Mother Jones back issues from May 2004:
Editor's Note
May 01, 2004; ... Even George W. Bush's most ardent supporters conceded that his 2004 State of the Union address was, at best, uninspiring. It wasn't just the president's bizarre inclusion of that most pressing of national problems, steroids in professional sports-a topic that received more presidential attention ...
Backtalk
May 01, 2004; ... Seeing the Damage I was moved by the devastating photo essay on the Iraq war's wounded soldiers ("The Damage Done"). The photos made me angry and sad. We read daily of the number of soldiers "wounded" in Iraq, but that word disguises how serious-and unique-each case is. Thank you for ...
Bundles of Influence
May 01, 2004; ... The Bush campaign's Pioneers and Rangers are raising millions to re-elect the president. What do they expect in return? On January 8, 2004, Mark Guzzetta, a prominent Florida developer, helped host a fundraiser for the Bush campaign. In the four hours that Air Force One was on the ...
WHAT'S IN your wallet?
May 01, 2004; ... During the 2000 presidential campaign, MBNA chairman Charles M. Cawley raised $370,000 for George W. Bush, including $240,000 from his own employees. He also personally contributed $5,000 to Bush's Florida recount team and $100,000 to the Bush/Cheney inauguration. All that cash made MBNA Bush's ...
Eating Away at Science
May 01, 2004; ... The sugar industry is fighting findings that link its product to obesity. And U.S. officials are echoing the companies' line. The Bush administration took an extraordinary step early this year to defend the interests of U.S. sugar producers and the packaged-food industry, both of which ...
Midnight Passage
May 01, 2004; ... The House of Representatives has had lots of reasons to keep its work out of the public eye this session. On the one hand, it's been "spending money like a drunken sailor" (to quote John McCain); on the other, it's been slashing vital programs, including veterans' benefits and future ...
The Few, the Proud, the Indebted
May 01, 2004; ... Payday loan shops are drawing fire from the military's top brass. Military leaders are starting to wage a war on the home front, and the enemy is right outside the gates of some of the nation's largest bases. There, amid the fast-- food joints and the tattoo parlors, are the payday loan ...
Fighting for the Down and Out(sourced)
May 01, 2004; ... One state legislator attempts to stanch the flow of jobs abroad. State senator Shirley K. Turner's stolid storefront office in Ewing, New Jersey-with its photos of kittens taped to the wall and Dr. Seuss books piled in the waiting area-hardly resembles ground zero of a fast-moving ...
The Russians Are Coming
May 01, 2004; ... Why did regulators welcome a foreign takeover of the nation's only producer of two vital metals? The Bush administration is high on hydrogen. The president's proposed 2005 budget includes $228 million to help businesses develop better hydrogen fuel cells, triple the assistance the ...
The Paperless Chase
May 01, 2004; ... Raging against the electronic voting machine SWARTHMORE college sophomores Nelson Pavlosky and Luke Smith weren't old enough to vote in the last presidential election. Frankly, they aren't even all that into voting. "We're not voting nerds," protests Smith, a rumpled-looking ...
The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged
May 01, 2004; ... Public Domain | POLITICS To see beyond their own little world and get a sense of what's really going on, journalists and readers need to get out of their pajamas. FIRST, A CONFESSION: I HATE BLOGS. I'm also addicted to them. Hours dissolve into nothing when I suit up and ...
His Own, Private Kingdom
May 01, 2004; ... The Slant | HUMOR In which our self-sufficient hero says to heck with all those nitpicky, clock-punching bureaucrats. I AM AN INDEPENDENT GUY. I take a lot of pride in doing for myself, like my dad and my granddad before me, and I don't need any bloated, out-of-control ...
IN SEARCH OF common ground
May 01, 2004; ... After all the post-9/11 talk about Americans pulling together, why does it feel as though we're moving farther apart? here are always problems. A budget shortfall is a problem, air pollution is a problem, Johnny-can't-read is a problem, crime in the ...
Class dismissed
May 01, 2004; ... EDUCATION class dismissed Laid-off teachers, 40-child classes, axed electives, an lay sports: Is Oregon the future of public education in America? BOB ALLNUTT greets me at the door of his geometry class at Hillsboro High School, outside Portland, Oregon. "The ...
Left Behind
May 01, 2004; ... At one of his trademark elementary school photo ops earlier this year, President Bush said his administration was pumping money into America's schools like never before. "The federal government is sending checks at record amounts," he announced. In fact, Bush's 2005 budget provides the smallest ...
Reading, Writing, and Landscaping
May 01, 2004; ... Mowing lawns, scrubbing bathrooms, selling stereos: How teachers make ends meet As a nation, we're confused about how we see teachers. Most polls show that respect for the profession has risen in recent years, yet we have certain quietly entrenched ideas-that teaching is easy, that ...
Whose hospital is it?
May 01, 2004; ... HEALTH CARE MCP Hospital didn't have any celebrity doctors or slick ad campaigns. All it had Was a 150-year history serving its Philadelphia neighborhoodand in today's cutthroat health care industry, that's no longer enough. GREGORY GAY WAS BORN 21 years ago at the ...
Medicare's Revolving Door
May 01, 2004; ... The courting of government officials by the private sector following passage of the $53o billion Medicare bill last November has been remarkable even by Washington standards. Calls for a congressional ethics investigation may have persuaded Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), who led the fight to keep ...
Contracts with america
May 01, 2004; ... PRIVATIZATION Never before have private companies done so much of the government's work, from homeland security to rebuilding Iraq. So who's making sure the public gets its money worth? Why, contractors, of course. JEFFREY JONES KNOWS HOW TO FUEL A WAR. As the director of the ...
Civil Servants As the Enemy
May 01, 2004; ... Long before taking over the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld tried to run another agency by contract. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney are two of the administration's biggest proponents for contracting out government to the private sector, and it's an experiment ...
Stats of the Union
May 01, 2004; ... Facts, figures, and uniquely American absurdities THE U.S. GOVERNMENT is going into the red at the rate of $991,000 per minute. THE IRS WEBSITE is maintained by a company incorporated in Bermuda. SINCE 2001, corporate tax collections have fallen by $11 billion ....
Losing friends & alienating people
May 01, 2004; ... U.S. diplomats and policy experts of all political stripes agree: Bush's unilateralist policies have been disastrous to our own interests. FOR AMERICANS, visiting Australia isa bit like going home. The cars tend to be big and, when the Aussies tell you a drive is long, unlike in Europe ...
When Bush Comes to Town
May 01, 2004; ... George W. Bush's aversion to international travel is legendary. But when the leader of the Free World does emerge from his domestic bubble, look out-especially if you happen to live where he's headed. That's because the president's hosts and handlers will go to extreme lengths-from suspending ...
In His Own Words
May 01, 2004; ... Richard Perle is widely credited as the "intellectual architect" of the Iraq invasion. But with the clarity of hindsight, it's clear that the former Defense Policy Board member trafficked in more than faulty intelligence; he also put forward a number of prognostications that turned out to be, ...
One liberty at a time
May 01, 2004; ... From the cages Guantanamo to a jail cell in B the administration isn' threatening the rights of a few detaineesit's undermining the very foundation of democracy. It is a recurring theme in his es of war, armed conflict, or perceive ger, even liberal democracies adopt measures man rights ...
The Patriot Act and You
May 01, 2004; ... George W. Bush calls it "vital legislation" that protects us from the threat of terrorism; John Kerry says "there are good parts to it and bad parts to it"; the ACLU claims it threatens "the very rights and freedoms that we are struggling to protect." The Patriot Act has been condemned by ...
Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform / All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education
May 01, 2004; ... books A Dream Deferred Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform By Derrick Bell. Oxford University Press. 230 pages. $25. All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of ...
Simple Truths
May 01, 2004; ... m u s i c The Holmes Brothers. Alligator. This terrific trio has made the standout album of their career. Wendell and Sherman Holmes, along with Popsy Dixon, remember when soul and gospel music had the same sound, but they never feel like an oldies act. They blend soaring ...
Neighborhood Watch
May 01, 2004; ... music Dilated Peoples. Capitol. Solemn purists in a hip-hop scene defined by trends and flash, Dilated Peoples treat rap with reverence. Despite Los Angeles roots, MCs Evidence and Rakaa, plus DJ Babu, echo the old-school East Coast spirit of Gang Starr, with thudding beats and ...
Misery Is a Butterfly
May 01, 2004; ... music Blonde Redhead. 4AD/Beggars Group. Blonde Redhead wants to creep you out, but in a good way. Ten years on, this New York three-- some has shed the dissonance of its early efforts, with Kazu Makino's breathy voice striking a note of dreamy anxiety that will speak to fans ...
Interview: Lizz Winstead
May 01, 2004; ... Interview TAKING BACK THE DIAL Having co-created Comedy Central's The Daily Show, Lizz Winstead is now trying to transform the political landscape of talk radio. As comedy czar of Air America Radiothe national liberal network backed by former AOL executive Mark Walsh-and ...
A Good Forest for Dying: The Tragic Death of a Young Man on the Front Lines of the Environmental Wars
May 01, 2004; ... A Good Forest for Dying: The Tragic Death of a Young Man on the Front Lines of the Environmental Wars By Patrick Beach. Doubleday. $24.95. In the mid-1990s, David "Gypsy" Chain"a stand-your-ground kind of Texan" rather than a "Missed-out hippie"-campaigned alongside Earth First ...
The Devil's Highway: A True Story
May 01, 2004; ... The Devil's Highway: A True Story By Luis Alberto Urrea. Little, Brown. $24.95. Trolling for Latino votes, President Bush recently proposed granting undocumented immigrants three-year work permits. The proposal has been a bust: Not only are Republicans indignant, but immigrants ...
Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood
May 01, 2004; ... Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood By Susan Linn. New Press. $24.95. All too often, media discussions of children swing between vague pieties ("The children are our future") and shrill hysteria ("A nipple! Children saw a nipple!"). Thankfully, Susan Linn-who was ...
Libby Montana
May 01, 2004; ... film Libby, Montana Drury Gunn Carr and Doug Hawes-Davis. High Plains Films. 147 minutes. "Either this is the most horrific story I've ever heard, or these people are completely crazy." Thus begins Libby, Montana, an incisive and unrelenting portrayal of a small northern mining ...
Super Size Me
May 01, 2004; ... Super Size Me Morgan Spurlock. Roadside Attractions. 98 minutes. Ronald McDonald and Michael Moore would certainly agree that it doesn't hurt to look like a clown when you're peddling your product to the masses. And so would Morgan Spurlock, whose highly marketable Moore-style ...
A Normal Life
May 01, 2004; ... A Normal Life Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Hugo Berkeley. Pine Street Productions, 65 minutes. In the summer of 1999, three weeks after leaving Princeton and three months after NATO had begun bombing the former Yugoslavia, Hugo Berkeley and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi ...
Extreme Bake Sales
May 01, 2004; ... In these days of tax cuts and unfunded federal mandates, cash-strapped schools are turning to ever more desperate means to pay for essentials-like, say, teachers. Attempting to raise $70,000 to save one of the five teaching positions at the public Family School in Eugene, Oregon, ...
the end of the empire
May 01, 2004; ... The war in Iraq was supposed to launch a bold new American foreign policy. But has the neoconservatives' grandiose dream ended before it began? THESE DAYS, even the staunchest advocates of the Bush administration's plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein and remake Iraq are hard-pressed to ...
Who's Minding the Store?
May 01, 2004; ... As Defense Department contracting has proliferated, government oversight has grown weaker. $1.3 billion between 1997 and 2000, while the department cut the number of workers overseeing programs. What's more, a G AO report in 2002 revealed that 9 of every 10 HUD contract and procurement ...
re:action
May 01, 2004; ... How to learn more about, or get involved in, the issues featured in Mother Jones Class Dismissed page 40 To see what Dick Armey's Citizens for a Sound Economy is up to in your state, check out its website, which highlights its current campaigns for "lower taxes, less government, ...
Same Operation, Different Bills
May 01, 2004; ... How U.S. hospitals soak the uninsured: the varying charges for an appendectomy in the Detroit area Historically, America's health care providers have subsidized care for the uninsured by charging those with insurance slightly inflated prices. But in recent years, the pendulum has begun ...
The Goodwill Deficit
May 01, 2004; ... America's standing in the rest of the world has taken a ...
Rights-They're Overrated
May 01, 2004; ... Just because it comes first in our Bill of Rights does not mean the First Amendment holds a top spot in the hearts of Americans. A 2003 "State of the First Amendment" survey conducted by the University of Connecticut reveals that public support for our freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, and ...