Author: Michael Levine

On July 15, 2010 the Los Angeles Times broke a story devastating the working class residents of Bell, California. 

In
the midst of the Great Recession, in a city where one in four residents
lives below the poverty level, came one of the worst municipal scandals
in recent memory.  City council members making $100,000 a year for
part-time work.  A police chief making $450,000 a year. 

And
the cream of the crop?  A city manager making nearly $800,000 a year. 
Meanwhile, as Times columnist Steve Lopez noted, the primary industry
in Bell is survival.

I have organized a national boycott of any travel (business or personal) to Scotland for one year for a simple reason. There are a certain number of people on the planet that qualify for the label “homicidal maniac”. Question – what signal does the Scottish decision to release a convicted terrorist to a hero’s welcome send them?

I know the business community doesn’t like the idea of boycotts. But how else can we Californians send a message to a sovereign government about terrorism?

I would like to encourage readers to join our boycott by e-mailing me at [email protected].

Rumors that Barack Obama was a secret Muslim whose patriotism was questionable first appeared on blogs and in e-mail messages. In March, the rumors began to show up in the press, though only minimally.

According to PEJ’s News Coverage Index, the media narrative about these rumors consumed 0.4% of the campaign news hole from March 13 – April 12. Since then, however, coverage of this storyline has steadily increased—and in June it gained momentum.

With the general election underway, stories about rumors that Obama was not patriotic and had ties to Islam jumped from 0.9% of the campaign news hole studied a month earlier to 3.8% from June 13 – July 12—nearly ten times as much attention as the narrative received in March.

And that was before The New Yorker’s controversial front cover ran. The early evidence, at least, suggests, this story line is not going away.