PHOENIX — Arizona lawmakers want more fence along the border with Mexico — whether the federal government thinks it’s necessary or not.
They’ve got a plan that could get a project started using online donations and prison labor. If they get enough money, all they would have to do is get cooperation from landowners and construction could begin as soon as this year.
Gov. Jan Brewer recently signed a bill that sets the state on a course that begins with launching a website to raise money for the work, said state Sen. Steve Smith, the bill’s sponsor.
“We’re going to build this site as fast as we can, and promote it, and market the heck out of it,” said Smith, a first-term Republican senator from Maricopa.
Arizona — strapped for cash and mired in a budget crisis — is already using public donations to pay for its legal defense of the SB1070 illegal immigration law.
Part of the marketing pitch for donations could include providing certificates declaring that individual contributors “helped build the Arizona wall,” Smith said. “I think it’s going to be a really, really neat thing.”
Construction would start “after we’ve raised a significant amount of money first” but possibly as soon as later this year, Smith said. ….
Fine print in everyday consumer contracts can include provisions that require Americans to surrender their rights to file class-action lawsuits, the U.S Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, overturning a lower court ruling.
The ruling could have immediate impact on consumers’ ability to fight against companies when they feel their rights have been violated. It also raises questions about the future of class-action cases.
Consumer advocates roundly criticized the decision.
“(The ruling) is a devastating and far-reaching betrayal of the most fundamental principles of American justice,” said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, a civil rights advocacy organization. “(The court) has effectively removed any incentive for corporations to behave within the law.”
When consumers sign up for everything from cell phone service to rental cars, terms of the contracts signed often compel them to forgo traditional legal mechanisms when a dispute arises, forcing them to mandatory binding arbitration instead. Such provisions have been struck down in many state cases as “unconscionable,” with various courts deciding consumers could not be compelled to surrender basic legal rights granted by the state. That is especially true in what are known as “contracts of adhesion” — standard form contracts offered on a “take it or leave it” basis, where consumers have little bargaining power, the courts have said.
Last year the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a case filed in a California federal court in which AT&T’s arbitration clause had been voided, a decision that was later upheld by a federal appeals court.
By a 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court overturned the appeals court ruling on Wednesday, with the majority essentially saying that federal law encouraging use of arbitration trumps state laws aimed at preserving consumer rights. ….
OAK HARBOR, Ohio — A man who recently told a relative he was having marital problems called 911 and informed a dispatcher that he had fatally shot his wife and three young children and was getting ready to kill himself, too, authorities and his grandmother said Saturday.
The 911 call came in just after midnight, the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department said, and deputies arrived within minutes at the white-sided, two-story farmhouse in Oak Harbor, about 25 miles southeast of Toledo. They didn’t enter the home until two hours later, after they’d tried to contact the people inside by phone and through a loudspeaker.
In an upstairs bedroom, they found Alan Atwater, 31; his wife, Dawn, 30; and their three children — 4-year-old Ashley, 2-year-old Isaac and 1-year-old Brady. The parents and two older children were on the floor, while the youngest was in a bed. All had gunshot wounds, authorities said. ….
Keith Olbermann out at MSNBC, The Raw Story, January 21, 2011, by Nathan Diebenow, used with permission, quoted verbatim: Evans Liberal Politics is happy to partner with The Raw Story to bring you cutting edge news.
Final update 11:09 p.m. EST
The liberal host of MSNBC’s “Countdown” has completed his last broadcast for the cable news network he called home for the past eight years.
Keith Olbermann: "Good Night and Good Luck"
“Good night, and good luck,” Keith Olbermann said as he threw his script behind him for the last time at the end of his show.
The phrase is one he borrowed from the late veteran radio and television journalist Edward R. Murrow.
MSNBC released a short statement, saying that the two parties had not apparently reached agreement on Olbermann’s contact.
“MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract,” the statement said.
It continued, “The last broadcast of ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann’ will be this evening. MSNBC thanks Keith for his integral role in MSNBC’s success and we wish him well in his future endeavors.”
No further explanation was given.
Olbermann thanked a number of people in his sign-off, but failed to mention any MSNBC executives.
An MSNBC spokesperson told The Washington PostFriday night that the NBC Universal-Comcast merger this week played no role in Olbermann’s departure. MSNBC’s president would not comment.
A second statement from MSNBC concerning line-up changes gave no mention of Olbermann either.
Following Olbermann Friday night, Maddow did not cover her co-worker’s departure.
Oddly enough, halfway through her show, MSNBC featured an ad promoting Olbermann’s show, according to The Guardian.
Maddow, appearing as a guest on RealTime with Bill Maher (see embedded video below) live after her show, addressed Olbermann’s departure. Details, though, were sparse.
“Yeah, it’s been a big day at MSNBC. At least it’s been in 15 minutes,” she said.
Maher did not buy Maddow’s explanation that Olbermann and the new company had cuts ties by “mutual decision.”
“That’s always bullsh*t,” Maher said.
“I know very little,” Maddow replied, immediately describing Olbermann’s exit as “very gracious and nice.”
In an early report, CNN’s Anderson Cooper said on his Twitter feed that Olbermann was fired. Raw Story initially reported that Olbermann had quit. However, MSNBC used neither phrase.
Olbermann and management have had a rocky relationship over the years; recently, the host was suspended for two days last November for contributing to Democratic election campaigns against company policy.
In 2008, Olbermann and MSNBC agreed to a four-year contract extension worth $30 million. This past week, the FCC and the Justice Department approved the merger of Comcast and NBC-Universal.
Sam Stein, Huffington Post’s political reporter, said via Twitter that Comcast’s merger had less to do with Olbermann’s exit than with Jeff Zucker leaving his post as president and CEO of NBC Universal.
“Zucker was Olbermann’s protector there,” Stein said.
Mediaite also cast the Olbermann/MSNBC split in terms of office politics.
“Countdown,” the network’s top-rated program, attracted 1.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen. However, Olbermann failed to match the ratings of FoxNews’ most popular anchor Bill O’Reilly.
Media mogul Russell Simmons reacted on his blog to Olbermann’s November suspension by stating that the network would end up suffering.
“Without Olbermann, MSNBC can’t survive – and the voice of progress will fall to the dark ages, when one unholy church dictated a fictional version of the truth,” he said.
Simmons concluded, “Re-instate Keith Olbermann now. I will personally pay his campaign contributions.”
Word is that CNN would not hire Olbermann because of the network’s strict non-partisan editorial perspective.
Olbermann has yet to reveal his plans.
####
Here is the transcript of Olbermann’s Final Thought from his final show (see video, above):
I think the same fantasy popped into the head of everybody in my business who has ever been told what I have been told — “this will be the last edition of your show.” You go to the scene from the movie Network, complete with the pajamas and the raincoat, and go off on a verbal journey of unutterable vision, and you insist upon Peter Finch’s guttural resonance, and you will the viewer to go to the window, open it, stick out his head and yell. You know the rest. In the mundane world of television goodbyes, reality is laughably uncooperative. When I resigned from ESPN 13 1/2 years ago, I was given 30 seconds to say goodbye at the end of my last edition of SportsCenter. With God as my witness, in the commercial break before the moment, the producer got into my earpiece and said, ‘Can you cut it down to 15 seconds so we can get in the tennis result?’ I’m grateful that I have more time to sign off here.
Regardless, this is the last edition of Countdown. It is just under 8 years since I returned to MSNBC. I was supposed to fill in for exactly three days. 49 days later, there was a year’s contract for me to return to this 8:00 time slot that I fled years earlier. The show established its position as anti-establishment with the stage craft of mission accomplished to the exaggerated rescue of Jessica Lynch in Iraq to the death of Pat Tillman to Hurricane Katrina to the nexus of politics and terror to the first Special Comment. The program grew entirely due to your support and great commentary. I hope for you too. There were many occasions where all that surrounded the show, and never the show itself, was too much for me. With your support and loyalty — if I may use the word insistence — required that I keep going. My gratitude to you is boundless and you think I have done good here, imagine how it looked as you donated $2 million to the National Association of Free Clinics and my dying father watched from his hospital bed and comforted that his struggles were inspiring such good for people, he and I and you would never meet, but would always know. This may be the only television program where in the host the much more in awe of the audience than vice-versa. We will also be in my heart for that and the donations to the family in Tennessee and these victims of governmental heartlessness in Arizona to say nothing of every letter and tweet and wave and handshake and online petition. Time ebbs here and top the close with more story. It is still Friday. Let me thank my gifted staff and a few of the many people who fought with me and for me: Eric Sorenson, Neal Shapiro, Michael Weiss, David Bloom, John Palmer, Alana Russo. Rachel Maddow and Bob Costas and my greatest protector, the late Tim Russert.
QUEEN Another One Bites the Dust
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WASHINGTON — The Tea Party political movement saw a major split over the weekend, with the National Tea Party Federation expelling a member group after its spokesman wrote an online post satirizing a fictional letter from what he called “Colored People” to President Abraham Lincoln.
On its website, the federation stated it had given the Tea Party Express, through direct contact with one of its leaders, a deadline to rebuke and remove spokesman Mark Williams.
“That leader’s response was clear: they have no intention of taking the action we required for their group to continue as a member of the National Tea Party Federation,” the federation stated.
Therefore, effective immediately the National Tea Party Federation is expelling Tea Party Express from the ranks of our membership.”
Federation spokesman David Webb, interviewed Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” called the blog post “clearly offensive.”
Williams, who said his letter was satirical, started it like this: “Dear Mr. Lincoln, We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!”
“Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for?” he added. “What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us Coloreds!”
A conservative talk radio host, Williams later removed the post as criticism grew.
Williams’ post was a reply to a resolution by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) earlier this month that called on Tea Party leaders to “repudiate the racist element and activities” within the political movement.
Immediately after the resolution, Williams said it was unfortunate that the NAACP had chosen to “profiteer off race-baiting and fear mongering” when it could be doing so much to help the black community.
He also questioned the motives of African-American leaders, suggesting they were taking advantage of the publicity the resolution generated.
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As a massive oil leak spit thousands of gallons more crude into the Gulf of Mexico, a big box that BP hoped would be its savior sat idle hundreds of feet away, encased in ice crystals.
The company’s first attempt to divert the oil was foiled, its mission now in serious doubt. Meanwhile, thick blobs of tar washed up on Alabama’s white sand beaches, yet another sign the spill was worsening.
BP engineers will search for a solution Sunday after suffering a setback in an attempt to contain the gushing oil with the huge metal dome, dashing hopes for a quick, temporary solution to a growing environmental disaster.
