Pratap Chatterjee – Drone Whistleblowers Step Out of the Shadows

In a trio of recent action-packed movies, good guys watch terrorists mingling with innocent women and children via real-time video feeds from halfway across the world. A clock ticks and we, the audience, are let in on the secret that mayhem is going to break loose. After much agonized soul-searching about possible collateral damage, the good guys call in a …

Does Your Partner’s “Caring” Feel More Like Controlling?

It’s rare for a person—deliberately—to subjugate to their will someone they care about. Typically, when someone acts manipulatively toward another, their motive, at least consciously, isn’t to control them at all. It’s simply to increase the likelihood that the relationship will better address their wants and needs. That is, despite how their action might be taken by the other person, …

Bill Clinton’s Crime Bill Led to Spike in Black Incarcerations

The US crime bill that former President Bill Clinton approved while in office led to a surge in the imprisonment of black people during the 1990s and subsequent years, an African American journalist in Detroit says. “The Clinton administration signed the ominous crime bill during the mid-1990s which was very instrumental in the incarceration and judicial supervision of hundreds of …

Credit Card Debt Levels Reaching Unsustainable Levels, Says CardHub CEO

Interview with Odysseas Papadimitriou, CEO of CardHub, on their latest study examining the accelerating increase in credit card debt levels, why he thinks this is unsustainable, and may soon “spiral out of control.” Subscribers can access the full broadcast on Thursday by logging in and clicking here. Not a subscriber? Click here. Forgetting Lessons of Great Recession “A lot of consumers have …

How Do You Decide to Have a Baby When Climate Change Is Remaking Life on Earth?

The librarian was nondescript in the way that everyone standing behind a counter is, probably in her 30s, with straight, fox-colored hair. When she took my stack of books, I noticed the way her sweater draped over a conspicuous melon-shaped belly, and I felt a tug in my chest and warmth rise in my stomach. It took a moment to …

Forget Nutraloaf—Prisoners Are Growing Their Own Food –

Scanning a prison menu is a bleak task. Common food items range from nutraloaf—a mishmash of ingredients baked into a tasteless beige block—to, rumor has it, road kill. The substandard quality of food at some correctional facilities has led to protests and hunger strikes, as in summer 2013 when nearly 30,000 California state prisoners refused food to demand, among other …

Jerry White – New study: Entire Regions of US Will Remain in Recession until the 2020s

A new study by a University of California-Berkeley economist says that at current sluggish levels of job growth, entire regions of the United States, which were hit hardest by the Great Recession will not return to “normal” employment levels until the 2020s. This amounts, to “more than a ‘lost decade’ of depressed employment” for “half of the country,” wrote economist …

Leid Stories – 03.01.16

Election 2016: On Super Tuesday, An Alternative to the Quadrennial Charade

It’s The Big Day in the 2016 presidential election. Bipartisan primaries and caucuses in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Wyoming largely will determine which candidates are likely to capture their respective party’s nomination for the general election in November. Leid Stories listeners offer their ideas about a progressive alternative to the duopoly’s quadrennial charade.

John Michael Greer – Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

A few months from now, this blog will complete its tenth year of more-or-less-weekly publication. In words the Grateful Dead made famous, it’s been a long strange trip:  much longer and stranger than I had any reason to expect, certainly, when I typed up that first essay and got it posted on what was still, to me, the alien landscape of …

Insight – AMERICAN IDOL REJECTS TALENTED SINGER WITH DISABILITY – HOW NYC’S RECYCLE A BICYCLE GOES FULL CYCLE – 01.21.16

Singer, songwriter and entertainer – Mario Bonds was floored (along with most of America) Wednesday night when all three American Idol judges thought he didn’t have what it takes. For the first time, Mario talks with Mark about his performance, the judges criticism and you won’t believe what one incredibly insensitive American Idol Producer said to Mario regarding his blindness!

Not only does Mark start most of his days on a bike before sunrise – today Mark talks with Emily Piccone from Recycle A Bicycle on the numerous programs that serve both NYC youth and adults through education programs to learning bike mechanics. And Emily and Mark share why they’re passionate cyclists and the numerous positive ramifications biking and Recycle A Bicycle have on the public. www.recycleabicycle.org

Have Mark Farrell speak at your school (K-12), college, corporation on vital topics including overcoming adversity, self entitlement, mental health, drugs/alcohol, anti-bullying-anti-teasing and more vital topics that all stem from Mark’s varied life experience. www.markfarrellmotivation.com