Nation in the News

The Cleveland Model: A Grassroots Approach to Job Creation

Al Jazeera English on April 12, 2010 - 2:28 PM ET

On this episode, Fault Lines explores some of the creative ways that local governments and communities are addressing the unemployment crisis. With almost 30 million people across the nation unemployed and Washington preferring to letting the economy follow the whims of unfettered capitalism rather than directly creating jobs, new approaches that think outside of the "Beltway-box" are becoming more popular, including "The Cleveland Model," which The Nation reported on in the February 11, 2010 issue.

Fault Lines first travels to Mississippi where federal stimulus money is being used for the STEPS program, which pays local companies to hire new workers. The Hattiesburg Paper Company recently hired two new workers through this program. Despite the area being staunchly Republican, citizens have responded positively to the government's intervention in jobs creation.

Next, Fault Lines visits Cleveland, where a cooperative model of business is becoming known as "The Cleveland Model." These are companies owned by their workers, who are also building equity in the company. City government, loans from local banks and the Cleveland Foundation are providing the capital for new cooperatives.

Tiger Woods: Athlete or Brand?

Dave Zirin on April 9, 2010 - 10:48 AM ET

MSNBC goes live to Augusta National for the Masters, where the National's Chairman Billy Payne scolded Tiger Woods for disappointing "all of us and more importantly our kids and our grandkids." Sports Editor Dave Zirin gives Payne the "just shut up award" for criticizing Woods while he oversees a tournament that "defines segregation in golf and still defines the exclusion of women in golf."

But Zirin is unhappy with Woods too, in particular with his latest Nike ad, featuring Woods' face and a voiceover of his late father. Zirin calls the ad "another shellac of distraction" from the tournament and questions if Woods is a human or just a brand. "All the sympathy we've ginned up for him over the last several months...it's all been about a narrative to sell us more crap with swooshes on it."

Hedge Fund Managers Beat the Banks

Countdown on April 8, 2010 - 11:05 AM ET

US unemployment may be hovering just under 10 percent, but some lucky hedge fund managers won't feel a thing. On Countdown with Chris Olbermann, Chris Hayes, Washington editor for The Nation, discusses the news that the top twenty-five hedge fund managers collectively made $25 billion last year. The top earner, David Tepper, pocketed $4 billion by correctly bidding on banks that the government bailed out with taxpayer money. Moreover, because this income is considered capital gains, these hedge fund managers, like Tepper, will pay fewer taxes than a group of Americans who collectively made $25 billion.

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Moscow Seeks Security After Suicide Bombings

GRITtv on April 7, 2010 - 5:53 PM ET

Nation Editor Katrina vanden Heuvel appears on GritTV with Laura Flanders discussing the political consequences to the Moscow suicide bombings that left 39 dead.

Vanden Heuvel argues that the cycle of vengeance and anger of Russia's "9/11s" must be solved through political measures. "One needs to remember the history that president Putin came to power almost ten years ago to this date on the basis of a strong-armed brutal repression of this region in the northern Caucasus, which has been seeking independence, which Russia has been at war with two times," she says.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy and The Mad Tea Party

GRITtv on April 7, 2010 - 5:47 PM ET

In 1966 Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven wrote the Nation article: "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty." Forty-four years later, the Cloward-Piven strategy has come full circle. On Grit TV with Laura Flanders, Nation Senior Editor Richard Kim discusses the strategy, which, according to Glenn Beck and the Tea Party, is rooted in the conspiracy to destroy the economy and possibly the world.

"Glenn Beck has done 28 different programs on it," Kim says. "There are hundreds of thousands of Google hits on it, and what it suggests is that, basically, the Left has cynically manipulated the system for the past forty-four years to crash the global economy, commit massive voter fraud, elect Barack Obama so we can nationalize the banks, take over the government and install a communist, totalitarian regime."