What Would Robert Reich Do?

Today on the list: What Robert Reich wants to do about jobs, why liberals don’t win and how Oxytocin increases trust (guess that explains modern politics, Whole Foods and Rush Limbaugh).

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

The links below open in a new window. Newer ones are on top.

Stanley Fish: Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal During my tenure as the dean of a college, I determined that an underperforming program should be closed. My wife asked me if I had ever set foot on the premises, and when I answered “no,” she said that I really should do that before wielding the axe.

Oxytocin Increases Trust — Under Certain Conditions Researchers report effects of the “trust hormone” get negated when a partner is perceived as dishonest.

FOLDING ELECTRIC BIKE YOU CAN TAKE ON SUBWAY WITH YOU

WHY LIBERALS DON’T WIN In an amazing piece of masochism and anti-historical argument, The Center for American Progress has dubbed those who support the Tenth Amendment “Tenthers,” an obvious play on “birthers.”

Empirically, it is fair to say that liberals now oppose the Second and Tenth Amendments of the Constitution and don’t give a damn about the Fourth Amendment as long as a Democratic president is dismantling it.

LEVI JOHNSON WANTS TO BE SECOND MAYOR OF WASILLA TO SELL OUT TOWN TO MAKE BIG BUCKS A month ago, it looked like Levi Johnston was getting married to the mother of his child, Bristol Palin.

That didn’t quite go as planned. But Johnston’s got his eye on another prize: The Wasilla, Alaska, city hall. Johnston wants to run for mayor — and yes, the cameras will be following him. As Variety wrote earlier today, Stone and Co. is shooting a pilot starring Johnston, which it then plans to shop to the networks.

THE JOBS EMERGENCY AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT Washington’s latest answer to the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression is $26 billion in aid to state and local governments. This still leaves the states and locales more than $62 billion in the hole this fiscal year. And because every state except Vermont has to balance its budget, the likely result is 600,000 to 700,000 more state and local jobs vanishing over the next 12 months (including private contractors and other businesses that depend on state and local governments) according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Say goodbye to even more of the teachers, firefighters, sanitary workers, and police officers we depend on.

The Rubin Con Goes On The corruptions of journalism were on full display when CNN’s Fareed Zakaria turned to Robert Rubin this past Sunday for advice on how to fix the financial crisis that he, as much as anyone, caused. I was trapped on a treadmill in front of an overhead television and unable to turn the thing off in time to avoid this assault on my mental and physical health.

Mr. G Is Right White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs ranted that “the professional left” needed to be drug tested for their complaints and attacks on the Obama administration after all the good things Obama has done. I agree.