Policy ≠ Politics

President Obama announces the compromise.


A couple days ago the White House and Congressional Republicans reached a compromise on issues that included extending the Bush tax cuts and unemployment benefits.  It took a while.  In the press conference announcing the agreement, President Obama commented that the agreement is not what he wanted, but said that Republicans were holding tax cuts for the Middle Class and an unemployment benefits extension “hostage.”  Many in the Democratic base oppose the compromise, seeing it as capitulation rather than compromise, and are resistant to approval.
Mainstream media has been providing blow by blow coverage of this process.  The tell us which side which wants what but not in a lot of detail and not why.  For the most part they spend their time speculating about the impact that whatever compromise might be reached will have on the 2012 elections.  Then they let party representatives and their surrogates in the punditry argue about what agreements might be better and for the nation and how.
It’s all very entertaining.  There is drama, conflict, suspense.  Who is winning the skirmish as the pundits argue?  Who will win the battle when the legislation ultimately makes it out of Congress?  Most importantly, who’s likely to win the war in 2012!
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Academic Freedom Media Review, November 20 – December 3, 2010

The Scholars at Risk media review seeks to raise awareness about academic freedom issues in the news. Subscription information and archived media reviews are available here.
The views and opinions expressed in these articles are not necessarily those of Scholars at Risk.
Russian prisoner of conscience: Amnesty letters were ‘connection to freedom’
Amnesty International, 12/3
ITALY: University reform bill passes amid protests
Lee Adendorff, University World News, 12/2
UK as a whole will suffer if a big mistake is made on student visas, v-c warns
John Morgan, Times Higher Education, 12/2
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The Musical World of Roger Kuhn Around X-mas Time

Cover Art for "Every Year Around XMas Time"


Singer / Songwriter Roger Kuhn will be at the American Indian Community House in lower Manhattan tomorrow, Friday, December 3, for a concert marking the release of “Every Year Around Christmas Time”  a collection of original Christmas songs available at most online music outlets. (Click here for information on the show.)
The record marks a return to the studio for the farm boy from North Dakota, turned New Yorker, who’s now become a Boston resident since moving here with his husband in May, 2009.  He has spent the last year reading, studying yoga, meditating, and enjoying married life off the road.  But now “he’s got the bug again,” and the Christmas collection is just some of the new music coming our way. A new single, My Vow to You, is already available on iTunes.
In this video interview he talks about his childhood, becoming a musician, the importance of music in negotiating his identity as a gay man of mixed Native American  and White heritage, his spirituality, his career thus far, and what is still to come.
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Academic Freedom Media Review-November 13-19, 2010

photo: Chris Hildreth


Compiled by Scholars at Risk
The Scholars at Risk media review seeks to raise awareness about academic freedom issues in the news. Subscription information and archived media reviews are available here. The views and opinions expressed in these articles are not necessarily those of Scholars at Risk.
Second Azerbaijani ‘Donkey Blogger’ Freed
Claire Bigg, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 11/19
Azerbaijani Activist Detained On Georgian Border
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 11/19
Nobel Winner’s Absence May Delay Awarding of Prize
Andrew Jacobs and Alan Cowell, The New York Times, 11/18
Law students march to support UP professors
ABS-CBN News, 11/18
SINGAPORE: Yale partnership to go ahead, NUS says
Stanislaus Jude Chan, University World News, 11/18
Law clinics that go beyond theory face attacks
Sarah Cunnane, Times Higher Education, 11/18
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Fox News Chairman says NPR Executives are Nazis, "of Course"

Fox News, a News Corp subsidiary


Honestly, I am think that Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes and most at that network live in a reality that is different than mine.
I was just pointed to an interview with Howard Kurtz in which he said that President Obama “has a different belief system than most Americans” and that on his recent travels he “told by the French and the Germans that his socialism was too far left for them to deal with.”  I don’t know if Ailes believes this or if it is part of the continuing campaign of the right to paint the President as so radically different from us that he is somehow threatening, but the statements are not simply wrong, they are absurd.
President Obama is a capitalist and he believes in our system of representative, Constitutional democracy.  He has given no indication otherwise.  He would not have risen in the party system were that not the case and he certainly would not have got elected to the highest office in the land, either.  The Presidents differences with the the opposition are differences of degree, not belief systems.
As for France and Germany telling him that his socialism is to far left, well that is ridiculous.  Germany, France and the United States do have differences on approaches necessary to stimulate their economies because in a global economy what is done in one country impacts the others, but the questions concern the means and scale of intervention and have nothing to do with ideology.  France and Germany are also democratic, capitalist states, but both are fundamentally more socialist in character then the US.  Both have and have had for some time, state funded systems of education, government owned rail systems, universal health care, strong labor movements, etc.
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FactChecking ‘The Pledge to America'

Get a load of that title! Click for text, with pictures.


FactCheck.org is the website of a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics for voters

by monitoring the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.

They are a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania and not related to any political party.  They simply check facts.  In these midterm elections, they are a good place to turn for the truth behind the spin in any given campaign.  This post, for example, shows that both the Republican and Democratic candidates for Senator in Nevada are making false claims about each other.
So what about the Pledge to America that Republican Party leaders recently made?
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Checking Facts on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster

The April 20 explosion that started oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico has prompted a slew of claims and counterclaims about the disaster. What caused it, how it’s being handled, the history of drilling accidents in the area – all are subjects ripe for false or misleading statements by politicians and others.
We keep track so you don’t have to. Some of the lowlights so far, in no particular order.
* Some Republicans falsely claimed Obama was slowing the cleanup by not waiving the Jones Act, which actually doesn’t apply to the cleanup operations.
* Obama said he issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. Not quite. Much drilling continues.
* A Republican governor keeps saying the spill is the first big blowout in the Gulf, failing to note a 1979 disaster that continued for 10 months, and numerous smaller blowouts.
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There are plenty more where those came from. See our “Analysis” section for a roundup of the oil-spill whoppers we’ve encountered.

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Academic Freedom Media Review, May 29 – June 4

May 29 – June 4, 2010
Compiled by Scholars at Risk

Public conversation on universities is welcome
W. Salters Sterling, The Irish Times, 6/3
Catholic University of Ukraine and the Security Service of Ukraine
Philip J. Crowley, Press Release Bureau of Public Affairs, 6/2
Union challenges new visa system
The UK Press Association, 6/1
Jefferson v. Cuccinelli: Does the constitution really protect a right to “academic freedom”?
Dahlia Lithwick and Richard Schragger, Slate Magazine, 6/1
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Stop this Dangerous Rhetoric

A drive for signatures on a petition from Credo says that in his new book FOX News contributor Newt Gingrich compared President Obama’s administration to Nazi Germany saying that his “secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.”
If anyone has read this book, I’d be interested in knowing how Gingrich defines socialism. It is an oft repeated charge, and I don’t understand it, because this country has a long way to go before it even become a “mixed” economy. Even the health care reform measures that passed recently will work through private insurance! Essentially the new policies of the administration check the excesses of capitalism, no more and no less. It has been acknowledged since the first recession of the Modern era that this is necessary.
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Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Media Review, April 24-30

Academic Freedom Media Review
April 24 – 30, 2010
Compiled by Scholars at Risk
Scholar wages FoI battle for bank collapse data
Melanie Newman, The Times Higher Education, 4/29
Studying global universities
Glenn C. Altschuler, The Boston Globe, 4/29
Pakistan university mourns murdered woman professor
BBC News, 4/28
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