A federal budget containing the largest single-year spending cuts in US history was grudgingly passed by Congress on April 14.
The cuts, amounting to US$38.5 billion, will be implemented until the end of the financial year on September 30, 2011.
President Barack Obama hailed the budget agreement as a victory. He said: “This is an agreement to invest in our country’s future while making the largest annual spending cut in our history.”
United States
Wall Street has continued erecting monuments to its own greed. The British Guardian reported on April 12 that Goldman Sachs’ paid its top five directors almost US$70 million in 2010.
The latest United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report, released on 27 July 2010, said civilian workers’ median hourly wage was $16.55. Private industry workers received $15.70 and state and local government workers received $22.04.
The top Goldman Sachs directors, on the other hand, earned an average $38,356 each day for 2010.
The Venezuelan government has repeated its request to the United States government for the extradition of terrorist and ex-CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles. Posada Carriles was found not guilty by a Texas court on April 8 of charges of violating US immigration law.
Posada Carriles is wanted by Venezuela for his role in blowing up a Cuban plane in 1976. The plane’s 73 passengers, all civilians, were killed. Posada Carriles escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985.
Venezuela’s foreign ministry issued the statement abridged below on April 8.
* * *
BP has asked United States regulators for permission to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the New York Times said on April 3.
The request comes less than a year after the devastating oil spill in the gulf, caused by an explosion in BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in which 11 workers died.
The NYT said: “BP is seeking permission to continue drilling at 10 existing deepwater production and development wells in the region in July in exchange for adhering to stricter safety and supervisory rules, said one of the officials.
“There’s no reason why technologically we can’t employ nuclear energy in a safe and effective way,” United States President Barack Obama told a group gathered at a town meeting in New Orleans in October 2009.
“Japan does it and France does it, and it doesn't have greenhouse gas emissions, so it would be stupid for us not to do that in a much more effective way”
You might think after the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima that Obama would have a reason to back off his support of nuclear energy as a new “clean” energy alternative.
The bad news for Ohio’s 350,000 public workers is that a new law bans them from striking — the good news is at least they will no longer risk jail for doing so.
A March 30 Reuters article said: “Ohio’s legislature on Wednesday passed a Republican measure to curb the collective bargaining rights of about 350,000 state employees, and Governor John Kasich said he will sign it into law.”
The new law will ban unions from striking in support of public workers and limit workers’ ability to collectively bargain.
Leonard Weinglass, a leading left-wing lawyer in the United States with an international perspective, died in the early evening on March 23, 2011.
Len, who died on his 78th birthday, fell ill in late January while in Cuba. In the first days of February, exploratory surgery at Montefiore Hospital discovered that he had inoperable cancer of the pancreas.
Lenny, a 1958 graduate of Yale Law School, became active in the US left lawyers’ organisation, the National Lawyers Guild, in the course of the civil rights movements of the 1960s.
US progressive journalist and author Joe Bageant died on March 26. Bageant is best known for his 2007 book Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War, in which he writes about his home town of Winchester, Virginia.
In the book, Bageant investigated how the betrayal of poor whites by the Democrats led to many supporting the Republican Party, despite it being against their interests. He also wrote many articles and essays. His last book, published in September 2010, was Rainbows: A Redneck memoir.
Legal action was launched on March 16 against Wisconsin’s Republican lawmakers in an attempt to repeal the anti-union bill that was signed into law on March 11. The law bans collective bargaining for most public sector workers in Wisconsin. Associated Press reported on March 16 that a legal challenge was mounted by Dane County district attorney Ismael Ozanne. AP said: “Democrats in the Wisconsin Assembly had alleged that Republican leaders did not give enough public notice that a committee planned to meet to amend the bill.”
“Ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid” is how one US official described the treatment of alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning.
Manning, a private in the US army, has been held in solitary confinement for nine months at Quantico Marine Corps Brig while awaiting a pre-trial hearing.
Breaking government ranks, spokesperson for the US State Department PJ Crowley criticized on March 10 the reported mistreatment of Manning. This mistreatment has included Manning being forced to strip and remain naked in his cell.
After months of investigation, the US Army has filed 22 new charges against US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning. The charges include “aiding the enemy” — a crime punishable by death.
From the cramped prison cell that has become his home, 23-year-old Army Private Bradley Manning is cut off from the world. He has had no opportunity to share his side of what could be the biggest whistleblowing story the world has seen.
What we do know of the alleged US war crimes whistleblower comes from the authority of friends and family — or from Adrian Lamo, the man who reported Manning to US authorities for allegedly leaking classified military documents to WikiLeaks.
- Previous page
- Page 125
- Next page