HUFFINGTON POST: … Thus, for example, when Andrew Cuomo wanted to get the support of hedge fund managers for his run for governor of New York, he was told to talk to Joe Williams, director of Democrats for Education Reform, a group set up to lobby liberals on privatization. Cuomo is now a champion of charter schools. As Joanne Barkan noted in a Dissent Magazine report, privatizers are even targeting school board elections, in one case spending over $630,000 to elect two members in a local school board race last year in Colorado.

Wall Street’s involvement in the charter school movement — when the media acknowledges it — is presented as an act of philanthropy. Perhaps, as critics claim, hedge funders are meddling in an area they know nothing about. But their motives are worthy. Indeed, since they send their own children to the best private schools, their concern for other people’s children seems remarkably altruistic. “Wall Street has always put its money where its interests of beliefs lie,” observed this New York Times article, “But it is far less common that so many financial heavyweights would adopt a social cause like charter schools and advance it with a laser like focus in the political realm.”… …

The Times‘ other guess about Wall Street’s motives was that hedge funders are attracted to the anti-union character of the charter schools. This is undoubtedly true; the attack on the pubic schools is clearly a part of the broad conservative campaign to discredit government. … (more)

PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW Opinion: …The ad against [Kathleen] Kane broke new barriers. The basic charges were false and dredged up disturbing memories for families that lived through despicable tragedies.

Kane’s maiden name, Granahan, was on the cases’ intake documents. But whoever did the negative research didn’t look further or ignored the facts. The cases were handled from beginning to end by other prosecutors…

The ad was aired by the Washington-based Republican State Leadership Committee, a nonprofit that includes the Republican Attorneys General Association, in an $800,000 Philadelphia media buy…   (more)

SCRANTON TIMES-TRIBUNE Editorial:  …Under a bill proposed by state Rep. Kerry Benninghoff, a Centre County Republican and chairman of the House Finance Committee, workers for companies that relocate to Pennsylvania would pay the state income tax through payroll deduction. But the companies that collect it would be allowed to keep 95 percent of the money rather than turn it over to the government.

State Rep. Scott Boyd, a Lancaster County Republican, said he would propose expanding the Promoting Employment Across Pennsylvania deal to all employers who add jobs.

The sponsors’ rationale is that the state government would not forfeit any revenue by allowing employers to keep income taxes paid by new employees, but would forgo some new revenue.

Well, how about in the case of an employer that creates a subsidiary and transfers half of an existing workforce to the “new” company, creating “new” jobs and getting back 3.07 percent – the personal income tax rate – of those employees’ wages? Who knows how many other ways there are to exploit such a tax scheme?…   (more)

Towards the end of this week’s column titled, First question on the middle class, Associate Editor Gil Smart observes:

“For most of U.S. history, most people had a slow and steady wind at their back, a combination of economic forces that didn’t make life easy but gave many of us little pushes forward that allowed us to earn a bit more every year. … That wind seems to be dying for a lot of Americans. What the country will be like without it is not quite clear. ‘It’s hard to imagine what set of circumstances would reverse recent trends and bring large numbers of jobs for unskilled laborers back to the U.S.’ ”

“Under our ruthless (yet virtuous!) system, that’s the way it is. Davidson himself writes,

WATCHDOG: As we have observed before, Smart gets more knowledgeable and insightful as time goes by and today’s column of jarring observations is certainly among his best. In reponse, here are two things that we can ”imagine”:

1)   Fast forward three decades.   By then much of the cheap labor in Asia will have been absorbed into their countries’ economies and be receiving wages, if not as high as in the West, are significant enough to make their products and services for less economical.   Rising world prosperity will ‘float all ships’ and American families will again be growing in affluence.  So, at worse, it isn’t a matter of  ’if’, but rather of ‘when.’

2)      But, as John Maynard Keynes said, “In the long run, we are all dead” so let’s look at what can be done now to improve our situation.  Do we have high speed trains?  Do we have modern airports?   Do we have a first class educational system?   Is our health care system rated among the top fifteen in the world?  The answers to all of the questions are no.

Also, at a time of worldwide fuel shortages, are we turning enough arable ground into cultivation?   Perhaps some of our population should be headed back to the farms and related industries.

Our big problem isn’t due to worldwide influences.  Our problem is our being bogged down in steep recession and a Congress that refuses to enact necessary stimulus to get us back to a decent level of employment.

Pray for an Obama landslide, carrying both houses of Congress.  We will then get the fiscal stimulus for which, since 2008, the vast number of economists and the Federal Reserve have been begging. Then taxes will flow into the public coffers, social safety net expenses will correspondingly decrease, we can again balance the budget (as was done during the latter Clinton years), the ratio of National Debt to Gross National Product will shrink to a safer percentage, and , to borrow an analogy from Smart, the wind will again be at our backs.

From the U. S. GOVERNMENT, DEPARTMENT OF STATE:

…The 18th-century framers of the U.S. Constitution guaranteed freedom of the press by writing that protection into the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Even so, the Supreme Court of the United States — the highest court in America — for years refused to protect the media from libel lawsuits by relying on the First Amendment. Instead, libel laws varied from state to state without a single coherent rule in the nation.

That all changed in 1964 when the Supreme Court issued a ruling that revolutionized libel law in the United States. The famous decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan once and for all created a national rule that squared more fully with the free press guarantees of the First Amendment. In its ruling, the Court decided that public officials no longer could sue successfully for libel unless reporters or editors were guilty of “actual malice” when publishing false statements about them…

The Supreme Court later extended its so-called Sullivan rule to cover “public figures,” meaning individuals who are not in public office but who are still newsworthy because of their prominence in the public eye. Over the years, American courts have ruled that this category includes celebrities in the entertainment field, well-known writers, athletes, and others who often attract attention in the media…

Click here to read the full article.

EDITOR: Contrary to the misleading and self serving statements by the Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.’s  publisher and counsel, the issue of the truthfulness of  former commissioner Molly Henderson’s accusations were not determined by the court but rather that they did not meet the especially higher standards required for a suit against a medium or a public figure.

From the PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW:

The fifth best-selling chardonnay on state wine and spirits store shelves is owned by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board….

“It’s inexcusable, in my estimation, that the government spent taxpayer money to brand and market products in direct competition with private industry,” said Jay Ostrich, spokesman for the Harrisburg-based Commonwealth Foundation.

“Should the people who are running the show, from a regulatory standpoint, should they be engaged in making business decisions that, if it doesn’t work out, what are the repercussions for them?” asked state Rep. Thomas Quigley, R-Montgomery County…

Click here to read the full article.

WASHINGTON POST:   The office of the nation’s spy chief issued a statement Friday defending the Obama administration’s accounts of the siege on a U.S. mission in Libya, saying it became clear only in the aftermath that it was “a deliberate and organized terrorist attack.”

The statement appeared aimed at quieting criticism, mostly from Republicans, of the administration’s shifting characterizations of a Sept. 11 assault that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. Officials initially described the attack as spontaneous but in recent days have said it was an act of terrorism with links to al-Qaeda.

The release from the office of Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. came as lawmakers sought more details about the siege in Benghazi. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent a letter to the State Department on Thursday posing questions about intelligence in the period leading up to the attack and the adequacy of the security at U.S. compounds…  (more)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:  … “The problem with this type of behavior is that it is unsustainable,” economist Eugenio Aleman of Wells Fargo said.

Spending rose by 0.5% in August — the fastest rate since February — and marked the second straight sharp gain, according to Commerce Department data released Friday. Spending is watched closely because it accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic growth.

Yet not all spending is of equal benefit to the economy. Other reports on consumption in August suggest a big portion of consumer outlays went to pay for higher gasoline costs. Gas stations reported the biggest rise in sales last month in nearly three years…  (more)

TIMES OF ISRAEL – Contrary to previous reports, the two pilots of a Turkish F-4 Phantom which was shot down by Syria in June were not killed in the crash, but were murdered by the Assad regime on Russian orders, according to a devastating series of alleged Syrian intelligence documents leaked to and published by Al-Arabiya on Saturday.

A file “sent from [President Bashar] Assad’s palace,” said the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya,” conveys and thus apparently approves a Russian suggestion to “eliminate” the pilots in the “natural way.”

Syria had claimed that the plane was downed by accident, and at one point asserted that it had believed the plane was Israeli – hence the need to down it…  (more)

EDITOR:   Very plausible, or is this an Israeli effort to discredit the Syrian regime?

NEWSMAX:  Senator Richard Lugar, the leading Republican foreign-policy expert in Congress, said President Barack Obama is following the right policy in Iran and warned of the dangers of war.

“The idea of moving with our allies, as many as we can find, on effective sanctions on the country has been the right move” on Iran, Lugar said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend…

“I understand even some wanting to go to war immediately to stop it where it is and so forth. But even within Israel, the reports are that the debate with Netanyahu is very intense,” said Lugar, an Indiana Republican. “We’re really going to have hell to pay. They will come back on us, and the implications for the Israeli people here are very severe.”…  (more)

EDITOR:  Knowledge that Lugar was about to go public with his views on Iran may have been the reason for Mitt Romney’s flip flop of a day ago.