Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine. News that the people in charge, the corporations and your government want keep from the public eye.
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RobertReich.org:
"President Obama reportedly will propose two big corporate tax cuts this week.
One would expand and make permanent the research and experimentation tax credit, at a cost of about $100 billion over the next ten years. The other would allow companies to write off 100 percent of their new investments in plant and equipment between now and the end of 2011 at a cost next year of substantially more than $100 billion (but a ten-year cost of about $30 billion since those write-offs wouldn't be taken over the longer-term).
The economy needs two whopping corporate tax cuts right now as much as someone with a serious heart condition needs Botox.
The reason businesses aren't investing in new plant and equipment has nothing to do with the cost of capital. It's because they don't need the additional capacity. There isn't enough demand for their goods and services to justify it. Consumers aren't buying because they're trying to come out from under a huge debt load, including mortgage debt; they have to start saving because their nest eggs are worth substantially less; and they've lost or are worried about losing jobs and pay.
In any event, small businesses don't have enough profits against which to use these tax credits and deductions, and large corporations are sitting on over a trillion dollars of profits and don't need them."
-->Why isn't our media presenting these massive business tax cuts for what they are? Perhaps because big business controls big media.
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BoingBoing.net:
"Today, the ACLU, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) filed a lawsuit challenging the government's claimed authority to search, detain, and copy electronic devices ≠ including laptops, cell phones, cameras, etc. ≠ at the country's international borders without any suspicion of wrongdoing.
We carry a lot of private information on those devices, including pictures, personal emails, work-related documents, and much more. Normally, the Fourth Amendment requires the government to obtain a warrant before sifting through this information, and the First Amendment protects this information from unwarranted government scrutiny. The Fourth and First Amendments should also bar the government from rummaging through all that information and detaining the devices indefinitely without any suspicion, just because a person is crossing the border.
The plaintiffs are Pascal Abidor, a 26 year-old U.S.-French dual citizen and a Ph.D. student at McGill University in Montreal who was taken off an Amtrak train in upstate New York and whose laptop was detained and searched (including through personal materials like family photos and chat logs with his girlfriend) for 11 days; NACDL, an organization of approximately 10,000 attorneys with members who often travel overseas for work with documents protected by the attorney-client privilege; and the National Press Photographers' Association (NPPA), an organization of about 7,000 photojournalists."
-->The Wall St. Journal covered this story. But not The NY Times.
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Montreal Gazette:
"Quebec - The Harper government has quietly presented a bill in the House of Commons that would give U.S. officials final say over who may board aircraft in Canada if they are to fly over the United States en route to a third country.
'Canadian sovereignty has gone right out the window,' Liberal transport critic Joe Volpe told The Gazette in recent telephone interview. 'You are going to be subject to American law.'
Bill C-42 amends Canada's Aeronautics Act to allow airlines to communicate passenger information to 'a foreign state' for flights over that country without landing.
At present, airlines are only required to give passenger information to the U.S. government on flights landing in the United States."
-->No mention in the US media of this proposed spying on US citizens abroad.
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NPR's "51 Percent" likes doing programs about Afghanistan. The script is much like women's rights reporting on Iraq before the US invasion. The Pentagon sees these issues as a rallying cry for imperial occupations, a version of the Brits bringing "civilization" to their colonies. Wednesday's "51 Percent" report ended on a typical note: how "destructive" it would be if the West were to leave Afghanistan at this point, now that women are winning their rights. How much reporting does 51 Percent do on women's rights in Middle Eastern dictatorships supported by the US? Don't ask.
