j_b

"finally come around" what? I have always promoted sustainable economic activity (sustainable both environmentally and socially). My guess is that my count of anti corporate welfare posts beats yours 100:1.

to deny a critique of "statistics" (as it is used in the political process and other processes) is anti-intellectual demagoguery. I am not sure if I follow. Proper use of statistics is very powerful.

yes, i'm famously anti intellectual robert mcnamara was a huge fan of stats too Much use of statistics is bunk, and statistics can be ambiguous but statistics are on the whole very useful.

FAIR’s study recorded every on-air source quoted in June 2003 on four National Public Radio news shows: All Things Considered , Morning Edition , Weekend Edition Saturday and Weekend Edition Sunday . Each source was classified by occupation, gender, nationality and partisan affiliation. Altogether, the study counted 2,334 quoted sources, featured in 804 stories. In addition to studying NPR ’s general news sources, FAIR looked at the think tanks NPR relies on most frequently, and at its list of regular commentators. To ensure a substantial sample of these subsets, we looked at four months (5–8/03) of think tank sources and commentators on the same four shows. The elite majority Elite sources dominated NPR ’s guest-list. These sources—including government officials, professional experts and corporate representatives—accounted for 64 percent of all sources. Current and former government officials constituted the largest group of elite voices, accounting for 28 percent of overall sources, an increase of 2 percentage points over 1993. Current and former military sources (a subset of governmental sources) were 3 percent of total sources. Professional experts—including those from academia, journalism, think tanks, legal, medical and other professions —were the second largest elite group, accounting for 26 percent of all sources. Corporate representatives accounted for 6 percent of total sources. Journalists by themselves accounted for 7 percent of all NPR sources. For a public radio service intended to provide an independent alternative to corporate-owned and commercially driven mainstream media, NPR is surprisingly reliant on mainstream journalists. At least 83 percent of journalists appearing on NPR in June 2003 were employed by commercial U.S. media outlets, many at outlets famous for influencing news- room agendas throughout the country (16 from the New York Times alone, and another seven from the Washington Post ). Only five sources came from independent news outlets like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the National Catholic Reporter . The remainder of elite sources was distributed among religious leaders (2 percent) and political professionals, including campaign staff and consultants (1 percent). The public on public radio Though elite sources made up a majority of sources, the study actually found a substantial increase in the number of non-elite sources featured. Workers, students, the general public, and representatives of organized citizen and public interest groups accounted for 31 percent of all sources, compared to the 17 percent found in 1993. The increase comes largely in the general public category. These are “people in the street” whose occupations are not identified and who tend to be quoted more briefly than other sources—often in one-sentence soundbites. More than a third (37 percent) of general public sources were not even identified by name—appearing in show transcripts as “unidentified woman No. 2” and the like. General public sources accounted for 21 percent of NPR sources. Spokespeople for public interest groups—generally articulate sources espousing a particular point of view—accounted for 7 percent of total sources, the same proportion found in 1993. Though not a large proportion of NPR ’s sources, public interest voices were still about twice as common on NPR as on commercial network news, according to a FAIR study published in 2002 (Extra! , 5–6/02) that found that such sources made up only 3 percent of voices on network news shows. Public interest voices on NPR reflected a wide range of opinion, from conservative groups like the National Right to Life Committee and Texas Eagle Forum to progressive groups like MoveOn.org and Code Pink. Types of organizations represented included political organizations, charitable foundations, public education groups and human rights and civil liberties advocates. Eighty-seven percent of public interest sources appeared in domestic policy stories. Sources identified as workers on NPR programming in June accounted for 2.3 percent of overall sources and 1.8 percent of U.S. sources. But spokespersons for organized labor were almost invisible, numbering just six sources, or 0.3 percent of the total. Corporate representatives (6 percent) appeared 23 times more often than labor representatives. How Public is Public Radio

NPR finds right-wing crank to spit on Howard Zinn's grave

That's anti-intellectual demagoguery. Most polls are worthless because of the ideological framing used to ask questions but statistics are invaluable to any analysis.

Except that polls show unequivocally that a large majority of people and independents are for public healthcare, greater taxation of the wealthy and corporations, job creation through government intervention, no escalation of wars (if not outright withdrawal), etc ..., which shows that your desperate attempts to claim that Obama is too far left and that folks are first concerned about 'big government" are complete BULLSHIT.

There is a very large problem with the military-industrial complex (or whatever for-profit corporate interest) owning huge media empires and that should of course be addressed but opening the floodgates to corporate money in politics isn't going help. If anything, it will make matters worse. The 4th estate is sine qua non for democracy and stating that it isn't up to the task today doesn't in anyway invalidate the need for a free press with different rights and obligations than that of GE. I find the insistence that this ruling will enable citizens associations and unions to compete with corporate interests disingenuous at best. Economic activity isn't evil. Controlling political outcomes to enhance one's economic activity to the detriment of the great unwashed masses is however evil. Partnerships aren't granted the privilege of limited liability by the state, so they have different obligations, which doesn't imply they should yield influence out of proportion to their representativity.

The main effect of this decision is to legitimize corporate influence on pols and elections. Anything else is at best a second order effect and, at any rate, nothing should protect office holders from genuine criticism. The press is supposed to play an essential part in the democratic process: that of the 4th estate to keep politicians honest. Comparing manufacturing appliances to that of keeping the electorate informed when discussing freedom and speech is nonsensical. Well, the NRA and move-on are very different birds in term of their representatitivty from Amway, and even more different than GE, etc, which you incidentally didn't mention

Well, granite areas don't have via ferratas like in the picture. Via ferratas exist pretty much only where limestone crags are ubiquitous, which is all of southern Europe.

My guess is that rock wear on popular climbs(limestone is soft) is a much more pressing sustainability issue in Europe than via Ferratas

Si Senor, by opposition to temperate ice.

Nuts! Like a blade of granite in cold ice.

Crazy pics G-spotter (btw, did you hear English scientists recently denied your name sake existed). Is that sedimentary?

Lots of general mountaineering/ice moderates to be had in the Dry Valley region of the Transantarctic but climbing is essentially illegal to the people who go there (can't justify mobilizing rescue) and it'd be difficult to know what has been done.

Poll: Two-Thirds Of Americans Unhappy About Citizens United Ruling Evan McMorris-Santoro | February 8, 2010, 1:44PM [...] Sixty-four percent of respondents were opposed to ruling, while just 27% said they favored it. "The results are pretty striking," Greeberg said on a conference call with reporters this morning. He said that the current anti-establishment fervor in the electorate suggests that incumbents should get as far away from the Citizens United ruling as they can. "The last thing people want to see in this environment is corporations having more influence on politicians." That's especially true among independents, as data from the poll shows. More than 80% of independents said new limits should be placed on campaign spending. Seventy-four percent of independents agreed with the statement that "special interests have too much influence in Washington." Though the results are good news for campaign finance reform fans, they're not so good for the party in power at the moment. Independents did not give positive reviews on how Democrats have dealt with the problem of special interest influence in Washington. Just 30% said President Obama has reduced the power of lobbyists in Washington, while 50% said special interests have gained more power in the city since he took office. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/poll-two-thirds-of-americans-unhappy-about-citizens-united-decision.php?ref=fpa

What I have always done, which is support pols and organizations that oppose corporate personhood. As for the specific tactics necessary to reach that aim, they are many: from campaigning for constitutional amendments banishing corp personhood to local initiatives to enforce citizens rights: Spokane Considers Community Bill of Rights Thousands of people voted to protect nine basic rights, ranging from the right of the environment to exist and flourish to the rights of residents to have a locally based economy and to determine the future of their neighborhoods.

Whether you are actually putting money and/or effort toward institutionalizing corporate personhood or just agreeing with it, you are still on the wrong side of this fight.

Any politician claiming they miss Bush would find their approval rating in the gutter along with that of the GOP

non-sequitur.

In addition to the obvious threats of switching funding to the regressive wing of the corporate party, the more subtle framing of corporate and GOP talking points: asking Wall Street to stop destroying the real economy, paying up its debt to the taxpayer, and stop fighting regulations amounts to exacting "revenge", "punishment", kicking the corporate "pinata", etc ... It's not like they are killing us and it has to stop, we are just being vengeful.

Downloads and online viewing of the film 'The Corporation' plus interview of director: http://www.archive.org/details/The_Corporation_ If you haven't seen it yet, this must see documentary demonstrates how corporate personhood consists in creating a class of citizens that can only be psychotics because unable of empathy, unable of ethics beyond maximizing profit, etc .. , whereas its sole purpose is to avoid corporate regulations.

Unless you plan to be self-employed for the rest of your working life, using one's real name on the internet is folly, and it has unfortunately little to do with whether one posts sludge. People who out posters are dangerous morons.

Yes, this is a special time, an emergency, that requires special powers and methods... Cheney couldn't have said it better. Difficult times are precisely when we should trust our institutions, most particularly the constitution, democratic process, and the rule of law, the most. If not, anything goes. We've all seen where that can take us. In any situation, you must still answer the same question: who decides? And what, exactly, are you suggesting be done, here? Yeah, we might have an issue of too much corporate influence over government after this ruling. How would you suggest we go forward in correcting that problem? Kvetching about the SC ruling, while a valuable discussion and airing of grievances, probably isn't the most fertile option. That ship has left the dock. It is apparent that fetishism of the law prevents you from telling the difference between 1) Cheney undemocratically grabbing power to impose unethical policies that have been widely denounced throughout time and 2) progressives consistently denouncing the unethical underpinning of the rule of law that enables corporations to evade social responsibilities. In what world does the systematic application of the same set of ethics boil down to "everything goes"?

I'll keep "playing the constitution card" as long as you keep cheering those who trample the principles you claim to adore like "freedom" and, you haven't shown how it was possible to have a legally consistent argument when the rule of law was unethical.