By David Swanson, ILCA Media Coordinator
Part of the Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories

You wouldn’t know it from reading, watching, or listening to the “mainstream” media, but many of the largest labor organizations in the United States have passed resolutions demanding that U.S. troops be brought home from Iraq and the war be ended. On July 19, the ILCA published an article on the media’s failure to cover this turn of events.

Back then the story was already read more

October 19, 2004

The Economic Policy Institute today released a report finding that investment in early childhood development can bring annual rates of return of 12 percent to the non-participating tax payers. The real rate of return that prevailed on the stock market between 1871 and 1998 was 6.3 percent. Are those eager to invest our Social Security dollars in a money-making venture paying attention?

How does investing in expensive educational, health, and nutritional programs for poor three- read more

Bernie was a funny bunny, but Bernie didn’t think so. He took himself very seriously.

Bernie lived in a town at the bottom of a big rocky mountain, and most of the other bunnies liked Bernie a lot, even if they did laugh at him once in a while. And the birds liked Bernie too, even though he had once tried to keep them out of the bunnies’ garden.

The garden was the center of the bunny town, and Bernie’s bunny hole wasn’t far from it. Mayor Michael’s hole was right next read more

Oct. 27, 2004

Kerry’s appeal to progressives is generally thought of as no more or less than the appeal a pumpkin would have if it could run: neither Kerry nor the pumpkin is Bush. I’d like to suggest another reason for progressives to support Kerry, one that does not require holding our noses.

Of course, parts of Kerry’s record are admirably progressive, and – unlike Bush – Kerry has a record of responding to public pressure (itself admirable in a democracy and an read more

By David Swanson, ILCA Media Coordinator
Part of the Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories

Single-payer health care is, according to numerous surveys, supported by a majority of Americans.i Few public policies are inspiring more activism and advocacy in the United States right now than single-payer health care at the national and state levels.ii Organizations are holding marches across major city bridges. Think tanks and foundations and labor unions are generating studies. Doctors, read more

Oct. 29, 2004
It’s a well known fact that the media sucks. Or is that merely a widely held opinion? I’d like to argue that it is a distinction that makes no difference, that opinion-free facts are the mythical creation of insecure epistemologists, that all the recent laments over the media’s becoming too opinionated are understandable but confused, that the corporate media has a powerful interest in the myth of non-opinion because it allows the expression of corporate read more

Nov. 3, 2004
Dear World,
Please be on the lookout for more bombs, debts, and global warming. It’s what we in the United States like to call “letting the healing begin.”

I know, I know, you thought there might be hope for us. You thought we might be ready to cross the bridge to the 18th century and stop letting religious bigotry run our lives. Even you British supposed that we might care about having killed 100,000 Muslims. Sorry to disillusion you on that one. We found it more read more

Nov. 5, 2004
Already the strategists are advising the Democrats to go to church more, hunt more, and become more like the Republicans. This strategy has, however, been pushed just about as far as it will go, and in a quarter century of trying has worked only for Bill Clinton, and then only with a lot of help from Ross Perot and a number of lucky breaks.

With over 40 percent of the country still not interested in voting despite massive Get-Out-the-Vote efforts, record turnouts, and endless lines read more

November 22, 2004
Those desperate enough to consider moving to Canada to escape a nation headed by George W. Bush may want to consider an easier option that could deny Bush’s Republican successor the presidency: moving to Iowa.

We spent upwards of $300 million trying to elect John Kerry ($241 million through the campaign, another $80 million through other organizations). We turned out every anti-Bush voter we could find. But there weren’t enough pro-Kerry voters to put Kerry over the read more

November 22, 2004
Part of the ILCA Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories
Bush’s success in reducing the value of the minimum wage in each of the past four years has wreaked havoc with the lives of millions of working Americans, but it does not exist as a media story.

The minimum wage loses value as the cost of living rises. Were the government to take action to partially correct for this loss in value, the media would cover that story, but would refer to it as “raising read more