Larry Flynt's Blog, page 19

HUSTLER ANNOUNCES FREE SPEECH VICTORY

Beverly Hills, CA – May 1, 2012 – Hustler Magazine and its publisher, Larry Flynt, today achieved another victory in defense of the First Amendment. In a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, the court threw out a jury award of punitive damages in a lawsuit brought by Maureen Toffoloni, the mother of Nancy Benoit, the murdered wife of professional wrestler Chris Benoit. The lawsuit alleged that in publishing nude photographs of Ms. Benoit as part of an article about her murder, Hustler violated her right of publicity.

At trial in an Atlanta federal court, the jury awarded Ms. Benoit’s estate approximately $19.6 million in punitive damages for Hustler’s publication of Benoit’s images. The trial judge reduced that amount to the Georgia statutory maximum of $250,000, which the court of appeals decision vacated.

On appeal, Hustler argued that even if the nude photographs were not newsworthy, Flynt and his staff honestly believed that their publication was newsworthy and protected by the First Amendment. As a result, any award of punitive damages was unjustified. In agreeing with Hustler, the 11th Circuit panel found that Ms. Toffoloni had failed to refute the testimony of numerous witnesses establishing that Hustler’s staff honestly believed in the newsworthiness of the images, and that “no reasonable jury could find by clear and convincing evidence that punitive damages were warranted.”

Cannabinomics – Just What the Doctor Ordered

By Christopher Glenn Fichtner, M.D.

ON JUNE 16, 2011, the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s declaration of “war on drugs,” the New York Times published an op-ed titled “Call Off the Global Drug War.” It was written by none other than former President Jimmy Carter, who cited the “courageous and profoundly important recommendations” of the recent Global Commission on Drug Policy.

These recommendations harkened back to Carter’s own message to Congress on August 2, 1977: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana for personal use. The National Commission on Marijuana…concluded years ago that marijuana use should be decriminalized, and I believe it is time to implement those basic recommendations.”

More than three decades and millions of marijuana arrests later, roughly one-third of the states have passed laws reflecting consumer demand for access to herbal cannabis as medicine. There has been a resurgence of interest in marijuana decriminalization, and media coverage of Mexico’s drug-war violence has exploded. At an early 2009 Presidential town hall meeting, one of the most frequently submitted online questions was whether marijuana legalization might provide a valuable stimulus for economic growth.

I suggest in my book Cannabinomics: The Marijuana Policy Tipping Point that we can now observe an intersection of three policy trajectories: the growing consumer demand for herbal cannabis as medicine; the growing recognition of the drug war itself as a public health problem; and an economic crisis that places a premium on optimizing America’s management of its resources.

In 2005, the Colorado SAFER campaign organized and passed by majority vote a Denver initiative to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, arguing that cannabis is safer than alcohol. In November 2006, the SAFER campaign took its public health message statewide in Colorado, where it garnered 41% of the vote. That same election day, a South Dakota medical marijuana initiative mustered 48% approval, while 44% of Nevada voters weighed in favorably on an initiative to tax and regulate the herb. Nevada voters put the question of frank legalization on the ballot long before California’s Proposition 19 to tax and control cannabis came up short at 46% in 2010.

Michigan voters came on board with approval of a medical marijuana law in November 2008, while Massachusetts decriminalized possession with an impressive 65% majority. And only weeks before Proposition 19 failed, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill decriminalizing possession of less than an ounce. Late in 2011, a Gallup poll found 50% nationwide support for marijuana legalization, with only 46% opposed.

While serving as state mental health director for Illinois, noting similarities and overlap between jail and public psychiatric hospital populations, I reviewed 2003 data from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. It showed more arrests statewide for marijuana possession than for all other controlled substances combined. This was not far from the national norm. At the same time, I heard testimonials of patients and advocates fighting to pass a medical marijuana law in Illinois.

Julie, a bright and articulate woman in her early 40s who had suffered with multiple scle- rosis (MS) for over 20 years, schooled me on language. She would not talk about marijuana. In the first place, Julie was not a pot smoker, and more importantly, she refused to accept the hostile projections loaded into a term popularized during the Reefer Madness era and built upon racial tensions. Julie ingested herbal cannabis in the form of three small brownies a day, finding that she could then eliminate prescription muscle relaxants that had left her bedridden with sedation, not to mention keep her use of opiate narcotic pain relievers to a minimum.

In addition, Julie had been prescribed antidepressants— MS often induces mood disturbance through its effects on the brain—but tolerated them poorly due to side effects. Cannabis improved her mood without mental impairment. Julie repeatedly testified before Illinois legislative committees and was viewed by all as a clear-headed spokesperson and patient advocate. From Julie, I learned to reframe “marijuana policy debates” as public conversations on society’s management of cannabis—which I later termed cannabinomics.

Space will not accommodate all the stories of cannabis consumers chronicled in my book, but they include: Seth, who turned to cannabis to control his epileptic seizures when prescribed medicines didn’t work and whose doctor proposed brain surgery while refusing to discuss any possible benefits of marijuana; Jason, who used cannabis to ease phantom limb pain following the amputation of a leg; Mary, whose poststroke rehabilitation included cannabis for chronic pain in an alternative treatment approach that helped her get off prescription medications with uncomfortable side effects; Stuart, who completed his master’s degree despite the obstacle of being quadriplegic from cerebral palsy and who relied upon cannabis to relieve his muscle spasticity and improve his mood; plus the AIDS, cancer and hepatitis patients who use cannabis to relieve pain or chemotherapyinduced nausea or to stimulate appetite in wasting syndromes.

The case of Garry, a Southern California medical cannabis patient, illustrates the hazards of the drug war and its economic impact—and the intersection of both with healthcare. In 2006, when county law enforcement officials opposing the state’s medical cannabis law paid Garry an early-morning visit with the help of federal agents, he jumped out of bed in response to loud knocking. As he opened his front door, he was greeted by a battering ram and a physical takedown maneuver that left him with a dislocated left shoulder, right hand fractures, blunt head trauma and a back injury that aggravated the arthritis for which he grew cannabis in his garage. Before the raid, Garry earned a high six-figure income in his family-owned business installing custom window treatments. He now collects Social Security disability. Many physicians writing medical cannabis recommendations believe that the safety and side effects profile of herbal cannabis favor its availability over the counter rather than on a strict prescription basis, but with an age restriction because it is psychoactive. The “agerestricted, over-the-counter” idea begins to break down the distinction between medicinal and personal use. As a physician and psychiatrist, I would not hold that “all use is medicinal,” but I would offer the guiding principle that “all use should be therapeutic.” Cannabis use need not be pigeonholed into either the palliative care of dying patients, on one hand, or “substance abuse” on the other.

Herbal cannabis contains an array of chemical compounds—some psychoactive, or mind-altering— and others not. The best-studied of these cannabinoid compounds known to be primarily responsible for the mood-elevating or euphoric effects of marijuana (the “high”) is delta-(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), ironically available as medicine in the United States since 1985. THC is used to alleviate nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy, for stimulation of appetite in AIDS wasting and sometimes for pain relief.

Science tells us that built-in chemical receptors in the human body recognize these cannabinoid molecules. The receptors belong to a natural chemical messenger system that includes the bodily substance anandamide, which produces weak marijuanalike effects. (Ananda is the Sanskrit word for “bliss.”) With the discovery of this endocannabinoid system, numerous cannabinoid compounds other than THC are now being studied, with growing evidence of potential medicinal applications.

For example, cannabidiol (CBD) is a molecule chemically related to THC but is nonpsychoactive, meaning it won’t get you high. Emerging research suggests that CBD may be a better muscle relaxant and anticonvulsant than THC. In addition, CBD appears to have antianxiety effects (as does THC, at modest doses, for some individuals) and may even help alleviate symptoms of psychosis seen in cases of schizophrenia.

But what about reports that use of marijuana may lead to mental illness—especially schizophrenia? The best research to date on the weak statistical association between marijuana use and schizophrenia suggests that cause-and-effect may run in both directions. While research suggests that some people with schizophrenia are genetically vulnerable to adverse effects from marijuana, other research finds a subset whose cannabis use may be associated with improved cognitive functioning.

Academic contributors to the “marijuana and psychosis” research literature often cite the Yale University study that infused volunteer subjects intravenously with THC, only to find that some of them became paranoid and had perceptual disturbances. They ignore the University of Cologne study that compared CBD headto- head with an approved antipsychotic medication in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. This German study found that CBD was equally effective in decreasing psychotic symptoms with fewer side effects.

Individuals genetically vulnerable to schizophrenia may self-medicate with cannabis early in their illness for symptom relief. The failure of psychiatric researchers to consider this possibility results in a bias toward viewing marijuana use as the cause of later mental illness.

Until recently, California was the only state that did not discriminate against persons with mental illness in its medical cannabis law, which allows physicians to recommend herbal cannabis for debilitating mental health symptoms. But in 2009, New Mexico added post-traumatic stress disorder to its list of conditions for which a physician (or nurse practitioner) could recommend cannabis as medicine. As a psychiatrist with extensive experience prescribing FDA-approved medications to target trauma-related mental health symptoms in combat veterans and others, I consider the New Mexico decision to be an important step forward in making therapeutic alternatives available to those patients.

Regulatory labeling informing consumers about THC and CBD concentrations would better serve those with mental health issues and would do more for public health generally than the current, criminalizing federal policy of strict prohibition. California’s medicinal cannabis producers are beginning to label and standardize their products—which include liquid whole herbal cannabis extracts—in terms of THC and CBD concentrations. This evolving interest in product measurement, standardization and quality control helps build the case for commercial integration or full legalization within a tax-and-regulate framework. In October 2011, the California Medical Association announced its support for policy change in this direction.

Current economic circumstances invite comparisons with the Great Depression. Weary of the bloodshed stemming from illegal booze and the public health hazards of nonregulation, the America that embraced President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal also repealed alcohol prohibition. The realities of our time prompt us to acknowledge that drug criminalization, which never really works anyway, is unaffordable. Cannabis is the low-hanging fruit of drug-policy reform; and medical marijuana is so ripe, it’s falling off the trees in front of us.

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Christopher Glenn Fichtner, M.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist with practices in California and Illinois. His book Cannabinomics: The Marijuana Policy Tipping Point (Well Mind Books, 2010) is available at Cannabinomics.com.

DISCLAIMER: The ideas expressed in this article are those of the author, are for informational and entertainment purposes only, and do not constitute medical advice of any kind.

Fukushima Updated: What They Won’t Tell You

by Karl Grossman for HUSTLER Magazine

The “whole world” is being “exposed to the radiation from Fukushima,” explains nuclear physicist Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of physics at the City University of New York. The still-ongoing catastrophe at the sixreactor Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan has caused radioactivity to be “circulating around the entire Earth.”

Major health impacts can be expected in Japan, of course, but also wherever the Fukushima radioactivity has fallen or will fall, including in the United States, say toxicologist Janette D. Sherman, M.D., and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project. Already, they’ve discovered that infant mortality in parts of the United States has increased substantially as a result of Fukushima fallout.

Dr. Sherman and Mangano cross-checked data on infant mortality from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with records of fallout from the EPA and found that infant mortality had spiked by an average of 35% in eight cities west of the Rocky Mountains and by 48% in Philadelphia during a tenweek span immediately following the March 11, 2011, Fukushima accident. While Philadelphia and cities in Washington (Seattle), Oregon (Portland), Idaho (Boise) and northern California (Sacramento, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, San Jose and Berkeley) reported drastic increases, infant mortality nationwide in this period rose 2.3%. Infant mortality—defined as the death of children from birth to one year old—is considered an early measure of radiation effects because there is rapid growth and cell division at this stage, increasing the impacts of radioactivity.

Cancer is a consequence of radiation that often takes years to manifest. “A global increase in cancer can be expected from the Fukushima discharges,” Dr. Sherman predicts. The radioactive iodine released will produce thyroid cancer, she notes, and “thyroid irregularities” have already been found in children evacuated from the Fukushima area. Cesium-137—another poison discharged in large quantities from Fukushima—will cause cancer in “soft tissues in the body, notably the breast tissue and the pancreas.” And strontium-90, yet another poison released in large amounts, “goes to the bone to cause leukemia.”

Dr. Sherman, an adviser to the National Cancer Institute, has been studying the impact of radiation since working for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in the 1950s. Her books include Life’s Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer. She was also editor of Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, published by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009.

Authored by a team of European scientists, it determined from available medical data that the Chernobyl release caused some 985,000 people to die between 1986—the year of the nuclear power plant accident—and 2004.

“The Fukushima disaster will be worse than Chernobyl,” Dr. Sherman emphasizes. “No question. This is because it is continuing. They have not stopped the releases of radioactivity—God knows if they ever will.” Moreover, the area in that part of Japan is “far more populated” than the region around Chernobyl, about 60 miles from Kiev, Ukraine’s capital.

The lead author of the Chernobyl study, Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, agrees. “We are seeing something that has never happened— a multiple reactor catastrophe…happening within 200 kilometers [125 miles] of a metropolis [Tokyo] of 30 million people.”

Other scientists and medical experts concur that Fukushima will have far greater consequences than Chernobyl. Professor Chris Busby of the School of Biomedical Sciences of the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland says, “Chernobyl went up in one go.” But large amounts of radioactivity have been streaming from Fukushima since March 11 and spreading worldwide. “Fukushima is worse,” Busby adds. He projects more than a million deaths worldwide.

Radioactivity has been found in livestock, crops and other produce many miles from the Fukushima complex—including in beef, milk, leafy vegetables and most recently in rice, which constitutes a major part of the Japanese diet. Radioactive fallout has also been spreading to the United States, contaminating water, soil and farm-grown food products. Across the nation, radioactive iodine and cesium have been detected in milk linked to cows eating radioactive grass. In California—one of the few states conducting any kind of testing for radiation in food— strawberries, kale, spinach, arugula, wild-harvested mushrooms and other vegetables have tested positive for radioactive chemicals.

Dr. Helen Caldicott, president emeritus of Physicians for Social Responsibility, says that based on the radioactive releases from Fukushima, she expects fatalities from the catastrophe will end up being “two to five times the million who have died because of Chernobyl.” Many of those deaths will be in Japan, but no place on Earth will escape this grim reality.

Besides blowing in the wind, the poisons from Fukushima are being spread through sea currents and through food, although some nations have restricted certain food imports from Japan. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned the importation of milk, dairy products, fresh vegetables and fruit originating in areas closest to the Fukushima complex—the prefectures of Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma. (Japan is divided into 47 local governing units known as prefectures.) Also, the FDA has announced that it is screening for radiation in other foods imported from Japan, including fish. Epidemiologist Mangano comments: “Despite these efforts, many Americans are and should be concerned about the potential risks of importation of food into the U.S from Japan in general.” According to the U.S.

Department of Agriculture, about 2% of the seafood consumed in this country comes from Japan. Scallops are the largest seafood import from Japan, with some 3,300 metric tons (valued at $64 million) shipped to the United States in 2010. Tuna has been the second-biggest Japanese seafood import. Japan provided an estimated 350 metric tons of tuna (worth $4 million) in 2010.

The sea along the Fukushima site provides a vast pathway for spreading radioactivity. The amount of radioactive iodine in seawater near the power plant has been measured as thousands of times over what the government of Japan considers permissible. Fish caught 50 miles off the coast have been found to contain large amounts of radiation. Further, when radioactive poison gets into the marine environment, a “concentration factor” kicks in as the radiation moves up the food chain. Small fish eat radiation-contaminated seaweed, and medium-size fish eat the small fish. Then big fish eat the medium-size fish, and radioactivity becomes increasingly concentrated. Some of the fish affected by the Fukushima radi- ation are migratory, so it’s not just sushi in Tokyo that’s impacted but also fish consumed globally. Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, led a research expedition off the northeast coast of Japan to assess the impact of the Fukushima disaster. Buesseler, a recognized expert in the study of radioisotope geochemistry, reported, “When we saw the numbers—hundreds of millions of becquerels [a measure of radioactivity]—we knew this was the largest delivery of radiation into the ocean ever seen.”

Response to the massive Fukushima radioactive discharges has been a massive cover-up and outright denial. The Nuclear Energy Institute—an influential nuclear industry trade group—claims, “No health effects are expected among the Japanese people as a result of the events at Fukushima.” The American Nuclear Society proclaims on its Web site that “no public ill effects are expected from the Fukushima incident.” Mainstream media have become tired of covering the disaster even though radioactivity continues to stream from the Fukushima reactors. Mangano says that “the absurd belief that no one will be harmed by Fukushima is perhaps the strongest evidence of the pattern of deception and denial by nuclear officials in industry and government.”

And it’s not just a PR effort. There have been systematic moves to prevent scientists from getting the data to connect Fukushima radioactivity to illness and death. On May 3, 2011, after weekly monitoring of radioactivity provided the data that Dr. Sherman and Mangano linked to infant mortality, the EPA announced it would only gather readings every three months. Mangano’s opinion? “Outrageous!”

Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said that with the Fukushima “situation still out of control and expected to continue that way for months, and with elevated radioactivity continuing to show up in the U.S., it is inexplicable that the EPA would shut down its radiation monitoring effort.”

Inexplicable, but in line with the nuclear industry’s traditional PR spin, according to Dr. Jeffrey Patterson, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “There has been a coverup, a minimization of the effects of radioactivity,” Patterson points out, “since the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear technology.” Will the nuclear establishment be able to get away with what would be one of the most outrageous Big Lies of all time—that no one has died because of Fukushima?

“I can’t believe this is going on,” said Professor Frank Daulton, who teaches economics and linguistics at Ryukoku University in Kyoto, Japan, about the Fukushima catastrophe. “This is a nightmare. I’m just afraid this has dealt a nearfatal blow to Japan.”

And the consequences for the rest of the world? Thanks to the clout of the nuclear industry and its chokehold on our politicians, it’s doubtful we will ever get the truth about Fukushima. Of course, that could change if our citizens rise up and demand transparency. But how likely is that?

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Karl Grossman is an investigative reporter, board member of BeyondNuclear.org and professor of journalism at the State University of New York’s The College at Old Westbury. His six books include Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power. Grossman, the longtime host of the nationally aired TV program Enviro Close-Up, has also written and narrated Three Mile Island Revisited, The Push to Revive Nuclear Power, Chernobyl: A Million Casualties and other documentaries.

Larry Flynt Book Signing Tour – Postponed to June

Come meet Larry Flynt for his book signing tour of One Nation Under Sex!

He will be appearing at the Hustler Hollywood stores in the following cities:

NEW ORLEANS: June ?

FT. LAUDERDALE: June ?

NASHVILLE: June ?

MONROE: June ?

LEXINGTON: June ?

ST. LOUIS: June ?

All appearances start at 7pm.

The first 25 guests receive a free give bag!

For location details and directions visit www.HustlerStore.com

Larry Flynt Book Signing Tour

Come meet Larry Flynt for his book signing tour of One Nation Under Sex!

He will be appearing at the Hustler Hollywood stores in the following cities:

NEW ORLEANS: Thursday, April 19th

FT. LAUDERDALE: Friday, April 20th

NASHVILLE: Saturday, April 21st

MONROE: Monday, April 23rd

LEXINGTON: Tuesday, April 24th

ST. LOUIS: Wednesday, April 25th

All appearances start at 7pm.

The first 25 guests receive a free give bag!

For location details and directions visit www.HustlerStore.com

No privacy left for our grandchildren?

BIG BROTHER CAN DIG UP LOTS OF PERSONAL INFO—BUT SOME IS JUST HOGWASH.

by Nat Hentoff for HUSTLER Magazine

Among the Congressional Republican leadership, there has been no active concern about ever-increasing government spying on you, me and the rest of us. So too among the GOP's leading contenders for the Presidency. However, a lone wolf emerged during the party's 11th debate when Ron Paul almost roared: "Our founders were very clear. They said, 'Don't be willing to sacrifice liberty for security!'" All but one of Paul's rivals made sharply clear they felt he was going too far with this personal liberty stuff.

As lackeys of our master spy, Barack Obama, Democratic lawmakers and highlevel officials no doubt concur. Even among Americans who were once taught that the Fourth Amendment guaranteed each of us freedom from "unreasonable search and seizure" by the government, how many know that in 1967 the Supreme Court went further? Its Katz v. United States decision assured that we citizens have an "expectation of privacy" in certain areas of our lives.

Can you think of anywhere that such an "expectation of privacy" now exists? Consider this October 14, 2011, banner in the Washington-based Daily Caller : "House subcommittee chair: Is Obama admin. already collecting private health information?"

This grim rumor did arouse, briefly, Representative Denny Rehberg (R-Montana), who chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services, and Education. Rehberg demanded that he be told whether the health-collecting information was true: "If so, it would represent an egregious violation of the privacy rights that the American public rightfully demands."

The Obama team denies, robotically of course, that such private information is being collected. But if the President is reelected, despite whatever the Supreme Court decides about Obamacare, his passion for health rationing will grow, and the government will insist on knowing those elements of our healthcare that are too costly for him to maintain.

A few members of the minority Republican Party in the next Congress may be upset, but I'm not aware if there is likely to be anyone in the GOP leadership with anything to say about this invasion of your inner privacy.

Keep in mind that when Obama extended the tenure of FBI Director Robert Mueller— who, with far more intrusive technology than J. Edgar Hoover ever imagined, regularly grinds down the Fourth Amendment—the confirming vote was unanimous. Not a whisper about our "expectation of privacy."

As long as the First Amendment is still robustly alive, I and other insistent protectors of privacy will keep to the task: trying to inform the citizenry that although we are not already subjects of a "police state," living in a world that is increasingly adding police states means we are not absolutely immune from making security the ultimate priority of this nation. All the more so because murderous terrorism, under whatever nomenclature, continues to breed new generations of assassins while citizens become more conditioned to privacy being as anachronistic as traditional matrimony.

Have you heard any criticism of Mueller's fully implementing the FBI domestic security rules that give his agents free rein to start a "threat assessment" (i.e., an investigation) of any of us without going to a judge and without any evidence of a crime having been committed?

And did you know that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are now testing ways to determine if someone is only thinking about or imagining some deep danger to our safety? This pre-crime detection by Big Brother is called "FAST." I'll be reporting on it soon.

Dig this additional Robert Mueller contribution for our next Fourth of July celebrations: Under the header "Is the American Way of Life Over as We Know It?" a WorldNetDaily article warned, "Next time you call a talk radio station, beware: The FBI may be listening."

The story mentioned this ominous news from WMAL.com: "The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet. … The FBI says it is not playing Big Brother by policing the airwaves but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence."

Huh? This databasing also includes callers. On many such programs, listeners given an opportunity to express themselves on-air can be even more fiercely opinionated than the hosts. And, as I've already reported in HUSTLER, the FBI is now after your garbage.

On what basis? In the Boston Herald, Dan K. Thomasson explained that "[the FBI's scrutinizing of trash] would be particularly [vital] if you have had any contact, knowingly or unknowingly, socially or otherwise, with someone the bureau finds suspicious."

Maybe someone who called in complaining that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Michael Savage was being too mild. Hey, I was a guest of both Limbaugh and Savage and also of Mark Levin. Now what did I say that might be suspicious? Isn't it about time I taped my call-ins to protect myself?

A friend of mine's grandchild is seven years old. He's already quite outspoken and has been reading voraciously. Would the FBI pay attention to a little boy? Well, the kid is so verbal and rambunctious, he just might call in to a radio station. Maybe a listening Robert Mueller agent would be curious about the patriotism of his parents or grandparents. I'm only joking, right?

My first job, when I was a 12-year-old during the Great Depression, was in a Boston haberdashery. I couldn't remember the store's name when I was writing my first memoir, Boston Boy: Growing Up With Jazz and Other Rebellious Passions (Paul Dry Books). But there it was in my FBI file along with my having attended, years ago, a meeting of radicals in North Africa. I've never been to Africa—North or South.

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Nat Hentoff is a historian of the Constitution, a jazz critic and a columnist for the Village Voice and Free Inquiry. His incisive books include The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America ; Living the Bill of Rights ; and the forthcoming Is This Still America?

Equal-Opportunity Poverty

DOWNSIZING THE MIDDLE CLASS IS A RISKY BUSINESS.

by Robert Scheer for HUSTLER Magazine

Poverty is not just for the poor anymore. Ever greater numbers among the 99% being screwed by the top 1%, who control more than 40% of the wealth in this country, should stop pretending to be middle-class and admit that they are on the deep, losing end of America's fierce class struggle.

We used to think poverty was just for urban ghetto folk who looked, talked and acted differently than the rest of us. No more. Poverty has been democratized, and the poor are everywhere. "Funny, you don't look poor" is what you might say to your neighbor in that white suburb who is surviving on food stamps and skipping mortgage payments until eviction. But when it comes to poverty, America is now an equal-opportunity society. Sure, folks don't go around in rags and visibly malnourished.

Thanks to Walmart's steady supply of Chinese sweatshop-produced clothes and our own government's vastly expanded food stamp program, poverty is disguised.

In the past ten years, poverty in suburban America has jumped an astounding 53%, twice its rise in urban centers. For the first time in U.S. history, poverty in the suburbs exceeds that of the cities they surround. While the superrich scurry for safety in their fortress enclaves, suburbs across the country feature boarded-up houses with mortgages that are deeply underwater.

Six months before the appearance of an Occupy Wall Street encampment, Joseph E. Stieglitz wrote an article for Vanity Fair— titled "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%"— that provided the movement with its essential manifesto. In a prescient prediction of the protests to come, the Nobel Prize-winning economist issued a warning to the power elite that tends to read Vanity Fair : "Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1% of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."

What they will regret, if they retain a shred of caution born of common sense, is that despite an economic meltdown caused by bankers run wild and requiring massive taxpayer-financed government intervention to avoid another Great Depression, the financial overlords continued to pay themselves enormous bonuses while ordinary folk went bankrupt. Hiding behind the fig leaf of Adam Smith's freemarket capitalism, they invented gimmicks never before known in the financial world that destroyed the real estate market and turned peoples homes into gambling chips in the Wall Street casino.

Thanks to the Republicans in Congress back in the 1990s and Democratic President Bill Clinton, who became their water boy, the rules of the regulatory road were changed. Swindles called collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps—transactions that would have been judged patently illegal if the Mafia had invented them—were made legal as a matter of federal law. The result was a boom-and-bust cycle that vastly increased the gap between America's superwealthy and the rest of the nation. In the process, the bedrock of the American Dream—an ever better-off middle class— was demolished.

Even during the Clinton years, which many Americans now think of as good times, the class divide in America was growing with a vengeance. As I document in my book The Great American Stickup, the income of the top 1% increased 10.1% per year under Clinton, while it rose only 2.4% for the other 99% of the population. Things got worse under George W. Bush. Even before the banking meltdown of 2007, the top 1% enjoyed an 11% annual rise in income, while the rest received the crumbs—sharing in a 1% increase. With the imminent collapse of their Ponzi scheme, the bankers were saved. In the meantime, their victims were thrown under the bus.

As libertarian Ron Paul, the Republicans' only honest Presidential candidate, put it: "The bailouts came from both parties. Guess who they bailed out? The big corporations, the people who were ripping off the people in the derivatives market.… But who got stuck? The middle class got stuck…they lost their jobs, and they lost their houses. If you had money to give out, you should have given it to the people who were losing their homes, not to the banks."

In his Vanity Fair article, Stieglitz hit the nail on the head: "The top 1% have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99% live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1% eventually do learn. Too late."

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Before serving almost 30 years as a Los Angeles Times columnist and editor, Robert Scheer spent the late 1960s as Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. Now editor of TruthDig.com, Scheer has written such hardhitting books as The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America and his latest, The Great American Stick-Up: Greedy Bankers and the Politicians Who Love Them.

Regarding The “Occupy Wall Street” Movement

It started when a bunch of college kids, responding to a tweet, descended on Wall Street. They stayed, and the crowd grew. Now there are thousands of them, and they’re not just in New York City anymore. Nor is the movement still limited to undergrads.

In a nation where 1% of the population controls almost half of the wealth, these protesters have chosen to call themselves the 99 Percent. They are the working class, the poor, the disenfranchised. They represent everyone excluded from a political process that has been hijacked by corporations and multimillionaires. The 99 Percent want their government back.

This looks and feels like something different. It feels organic. It reminds me of the 1960s’ antiwar movement. A long-simmering undercurrent of unrest in our country is now bubbling to the surface. Our politicians ignore this movement at their peril. As Bob Dylan said, “The times they are a-changin’.”

Regarding The "Occupy Wall Street" Movement

It started when a bunch of college kids, responding to a tweet, descended on Wall Street. They stayed, and the crowd grew. Now there are thousands of them, and they're not just in New York City anymore. Nor is the movement still limited to undergrads.

In a nation where 1% of the population controls almost half of the wealth, these protesters have chosen to call themselves the 99 Percent. They are the working class, the poor, the disenfranchised. They represent everyone excluded from a political process that has been hijacked by corporations and multimillionaires. The 99 Percent want their government back.

This looks and feels like something different. It feels organic. It reminds me of the 1960s' antiwar movement. A long-simmering undercurrent of unrest in our country is now bubbling to the surface. Our politicians ignore this movement at their peril. As Bob Dylan said, "The times they are a-changin'."

Corporate Tax Dodging

CEOs Get Paid More Than Uncle Sam

By Kimberly Cheng for HUSTLER Magazine

CEOs nationwide are reaping lavish rewards for their aggressive tax dodging. Of America's 100 corporations with the highest-paid CEOs, 25 paid their top executives more in compensation than they did in 2010 federal income taxes. These 25 CEOs averaged a salary of $16.7 million.

The most profitable of all the firms? General Electric. In 2010, GE alone received tax refunds of $3.3 billion despite a whopping $5.1 billion in U.S. pre-tax profits. CEO Jeff Immelt's 2009 compensation nearly doubled in 2010 as he raked in $15.2 million. Meanwhile, GE shut down 31 factories, reduced its workforce by 19,000 and cut pay and benefits for employees. GE also surpassed all other corporations in lobbying and political campaign spending. Its total investment in swaying politics to their advantage: $41.8 million.

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