Bring on the bloggers…

For many years people have been grousing about a lack of investigative reporting in the blogosphere.  I myself have been concerned about the fate of investigative reporting because I have seen a few stories where either bloggers or traditional reporters actually got down and dirty and started digging if things didn't smell right.

Well here is a case where two bloggers managed to bring a story to life.

The Buffalo Beast - a.k.a. fake David Koch:

First and most celebrated we have Ian Murphy of the BuffaloBeast.com who managed to get Scott Walker to do more in self-revelation by pretending to be David Koch than he could of pretending he was a Wisconsin state senator.   A job well done - and I understand that your site got overloaded with traffic for a couple of days….AH!  The price of instant fame!

Governor Scott Walker - union buster extraordinaire - trending towardsthe diabolical….

Buffalo NY blogger vs Madison WI Governor Scott Walker

Hats off to Ian Murphy - a writer fro the BuffaloBeast.com without him  - no one would know the extent of the diabolical intent of the debate raging in Madison WI over collective bargaining.

Apparently, this gentleman doesn't know the meaning of the word "no" and when the democratic State Senators claimed that they could not get in contact with Governor Walker - he jumped in with an out-of-the-box method of establishing contact.   Pretending to be billionaire contributor David Koch  - Mr. Murphy found that Governor Walker had a surprising amount of time on his hands for a simple phone conversation.

Thinking he had a sympathetic ear - the Governor let down his hair and established for the record that he was sleazy enough to be a master exploitive politics.  He also had enough hubris to fancy himself a latter-day Ronald Reagan.

By all means, go to the Buffalo Beast to see the transcript - I have embedded the interview conducted by Lawrence O'Donnell on "The Last Word" yesterday.

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Crazy like a FOX news analyst.....

What  Obama and the Antichrist have in common??????

A post with the above title was published in 2009 by Joel Richardson.  One would hope that such a post was written with an eye to satire.  Needless to say - such is not the case.  This end of times prophet has somehow morphed into a FOX analyst  - covering the protests in Madison WI.  Yes, that makes sense.   The pretzel logic involved in morphing the end of times into arguments about collective bargaining and medical coverage for teachers is truly torturous.  The truly frightening thing is that some might actually take this seriously.

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From Egypt to Wisconsin - the contagion spreads…

Right now Madison Wisconsin is the epicenter of an epic fight for workers around the United States.   Recently, I wrote a blog about overpaid union workers in New York digging in their heels. I don't know the details of how well paid the public union workers are paid in Wisconsin.  My blog referred to New York State where private-sector salaries in comparable fields were lagging as much as 25% in some areas.  But in a very real sense - it doesn't matter because the issue has morphed into something far more significant.

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin puts collective bargaining on the chopping block.

Newly elected tea party Governor - Scott Walker has decided to undertake some massive union-busting by stripping collective bargaining rights for many of the public unions.

STEM Careers - the hype bumps up against the post-doctoral logjam

Ever since Obama's State of the Union address in January, we have been hearing more and more about American "exceptionalism" and about so-called "STEM" careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  Engaging young minds in these all too critical areas of study is supposed to be the key to America's future - paving a way to our supremacy in the 21st century and beyond.

Spin vs Reality:

The battle lines are drawn - public unions vs the middle class

This is one post where people may see that at my core I'm a moderate with progressive undertones.  So to those who were hoping that I was pure progressive - I offer my apologies in advance.  Like most democrats - I deviate from the party line on some matters.

While everyone has their eyes peeled towards the federal budget deficit - the elephant in the room is the burgeoning disaster within the state, county, and local governments.  New York State - where I reside has a mind-numbing budget shortfall of $10 billion. Since our constitution demands that we balance our budget - this is truly a frightening number.

Let me state at the outset that much of the trouble at the state and local level has to do with "trickle down" theory gone awry.  The natural result of low federal taxes is that the mandates keep coming but the only thing that actually trickles down to the states and cities are the mandates - which are now largely unfounded.   The squeeze at the top is simply passed along until it simply has no place else to go.

The Politics of Hate...Fueled by Fear...

A couple of days ago Matt Yglesias had posted about the Fox Effect.  He was responding to Richard Ramsey's post about the "Fox Geezer Syndrome" in which discussed how even conservative adults were growing increasingly perplexed and frustrated by the extreme effect that the politics of hate (courtesy of the Glen Beck Show) is having on their parents.

Its the end of the world as we know it….and I feel scared.