More nonsense concerning attacks on workers and pension funds as the culprit in America's financial woes. This is a deliberate misinformation campaign that seeks to distract Americans from the tremendous revenue imbalance in which the wealthy and corporations do not pay their fair share of taxes into the operating budget of the country, and to further stigmatize the working man as the root of all of troubles. It's absurd and dishonest and people need to realize that they are being manipulated into a dialogue that misses the larger issues driving the budget crisis.
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/04/10601/koch-fueled-controversy-lands-washington
Only one representative had the courage tackle Wall Street head on. Rep. Elijah Cumnings (D-Maryland) said, “This recession was not caused by working Americans. Firefighters, teachers and nurses were not responsible for the reckless actions on Wall Street … It is shameful to play politics with middleclass families –- we should be helping these workers, not attacking them they are the engine of our economy.”
More than two years after massive fraud in the banking industry led to the Great Recession and the bailout of "too big to fail" players in the financial industry, very few cases have been referred for criminal prosecution. This is a situation in stark contrast with the Savings & Loan scandal in the 90's when over 1,800 cases were forwarded by bank regulators to the DOJ for prosecution.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/15/966896/-Financial-regulators-failed-Crooks-went-unpunished-Uh-huh-But-what-will-be-done-about-it?utm_
The US food supply is increasingly being compromised by drug resistant bacteria and E Coli and other health hazards. It is dangerous for all of us and may well result in a major epidemic of sickness and death among Americans who currently trust government and industry to safeguard public health. Yet the regulators continue to play russian roulette with the people's health and our food safety standards lag far behind much of the world. We should all be alarmed by this report and open our eyes to the possibility, or probability, that new drug-resistant diseases will result from the widespread use of antibiotics in our food supply.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/04/15/135435291/1-in-4-supermarket-meat-samples-tainted-with-drug-resistant-bacteria?ft=1&f=1001
Big Pharma is seeking to make it illegal to grow natural medicinal herbs in the EU and elsewhere around the world. If people do not resist this effort in large numbers then natural herbs that have been used for thousands of years will be unavailable for many, leaving only pharmaceutical options for the treatment of maladies. Please sign the petition.http://www.anh-europe.org/node/3113#Background
Here is the petition site:
http://www.savenaturalhealth.eu/
The hoax, picked up by the AP, put GE in the embarrassing position of having to confirm that they did not agree to return the $ 3.2 billion refund. or tax benefit, they received from the government in 2010.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/159931/yes-men-us-uncut-behind-ge-hoax
AP and USA Today Fall for GE Tax Repayment Hoax
http://dollarsandsense.org/blog/2011/04/ap-and-usa-today-fall-for-ge-tax-repayment-hoax.html
This review of Obama's speech on the budget controversy reveals some much needed vision for more sensible policy and a reduction in the growing inequality gap. Let's hope that Obama can follow through on his lofty words.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2011/04/13/what_a_democrat_sounds_like/index.html
Is Obama Hijacking - or Reinforcing - the GOP's One Big Idea?
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/obama-deficit-speech
The Koch brothers agenda goes far beyond the current attack on collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin, as this ThinkProgress report on activities to de-regulate dangerous phosphorous pollution makes clear. The blind drive for profit in the US all too often results in reckless practices that destroy our environment and put people's health at risk.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/13/walker-koch-phosphorus/
The Agribusiness farming model is wreaking havoc on the nation's rich topsoil and also contaminating huge swaths of our water supply, because the herbicides that are liberally sprayed on our crops are exempted from Clean Water Act regulations.
http://civileats.com/2011/04/13/watching-the-future-wash-away/
Big Ag is Pissing Away Our Nation's Rich Topsoil
http://www.grist.org/industrial-agriculture/2011-04-13-big-ag-washing-away-midwest-topsoil
The lax regulatory environment of the US food supply is in evidence once again, as the government refuses to test our milk supply for radiation despite reports of elevated levels, above EPA standards, resulting from the ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan.
http://farmwars.info/?p=5800&utm_
Over-reliance on pesticide use in farming is creating a host of serious problems, including an annual colony collapse disorder in the US that results in the die-off of significant portions of the bee population each year.
"As if we didn’t have enough problems with the fake food safety bill, a genetically modified food takeover by the USDA’s terrorist arm Monsanto, chemtrails dumping aluminum, barium, and strontium on farmland, and Japan’s radioactivity spreading across the country, now we have a huge fracking (hydrolic fracture mining) nightmare that is threatening to destroy our farmland with poisoned water."
http://farmwars.info/?p=5767
The fracking process involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand, and over 900 toxic chemicals thousands of feet underground to release tiny pockets of gas by literally breaking up the rock where the gas is trapped. The method has been compared to exploding a pipe bomb deep underground. Chemicals used in the process are kept secret from the public, medical professionals, and even regulators, because fracking is exempt from key provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act. The exemption, which was granted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, has been dubbed “the Halliburton Loophole” because Halliburton pioneered the fracking process, and then-Vice President (and former CEO of Halliburton) Dick Cheney was heavily involved in setting the Bush administration’s energy policy.http://www.waterdefense.org/the-problems/fracking
Wedge politics, "starve the beast" strategies, budget attacks and the war on unions are all GOP strategies designed to weaken the voice of the public and compromise the ability of the Left and the Democratic party to affect change.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/scott-walker-defunding-democratic-donors
I think Greenwald is, unfortunately, spot-on with his analysis of the Obama Administration's budget actions that seem to conflict so drastically with his 2008 campaign promises. It's all about getting re-elected and not about changing the way Washington goes about its business.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/13/obama/index.html
Though it may be an inconvenient drag for all of us, I believe that the only way to effectively combat threats to public health posed by industrial recklessly, currently occurring on a massive scale in the hydrofracturing push for natural gas, is massive and sustained activism and opposition by the public. We have to find a way to realize our true numbers and leverage this pressure in the political process.
http://www.citizenscampaign.org/news/story.asp?id=331
An update on legal aspects of efforts to ban and regulate GM crops in Europe. The relentless assault on existing and proposed regulations by the American-dominated biotech industry aggressively seeks to undermine these efforts on the continent, just as it does here at home in the US.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/europe-takes-step-towards-ban-on-genetically-/blog/34239?utm_
"The committee also agreed that if these rules fail, governments should ensure that those responsible for the contamination pay damages. The “polluter pays” principle applied to agriculture. The committee also agreed that biotech companies should finally open up their products to independent research into the environmental and health risks of GM crops."
The battle against transgenic seeds and food products is truly of a global nature. While we struggle to gain critical mass in our organizational attempts to halt GM crop production and label all foods containing GMOs, it is good to know that others around the world are fighting, and in some cases winning, similar battles. Now, the Irish are fighting to stem the biotech tide in Ireland.
http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/irish-call-for-moratorium-on-gm-crops/
