To: U.S. Senator Chris Dodd
Chairman Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs

Dear Senator Dodd,

As women and as taxpayers, we are writing to you today to tell you that size matters.

Usually we love big. Big boxes of chocolate, big boxes of wine, big — well you know. But when it comes to big banks and big bank bailouts, it’s a whole different story.

As you get ready to take up bank reform in your committee next week, we need to talk.

Send the message to Congress that we need to break up the banks and end "too-big-to-fail." Call your Senator using the toll free number provided by SEIU 866-544-7573. This number will be open and available to consumers until March 31, 2010, or you can send an email at BanksterUSA.org under "Protect American Families."

World Water Day 2010 is Monday, March 22nd. It is no surprise that corporations have attempted to co-opt this event. One example of greenwashing that SourceWatch has targeted is the Starbucks-run "www.worldwaterday.net," which many environmentally-minded individuals may mistake for the official UN World Water Day website. Since SourceWatch first identified the misleading page, www.worldwaterday.net now routes viewers to www.waterday.org, where the Starbucks connection is not apparent. (A cached version of the original page's privacy agreement can still be viewed here). Please bookmark our new water clearinghouse on Sourcewatch to find regular updates about this precious and essential natural resource, including news about the dangers of Halliburton's hydrofracking process that is being challenged by citizens opposed to ruining drinking water supplies through efforts to extract natural gas from the Marcellus shale in New York and elsewhere.

Here are some highlights regarding the 1,300 page bank reform bill released by U.S. Senator Chris Dodd (D-CN) yesterday.

THE GOOD
1) Capital requirements and leveraging requirements to be set by regulators (although some reformers would like these set in law to makes sure they do the job).
2) Creates a council of systemic risk regulators called a Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is generally a good idea. We don’t want to just leave it to the Federal Reserve.
3) Obama’s “Volcker Rule” included, not perfect, but at least it made the cut.

Fifteen years ago, the Center for Media and Democracy in my book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You first exposed the deceptive PR campaign by the municipal sewage industry that has renamed toxic sewage sludge as "biosolids" to be spread on farms and gardens. Unfortunately, the scam continues to fool more people than ever, even in San Francisco which is often dubbed the country's greenest city.

I suspect that Bay area celebrity chef Alice Waters would never dump sewage sludge onto her own organic garden, nor serve food grown in sludge in her world famous natural foods restaurant Chez Panisse. The mission of her Chez Panisse Foundation is to create "edible schoolyards" where kids grow, prepare, and eat food from their own organic gardens. But Francesca Vietor, the new executive director of the Chez Panisse Foundation, is at the same time actively promoting dumping toxic sludge on gardens in her role as Vice President of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.