Go On, Have Some Pesticides on the Side
Submitted by Anne Landman on
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) publishes a popular consumer guide called
Submitted by Anne Landman on
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) publishes a popular consumer guide called
Submitted by Anne Landman on
Nobu Su, the wealthy owner of TNT shipping, had a great idea: convert a supertanker into a giant skimming vessel that
Submitted by Anne Landman on
On May 3, Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested that the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil disaster were "acts of God." Following up on that belief, Perry, along with the Governors of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and the Lieutenant Governor of Florida, issued
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson questions BP's widespread application of oil dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico, as does everyone else. According to Jackson, the government is "uncharted waters" with the use of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico. "The amount of dispersant being used at the surface is unprecedented," Jackson says. BP is also applying the chemicals in the sub-sea environment. In addition, dispersant is stopping oil from collecting on water surface, where it can be more easily controlled.
BP's Web site gives the impression that dispersants "clean and control" ocean oil spills by putting the oil in a state where "it becomes a feast for the naturally-occurring microbes that inhabit the ocean." But dispersants do not clean the water, nor do they remove oil at all, but rather re-arrange where it exists, and change where it goes.
CMD Executive Director Lisa Graves, and Mary Bottari of CMD's BanksterUSA project will both be speaking this year at the Netroots Nation 2010 gathering in Las Vegas, Nevada. Formerly known as the YearlyKos Convention, Netroots Nation magnifies progressive voices by providing a venue for exchanging ideas and learning how to more effectively use technology to influence public debate. It is an incubator for progressive ideas that challenge the status quo. Lisa will be speaking on fighting against expanded corporate rights in the wake of the Citizens United decision and Mary will be speaking about reforming Wall Street. The event will be July 22-25 at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. You can see the Netroots Nation agenda here.
You know that Wall Street reform bill pending in the Senate? Some last minute insertions add up to a surprisingly big win for the developing world.
First, kudos to Senators Dick Lugar (R-Indiana) and Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) for inserting strong provisions that require extractive companies (oil, natural gas, etc.) to detail in their annual Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings the payments they make to foreign governments. One would think that oil-rich and mineral-rich countries would be, well, rich. Big international firms move in to extract these resources and pay royalties, fees, taxes, bonuses and other monies to national governments. Unfortunately, too frequently this money is put to work lining the pockets of dictators and warlords, rather than building schools or health clinics.
Submitted by Anne Landman on
A woman driving by a Safeway store in Kirkland, Washington, spotted a big banner in front of the store announcing a farmer's market that weekend, so she stopped to get more details. The manager explained that Safeway employees were going to be setting up tents and selling Safeway produce, farmer's market-style, in front of the store.
Conservatives may have moved quickly to dissociate themselves from Representative Joe Barton's apology to BP, but many on the right still believe that the establishment of a $20 billion escrow fund violated the legal rights of the company. A frequent claim is that the Obama administration has violated BP's due process rights. Appearing on ABC's This Week, George Will stated the creation of the escrow fund amounted to a confiscation of assets that circumvents due process. Former Washington Times writer Robert Stacey McCain argued in his blog that Rep. Barton was rightly concerned about due process when he apologized to BP. Michael Barone in National Review Online quipped that, "the Constitution does not command 'no person ... shall .... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; except by the decision of a person as wise and capable as Kenneth Feinberg." The Framers stopped at "due process of law." It is to be expected that conservatives care less about the decimated lives along the Gulf Coast than they do about a multinational corporation losing $20 billion over several years, even when its cash flow for this year alone will reach $30 billion, according its own estimates. What is a slightly more surprising is that they would completely misconstrue a fundamental legal concept in the process.
British Petroleum has stooped to a new low, if that's at all possible. As if spewing over 80 million gallons into the Gulf of Mexico were not a sufficiently criminal activity, they are now attempting a cover-up and have facilitated, working alongside the police of New Orleans, a blockade of sorts of hard-hitting journalists from getting their hands on what's actually taking place in the ravaged Big Easy. It is truly a sham of epic proportions. And now, word of a big hurricane with winds of up to 90 MPH rolling into town has surfaced. Trouble, it appears, has just begun in the Bayou.
Mother Jones, known for hard-hitting, deep-digging, no-holds-barred journalism, has approached coverage of the on-going and seemingly perpetual BP oil spill with the same vigor as usual in its reporting. Unfortunately, they've got some competition, or as astronaut Jack Swigert of Apollo 13 once said before going down, "Houston, we've had a problem!" The problem? BP is doing everything in its power to stop journalists dead in their tracks and scare them away from exposing their crime of poisoning the Gulf.
President Obama is calling a big part of the health care reform bill he signed into law last March a "Patients' Bill of Rights", suggesting that many of the consumer protections contained in the new law were the same ones the health insurance industry succeeded in killing time and again over many years through a fear-mongering campaign it secretly financed.
Obama is right -- but only to a point. An important right was missing from his list of consumer protections because, once again, insurers had made sure it would not be part of any bill that reached his desk.
The insurance industry defeated many attempts to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights in the 1990s and 2000s, despite considerable bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. It did this by funneling millions of dollars through a big PR firm it hired to set up a front group -- the Health Benefits Coalition -- whose sole purpose was to scare people away from the legislation. The industry also had one especially important ally: Obama's predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush. Bush threatened to veto any Patients' Bill of Rights that he (read: the insurance industry and its business allies) didn't like. Lawmakers were never able to agree on a single bill that Senators and House members could agree to (the House approved a weakened version of the bill Bush presumably would sign but the Senate refused to weaken its bill), so they eventually just gave up.
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