asthma
GRITtv: The F Word: Today's Secrets Are In Plain Sight
Daniel Ellsberg was on the show last week and he left me thinking about secrecy. Ellsberg, of course, was the man who released the top secret Pentagon Papers on secret decision-making during the wars in Cambodia and Vietnam. He got me wondering: What are the Pentagon Papers of today? We've got the torture memos, the Abu Ghraib photos...some of them. What about the scandals hiding in plain sight? Like the numbers we discuss on the show: 6 million Americans have no income aside from food stamps and growing numbers of them sell their food stamps at a loss to get cash to pay the rent and heat. Or the 16.4 million adults and 7 million children who suffer from asthma-a rising trend over the past two decades. According to Science Daily, "Those most at risk--low income, medically underserved, and African-American and Hispanic children--have the least access to preventive care and the most visits to the ER." What about the number of workplace injuries that are on the rise despite the loss of factory jobs? They're habitually underreported, according to the New York Times (who would know...). What do all these things have in common? They're not secrets to a large portion of the U.S. population. They define our reality, explain a lot of what's going on, yet they're rarely discussed. Today's biggest "secrets" don't require a top-secret hiding or marking "confidential." They just require politicians, a press corps, and a public paying no attention at all.
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.
Email this pageGRITtv: Mar. 3 2010
Yesterday, we noted that the fangs seem to have been pulled out of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and financial reform seems to be quietly fading from the agenda. But our friends at the Roosevelt Institute are in the middle of a groundbreaking conference on market reform, and we asked a few of their guests to join us in studio. Lynn Parramore, editor of New Deal 2.0 for the Institute, Raj Date, chairman and executive director of the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, and Lawrence White of NYU's Stern School of Business discuss where financial reform is headed and what will happen to us if it dies.
Speaking of regulation, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has an ongoing series, "Hard Times Profiteers," looking into schemes cropping up around the country. David Vlateck of the Federal Trade Commission explains.
Swine flu, bird flu, cancer, parasites, E. Coli...what do they all have in common? Factory farms, says investigative reporter David Kirby. In his new book, Animal Factory, he exposes the deep problems with the factory farming system and how it hurts people and the environment. Kirby joins Laura in studio to talk about the book and what we can do to fix our food supply, and Rick Dove of the Waterkeeper Alliance explains the effect the farms have had on his home in North Carolina.
The always lyrical Jay Smooth weighs in on what rappers think is profitable these days, and how not being lyrical is "the subprime mortgage of hip-hop," and our friends at Ramblin' Man Films look at the growing movement for student loan justice.
Finally, Laura has some thoughts about the secrets that really shape our society.
