Democracy Now! Friday, August 28, 2009

Today's Headlines

• 20,000 Pay Respects to Sen. Kennedy
• Mohamed Jawad to Sue US Government over Gitmo Detention
• US Criticized for Bombing Afghan Medical Clinic
• Holbrooke Holds “Explosive” Meeting with Hamid Karzai
• South American Summit to Focus on US-Colombian Military Pact
• Staff at State Dept Recommends Cutting Off Aid to Honduras
• Banks at Risk of Failure Has Reached 15-Year High
• Carter: All Israeli Settlements Should Be Removed
• FCC to Probe Cell Phone Industry
• Man Arrested for Threatening to Kill Abortion Provider
• GOP Candidate Jokes About Hunting President Obama
• Arkansas Decertifies Green Party
• Cindy Sheehan Protests Obama’s War Polices

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  Immigrants' Champion: Juan Gonzalez on Ted Kennedy's Support for Cesar Chavez and Migrant Workers

  Juan Gonzalez discusses the late Senator Edward Kennedy’s longtime advocacy of union leader Cesar Chavez and migrant workers across the country. “From the Imperial Valley of California to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, from the apple orchards of Washington to the cane fields of Florida—in all those places where invisible immigrant hands still pick America’s food—[Ted Kennedy] will be sorely missed,” writes Gonzalez in the New York Daily News. [includes rush transcript]

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  Pentagon Hires Rendon Group to Profile and Rate Journalists Covering Afghanistan War

  The US Army in Afghanistan has admitted it pays a private company to produce background profiles on journalists covering the war. The Pentagon has been on the defensive ever since the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes revealed this week that journalists were being screened by the Washington-based public relations firm, the Rendon Group, under a $1.5 million contract with the military. Documents obtained by the paper reveal journalists were evaluated with pie charts breaking down their coverage into percentages of “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.” [includes rush transcript]

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  Report: Taxpayers to Pay Subprime Players Billions to Fix Loan Mess

  A new report by the Center for Public Integrity has found that any of the lenders that helped fuel the housing crisis by issuing risky subprime loans are now lining up to receive more than $21 billion in taxpayer money intended to help bail out borrowers. At least twenty-one out of the top twenty-five participants in the Making Home Affordable program specialized in servicing or originating subprime loans.

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  Former Wells Fargo Subprime Loan Officer: Bank Targeted Black Churches as Part of Predatory Subprime Lending Scheme

  Up until two years ago, Elizabeth Jacobson was the top producing loan officer in the subprime division at Wells Fargo. Today she is speaking out against the practices of her former company. Earlier this summer, she filed a sworn affidavit with a federal court in support of the city of Baltimore’s lawsuit against Wells Fargo for pushing high-interest, subprime loans onto African Americans in Baltimore and the Maryland suburbs, leading hundreds into foreclosure.

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  "From Recession to Depression: The Destruction of the Black Middle Class"

  We speak with Dedrick Muhammad of the Institute for Policy Studies about his latest article with Barbara Ehrenreich called “The Destruction of the Black Middle Class.” They write, “For African Americans—and to a large extent, Latinos—the recession is over. It occurred between 2000 and 2007…What’s happening now is a depression.”