Leid Stories

Leid Stories - 12/26/13

The State of the Union 2013: A People’s Report (Part 2)

Where we’ve been, where we are, and where we ought to be as a nation – that’s the focus of our discussion today on Leid Stories, Part 2 of our own “State of the Union” report.

As we close out the year, listeners offer keen insights on issues, events and people they believe had the greatest impact (positive and/or negative) in 2013, and tell us what they think is ahead in 2014.  

Leid Stories - 12/24/13

The State of the Union 2013: A People’s Report on What Was, What’s Ahead

It’s Open Forum on Leid Stories, but with a twist.

Listeners create a “State of the Union” report citing issues, events and people they believe have had the most significant impact in 2013, and forecasting their likely impact, if any, in 2014.

Leid Stories - 12/23/13

“Where Are We? Where Are We Going?: A Year-End Reality Check

At the end of a tumultuous year and on the cusp of another, Leid Stories begins a series of end-of-year discussions to encourage a dialogue about the realities and challenges of life in various segments of our society – both as a reminder that we’re not “all in this together,” and as a caution against the one-size-fits-all, zero-sum model for social, political and economic change.

 

The series kicks off with attorney Alton H. Maddox Jr., whose deep political activism and four-plus decades as a self-appointed “people’s attorney general” litigating, pro bono, some of the most contentious cases involving official and prosecutorial misconduct in New York history, inform a scathing analysis of the principal impediments to power and progress in the African American community and society at large.

Leid Stories - 12/20/13

Ross Perot Was Right: NAFTA Was ‘A Giant Sucking Sound’;

Detroit: Politically Connected Vultures Hover Over the City’s Assets

 

Approaching the 20th anniversary of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Jan. 1, 2014, Leid Stories does an audit on its central promise: Jobs for Americans. But Robert E. Scott, director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, says that NAFTA-linked trade deficits have cost the United States 682,900 jobs.

 

Ross Perot, the 1992 independent presidential candidate from Texas, was right: NAFTA was for the U.S. a “giant sucking sound.”

 

Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African Newswire and community organizer with the Workers World Party, reports on the latest developments in the city’s court-approved bankruptcy. Politically connected vultures are eyeing the city’s assets, he says, and several have already closed bargain-basement deals.

Leid Stories - 12/19/13

Obamacare Should Be the Death Knell for the Two-Party System;

More Questions Than Answers About Supermole Snowden

 

Option 1: Object all you want, but “it’s the law,” a done deal, so get with the program or the IRS will impose a penalty.  Option 2: Object all you want, but “it’s the law,” a done deal, so get with the program or the IRS will impose a penalty.

 

The stitched-together Obamacare, like Frankenstein, is alive, and it’s a monster. No one in the Democratic Party so far has had the moral fiber to take on the Con Man-in-Chief over his eponymous boondoggle gift to pay-to-play health-care corporations, and no one in the Republican Party has dared advance a credible alternative plan to assure access to quality medical care for all.

 

Leid Stories makes that we shouldn’t have to choose between the lesser of two evils or the evil of two lessers. The people deserve true democracy – the benefit of competing ideas and solutions from many different political parties.

 

Plus, a bit more about the mysterious Edward Snowden and the puzzlements that surround him.

 

Leid Stories - 12/17/13

Get Ready, Get Set, Call In! It’s Open Forum on Leid Stories!

 It’s your turn to define what’s news – or, what ought to be.

Take the conversation wherever you want it to go, but be prepared: The smartest people on the planet are listening to you and just might take you on -- with great respect, of course. 

Leid Stories - 12/16/13

Detroit’s Sham $18-Billion ‘Bankruptcy’ Gets A Forensic Audit

Snowden’s Stolen NSA Files Launched A $250-Million Business

 

The former chairman of Michigan’s Board of Accountancy (which certifies public accountants practicing in the state), had told Leid Stories on the eve of the Dec. 3 federal court decision granting Detroit’s filing for bankruptcy that the city’s financial balance sheet showing $18 billion in debt didn’t add up. The debt was grossly overstated and the city’s accounting practices were highly irregular, he said.

 

Barrow discusses Detroit’s fiscal future based on the debt-relief plan approved by the court.

 

In the wake of reports that NSA officials consider amnesty for Edward Snowden in return for the files he stole “a conversation worth having” comes a bombshell exposé that the 1.7 million classified documents already have launched a $250-million “checkbook journalism” business.

Leid Stories - 12/13/13

Mandela: A Reluctance to Tell the Whole Story

 

Media coverage and, therefore, public discourse about and opinion of Nelson Mandela, have neatly excised centuries of racist invasion, plunder and brutal subjugation of a people from the story of the heroic figure. We encounter Mandela at the near end of a cataclysmic era in South Africa, but certainly not unique to it. That history had been replicated all over the black world.

Leid Stories discusses the clear discomfort the media and shapers of opinion have in telling the whole story -- not the hurried, sanitized version that starts with “apartheid” and casts a centuries-old war for reclamation of indigenous natural rights essentially as a higher-octane version of the U.S. civil-rights struggle that ended with Mandela bringing about kumbaya “reconciliation” in 1994.

There is a reason they won’t tell the whole story.

Leid Stories - 12/12/13

Obama Discovers Ubuntu, Then Proves He Doesn’t Have It (Part 2)

 

We pick up from where we left off with yesterday’s presentation – a blow-by-blow analysis of President Obama’s speech at the Dec. 10 massive memorial service for the world-revered Nelson Mandela, attended by almost 100 heads of state and high-profile people and about 50,000 mourners who defied a steady rain at the First National Bank Stadium in Johannesburg.

Obama’s speech was a huge eye opener about the president himself – chiefly, his discomfort with his African identity; his revisionism of a people’s war against European invasion and supremacy and of ubuntu, the sociopolitical philosophy that kept the spirit of freedom burning throughout Africa; his outrageous proposition that Mandela benefited from being jailed for 27 years; and his intolerable insinuation that he has been trying to walk in Mandela’s path.

Leid Stories - 12/11/13

Obama Discovers Ubuntu, Then Proves He Just Doesn’t Have It

The quasi-preacher cadence and tone President Obama adopts when he believes he’s making history were in full effect yesterday at the massive memorial service for the world-revered Nelson Mandela. Obama’s 18-minute eulogy did its magic – not so much on the almost 100 heads of state and high-profile people (they are used to this sort of thing), but on the estimated 50,000 attendees who crammed the First National Bank Stadium in Johannesburg. The U.S. political rock star rocked ’em! – there, and all over the televised world.

Leid Stories disassembles Obama’s speech, a huge eye opener about the president himself – chiefly, his discomfort with his African identity; his revisionism of a people’s war against European invasion and supremacy and of ubuntu, the sociopolitical philosophy that kept the spirit of freedom burning throughout Africa; his outrageous claim that Mandela benefited from being imprisoned for 27 years because it helped him focus and think; and his intolerable insinuation that he has been trying to walk in Mandela’s path.