Record Stores Fight to Be Long-Playing

By BEN SISARIO

The New York Times

Published: April 18, 2008

NOW added to the endangered species list in New York City, along with independent booksellers and shoe repair: the neighborhood record store.

James Estrin/The New York Times

Jammyland in the East Village.

Multimedia

James Estrin/The New York Times

The Downtown Music Gallery is looking for a home.

The hole-in-the-wall specialty shops that have long made Lower Manhattan a destination for a particular kind of shopper have never made a great deal of money. But in recent years they have been hit hard by the usual music-industry woes — piracy, downloading — as well as rising real estate prices, leading to the sad but familiar scene of the emptied store with a note taped to the door.

Some 3,100 record stores around the country have closed since 2003, according to the Almighty Institute of Music Retail, a market research firm. And that’s not just the big boxes like the 89 Tower Records outlets that closed at the end of 2006; nearly half were independent shops. In Manhattan and Brooklyn at least 80 stores have shut down in the last five years.

McCain Shows Us How to Kill an Army/By Sara Robinson

McCain Shows Us How to Kill an Army

By Sara Robinson, TomPaine.com
Posted on April 17, 2008, Printed on April 17, 2008

John McCain, who from the early 1980s worked hard to establish himself as one of the Senate’s shining champions of Vietnam veterans’ issues, completed his betrayal of the Iraq-era troops today. Brandon Friedman of vetvoice.com has the details:

Yesterday VoteVets.org delivered a petition with 30,000 signatures to the office of Sen. John McCain. Through that petition, we asked him to support Sen. Jim Webb’s new GI Bill. And less than 24 hours later, we have an answer:

“Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill …”

The reason for McCain’s refusal to support the bill is about the most disturbing rationale one could imagine. … Officials in charge of Pentagon personnel worry that a more generous and expansive GI Bill would create an incentive for troops to get out of the military and go to college.

Friedman observes that McCain’s no-college-for-grunts position essentially says to the troops: “Thanks for your service and your three combat tours in five years. Now get back to work.”

ANTIOCH, THE US MILITARY AND THE DAYTON DEVELOPMENT COALITION, THE INSIDE STORY

This is a stunningly well researched and insightful look at the role of the Dayton Development Coalition {DDC} in  the proposed closing of Antioch College. The DDC appears to be acting as a “shadow” government, doing the bidding of the local ruling elites.Much credit goes to the authors of this remarkable document for exposing this dirty political laundry for all to see.

Visit theBlaze @Closing Antioch College: Cui Bono?

Closing Antioch College:Cui Bono?

How Antioch University is cozying-up with developers amidst regional military base realignment

By Laura Fathauer

While the country talks of recession, the Dayton region is preparing for a growth of high-paying, high-tech jobs. Along with this is a growth of construction and infrastructure development, some of which can already be seen around Wright Patterson Air Force Base and the Mall at Fairfield Commons.

Many of the jobs gained will need to be filled locally, and area organizations and educational institutions are already creating cooperative educational efforts to address these workforce needs. Almost all of this growth is related to the missions and contractors that will be moving on or near the base. It seems that nothing in the region is untouched by the results of the US Military’s 2005 Base Realignment and Closure process.

Including, quite possibly, a small liberal arts institution in Yellow Springs Ohio, called Antioch College.

Ha-Joon Chang’s ‘Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism’

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 02/29/2008 - 3:33pm.
Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
by Ha-Joon Chang
Reviewed by Thom Hartmann

The fundamental myth of the Milton/Thomas Friedman neoliberal cons is that in a “flat world” everybody is not only able to compete with everybody else freely, but should be required to. It sounds nice. America trades with - and competes with trade with and for - the European Union. France against Germany. England against Australia.

But wait a minute. In such a “free” trade competition, who will win when the match-up is Canada versus the Solomon Islands? Germany versus Bulgaria? Zimbabwe versus Italy?

There are two glaringly obvious flaws in the so-called “free trade” theories expounded by neoliberal philosophers like Friedrich Von Hayek and Milton Friedman, and promoted relentlessly in the popular press by (very wealthy) hucksters like Thomas Friedman.

With Kucinich’s Exit, Democratic Discourse is Diminished

John Nichols
Posted 01/24/2008 @ 10:46pm

The media managers of the 2008 presidential contest
worked for months to get Dennis Kucinich off the stage
and out of the running. And they have finally succeeded,
as the Ohio Congressman says he is now “transitioning
out of the presidential campaign” and into a tough
Democratic primary race for reelection to his Cleveland-
area U.S. House seat.

Kucinich’s decision to quit the Democratic presidential
race is an acknowledgement of reality. Never flush with
the funds needed to buy paid media, he has lately been
denied access to the free media that is the lifeblood of
insurgent candidacies. The congressman was excluded from
the last few debates by the television networks, and his
campaign events — even those that drew substantial
crowds in New Hampshire and Michigan - went largely
uncovered.

Miscellaneous Posts I found Interesting>>01/23/08

Army Gets Fewer High School Grads in ‘07
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jGqkVjgOw8nOOgvDqpNAlfqXIF_g

Deregulation and the Financial Crisis
by Robert Weissman
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/22/6531/

Fed Cuts Key Interest Rate as Global Markets Drop for Second Day

By Howard Schneider, Neil Irwin and Ariana Eunjung Cha

Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 22, 2008; 10:33 AM

The Federal Reserve cut a key U.S. interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point this morning as a global stock sell-off continued on Wall Street today, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropping more than 400 points in its opening minutes.

The surprise rate cut, made via an emergency videoconference last night, responds to a growing sense of crisis in world financial markets, which have been buffeted by problems that began in the U.S. mortgage markets but have now spread well beyond it.

It is the largest single rate cut since 1984, beyond even the initial half-point reduction that the Fed made following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The new federal funds rate of 3.5 percent will lead to lower rates for credit cards, auto loans and home equity lines of credit. That, in turn, can encourage economic growth by prompting consumers and businesses to spend more.

Chicken Little Reports>>Stocks Plunge Worldwide on Fears of a U.S. Recession

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January 21, 2008

By MARK LANDLER and HEATHER TIMMONS

FRANKFURT — Fears that the United States is in a recession reverberated around the world on Monday, sending stock markets from Frankfurt to Bombay into a tailspin and puncturing the hopes of many investors that Europe and Asia will be able to sidestep an American downturn.On a day when United States markets were closed in observance of Martin Luther King’s Birthday, the world’s eyes were trained nervously on the United States. Investors reacted with what many analysts described as panic to the multiplying signs of weakness in the American economy.

Shares of banks led the decline in many countries, underscoring that the subprime crisis continues to hobble the global financial system. On Monday, a big German state bank, WestLB, said it would report a loss of $1.4 billion in 2007 because of its exposure to deteriorating mortgage assets.

“There is indeed some panic,” said Thomas Mayer, the chief European economist at Deutsche Bank in London. “What we’re seeing, in Europe and Asia, is that the markets are pricing in a recession.”

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