There is a Supreme Court in Canada that believes in the unfettered rule of law, and has slapped down the US government's attempt to railroad a former Cisco exec turned whistleblower. Our democracy has become corporatism and there is increasingly evidence that the country is morphing into a Corporate Police State. Where are the heros we need in America to fight this battle and tell it like it is to the powerful and unscrupulous when they trample the law?
http://www.salon.com/news/david_sirota/2011/06/06/cisco_law_enforcement/index.html
Judge Blasts Cisco's "Unmitigated Gall" in Ex-Exec's Arrest
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/03/cisco_charged_with_duplicity/
Canada Blocks Extradition of Cisco Suspect
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217300/Canada_blocks_extradition_of_Cisco_suspect?taxonomyId=16&pageNumber=1
A short and sour recap from the New Yorker on Obama's record on climate change since he took office, and a call for him to do the right thing now before it's too late.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2011/06/13/110613taco_talk_kolbert
The New Yorker Slams Oil-Centric Obama For Letting The Planet Burn
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-06-06-new-yorker-elizabeth-kolbert-president-barack-obama
I'm embarrassed to admit that I only discovered the combative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) a few months ago despite the fact that he is a six-term congressman from NYC where I live. Nonetheless, I admired his forceful advocacy of issues that I believe are critical to the country. So, naturally, I was dismayed to learn of the mess he got into this week and his apparent dalliances with the truth. Well, Anthony Weiner just came clean a few minutes ago in a heartfelt and sincere statement to the press in which he said he would not resign. Good. Let's get past this major mistake and the Rep's admission of other inappropriate online or phone contacts with women over the past six years, and get back to fighting for the interests of the nation's people.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/06/weiner_confesses.php?utm
It's hard to believe that deadly the Jack-in-the-Box E coli. outbreak in the US was all the way back in 1993. That event sickened over 750 children and resulted in four deaths while alerting the public because of massive news coverage that dangerous E coli. bacteria was commonly found in US meat products. As a result, that deadly strain of E coli. was declared an adulterant in food and regular testing was instituted to prevent a recurrence. Yet, since then, six new deadly E coli. strands have been identified by our government that we do not test for at all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/opinion/05Benedict.html
I never got caught up in all the hysteria about exposure to sunlight and rarely use sunscreen when I'm out and only a bit when I'll be on the beach for a good stretch trying to catch a fish. By chance, I recently got a thumbs up from a skin doc at a free clinic. Now, it turns out that scientists have determined that sunlight is an important source of vitamin D, which protects against skin cancer as well as osteoporosis, prostate, bowel, cervical cancers and rickets. So, lighten up on the sunscreen and go for natural products if you can to avoid the chemicals in most sunscreen products.
http://www.naturalnews.com/032533_sun_exposure_skin_cancer.html
If you've been wondering about all of the weather related natural disasters that have wreaked havoc with the earth recently then this op/ed piece by Bill McKibben from 350.org will put our nation's ignorant approach to these questions in revealing perspective.
http://action.350.org/signup_page/connections
This is certainly good news for New York politics as there will now be external oversight of the state legislature and lawmakers will be required to disclose clients who have business before the state. However, in order to get it passed, Cuomo gave the Senate Majority Leader veto power over investigations and all votes for or against investigations will be kept secret.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/nyregion/cuomo-and-albany-legislators-in-deah-on-ethics-overhaul.html?hp
I'm a little late on this one but it's important to acknowledge this man. Thomas Tamm demonstrated remarkable courage and integrity by leaking details of illegal wiretapping by the US government to the press. His action was taken on behalf of all Americans and the supposed rule of law that governs our democracy. One wonders why it took Obama two years to drop the prosecution of the man he championed on the campaign trail, and why we cannot guarantee the well-being of whistleblowers in this country, past, present and future.
http://www.openthegovernment.org/node/3089
US Opens WikiLeaks Grand Jury Hearing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/may/11/us-opens-wikileaks-grand-jury-hearing
This is a very interesting piece from Dave Roberts at Grist. He recalls that environmentalism was initially a high priority for the communist state and that quality of life, represented by clean working conditions, air and water, were supposed to distinguish East Germany from the capitalist West. As the need for increased industrial capacity grew and a dependence on dirty lignite coal brought brown smog the environmental standards went by the wayside. The State eventually declared all environmental information to be state secrets and an underground resistance developed.
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-04-21-underground-environmentalism-in-communist-east-germany
Prominent GOP lawmakers beholden to the financial industry, and the US Chamber of Commerce, have declared all-out war on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and its yet to be formerly appointed administrator Elizabeth Warren. It seems that the only constituents these players care about are their friends in the banking and financial industry, rather than the citizens whom the wizards of Wall Street prey upon with shocking alacrity.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/03/981720/-Opposition-to-Elizabeth-Warren-extremely-well-funded,-inherently-sexist?utm
The banking and mortgage servicing industry continue to fleece homeowners even after some have won modifications to avoid foreclosures. The deliberate stonewalling and falsification of records on behalf of bankers puts the common citizen in the position of having to prove that the bank has made a mistake and attain legal representation. It's an exploitive strategy on the part of the recently bailed out banks, a numbers game that reckons most people will not be able to fight inappropriate charges and foreclosure efforts by bankers. It's a fundamentally amoral way to do business and the banks persist in ripping off Americans on a regular basis. I will post a follow-up article on the resources being amassed and used against the nomination of Elizabeth Warren to head the CFPB, a consumer watchdog bureau that might effective curtail much of this abuse.
http://www.propublica.org/article/even-after-mortgage-modification-shoddy-bank-practices-continue-to-hurt-hom
US regulators have known about five other deadly strains of E. coli for years but only test for one, E. coli 0157. Now there is a new super-toxic strain of E. coli that has struck in Germany and spread to ten countries so far. Yet regulators in the US continue to pander to the factory food industry which prefers to wait until there is another food-borne epidemic before testing for these known pathogens in our food supply. Like it or not, we are all guinea pigs for the chemical, biotech, pharmaceutical and food industries. In America we don't test for safety before marketing to the public, it's only after a product causes death and sickness that we consider that a product may cause more harm than good.
http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/as-new-food-safety-threat-emerges-u.s.-regulators-still-steps-behin
Do not be fooled by all the talk of privatization being the savior of democracy. The goal of all privatizers is to make money on their investment and by buying municipal water and sewage systems the privatizers buy into a monopoly market with a captive population of customers. Then they will raise water prices, a lot, and that's what this Food & Water Watch study documents. Privatizations are generally a bad deal for the public and water privatizations put an alarming economic cost on a basic necessity of life.
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/factsheet/selling-out-consumers/
TEPCO is belatedly acknowledging the overflow risk posed by storage tanks containing radioactive water containing more radiation than what has already been released into the atmosphere by the Fukushima disaster. Even though the American press is failing to cover the global tragedy in Japan on a regular basis, developments there continue to worsen with industry and government there failing to do all that is possible to mitigate the danger of increased radiation releases and contamination of ocean life.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/03/981775/-Radioactive-Fukushima-Water-Nears-Overflow?via=siderec
From the War On Drugs to the War On Terror to the Patriot Act, Americans have seen a steady erosion of civil liberties here at home. This AlterNet piece examines the Supreme Court's recent 8-1 decision undermining Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure by empowering police to forgo a search warrant after they are denied entry to a person's home.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/151150/america%27s_creeping_police_state/?page=1
This is a sobering example of what has come to freedom of expression in the United States. It appears increasingly undeniable that America is becoming a police state in which the Constitution is an inconvenience that the government trample on at will. These people were not even demonstrating, they were dancing, and they got arrested in Washington DC.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/151128/shocking_video%3A_americans_arrested_violently_at_the_jefferson_memorial_--_for_dancing_/
This little chart produced by the IMF underscores the fundamentally exploitive concept of privatizing profits and externalizing costs, as identified in Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine." The US has the lowest costs for polluting the environment which basically results in another government subsidy for industry that is literally borne on the backs, and health, of the American public. It's a bad deal for all of us.
http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/06/03/234753/the-united-states-undertaxes-pollution/
Bill McKibben outlines Obama policies that facilitate massive new coal extraction in the US and Canada that threatens to raise global temperatures dramatically and further imperil the planet.
http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/06/obama-global-warming-failure
