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Eight Headlines the Corporate Mainstream Media Does Not Have the Courage To Print

by Paul Bucheit

The following are all relevant, fact-based issues, the "hard news" stories that the media has a responsibility to report. But the corporate-owned press generally avoids them.
1. U.S. Wealth Up $34 Trillion Since Recession. 93% of You Got Almost None of It.
That's an average of $100,000 for every American. But the people who already own most of the stocks took almost all of it. For them, the average gain was well over a million dollars -- tax-free as long as they don't cash it in. Details available here.
2. Eight Rich Americans Made More Than 3.6 Million Minimum Wage Workers
A recent report stated that no full-time minimum wage worker in the U.S. can afford a one-bedroom or two-bedroom rental at fair market rent. There are 3.6 million such workers, and their total (combined) 2013 earnings is less than the 2013 stock market gains of just eight Americans, all of whom take more than their share from society: the four Waltons, the two Kochs, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett.
3. News Sources Speak for the 5%
It would be refreshing to read an honest editorial: "We dearly value the 5 to 7 percent of our readers who make a lot of money and believe that their growing riches are helping everyone else."
Instead, the business media seems unable to differentiate between the top 5 percent and the rest of society. The Wall Street Journal exclaimed, "Middle-class Americans have more buying power than ever before," and then went on to sputter: "What Recession?...The economy has bounced back from recession, unemployment has declined.."
The Chicago Tribune may be even further out of touch with its less privileged readers, asking them: "What's so terrible about the infusion of so much money into the presidential campaign?"
4. TV News Dumbed Down for American Viewers
A 2009 survey by the European Journal of Communication compared the U.S. to Denmark, Finland, and the UK in the awareness and reporting of domestic vs. international news, and of 'hard' news (politics, public administration, the economy, science, technology) vs. 'soft' news (celebrities, human interest, sport and entertainment). The results:
-- Americans [are] especially uninformed about international public affairs.
-- American respondents also underperformed in relation to domestic-related hard news stories.
-- American television reports much less international news than Finnish, Danish and British television;
-- American television network newscasts also report much less hard news than Finnish and Danish television.
Surprisingly, the report states that "our sample of American newspapers was more oriented towards hard news than their counterparts in the European countries." Too bad Americans are reading less newspapers.
5. News Execs among White Male Boomers Who Owe Trillions to Society
The hype about the "self-made man" is fantasy. In the early 1970s, we privileged white males were spirited out of college to waiting jobs in management and finance, technology was inventing new ways for us to make money, tax rates were about to tumble, and visions of bonuses and capital gains danced in our heads.
While we were in school the Defense Department had been preparing the Internet for Microsoft and Apple, the National Science Foundation was funding the Digital Library Initiative research that would be adopted as the Google model, and theNational Institute of Health was doing the early laboratory testing for companies like Merck and Pfizer. Government research labs and public universities trained thousands of chemists, physicists, chip designers, programmers, engineers, production line workers, market analysts, testers, troubleshooters, etc., etc.
All we created on our own was a disdainful attitude, like that of Steve Jobs: "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
6. Funding Plummets for Schools and Pensions as Corporations Stop Paying Taxes
Threeseparatestudies have shown that corporations pay less than half of their required state taxes, which are the main source of K-12 educational funding and a significant part of pension funding. Most recently, the report "The Disappearing Corporate Tax Base" found that the percentage of corporate profits paid as state income taxes has dropped from 7 percent in 1980 to about 3 percent today.
7. Companies Based in the U.S. Paying Most of their Taxes Overseas
Citigroup had 42% of its 2011-13 revenue in North America (almost all U.S.) and made $32 billion in profits, but received a U.S. current income tax benefit all three years.
Pfizer had 40% of its 2011-13 revenues and nearly half of its physical assets in the U.S., but declared almost $10 billion in U.S. losses to go along with nearly $50 billion in foreign profits.
In 2013 Exxon had about 43% of management, 36% of sales, 40% of long-lived assets, and 70-90% of its productive oil and gas wells in the U.S., yet only paid about 2 percent of its total income in U.S. income taxes, and most of that was something called a "theoretical" tax.
8. Restaurant Servers Go Without Raise for 30 Years
An evaluation by Michelle Chen showed that the minimum wage for tipped workers has been approximately $2 an hour since the 1980s. She also notes that about 40 percent of these workers are people of color, and about two-thirds are women.

***

Here's one more possible and welcome headline: Progressives Unite Behind Wealth and Wall Street Taxes.

NSA spies on human rights groups, including those in the USA

During video testimony to the Council of Europe, whistleblower Edward Snowden reiterated that the NSA targets human rights groups, including those in the USA, for surveillance. It uses its Xkeyscore technology to "fingerprint" communications from these groups and targets them for deep surveillance. Groups that have been targeted in this way include UNICEF and many others.

Prosecutors wage war on judges who insist on fairness

When South Carolina State Supreme Court Justice Donald Beatty told a convention of prosecutors that judges would not permit "unethical conduct, such as witness tampering, selective and retaliatory prosecutions, perjury and suppression of evidence," prosecutors revolted, vilifying him. They're following the lead of San Diego prosecutors, who boycott judges who are to "pro-Fourth Amendment." And in Arizona, prosecutors are fighting an ethics rule that would require them to disclose "new, credible, and material evidence" of wrongful convictions.

LAPD officers sabotage their own voice-recorders: nothing to hide, nothing to fear?

The Los Angeles Police Department is trying to do something about its notoriously bad human rights record: it has equipped officers with belt-worn voice-recorders that feed tamper-evident uploading stations in their cruisers. Unfortunately for anyone who advocates for the basic honesty of the LAPD, these have been widely sabotaged by officers, with more than half of the receiver antennas being vandalized or removed, which sharply reduces the recorders' range. Boston cops reacted the same way when logging GPSes were added to their cars. As Washington University law prof Neil Richards notes, it's a pretty ironic turn, in that the cops apparently feel like being surveilled while going about their normal business is an unreasonable impingement on their freedom.

Ziggy

Bacon, Egg and Cheese Brunch Ring

Crescent dough is the base for this cheesy egg dish that looks impressive but is a cinch to make.

Step 1

Unroll the crescent dough; separate into 8 triangles. On a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, arrange the triangles in a star shape, with short ends meeting in the center and slightly overlapping. (Leave a 4-inch circle open in the center.) Lay 1 bacon strip lengthwise down the center of each triangle.

Step 2

Sprinkle the widest part of the triangles with 1/3 cup of the cheese. Top with the egg mixture; sprinkle with another 1/3 cup of the cheese.

Step 3

Pull the points of triangles over the eggs and cheese. Tuck the dough under to form a ring (the filling will still be visible).

Brush the dough with milk and sprinkle with remaining cheese, then bake the ring according the recipe directions—and enjoy!

Ingredients

• • 4 slices bacon, cut in half crosswise
  • 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon milk
  • 4 eggs, slightly beaten
  • Salt and pepper, if desired
  • 1/4 cup chopped red bell pepper
  • 1 can (8 oz) Pillsbury® refrigerated crescent dinner rolls
  • 1 cup shredded Mexican cheese blend (4 oz)
  • Chopped fresh cilantro, if desired
  • 1 cup Old El Paso® Thick 'n Chunky salsa, if desired

Steps

• 1 Heat oven to 375°F. Line large cookie sheet with cooking parchment paper. In 10-inch skillet, cook bacon over medium heat about 4 minutes or until cooked but not crisp, turning once. (It will continue to cook in oven.) Set bacon aside; drain all except 2 teaspoons bacon drippings from skillet.
• 2 In medium bowl, beat 1/3 cup of the milk, the eggs, salt and pepper with fork or whisk until well mixed. Stir in bell pepper. Pour egg mixture into skillet. As mixture heats, portions of eggs will begin to set. Gently push cooked portions with metal spatula to outside edge of skillet. Avoid stirring constantly. As more egg sets, push it to the edge and place it on top of the already set egg mixture. Cook 5 to 6 minutes or until eggs are thickened throughout but still moist.
• 3 Unroll dough; separate into 8 triangles. On parchment-lined cookie sheet, arrange triangles with shortest sides toward center, overlapping in star shape and leaving 4-inch round circle open in center (see diagram). Crescent dough points may hang over edge of cookie sheet. Press overlapping dough to flatten.
• 4 Place bacon on each of the triangles. Sprinkle 1/3 cup of the cheese onto widest part of dough. Spoon eggs over cheese. Sprinkle with 1/3 cup of the cheese. Pull points of triangles over eggs and cheese, and tuck under dough to form ring (filling will be visible). Carefully brush dough with remaining 1 tablespoon milk; sprinkle with remaining 1/3 cup cheese.
• 5 Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until deep golden brown. Cool 2 minutes. With broad spatula, carefully loosen ring from cookie sheet; slide onto serving platter. Garnish with cilantro and salsa.

Presto Power Pop Microwave Corn Popper

I do love popcorn, but usually don’t like to pop commercial microwave bags in the office. Although their contents are delicious when popped, commercial microwave bags release a cloud of buttery esters into the local environment for all to smell. They have a TON of added fat and salt, and one has no control over the contents.
There’s also a great deal of debate over the safety and stability of polyunsaturated fats in high-heat cooking, and corn popping is a very high-heat process.
Hot-air poppers aren’t suitable for an office environment, and anyway I haven’t found one that doesn’t eventually make the popped corn taste like it came out of a hair dryer.
I have used the Presto Power Pop corn popper ($16) for at least a decade, and found it to be an excellent solution to light snacking in the office. It doesn’t smell strongly of anything but the corn, and that can be controlled by keeping the lid on until I’m back at my cube. I can control the amount of salt or oil I use, if any. It acts as a serving bowl for the popcorn, and is easy to keep clean once emptied. It does an excellent job of popping most of the corn, even in lower-power microwaves. It typically will pop a batch in under two minutes, not three to four like commercial bags. (Which makes one wonder how much of the mass inside commercial bags is popcorn, and how much is just colored fat.)
Its construction is fairly simple: a bowl, a detachable base with a metal reflector disc inside it, and a paper/foil heater cup. The cups are replaceable, but last a long time for me. I’m just finishing my first 8-pack of them after 10+ years. Granted, using oil in the popper will make them deteriorate more quickly. Also, as microwaves have increased in power over the years, I notice the cups burn more quickly. Replacements are available in many big box stores and at Amazon.
About Corn Popping:
Use fresh popcorn, and keep it hydrated so it pops well. Every few weeks, if your bag of popcorn lasts that long, open the bag and sprinkle maybe a half teaspoon of water into it. Close the bag, turn/roll it over a few times to distribute the water, and then let it sit. You don’t want a lot of water: just enough to keep the corn from drying out, not enough to make it germinate.
The best salt to use is superfine salt, like the movie theaters use. There’s something about that initial super-salty hit from extra-fine salt, that quickly fades into the mellow sweetness of popped corn. That salt/sweet balancing act is a visceral trigger that has kept us coming back for more for centuries.
Don’t get the popcorn salt with yellow coloring, it’s just dye. Easiest and cheapest is to make your own fine salt in a coffee or spice grinder.
Salt doesn’t often stick well without a little oil. Very, very little oil is actually needed. So I made a recipe:
Popcorn Salt/Oil Mix
~1 Tbsp. Table Salt
~1 tsp. Oil (Coconut oil preferred, it’s most stable long-term and at high heat) Coffee/Spice Grinder
Put a few teaspoons of regular salt into the coffee grinder. Grind it for a few seconds until it is a fine powder. Repeat until you have a tablespoon or so. In a very small container (1 oz.), put the salt and about a teaspoon of oil on top. Let it soak in. If it’s coconut oil, it’s OK if it’s solid; it will soak in.
What you’re looking for is a dry crumble of salt/oil. Use ¼ teaspoon for a batch of popcorn. Just place it on top of the corn; the popping action will distribute it fairly well.

Fucking awesome sandwich shop soon to open in Sweden

A new sandwich shop soon to open in Gothenburg uses a coarse English swear word in its name and marketing. The owner says it's a question of humor.

Two brothers are set to open the new eatery in Gothenburg in the spring and have given their venture the name "A Fucking Awesome Sandwich." Co-owner Christian Ingber says he often heard the cuss word used in a positive sense during his years living in New York. Ingber, who also owns the restaurant Puta Madre, which means "Your mother is a prostitute" in Spanish, said the name was not to be taken too taken too seriously.
"It's not the F word in a negative context," he said. "It could be a question of humor, we thought it was a fun name. My seven-year-old daughter is not allowed to swear, but she knows how to use 'fucking' in the right context." Ingber, whose daughter took part in the promotional video, said that several children in the video had American parents, and had attended a local English-language daycare center where the teachers gave the video positive feedback.

YouTube link.

"If anyone were to protest, it would be those teachers," Ingber said. "They called us silly." Ingber said he hoped there would be less focus on the name and more on the food. "To see the word rather than the product, that almost makes me a bit annoyed," he said. "I bet that 90 percent of those that grumble about us letting a child say fuck take their children to be poisoned at McDonald's."

Sriracha Factory In California Declared Public Nuisance

In the last decade Sriracha has gone from that sauce you see on the table at Asian restaurants to a spicy staple in many homes, rivaling the fame enjoyed by spicy celebrities Tapatio and Cholula. People like Sriracha so much that Lay's even made Sriracha flavored chips, although their recipe could have used a little more Sriracha.
Recently, a Sriracha factory in Irwindale, California was declared a public nuisance by the South Coast Air Quality Management District after nearby residents complained of burning eyes and throats due to the odor emanating from the factory.
So, is the spice going to disappear from our lives? Huy Fong Foods, makers of Sriracha, have until June 1st to install carbon filters in their factory or it's bye-bye red rooster sauce.

Daily Comic Relief

Where Everyone In The World Is Migrating

It's no secret that the world's population is on the move, but it's rare to get a glimpse of where that flow is happening. In a study released in Science, a team of geographers used data snapshots to create a broad analysis of global migrations over 20 years.

Watch Every Cyber Attack In The World In Real Time

Kasperkspy Labs launched a beautifully terrifying interactive map that shows online threats arounds the world in real time. It's a global visualization of cyber attacks. The data displayed on the map all comes from Kaspersky's malware monitoring software.

The United States, for instance, is an especially high risk area - it's the fourth most popular target for malware - but Russia is the most infected country. The different colored lines that connect attackers and victims represent different kinds of attacks, a feature that should help you decide how to protect yourself.

Printing Wikipedia

A German-based group called PediaPress is trying to raise enough money to make a print copy of all of Wikipedia. That's right, Wikipedia, the ever-evolving, always-changing, inherently digital encyclopedia of information gathered by contributors all over the world. To say this would be a massive project is an understatement.
One thousand volumes, 1,200 pages each - more than one million pages in all - about 80 meters of shelf space. That's what it would take to make a printed version of Wikipedia. The idea is to let people see just how much information is in the online encyclopedia, says Christoph Kepper and his partners at Pediapress.

$150,000 "Black Beauty" Manganite specimen to be auctioned

 

Here's a nice looking "whopper of a Manganite group." With an estimated value between $150,000 and $175,000, it has an opening bid of $75,000. It's one of over 300 gems and minerals being auctioned by Heritage.

Ilfeld, Nordhausen, Harz, Thuringia, Germany
If it wasn't for the Ilfeld Manganese mines, Manganite would be relegated to back row status in the Pantheon of Fine Minerals. Fortunately, Manganite was rescued from obscurity by the brilliant, midnight-black crystal groups found in this part of the Harz Mountains. Of the various Manganite groups known, the one seen here is arguably in the top 5. Single crystals run riot over the upper surface of a massive Manganite/Pyrolusite matrix, with thin layers of the original wall rock visible on the absolute bottom of the specimen. Many of the crystals are over one inch, and some are much larger: up to 1.88 inches (4.74 cm). At better than 6.5 inches (16.5 cm) in length, this is not a small example of this mineral; it is a whopper of a Manganite group. The condition of this 'black beauty' is absolutely pristine with no visible damage. As befits a world-class specimen of Ilfeld Manganite, it comes with a custom acrylic base. Overall Measurements: 6.49 x 3.34 x 2.65 inches (16.5 x 8.5 x 6.74 cm)

I've got my eye on this hunk of heulandite on chalcedony, which "looks like Godzilla as a hockey goalie," and has a current high bid of $1.

Heritage Auctions gems and minerals

Coming Tomorrow

Coming Tomorrow

• Nuetered repugicans destroy their chances with women with one vile poster
• White wingnut terrorist busted ... and not a peep
• Wingnut food companies
• Justices For Sale! Buy Yours Here!

And more ...

This blue birdie is our Animal Picture, for today.

The Daily Drift

Facts are great ... ?

 

Carolina Naturally is read in 197 countries around the world daily.   

 Hands up ... !

Today is - World Youth Day

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Africa 

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Today in History

1598		The Edict of Nantes grants political rights to French Huguenots.
1775		Lord North extends the New England Restraining Act to South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. The act forbids trade with any country other than Britain and Ireland.
1861		After 34 hours of bombardment, Union-held Fort Sumter surrenders to Confederates.
1865		Union forces under Gen. Sherman begin their devastating march through Georgia.
1902		J.C. Penny opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
1919		British forces kill hundreds of Indian nationalists in the Amritsar Massacre.
1933		The first flight over Mount Everest is completed by Lord Clydesdale.
1941		German troops capture Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
1943		Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the Jefferson Memorial.
1945		Vienna falls to Soviet troops.
1960		The first navigational satellite is launched into Earth's orbit.
1961		The U.N. General Assembly condemns South Africa because of apartheid.
1964		Sidney Poitier becomes the first black to win an Oscar for best actor.
1970		An oxygen tank explodes on Apollo 13, preventing a planned moon landing and jeopardizing the lives of the three-man crew.
1976		The U.S. Federal Reserve begins issuing $2 bicentennial notes.
1979		The world's longest doubles ping-pong match ends after 101 hours.

Non Sequitur

Movies Show Black Police Officers Good For Entertainment Only

Movies Show Black Police Officers Good For Entertainment Only

Depictions of African-American police officers in television and movies may […]