William K. Black — Prosecutors for the Petrocrats Try to Imprison the Media

Sheriff Bill is on North Dakota's case.

New Economic Perspectives
Prosecutors for the Petrocrats Try to Imprison the Media
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC
See also

Doug Krejci’s effort to use the University of Iowa’s 2008 flood footage for an upcoming documentary is being blocked by state officials who say copyright overrides public records.
The rare argument, if successful, could not only impede Krejci’s effort to raise public awareness of the disaster but also dismantle the state’s public records law, government transparency experts claim.

“It’s just bizarre,” said Adam Marshall, an attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a First Amendment advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “It can’t be the case that copyright law enables every state entity to withhold every single record they generate. That would totally eviscerate the public records laws.”

DesMoines Register
University of Iowa claims copyright law to block use of flood video
Jason Claywort

Ivan Stamenkovic — This is Why the Media Is Silent — Award Winning Journalist To Be Jailed For Covering Dakota Pipeline

More news blackout. Another attempt at suppression of a free press.

It’s not the first time that award-winning journalist Amy Goodman has been arrested, and it might not be the last, but the mainstream media correspondent will present herself to the Morton County–Mandan Combined Law Enforcement and Corrections Center at 8:15 a.m. local time (CDT) on Monday for processing.

Goodman is the host of her own television show Democracy Now, and according to the show’s website, Goodman has been charged with criminal trespassing for “filming an attack on Native American-led pipeline protesters” at what is now known as the Dakota Access pipeline.…

Goodman was present on 9/3 and documented the attack, which according to one source, left, “six people, including one child, were injured after being bitten by the security dogs.” According to Steve Sitting Bear, an eyewitness to the attacks, at least 30 people were also pepper-sprayed.

Counter Current News
This is Why the Media Is Silent — Award Winning Journalist To Be Jailed For Covering Dakota Pipeline
Ivan Stamenkovic

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A North Dakota prosecutor is seeking to charge Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman for the more serious offense of "rioting" over her filming of Native American protests against the North Dakota pipeline when a number of people were attacked by private security attack dogs.

Originally Goodman said she was charged with trespassing over the incident from September. Now North Dakota State Attorney Ladd Ronald Erickson has filednew "riot" charges.
Goodman said that the charges were changed because they authorities realized they couldn't make the trespassing "stick."…

teleSUR
North Dakota Prosecutor Charges Amy Goodman with Rioting

Amy Goodman and Aaron Mate interview Nomi Prins — All the President's Bankers: Nomi Prins on the Secret History of Washington-Wall Street Collusion

Video and transcript of Amy Goodman and Aaron Mate interviewing Nomi Prins

Democracy Now! | Video Interview
All the President's Bankers: Nomi Prins on the Secret History of Washington-Wall Street Collusion
Amy Goodman and Aaron Mate interview Nomi Prins

See also Zero Hedge, All The Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power

Prins is getting full spectrum coverage. This is left-right bipartisan issue, although the diagnosis and treatment differs.

Amy Goodman interviews Bill Black at Democracy Now on Occupy Wall Street and control fraud

The video and transcript is available at Democracy Now,

Former Financial Regulator William Black: Occupy Wall Street a Counter to White-Collar Fraud

Follows up on Dylan Ratigan's interview of David DeGraw and Bill at MSNBC

Video

David invites Bill to stand for Attorney General at the General Assembly, and Bill responds positively.

Shock Doctrine at work again — USPS?

Today, postal workers and their supporters are holding events across the country to press their demand for repealing the benefit-funding mandate and push back against calls for their workplace to be privatized. For months, Americans have heard dire warnings about the impending collapse of the United States Postal Service due to fiscal insolvency and a drop in the use of mail service. In early September, the U.S. Postmaster General told Congress that the USPS is close to default and unveiled a series of radical proposals to cut costs by firing up to 120,000 workers, closing several thousand facilities, scaling back deliveries, and reducing benefits for retirees. But many postal workers say the much-touted crisis facing the U.S. Postal Service is not what it seems. They argue the greatest volume of mail handled in the 236-year history of the postal service was 2006. They also point to a 2006 law that forced the USPS to become the only agency required to fund 75 years of retiree health benefits over just a 10-year span, and say the law’s requirements account for 100 percent of the service’s $20 billion in losses over the previous four years, without which the service would have turned a profit....

Read the rest at TruthOut, Shock Doctrine at US Postal Service: Is a Manufactured Crisis Behind Push Toward Privatization? by: Nermeen Shaikh and Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW!

Barefoot Economics

AMY GOODMAN: Today we begin with acclaimed Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef. He won the Right Livelihood Award in 1983, two years after the publication of his book Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics. I sat down with Manfred Max-Neef in Bonn, Germany, at the 30th anniversary of the Right Livelihood Awards. I began by asking him to explain just what "barefoot economics" is.

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: Well, it’s a metaphor, but a metaphor that originated in a concrete experience. I worked for about ten years of my life in areas of extreme poverty in the Sierras, in the jungle, in urban areas in different parts of Latin America. And at the beginning of that period, I was one day in an Indian village in the Sierra in Peru. It was an ugly day. It had been raining all the time. And I was standing in the slum. And across me, another guy also standing in the mud — not in the slum, in the mud. And, well, we looked at each other, and this was a short guy, thin, hungry, jobless, five kids, a wife and a grandmother. And I was the fine economist from Berkeley, teaching in Berkeley, having taught in Berkeley and so on. And we were looking at each other, and then suddenly I realized that I had nothing coherent to say to that man in those circumstances, that my whole language as an economist, you know, was absolutely useless. Should I tell him that he should be happy because the GDP had grown five percent or something? Everything was absurd.

So I discovered that I had no language in that environment and that we had to invent a new language. And that’s the origin of the metaphor of barefoot economics, which concretely means that is the economics that an economist who dares to step into the mud must practice. The point is, you know, that economists study and analyze poverty in their nice offices, have all the statistics, make all the models, and are convinced that they know everything that you can know about poverty. But they don’t understand poverty. And that’s the big problem. And that’s why poverty is still there. And that changed my life as an economist completely. I invented a language that is coherent with those situations and conditions....

The rest at Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef on Barefoot Economics, Poverty and Why The U.S. is Becoming an "Underdeveloping Nation" (Video and transcript at Democracy Now).