THIS IS WHY PEOPLE HATE WASHINGTON

The outrageous revolving door of industry and government strikes again! We have a very serious problem with industry influence in government policy and former regulators working for the very companies they were responsible for policing on behalf of the public. And, as always, it's the people who lose...
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/this_is_why_people_hate_washington_20110511/?utm

8 Invented Diseases Big Pharma Is Banking on

This piece reviews several new drugs with dubious indications and effectiveness that are in the Big Pharma pipeline and are set to be promoted through insidious direct-to-consumer marketing. Resist the hype if you can...
http://www.alternet.org/story/146471/8_invented_diseases_big_pharma_is_banking_on

'Fracking' for natural gas is polluting ground water, study concludes

The results of a Duke University study in PA and NY show methane levels in drinking water that was 17 times higher than normal. 
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2011/0509/Fracking-for-natural-gas-is-polluting-ground-water-study-concludes?utm

This is actually a more complete analysis of the study and the problems that have been documented over the past couple of years in communities where fracking wells have contaminated drinking water.
Fracking Linked to Methane in Flammable Drinking Water for First Time in Scientific History
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/09/fracking-methane-flammable-drinking-water-study_n_859677.html

In a response to mounting public pressure to regulate fracking, President Obama instructed a new study on the safety of the practice. The panel is composed of industry and advocacy groups and it remains to be seen whether adequate regulatory measures will be recommended by the group. This story inaccurately suggests that fracking has been in practice for decades by not focusing on the details of the new practice that was pioneered in 2002 and involves millions of gallons of chemicals in the extraction process. There is also no mention of the Safe Drinking Water Act exemption that the industry enjoys and which safety advocates would to reinstate through the Frac Act.
Energy Department Panel to Revise Standards for Gas Extraction
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/science/earth/07frack.html

Japan Scraps Plans for New Nuclear Plants

This decision by the Japanese PM reinforces the resurgent awareness that the benefits of nuclear energy are not worth the devastation that accidents wreak on humanity, as the Fukushima disaster has demonstrated so strikingly. Hopefully we can achieve a similar consensus here in the States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/world/asia/11japan.html?hp

New Yorkers Show the Faces of the Anti-Fracking Movement in Albany

New York State currently has a six-month moratorium on fracking in place and there is a call to ban the water and toxin intensive, environmentally dangerous hydraulic fracturing technique altogether. Certainly we would all agree that uses millions of gallons of water and over 900 chemicals should be subject to the protections embodied by EPA's Safe Drinking Water Act, right?
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blogs/new-yorkers-show-the-faces-of-the-anti-fracking-movement/

Food & Water Watch Action page to add your voice to the movement to protect public drinking water threatened by the fracking rush.
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/take-action/

Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) information:
http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/rulesregs/sdwa/index.cfm


PA Oil and Gas Inspectors Free to Issue Violations Without Approval From Top, Enviro Chief Says
http://www.propublica.org/article/pa-oil-and-gas-inspectors-free-to-issue-violations-without-approval-from-to

Citizens United Decision Profoundly Affects Political Landscape

The Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling has indeed opened the floodgates for special interest money to be showered onto the political landscape. This analysis by the Center For Responsive Politics quantifies the statistical increase of political message funding now prevalent in our country on the part of unions and corporations who previously were restrained from such outlandish spending.
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/05/citizens-united-decision-profoundly-affects-political-landscape.html

Top findings of the Center's study include:

• The percentage of spending coming from groups that do not disclose their donors has risen from 1 percent to 47 percent since the 2006 midterm elections
• 501c non-profit spending increased from zero percent of total spending by outside groups in 2006 to 42 percent in 2010.
• Outside interest groups spent more on election season political advertising than party committees for the first time in at least two decades, besting party committees by about $105 million.
• The amount of independent expenditure and electioneering communication spending by outside groups has quadrupled since 2006.
• Seventy-two percent of political advertising spending by outside groups in 2010 came from sources that were prohibited from spending money in 2006

Wisconsin Republicans rush agenda before recalls

In an attempt to advance their pro-business, anti-worker and anti-environmental agenda prior to the potential recall of GOP state senators in June, Walker's Republican Assembly is frantically pushing through contentious legislation with a minimum of public disclosure and debate.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j8y3BYEuZhNHzUYyj1iRYYoF4_EA?docId=76e1340ae0cd41859d635bc2b8ed754b

Big Bank Backlash: From Coast to Coast People are Moving their Money

People around the nation are continuing to put pressure on big banks for their advocacy of policies to undermine the middle class as well as the unethical and widespread pursuit of foreclosures in the wake of the Great Recession that was brought on by industry practices. Let's not forget that these banking interests have robbed the public trust and need to be broken down into more manageable sizes under renewed regulatory oversight.
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/05/10712/big-bank-backlash-coast-coast-people-are-moving-their-money

Revealed: how seed market is controlled by Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dow & DuPont

The consolidation of the seed market as pursued by biotech companies and their agenda of patenting GM seeds has led to tremendous disruption in the production of food around the world and the extinction of many varieties of crop species anda preponderance of GMO food products in the US and musch of the world.

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/625294/revealed_how_seed_market_is_controlled_by_monsanto_syngenta_bayer_dow_dupont.html

'Patents exacerbate genetic erosion as they promote monoculture by hindering the development of new seed varieties. In sum, the possible, long term consequences of patents are control of the whole food chain by a few companies,' said the report.

The Union’s ‘Shoddy’ Aristocracy

I find historical revelations, such as the widespread profiteering during the Civil War, to be immensely interesting and instructive when considering contemporary issues in the US. It's fascinating to learn that the word 'shoddy' originated from the deceptive manufacturing techniques employed by clothing manufacturers during this war that poorly served the soldiers in the war but enriched many unscrupulous businessmen.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/the-unions-shoddy-aristocracy/?ref=opinion

"One writer for the New York Tribune painted an equally graphic picture: “Shoddy” was, he wrote,

'poor sleezy stuff, woven open enough for seives [sic], and then filled with shearman’s dust. … Soldiers, on the first day’s march or in the earliest storm, found their clothes, overcoats, and blanket, scattering to the wind in rags or dissolving into their primitive elements of dust under the pelting rain.'"

War Against the Weak

The GOP agenda, defined by measures to strip collective bargaining rights of public sector employees, weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the pro-corporate Supreme Court's decision to preclude class action suits in favor of binding arbitration written into consumer contracts, amounts to an attack on the rights of each and every individual citizen. Without the ability to join together in collective action, the general public's democratic rights will be eviscerated.
http://www.slate.com/id/2293526/

Another Big Business Win in the U.S. Supreme Court
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/05/10706/another-big-business-win-us-supreme-court

David Arkush of Public Citizen writes:

The case's potential impact is breathtaking. Corporations can now prevent consumers and small business owners from exercising what is often their only real option for challenging companies that defraud them by millions or even billions of dollars: banding together to file class action lawsuits. The case could be equally devastating to millions of non-union employees, who need class actions to challenge systemic discrimination by their employers. The Supreme Court has given major corporations the green light to engage in nearly limitless wrongdoing against others, so long as they do it in relatively small dollar amounts, which ensures that no one can afford to challenge the misconduct without a class action.

Hitting the Bottle - Untested Chemicals In Our Products

This Op-Ed piece examines how the EPA has yet to rule BPA out of products because of its effects on stimulating cancer cells but shows that some manufacturers have voluntarily stopped using the chemical in baby bottles and some other products. The problem is that the chemicals they are substituting have not been tested for safety and could be even more dangerous. We have the highest cancer rates in the world and perhaps it's time to test chemicals for human safety before we allow them to be used in commercial products!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/opinion/09browning.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Elitism is Dead: The New Debate for the Good Food Movement

A review of food policy and debate in the wake of The Future of Food symposium recently put on by The Washington Post at Georgetown University. Prince Charles' presentation regarding the perils of industrial agriculture, soil erosion and many other issues, based on his Duchy Originals organic farming experience, were largely marginalized with talk about organic food being elitist. In fact, what is really undemocratic about US food policy is the concentration of so much power in the hands of so few corporate productions and their government acolytes. Good reading on an issue that affects each and every one of us.
http://civileats.com/2011/05/06/elitism-is-dead-the-new-debate-for-the-good-food-movement/

Mass Arrests, Tear Gas, Sound Weapons used Against WIU Students

This disturbing footage of riot police cracking down on college students with tear gas and sonic weapons took place in MaComb, Illinois last Saturday. Is this America? How can we allow such blatant violation of constitutional rights as these to take place? This account, supported by video footage, shows the students peaceably assembled on their front lawns yet the riot police illegally entered homes without warrants and used pepper spray against the students.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufKv-5t0t4E

Police, SWAT Teams Storm College Block Party With LRAD Sound Cannons, Tear Gas, Riot Gear for No Reason
http://www.NaturalNews.com/032318_block_party_SWAT_teams.html

WIU Parent Wants Answers After Police Use Pepper Spray
http://www.wqad.com/news/western-illinois-university-riots-wheeler-street-block-party-05032011,0,7847957.story

Calling on the Power of Moms

Food & Water Watch chooses Mother's Day as an opportunity to highlight the dangers of the endocrine disruptor Triclosan, that is found in many household products. While this is news to me, the site details a host of problems with this industrial compound and reveals that both the FDA and EPA are investigating its safety.
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blogs/calling-on-the-power-of-moms/

Has Elizabeth Warren Won Over the Banks?

This update on sentiment in the banking community regarding Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau offers some encouragement regarding her eventual nomination to head the consumer watchdog group. While the GOP still seems set on undermining the CFPB and its mandate, some in the banking community have warmed to Warren and credit her knowledge of the industry as well as her dedication to consumer advocacy. This may make it more likely that Warren could survive congressional hearings to head the bureau should Obama finally decide to formally nominate the law professor to the post.
http://beta.motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/elizabeth-warren-cfpb-community-banks

Fox Business Fails To Disclose Industry Ties Of Drilling Proponent

In an age of decreasing budgets for journalism and the increasing reliance on 'expert' commentary in TV news, this sort of thing is occurring all too often. It's well-known that viewers tend to give more credence to non-partisan 'experts' on hotly debated issues but shouldn't we be told if a commentator has financial ties to the industry their commentary supports? The featured 'expert' in this Media Matters expose happens to have PR clients who own millions of acres of potential oil fields in Alaska. To present such a voice as independent is nothing short of a travesty that constitutes propaganda of the most insidious sort.
http://mediamatters.org/research/201105070007?utm

This week in the War on Women

This column reviews details on a host of laws that are being enacted around the country to restrict women's right to choose and cut funding for women's healthcare and, abortions. It's really an all-out assault on American women that is not only a threat but an insult to all women. 
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/07/973996/-This-week-in-the-War-on-Women?utm

Voter ID Bill Under Scrutiny at the Capitol in Wisconsin

The nationwide push for voter ID laws in several states is actually a trumped-up legislative assault on a non-issue as voter fraud has been shown to be a negligible problem in America. Nonetheless, several states, including Wisconsin, are pushing voter ID laws that target the least stable residents, ethnic groups and students, and if approved would work to reduce turnout of likely Democratic voters.
http://www.defendwisconsin.org/2011/04/27/voter-id-bill-under-scrutiny-at-the-capitol/

As voter ID bill heads toward passage, the only certainty is a high price tag
http://www.defendwisconsin.org/2011/05/07/as-voter-id-bill-heads-toward-passage-the-only-certainty-is-a-high-price-tag/

PR Industry Fills Vacuum Left by Shrinking Newsrooms

This story highlights a distressing pattern, a declining number of journalists increasingly dependent on PR releases and video news releases for their segments. The PR industry has grown not only in numbers but also in the sophistication of their tactics, presenting a compelling information problem for the masses.
http://www.truth-out.org/pr-industry-fills-vacuum-left-shrinking-newsrooms/1304357509