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20B7. >DC This still from the film ‘American Casino’ shows how Wall Street’s misuse of financial tools literally hit home.
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Project Censored features the stories the mainstream media missed Edited by Rebecca Bowe
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very year since 1976, Sonoma State University’s Project Censored has spotlighted the 25 most significant news stories that were largely ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream press. Now the group is expanding its mission— to promote alternative news sources. But it continues to report the biggest national and international stories that the major media ignored. Here are their top 10 underreported stories of 2008–’09.
1. Congress Sells Out The total tab for the Wall Street bailout, including money spent and promised by the U.S. government, works out to an estimated $42,000 for every man, woman and child,
according to American Casino, a documentary film about sub-prime lending and the financial meltdown. But another twist in the story has received scant attention from the mainstream news media: the unsettling combination of lax oversight from national politicians with high-dollar campaign contributions from financial players. In the 10-year period beginning in 1998, the financial sector spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions, and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists. Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates, and the Republican and Democratic parties. Wall Street’s spending spree on political contributions coincided with a weakening of federal banking regulations, which in turn created a recipe for the astronomical financial disaster that sent the global economy reeling.
Sources: ‘Lax Oversight? Maybe $64 Million to DC Pols Explains It,’ Greg Gordon, Truthout.org and McClatchey Newspapers, Oct. 2, 2008; ‘Congressmen Hear from TARP Recipients Who Funded Their Campaigns,’ Lindsay Renick Mayer, Capitol Eye, Feb. 10, 2009; ‘The Big Takeover,’ Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, March 2009.
2. School Segregation Latinos and African Americans attend more segregated public schools today than they have for four decades, professor Gary Orfield notes in a study conducted by the Civil Rights Project of UCLA. Orfield’s report used federal data to highlight deepening segregation in public education by race and poverty. About 44 percent of students in the nation’s public school system are people of color, and this group will %-
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THE BOHEMIAN
09.30.09-10.06.09
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