Civil War to get rid of that in the Constitution with the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments. And then it took another 100 years for those amendments to mean anything.
I mean in -- in the 1860s, they said black people could vote, but no one -- no black people voted until the 1960s when, you know, Lyndon Johnson got the Voting Rights Act passed.
So, yes, the Constitution is a wonderful document, but infallible, it never was and it still isn't.
FAREED ZAKARIA: Jeff Toobin, fascinating. Thank you so much.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: My pleasure.
CNN - GPS
Host Fareed Zakaria interviews Jeffrey Ross Toobin
June 26, 2011
Transcript:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP.../fzgps.01.html
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com
http://www-cgi.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/fareed.zakaria.gps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Toobin
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(.AVI Format)
*****/une26-2011.avi

New Rules (Clip)
HBO - Real Time
Host Bill Maher
October 07, 2011
(Flash Video)
http://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher/index.html
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(.AVI Format)
*****/ber07-2011.avi



How to Make Your Lie Go Mainstream in 26 Easy Steps
A handy flowchart
By Mat Honan
May-June 2011 Issue
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011...-26-easy-steps

Part 1

Part 2

Discussion started by Calm , on 581 days ago