Orrin Hatch Tacks Anti-Abortion Amendment Onto Korean Trade Deal
First Posted: 06/30/11 12:37 PM ET Updated: 06/30/11 12:54 PM ET
Laura Bassett

WASHINGTON–Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) attached an amendment to the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement on Thursday that would ban any organizations that provide abortions, including hospitals, from receiving Medicaid family planning funds — even if those abortions are to save a woman’s life.

The Senate Finance Committee will consider the amendment Thursday afternoon as they begin action on the South Korea pact, despite the fact that there is no connection between the two issues.

“Clearly abortion has absolutely nothing to do with U.S-South Korea trade,” Donna Crane, policy director for NARAL Pro-Choice America, told HuffPost. “It’s completely insane — he’s looking to bring down trade bills for abortion politics, and frankly for his own politics.”

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The NYT’s Favor and Fear

By Robert Parry
June 30, 2011

The New York Times, like most U.S. newspapers, prides itself on its “objectivity.” The Times even boasts about printing news “without fear or favor.” But the reality is quite different, with the Times agreeing – especially last decade – to withhold newsworthy information that the Bush-43 administration considered too sensitive.

A new example of this pattern was buried in a Times article on Wednesday about a subpoena issued to Times reporter James Risen regarding his receipt of a leak about an apparently botched U.S. covert operation to sabotage Iran’s nuclear research, a disclosure that Risen published in his 2006 book, State of War.

In Wednesday’s article, the Times reported that its news executives agreed in 2003 to kill Risen’s article about the covert operation at the request of George W. Bush’s national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet.

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Minn. braces for government shutdown; talks break
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Budget talks to avoid a wide-ranging state government shutdown have broken off again in Minnesota, with no word on when they might resume.
By Jason Wachter, AP

Rest areas around St. Cloud, Minn., are being closed because of the possible state shutdown.

Most of state government will close at midnight if Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and Republican legislative leaders fail to agree on a budget or at least a temporary spending measure.

Top GOP lawmakers left Dayton’s office through a side door late Thursday morning after a meeting that lasted about an hour and 15 minutes.

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1) Govs. Rick Perry And Rick Scott Go AWOL During State Emergencies To Attend Secret Koch Event
By Marie Diamond and Alex Seitz-Wald on Jun 29, 2011 at 4:15 pm
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/06/29/256783/rick-perry-scott-kiss-koch-ring/

2) 8 Signs Your Governor Has a Koch Problem
http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/06/27/8-signs-your-governor-has-a-koch-problem/

3) Perry spoke Sunday at Koch brothers’ gathering near Vail
By Jason Embry | Monday, June 27, 2011, 12:45 PM
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/politics/entries/2011/06/27/perry_spoke_sunday_at_koch_bro.html

Report: Koch Industries outspends Exxon Mobil on climate and clean energy disinformation
By Climate Guest Blogger on Mar 31, 2010 at 11:06 am

In a must-read report, Greenpeace details how Koch Industries has “become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition,” spending over $48.5 million since 1997 to fund the anti-science disinformation machine. Brad Johnson has the story.

Climate Progress and the Wonk Room have long detailed the role of the billionaire brothers of Koch Industries, Charles and David Koch, in destroying American prosperity. Their pollution-based fortunes have fueled a network of right-wing ideologues, from McCain mouthpiece Nancy Pfotenhauer to loony conspiracy theorist Christopher Monckton. In public, the Kochs like to burnish their reputations by buying museum and opera halls.

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Egypt Unprepared For September Elections
By Leila Fadel from Cairo

Egypt’s first post-revolution parliamentary elections are due to take place in just three months. But a near-total lack of preparation is prompting fears that the vote will be flawed, undermining the election’s legitimacy and marring a revolution that empowered the Egyptian people.

While the vote is slated for September, no election law has been declared, no electoral system has been announced, no districts drawn and no specific date set. Egyptians who had hoped to embrace democracy after three decades of Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic rule now worry that a troubled election in the Arab world’s most populous country could instead endanger reform efforts in Egypt and beyond.

“What happens as a result of the elections will define the features of Egypt and the region,” said Farid Zahran, a member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, which has pushed for elections to be postponed. “Now is the time when the revolution ends in success or failure.”

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From Allen Feldman:

The seminal Greek documentary Debtocracy, on the current violence of EU and IMF neoliberalism:

http://www.thenewsignificance.com/2011/06/28/debtocracy-video-documentary/

The struggle for self-constituting democracy has expanded from North Africa , the Gulf and Syria to Syntagma Square, Athens, the eulogized birthplace of the demos. The death/rebirth of Hellenic democracy and the massive police violence on democratic sovereignty, with 1,000 civilian casualties to date, can be witnessed on 24-hour webcam at:

LIVE STREAMING: Πεδίο μάχης το Σύνταγμα by News247

Today the Greek police almost succeeded, where Mubarak’s thugs failed in Tahrir: in evicting democracy. They blockaded the square, used massive tear-gas clouds to disperse the protesters, and burned the medical tents set up to treat the wounded, who were forced to flee with medical personnel to a nearby subway station.

Note how well-equipped, in this country of economic austerity, are the Greek police with their body armor and the latest in tear gas hoses that eject gas like bug spray directly into people’s faces (something I haven’t seen before). I was told by an Athenian anthropologist that the day the socialist PASOK party assumed power, the police presence in the streets escalated out of all proportion to the levels of crime and/or protest at that time.

Greek Police repression-technology can be seen here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/jun/29/athens-riots-greek-general-strike-in-pictures?intcmp=239

Allen Feldman

Koch Brothers Give Huge Gifts To Several Public Universities
June 28, 2011

When the terms of a 2008 grant agreement between Florida State University and the Charles G. Koch Foundation became public last month, the news drew attention to the fund for what some saw as an attempt to exert undue influence over personnel matters.

The foundation has made sizable grants to a number of other colleges and universities — including six-, seven- and eight-figure gifts to such public institutions as Clemson University, George Mason University, Utah State University and West Virginia University.

In at least one case besides that of Florida State, Utah State University, the grant agreements give the foundation a role in reviewing candidates for positions. While the role given to Koch is less expansive than the one set out at Florida State, it still goes beyond norms of faculty hiring, which generally avoid any formal role for donors beyond designating an area of study. In other cases, the nature of the gifts has raised questions — with critics suggesting that the subject matter is so narrowly defined that it effectively embraces a political perspective, not a subject of study.

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From Jonathan Simon:

While Fighting To Block SEC Investigation Of Goldman Sachs, Rep. Darrell Issa Bought Goldman Sachs Bonds
By Lee Fang, ThinkProgress
Posted on June 29, 2011, Printed on June 29, 2011

Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) raised hell last year to stop the federal government from investigating Goldman Sachs regarding allegations that the company defrauded investors. In April 2010, shortly after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a civil suit against Goldman Sachs, Issa sent a letter to SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro demanding to know if there was “any sort of prearrangement, coordination, direction from, or advance notice” between the SEC and the Obama administration or congressional Democrats over the timing of the lawsuit.

Issa’s investigation of the SEC’s investigation into Goldman Sachs stole the headlinesand reinforced Goldman Sach’s claim that they had done nothing wrong. Explaining his defense of Goldman Sachs, Issa said he was representing the views of ordinary Americans who are worried about the “growth of government and the growth of government wanting to become more complex, with more agencies and more control over our lives.”

However, recent personal finance disclosures reviewed by ThinkProgress paint a different picture of Issa’s motivations. According to documents filed recently with the House Clerk, Issa went on a buying spree of high yield Goldman Sachs bonds at the same time he was running defense for the investment bank in Congress. From February to December of 2010, Issa bought 12 Goldman Sachs High Yield Fund Class Abonds, each worth up to $50,000 (view page 10 the disclosure here). Many of the bonds were purchased in the months after he filed his letter to the SEC. The $600,000 in new Goldman Sachs investments added to Issa’s already multimillion dollar stake in the company, valued from $5.1 to $15.5 million.

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