Rick North

The Disappearance of the Middle Class

Bill Moyers, among others, has called the increasing gap between the rich and the poor one of the most under-reported stories of the last few decades. Robert Reich’s recent article http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/9842-the-downward-mobilit... does an excellent job of highlighting just how serious the financial situation has become for so many people formerly in the middle class. A few highlights:

• 37% of young families with children were officially in poverty in 2010
• Entry-level manufacturing jobs are paying half (half!) of what they did six years ago
• Only 40% of the unemployed even qualify for benefits because they didn’t work full time or long enough on a single job before they were let go
• 49% of Americans live in homes where at least one person is collecting a federal benefit like food stamps or unemployment

Financial distress is becoming the norm. People that used to be financially secure are one illness, one serious car repair, or one mortgage payment from disaster. This makes Mitt Romney’s statement that he wasn’t concerned about the very poor because of the safety net all the more head-scratching. The safety net is absolutely essential, but for many people, it doesn’t exist, or isn’t adequate. Incredibly, Romney’s tax plan would cut these programs even more, making more holes in the net.

And Romney’s tax plan, which would extend Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy permanently, reduce corporate income taxes and eliminate the estate tax, would increase the income of those earning more than $1 million a year by an average of $295,874 annually.

Banks Feeling the Heat (and the Hate)

If you’ve wondered about any practical results from the Occupy Wall Street protests, take a look at this: In the last 90 days, 5.6 million people moved their bank accounts, with 610,000 switching because of the OWS-inspired “Bank Transfer Day.”

Most of those citing the Bank Transfer Day moved their accounts from a large to a small institution. Bank of America, whose ill-advised attempt to charge $5 in monthly fees for debit cards prompted a full-scale revolt, saw their defections jump 20% in the last quarter. For the full story, see http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/02/417054/americans-moving-bank....

Mary Landrieu – Backing the Fracking

Lest you think it’s only Republicans that are in the pocket of the oil companies, consider Mary Landrieu, Democratic senator from Louisiana.

The EPA recently came out with a devastating report that fracking was seriously contaminating groundwater in the area around Pavilion, Wyoming. This is the same region in which the documentary film Gasland highlighted residents showing flames coming out of their water faucets. Now Landrieu and her Republican buddy in the House, Ohio’s Rob Portman, have sent a letter to the EPA expressing their concern about “unwarranted regulation” of fracking. Oh my goodness, we wouldn’t want the EPA actually doing its job to protect health and environment, would we? The full story is at http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/9851-why-democrats-fracki....

Vermont Wants Medicare For All – Health Insurance Corporations Don’t

Last May, Vermont legislators passed a law moving the state toward a single-payer health system – Medicare for All. Their Congressional representatives will ask for a federal waiver enabling them to implement this in two years instead of the five now required. Guess who will be standing in their way? The health care industry, of course.

Wendell Potter is the former Vice President of corporate communications at CIGNA, one the largest health insurance companies. He learned first-hand all the dirty tricks the industry played to stop the U.S. from gaining what virtually every other industrialized nation has for its citizens – universal health care. He quit CIGNA, turned whistle-blower, and is now one of the most respected experts on the subject. To see his article on the Battle for Vermont, see http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/08-6.

Caught Between Barack and a Hard Place

In a controversial move sure to move his critics to call him a flip-flopper, President Obama gave his reluctant OK to a super-PAC, Priorities USA, which would raise money to support him in his re-election bid. Earlier, he had derided super-PACs, but now says he is forced to accept them because the GOP’s super-PACS are raising hundreds of millions of dollars. He doesn’t want to go into the campaign with one arm tied behind him.

This is a tough call. Progressives I highly respect such as Robert Reich and Russ Feingold have panned Obama’s decision, saying it’s hypocritical. Others say it’s necessary and a holding action until the D’s can get both houses of Congress and the presidency before enacting meaningful campaign finance reform. For a good article on the pro’s and con’s, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/08/barack-obama-super-pac_n_126341....

Re-Visiting the Komen Decision

Most of you have now heard that the Susan B. Komen Foundation reversed its earlier stance and will again allow funding of Planned Parenthood breast cancer education and detection programs. Yesterday, Karen Handel, Komen’s most visible anti-Planned Parenthood executive, resigned.

Two points: First, I’m afraid I just don’t trust Komen any more, no matter what they’ve done. They said that their recent actions were not politically motivated. Oh, please – everyone knows that they were reacting to pressure from the anti-choice (and anti-contraceptive) religious right wing to cut ties to Planned Parenthood. Second, even though Handel resigned, the people that hired her, knowing full well her feelings toward Planned Parenthood, are still there. I agree with Handel on one matter – she said the discussions on cutting the ties pre-dated her hiring last April.

The Religious Right’s Attack on Women

Yesterday I called the local affiliate of the Susan B. Komen Foundation to express my disgust. My wife and I have been donors for years. No more.

If you hadn’t heard, Komen cut off hundreds of thousands of dollars that provided funding for almost 170,000 breast cancer education, screenings and referrals for Planned Parenthood. Many of them are low-income and/or minorities who can’t get medical services anywhere else. Why would Komen do this? The official reason is a new policy that an organization can only receive funds if it “is not currently under a local, state or federal formal investigation for financial or administrative impropriety or fraud” and “The applicant is not currently debarred from the receipt of federal or state funding.”

How convenient. Republicans in Indiana and Wisconsin (Mitch Daniels and Scott Walker strike again) have passed bills banning state funds from funding Planned Parenthood, although the implementation has been blocked by the federal government. And a right-wing Congressman, Cliff Stearns (R-FL), has launched an inquiry (any Congress person can start an inquiry into almost anything) into Planned Parenthood, investigating whether it’s used federal funds to provide abortion services. Of course, there’s been absolutely no evidence that it has, but that hasn’t stopped him.

One precipitating factor was Komen’s recent hiring of Karen Handel as Senior Vice President for Policy. She was a former candidate for Georgia governor who is virulently anti-choice and had promised in her campaign to defund Planned Parenthood. She lost the governor’s race but has obviously found a new home for her views. What’s equally disturbing is that Komen never would have hired her in the first place if they didn’t have other far-right anti-choice people in their leadership. For a very good story on this, see http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/01-9.

Rick Santorum famously said that women who become pregnant from rape should accept the baby as “a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you.” You’ve probably also heard that he’s opposed to contraception. You may not have heard that, according to Credo, all the leading GOP presidential candidates except Jon Huntsman supported a Mississippi ballot initiative that would have banned birth control pills and IUD’s.
For Credo’s article and to sign a petition, see http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/bc_repub/?rc=tw2. Illustrating how hopelessly these candidates are out of touch, more than 99% of all sexually active women in the U.S. have used birth control.

Let’s connect the dots between the religious right, the Republican party and corporations. If you want to read a remarkably frank, fascinating and often hilarious book, get Frank Schaeffer’s Sex, Mom and God. Schaeffer is a former evangelical Christian and Republican advisor who left the party after becoming dismayed at what was happening.

He was instrumental in linking up the GOP with the Christian far right, laying the groundwork for its anti-abortion stance as a litmus test for potential candidates. Here’s what he said: “That strategy was simple: Republican leaders would affirm their antiabortion commitment to Evangelicals, and in turn we’d vote for them – by the tens of millions. Once Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency, ‘we’ would reverse Roe (v. Wade), through a constitutional amendment and/or through the appointment of antiabortion judges to the Supreme Court . . .”

And the corporations? My opinion, not based on any particular study or data, is that they’re not all that concerned (there are exceptions) with social issues like abortion or gay marriage. They’re all about money and don’t care about much else. So they want tax cuts, loopholes, less environmental and safety regulation, union-busting, opposing minimum wage increases, cutting pensions, etc. In other words, they want the Republicans. And to get the Republicans into power, they’re delighted to have the religious right deliver millions of votes for them.

Food Fight

Ractopamine is a drug given to pigs and cattle to make them grow faster and produce more meat instead of fat. It’s fed to 60-80% of the pigs in the U.S. Unless you’re a life-long vegetarian, probably every one of you reading this has ingested it.

In a word, ractopamine is awful. It’s been banned in over 150 countries, including all the nations of the European Union, Taiwan and even China, which isn’t exactly known as the world’s center of safe food. It’s so harmful to pigs that it’s killed more than 200,000 of them, as of last year. It’s so dangerous that workers handling it see this warning: "Not for use in humans. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask."

So why did the FDA approve it? No surprise here – their decision was based on tests conducted by the Eli Lilly Drug Company’s Elanco Animal Health Division, the same wonderful folks who bought recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST) from Monsanto to inject into dairy cows. Corporate lobbying trumps public (and animal) health again. For a good story, see http://grist.org/food/new-food-reporting-project-dives-deep-into-pork-an...

News Gets Skewed, We Get Screwed

Media Matters has completed a highly revealing report on how the conventional news media skewed reporting of the Keystone XL Pipeline controversy. A few details:

• Except for USA Today and the LA Times, every news outlet quoted or cited more pipeline supporters than opponents
• Dubious (i.e. false) industry estimates of jobs created by the pipeline were quoted uncritically 5 times more often than they were questioned
• NBC and ABC didn’t quote ANYONE opposed to the pipeline

For the full report, see http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/317-65/9690-study-the-press....

And not only is the news slanted, it’s increasingly repressed. The watchdog group Reporters /Without Borders released their World Press Freedom Index, ranking of all the world’s countries – the U.S. dropped to 47th out of 179 nations.

The reasons for the plunge include repression of journalists covering the Occupy movements, where more than 25 were arrested and/or beaten by police. The situation in New York City has been so bad that 13 different news organizations signed a letter blasting police restrictions on the media. For the Atlantic story and a link to the full rankings, see http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/us-press-freedo....

Finally, this outrageous story out of Washington, D.C., which won’t improve our international rankings. Josh Fox, the film-maker who produced Gasland, the award-winning documentary exposing the groundwater contamination caused by fracking, was arrested and thrown out of a Congressional hearing by the Republican leaders of the committee hearing testimony on it.

Please note that it is common practice for Congressional hearings to be filmed by journalists. Fox had asked for a standard press pass the day before the hearing but the Republican chair wouldn’t give him one. He showed up anyway, there was plenty of room, and he was doing nothing disruptive. There has never been a problem, press credentials or not, with filming of these hearings – until now. The Democrats on the committee protested and asked for Fox to be allowed to film, but were over-ruled by the Republicans.

The Constitution’s 1st Amendment says “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of the press.” House Speaker John Boehner said not too long ago that “We can start to usher in a new era of openness and transparency in our government.” How quickly he forgets, both the Constitution and his own words.

For the story, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/house-republicans-order-j_n_124....

Back From the Front

Due to overwhelming popular demand (both of you), I’ve attached a few pictures from last Friday’s rally at Portland’s Pioneer Square protesting the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. I was playing Justice Stevens, who voted against the decision, so I didn’t have a sash with corporate logos. Please keep in mind we’re supposed to be deadly serious to play our part. Of course, I busted up laughing immediately after the photos were taken.

In spite of the cold and rainy weather, about 250 people showed up to demonstrate, hear speakers and march around the courthouse. It was a lot of fun and we made our point that the Supreme Court has made it virtually impossible to have a democracy untainted by big money.

In a related event, I attended a town hall meeting hosted by Senator Jeff Merkley last week. It was excellent – he spoke for a few minutes on the most recent developments in Congress, then opened it up for questions from the audience chosen at random (mine wasn’t picked). He then stayed half an hour after the event ended to answer individual questions. I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to see a politician give direct answers to direct questions. No pre-arranged “plants”, no beating around the bush, no evasion, no political b.s.

There were about 100 people there. Early in the session, he asked the audience how many were familiar with Citizens United. I estimate 75 raised their hands. He said that the Court ruled that corporations were people and asked how many people agreed with that. No one raised their hand. When he asked how many people disagreed that corporations had the same rights as people, virtually everyone’s hand went up. I have to believe there were a number of Republicans present.

More on Citizens United

Robert Reich has written a number of articles and produced a basic video that are excellent in shining a light on problems made much worse by the Supreme Court and the increasing gap between the rich and poor. First is this 2-minute video that gives the basics http://www.amend2012.org/site/c.8qKOJXMvFaLUG/b.7939705/k.1AA3/Reverse_C.... If you know people who aren’t all that familiar with this issue, this is a great way to introduce them.

Next, this excellent article http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/9481-free-enterprise-on-t... how our economic system is rigged to favor the rich (reminiscent of Bill Moyers’ great quote: “Our system isn’t broken. It’s fixed.”) A few excerpts on how CEO’s get rewarded handsomely, even when they’re incompetent:

Philip Purcell, who left Morgan Stanley in 2005 after a shareholder revolt against him, took away $43.9 million plus $250,000 a year for life.

Thomas E. Freston, who lasted just nine months as CEO of Viacom before being terminated, and left with a walk-away package of $101 million.

William D. McGuire, who in 2006 was forced to resign as CEO of UnitedHealth over a stock-options scandal, and for his troubles got a pay package worth $286 million.

“To the extent free enterprise is on trial, the real question is whether the system is rigged in favor of those at the top who get rewarded no matter how badly they screw up, while the rest of us get screwed no matter how hard we work.”

Democrats and Republicans the Same?

“There’s no difference between the R’s and D’s” or “It’s Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee” (this one’s from Ralph Nader). Well, legislators from both major parties are forced to be far too dependent on big money, that’s for sure. And President Obama is far too close to Wall Street for my comfort. But no, they’re not the same, and here’s just one example out of many how they’re different:

Congressional Democrats, led by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), will introduce an updated version of the Disclose Act, which requires more transparency of campaign donations. This would force super-PACS and organizations that spend money on campaign expenditures to reveal the top 5 donors for each ad. It would also force lobbyists to disclose their spending. Here’s what the Politico’s article
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/disclose-act-super-pac-chris-va... said about the fate in Congress of the first Disclose Act:

“The initial DISCLOSE Act passed the House of Representatives by a 219 to 206 vote with only two Republican lawmakers offering support. Both of those lawmakers –- Reps. Mike Castle of Delaware and Joseph Cao of Louisiana -- are no longer in Congress. It ultimately failed to pass the Senate by a single vote, with all 59 Democrats backing the measure but no Republicans offering support.”

Plain and simple, the R’s don’t want you to know where that campaign cash is coming from. The D’s do.

Speaking of Super-Pacs

Open Secrets has an interesting article http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/08/world-of-super-pacs.html on the Super-Pacs, the “independent” organizations spending millions on ads for and against candidates. So far, conservative Super-Pacs have raised $17.6 million and liberal ones $7.61 million. President Obama has one supporting him, as do all the GOP candidates.

And you may have heard about the donor that gave $5 million to the Super-Pac supporting Newt Gingrich that helped him win the South Carolina primary by carpet-bombing the state with ads blasting Mitt Romney. He and his wife have now given another $5 million for Newt’s ads in Florida. Who is this guy?

He’s Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino and hotel owner (the Venetian) from Las Vegas, the 8th richest person in the U.S. and the 16th wealthiest person in the world. In one more article by Reich
http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/9619-focus-who-is-she..., he openly wonders what Newt has promised him for all the largesse. He also notes that “Never before in the history of American politics has a single couple given more money to a single candidate and had a bigger impact – all courtesy of the Supreme Court . . .”

I’m not sure what Newt has promised Adelson, if anything, but here’s a clue – Adelson is very involved in Israeli-Palestinian politics and owns the most widely-distributed newspaper in Israel. He has a dim view of the Palestinians, being quoted as saying about Newt’s statement on the controversy: “read the history of those who call themselves Palestinians, and you will hear why Gingrich said recently that the Palestinians are an invented people."

If Newt, God forbid, was ever elected president, I doubt very much that the U.S. stance toward Israel and the Palestinians would differ one iota from Sheldon Adelson’s.

Just Label It

Most of you know I retired about a year ago from working 7 ½ years for Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility fighting against genetically engineered foods. After intensively researching the science, I don’t believe for one minute they’ve been demonstrated safe for human health or the environment. In fact, there is significant data they may carry serious risks.

Robert Kenner, film-maker and producer of Food, Inc., a terrific movie, has put together a neat little 3-minute video titled “Just Label It” on labeling genetically engineered foods. One of the women featured, Robyn O’Brien, worked with us for years and is the author of a great book called The Unhealthy Truth. It’s still a little under the radar, but a movement is building to demand labeling of these foods. Of course, the food and GE industries, led by Monsanto, will stop at nothing to derail it. The video is at http://grist.org/list/just-label-it-new-video-from-the-food-inc-guy/.

Obama to TransCanada: You Can Take Your Keystone Pipeline and . . .

Yesterday, President Obama said NO to the Keystone XL pipeline from the Alberta tar sands to Texas, reinforcing what the State Department had already said: the early decision forced by the Republicans didn’t allow anywhere near enough time for a full environmental assessment.

To be sure, this isn’t necessarily a final decision, and Obama could reverse himself in the future. Big Oil will continue to press for this, so don’t be surprised if you see a deluge of TV commercials on the inflated number of wonderful jobs created (but not a word on how the environment is devastated). But give Obama credit for now – the American Petroleum Institute director had threatened him, promising “huge political consequences” if he dared to turn the pipeline down.

This was an incredible, and highly unlikely, victory. As environmentalist Bill McKibben reported in Grist http://grist.org/oil/keystone-xl-decision-is-a-big-win-for-now/, a survey of 300 energy insiders in D.C. last October found that 91% thought the pipeline was a slam dunk. TransCanada was so sure that they had already stacked 1,700 miles of pipeline along the route. This reversal never would have happened without the public demonstrations of thousands of people and the other thousands of signatures on the petitions urging Obama to do the right thing.

Meat Consumption Down, Corporate Profits (And Illegal Immigration) Up

The USDA is now estimating that U.S. meat consumption is down 12% from 2007 and will continue to drop. There are a number of factors behind this, including consumers’ increasing recognition that we eat far too much meat for our health, conditions at factory farms and slaughterhouses are atrocious, and the unethical practice of adding antibiotics to feed, increasing antibiotic resistance when we go to the hospital for pneumonia and other nasty diseases.

Of course, the meat companies are fighting back. This Grist article http://www.grist.org/food/2012-01-12-meating-them-half-way-americans-opt...
highlights the way Smithfield has been profiting from hardships on both sides of the border. Be sure to check out the link to the Nation’s expose by David Bacon http://www.thenation.com/article/165438/how-us-policies-fueled-mexicos-g....

Here’s how it’s worked, in a nutshell:

• NAFTA, one of the most disastrous trade agreements ever signed, lowered the price of U.S. pork to Mexico
• Smithfield took advantage of the changes to massively increase pork exports to Mexico
• Mexican pork producers couldn’t compete with the flood of cheap U.S. imports – pork farming and processing was devastated, with an estimated 100,000 put out of a job
• Mexicans, in desperate poverty, flooded into the U.S. looking for jobs
• Many of them (including illegals) ended up at pork processing plants in North Carolina, working for guess who? Smithfield

You’ve got to hand it to NAFTA – increasing poverty, unemployment, separation of families, illegal immigration and misery in two countries, all while lining corporate pockets.

The Bee’s Needs

It’s difficult to overstate how dependent upon honeybees we are for our food supply. Claire Thompson in Grist estimates that “one out of three bites of food on Americans’ plates results directly from honey bee pollination” and “there’s no question that the fate of these insects will determine our own as eaters.”

Those of you who subscribed to my food newsletter know that bees are in big trouble – they’ve been dying mysteriously from a malady known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), in which entire hives are depopulated, with every bee dead. We’ve lost about 30% of our bees every year since 2006.

Now it looks like we know what’s been causing it – a group of pesticides called neonicotinoids – which have been applied directly to corn seeds. Almost all of the genetically engineered Bt corn seed is treated with these pesticides, so you know that Monsanto and their buddies will be pulling out all the stops to convince us that oh, no, it must be something else. For the full story, see http://www.grist.org/food/2012-01-13-honey-bees-problem-nearing-a-critic....

The Best Power Point I Ever Saw

Lawrence Lessig is a Harvard professor who’s also a leading nationwide activist promoting the elimination of big money from politics and highlighting the urgent need for public financing of campaigns. I saw him speak here in 2010 and had a chance to talk to him briefly, following up by e-mail when I had other questions. His latest book, which I highly recommend, is Republic, Lost.

There may be someone in the country who does better Power Points, but I haven’t seen any. His latest one, which hits the high points of his book, is superb. It lays out beautifully the stranglehold big money has on our campaigns and government, and what we can do about it. It’s at http://blip.tv/lessig/episode-5697931.

A few tidbits:

• Senators and Congressional Representatives spend between 30% and 70% of their time raising money
• 50% of Senators and 42% of Representatives go on to become lobbyists after they leave government
• His favorite quote, from Henry David Thoreau: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root.” The root, of course, is the undue influence of big money, which forces legislators to be beholden to their corporate and individual big donors instead of ordinary citizens like you and me.

Big Rally Tomorrow at Pioneer Courthouse Square

Tomorrow, Friday, Jan. 20, there will be a big rally at Pioneer Courthouse in downtown Portland. It’s part of a nationwide “Occupy the Courts” movement, led by another demonstration at the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. We’re sick of the Citizens United decision, we don’t believe corporations are people, we don’t believe money equals speech, and we’re fed up with the Supreme Court. The event will go from noon to 1:00 p.m. with speakers and a march around the courthouse. For the flyer, see http://www.afd-pdx.org/Fliers/OTC-Call-To-Action-Poste-Color-Txt-Box%201....

I’ll be participating in a little street theatre, dressed up as one of the Supreme Court judges, complete with robe and a sash of logos of my corporate sponsors. I hope some of you can make it to the rally to register your protest over the sale of our democracy. If you do, please stop by and say hi!

Who Are the Candidates’ Biggest Donors?

You can tell a lot about what candidates will do in office by who their biggest donors are. Daily Beast has compiled an interesting snapshot of the top five donors (at this point) for each of the Republican presidential candidates and President Obama at http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/69-69/9279-the-.... Here are a few tidbits:

• Mitt Romney’s two biggest contributors are Goldman Sachs ($367,200) and Credit Suisse Group ($203,750). There’s no question that he’s Wall Street’s favorite son. No one else is even close to getting this kind of money from the big banks, including Obama.

• Ron Paul’s biggest contributors (besides himself) are US Army personnel ($24,503) and US Air Force personnel ($23,335). I don’t know how much these same military donors gave other candidates, but it would appear there are a lot of them that support the one candidate that is pledged to get them out of harm’s way in Afghanistan and other war zones.

• John Huntsman’s major contributors include $29,000 from Ultimate Fighting Championship, which sponsors a cage-fighting league in Nevada. No, I don’t have a clue either.

Oil Companies Wind the Clock on Obama’s Keystone XL Pipeline Decision

The pound of flesh Republicans extracted from Obama on keeping the government running last month was that he’d have to decide on the Keystone XL pipeline next month, not delaying it until 2013. The idea was to force Obama to choose between losing support of either environmentalists or some sectors of labor before the November election.

In Grist, Bill McKibben lays out just how the oil companies are pulling the strings in Congress, and how we’ve got to mobilize to stop this democracy-for-sale downward spiral. Here’s an excerpt:

Speaker of the House John Boehner, who insisted that the Keystone approval decision be speeded up, has gotten $1,111,080 from the fossil-fuel industry during his tenure. His Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell, who shepherded the bill through his chamber, has raked in $1,277,208 in the course of his tenure in Washington . . . I don't want to be hopelessly naïve. I want to be hopefully naïve. It would be relatively easy to change this: You could provide public financing for campaigns instead of letting corporations pay. It's the equivalent of having the National Football League hire referees instead of asking the teams to provide them.

The full article is at http://www.grist.org/politics/2012-01-05-time-to-stop-being-cynical-abou....

Go Portland!

As I’m writing this, the Portland City Council is discussing and voting on a resolution opposing corporate personhood and supporting a constitutional amendment to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous 2010 Citizens United decision. So far, Missoula, MT, Boulder, CO and Madison, WI have passed similar resolutions.

Since these resolutions have no binding power, it’s easy to dismiss their importance. I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You’re seeing the seeds of a mass movement, aligned with Occupy Wall Street, that are shaping the future – I would go so far as to say the very survival – of our democracy.

For the full resolution, see http://www.portlandonline.com/auditor/index.cfm?c=50265&a=380759.

Viva la France

You’ve got to love the French – Paris, the Riviera, fine wines, French fries, Nicolas Sarkozy. Wait a minute . . . Sarkozy? Yes, the conservative prime minister.

I’m no expert on Sarkozy, but I love him for what he just announced: he wants France to institute a financial transactions tax. He has said the tax is a “moral issue,” making the investment banks start to pay back some of the money they’ve taken from the public. With the budget deficits his country, and most countries, are facing, it’s just common sense to do this.

This kind of tax has been put forth by Rep. Peter DeFazio and Sen. Tom Harkin several times in bills in Congress, but haven’t gotten anywhere due to Republican opposition. And let’s be clear – President Obama has so far refused to support it, bowing to pressure from his buddies on Wall Street. I can’t imagine a more popular issue to stand behind, if only he has the guts to do it. Maybe if Mitt Romney brings in tens of millions of dollars (see above) from Wall Street to kick him out of the White House, he’ll reconsider. For the full story, see Jeff Cohen’s article at http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/357-europe/9392-obama-sarkoz....

Really Good News

From the Big Sky country comes this Big Story: the Montana Supreme Court voted 5-2 that the state’s ban on corporate political donations, which dates back to 1912, could stand. This is in direct defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

Even one of the judges voting in the minority, for God’s sake, slammed Citizens United. Judge James Nelson: “It is utter nonsense to think that ordinary citizens or candidates can spend enough to place their experience, wisdom, and views before the voters and keep pace with the virtually unlimited spending capacity of corporations . . . In spending ability, bigger really is better, and with campaign advertising and attack ads, quantity counts. In the end, candidates and the public will become mere bystanders in elections.”

In other words, the Montana Court ruled, like the vast majority of Americans already know, in favor of common knowledge and common sense. By itself, this case can’t over-rule Citizens United, and most likely will be challenged. But it’s part of the growing groundswell of disgust with the influence of big money, especially corporate, in our politics and government. For the full story from law professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ciara-torresspelliscy/double-barrel-blast-....

More Really Good News

On December 21, the EPA took a long-overdue action that Grist’s Dave Roberts compared to “an advance on par with getting lead out of gasoline.” The new EPA rules restrict mercury, one of the deadliest by-products of burning coal for electricity. Going into effect in 2014, the rules will force power companies to either install pollution controls or close the plants. This will not only be a major boon to public health but also benefit the environment through reduction of carbon dioxide generation, the main cause of global warming.

How dangerous is mercury? In a letter to President Obama urging the passage of these rules nearly two dozen leading health scientists emphasized that “each atom (of mercury) that ends up in the body can be toxic to all types of cells . . . exposure to mercury in any form places a heavy burden on the biochemical machinery within cells of living organisms.” Mercury causes birth defects, learning disabilities, respiratory diseases and tens of thousands of premature deaths a year.

So who would be against lowering the levels of a highly toxic substance that lowers I.Q.’s and kills people? Republican leadership, of course, who are in bed with the coal companies and actively trying to gut the EPA of its authority to regulate the environment. And it isn’t just the more rabid anti-environmentalists in the GOP. Jon Huntsman, touted as the most reasonable of the current presidential contenders, recently denounced, according to Paul Krugman, “the E.P.A.’s “regulatory reign of terror,” and predicting that the new rules will cause blackouts by next summer, which would be a neat trick considering that the rules won’t even have taken effect yet.”

Roberts’ article on the health and regulations is at http://www.grist.org/fossil-fuels/2011-12-21-the-mercury-rules-announced... and Krugman’s on the politics is at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/opinion/krugman-springtime-for-toxics....

Really Bad News

Many publications compile their “10 Best” or “10 Worst” lists at this time of year. I’m not that ambitious, but here are my nominations for the two events that make me lose more sleep than anything else:

Climate Change/Global Warming:

No matter which term you use, we’re getting very close to the point of no return. I’ve been independently studying this issue for the last 12 years, spending hundreds of hours researching the science. The evidence is simply overwhelming that this is a phenomenon that threatens the foundation of life as we know it – species extinction, food supply, the economy and even the stability of politics and government, shaky as they are.

In 2011, there were more record-breaking extreme weather events than in any previous year. On average, we have three or four. Last year we had 12. Three of the largest tornado outbreaks in history ravaged the country, including the twister that devastated Joplin, MO, leveling the town and killing almost 160 people.

It was the hottest summer Texas has ever seen – Wichita Falls had more than 100 consecutive days of 100-degree heat. That state suffered its worst ever drought, with losses in crops, livestock and timber reaching $10 billion. Nationwide, more than 6,000 heat records were broken.

Of course, no one can say definitively that climate change is the cause of a single serious weather event. And obviously, some years have more extreme weather events than others. But no one can deny that the trend has been toward more warming, more droughts and more pushing the extremes. A recent PBS report featuring Kathryn Sullivan, oceanographer and deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Jeff Masters, meteorologist for the Weather Underground, is excellent. As Masters observed, our climate is “like being on steroids.” The video and transcript are at http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2012-01-01-like-being-on-steroids-pb....

Exxon Mobil, other oil companies and the coal industry are the corporate forces behind much of the pseudo-science designed to cast doubt and cause confusion on climate change. There isn’t one Republican presidential contender that dares say what a massive problem this is. Romney, Huntsman and Gingrich have all done major flip-flops. And please don’t assume this is just on the national level. The Oregon Republican party has this statement in its official 2010 platform: “Human-caused carbon dioxide emissions have minimal impact on climate change.”

The Other Cliff We’re Rushing Over – Our Civil Liberties

Both houses of Congress passed the National Defense Appropriations Act by a wide margin and President Obama signed it quietly over the holidays. Included in this bill was Amendment 1031, which allows the military to arrest U.S. citizens, hold us indefinitely without bringing charges and, if they want, never allowing us a trial. We could never see the light of day again.

We’re becoming a police state, and our own elected leaders are paving the road to the end of our democracy. President Obama tells us not to worry, that he and his administration would never detain anyone who isn’t a terrorist. He’s just not that kind of guy, he would have us think.

I wish I could believe him, but I don’t. He has been every bit as awful on eroding our civil liberties as George Bush, and he was the one pushing for the authority of the executive branch, i.e. him, to jail people without charges through the military.

For two excellent articles, see Naomi Wolf’s comments at http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/9236-focus-naomi-wolf-nda... and Jonathan Turley at http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/9240-the-ndaa-is-our-maya....

Happy Holidays Music

Nothing says Christmas quite like four Unitarian pranksters singing a parody of corporations to the tune of Handel’s Messiah. Not only are they hilarious, they even have beautiful singing voices. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws0WSNRpy3g

Fox News Harming Republicans?

Fox News is often regarded as the Wizard behind the Republican Oz, claiming millions of followers who buy everything they say. However, one of the most perceptive articles (http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/8931-how-fox-news-is-help...) I’ve seen is by Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian UK, whose counter-intuitive take is that Fox is actually harming the R’s by insisting on candidates that share their wacko ideology that won’t fly with Americans who haven’t drunk the right-wing Kool-Aid. Here are a few excerpts:

“If one is to flourish rather than wither in the Fox spotlight, there are several articles of faith to which one must subscribe – from refusing to believe in human-made climate change, and insisting that Christians are an embattled minority in the US, persecuted by a liberal, secular, bi-coastal elite, to believing that government regulation is always wrong, and that any attempt to tax the wealthiest people is immoral. Those who deviate are rapidly branded foreign, socialist or otherwise un-American.”

And quoting David Frum, former Bush speechwriter: “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us – and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”

And finally: “A series of surveys has proven that Fox viewers are woefully ignorant of current affairs, the latest study revealing that it is actually better to consume no news than to watch Fox: you end up better informed.” Fox has never been a corporation willing to let facts stand in the way of their opinions.

Look at This Map

Check this out:

This is a representation from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of ocean currents leading from the nuclear disaster at Fukushima to the West Coast of the U.S. The first peer-reviewed study documenting the health hazards of Fukushima estimates that 14,000 people in the U.S. died prematurely from effects of its radioactive debris. The most vulnerable were infants.

The detected levels of Iodine-131 in precipitation in the U.S. were 390 times higher than normal in Boise, ID, 190 times in Salt Lake and even 92 times higher in Boston.

All this, and the nuclear power industry is still trying to push the building of more nuclear power plants around the world and in the U.S., using our tax dollars to subsidize them. For the full article on the study, see http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/312-16/9004-study-us-deaths....

What You’re Not Hearing from the Corporate Media on the House Republican Payroll Tax Extension Bill

All the headlines the past week have been about the inability of Congress to agree on the payroll tax extension bill, which also has major provisions extending unemployment benefits and Medicare payments. The Senate passed a compromise bill easily that required President Obama to make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, which of course has nothing to do with taxes or jobs, but the GOP wanted to put Obama in a difficult political position.

The standard narrative is that the Senate has kicked the can for another two months and then will have to figure out how to pay for it – as far as I can tell, this is accurate. The other part is that the House bill, rejecting this short-term fix, will go for another year. Here’s what you’re not hearing, according to radio host Thom Hartmann and Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/payroll-tax-cut-house-rejects-e...). The House Republican bill, pushed by the Tea Party faction, would require, among other things:

1. President Obama would have to APPROVE (not just decide upon) the Keystone XL pipeline before a full environmental assessment
2. Allow states to require anyone collecting unemployment benefits to submit to drug testing
3. Require the unemployed to take GED or other training programs
4. Strip the EPA of authority to regulate incinerators and boilers
5. Stops the Affordable Care Act’s prevention and public health fund, wiping out $8 billion in funding

In short, an all-out attack on the unemployed, the environment and public health. In fact, unemployment benefits could be cut to 59 weeks, instead of 99. The assault on the EPA’s authority would lead to an estimated 20,000 premature deaths from the resulting pollution from incinerators and boilers.

Follow-up on the Erosion of our Civil Liberties

As usual, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald has done the most penetrating analysis of President Obama’s stance toward the erosion of our civil liberties that are embedded in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bill recently passed by both the House and Senate. Obama has indicated he will not veto the bill, reversing his earlier stance.

Greenwald reports on an aspect of this that I haven’t seen from anyone else – Obama WANTS indefinite detention by the military of anyone, including U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, and he wants it under his control. And if you think that Obama would be more, um, civil toward this devastation of civil liberties, than a Republican president, ask Bradley Manning. Here are the reports from Greenwald, one from Salon (see the Three Myths article) and one from the Guardian UK:

http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/370-wikileaks/8930-bradley-manni...

Have a Great Holiday

I’ll be taking a little time off from the newsletter until after the holidays. Until then, best wishes to everyone.

Hey, Kids, Get a Load of These

I’ll be the first to admit that I eat too many cookies during the holidays (ok, ok, all year round), most of them laden with sugar.

But at least the cookies aren’t being portrayed as healthy foods – we all know they’re not. But that’s not the case with kids’ cereals, the food industry’s equivalent of wolves in sheep’s clothing. How bad are they?

• Kellogg’s Honey Smacks is 56% sugar by weight – one cup has more sugar than a Hostess Twinkie
• Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch Original has 44% sugar
• A cup of 45 different kids’ cereals has more sugar than three Chips Ahoy! Cookies

The Environmental Working Group recently released a devastating report on the cereals. In it, they cited federal government efforts to curtail this assault on our kids’ health, which included enacting minimum guidelines to be implemented starting in 2016. Of course, the corporations making big bucks off the cereals, such as General Mills and media and entertainment companies, lobbied furiously against them and convinced the Federal Trade Commission to take itself out of the discussion. Instead, they proposed their own, virtually meaningless, voluntary guidelines. And we all know how well self-regulated industries set and abide by their own rules, don’t we?

For the full story, see http://www.grist.org/food/2011-12-07-cereal-offenders, which includes a link to EWG’s recommended cereals.

EPA: Fracking’s a Risk

Hydrofracturing, better known as “fracking,” is the process of injecting pressurized water, sand and toxic chemicals into the ground to break up rock, typically shale. This enables natural gas and oil to be extracted.

If you’ve never seen the 2010 movie “Gasland,” I highly recommend it. The documentary, nominated for an Academy Award, chronicles the disastrous environmental results of fracking, including the now-famous film clips of flames shooting out of homeowners’ faucets. Filmmaker Josh Fox spent three years in numerous states, chronicling hundreds of examples of water contamination. As he says in his article in the Guardian (UK), http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/271-38/8837-shale-gas-drillings-..., “It goes like this: the frackers move in – and all of a sudden your water turns color, or can be lit on fire, or smells like turpentine or leaves burn marks on you after you take a shower. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots.”

Finally, after a three-year investigation of nearly 50 wells in Pavilion, WY, the EPA has come out with a report that confirms the risks. It stated that “. . . the data indicates likely impact to groundwater that can be explained by hydraulic fracturing.” According to Fox, the water in Pavilion can never be clean, and he reported that the same contamination of water by toxic fracking chemicals in Dimrock, PA, has occurred. The oil and natural gas companies have moved from the West and are pushing for drilling in a big way in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states.

Of course, the oil industry continues to insist that fracking is perfectly safe and wouldn’t hurt a flea, and are running loads of TV commercials to convince us. By the way, fracking was exempted from the 2005 Safe Drinking Water Act – it’s known as the “Halliburton Loophole,” pushed by Vice President Dick Cheney. And the Republicans continue to whine that there are too many regulations . . .
The Environmental Working Group also has an excellent report on this at http://www.ewg.org/reports/Free-Pass-for-Oil-and-Gas/Oil-and-Gas-Industr....

Republicans to Congress – Your Choice: the Economy or the Environment

In the current battle to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits for working Americans, the Republicans have thrown in a new twist – if you want to help workers, you’re going to have to let Keystone XL build their pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to Texas. This is going exactly backwards, locking us in to promoting the dirtiest, most carbon dioxide-producing oil on the planet, making global warming even worse. Also, it’s an oil spill waiting to happen across a wide swath of the Ogallala Aquifer. It’s a disaster.

House Speaker John Boehner, sticking up for his buddies in the oil industry, insists the pipeline would “put tens of thousands of Americans to work immediately.” He’s lying, of course.

Even the U.S. State Department, in its horribly-compromised analysis in favor of the oil industry, said it would provide a maximum 6,000 temporary jobs. A more impartial analysis by Cornell’s Global Labor Institute said it would create between 2,500 and 4,650 jobs, mostly temporary. Even TransCanada, builders of Keystone, said it would only create “hundreds” of permanent jobs.

Robert Redford, besides being an accomplished actor, is also a well-regarded environmentalist. His article on this is at http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/271-38/8868-robert-redford-keyst....

Update on National Defense Authorization Act – Obama Caving Again?

Although Barack Obama is head and shoulders over any Republican presidential candidate, all of whom scare the living daylights out of me, I have serious concerns about him. This includes his dependency on Wall Street contributions, his maddening refusal to take strong, principled stances on the environment, and his willingness to erode civil liberties.

This story is breaking as I write this, but it looks as if he is now caving in again on the National Defense Authorization Act’s provision that the military, not civilian police, can arrest people suspected of terrorist activity and throw them in prison indefinitely without trial. This is in spite of Obama’s own FBI director saying the bill is a major mistake.

There is a fair amount of weirdness on this bill, which seems to contradict itself. On one hand, it includes the provision cited above. On the other, it says that the previous authority of civilian police forces isn’t affected. Confused? So am I. But it sure looks like our Constitutional rights are being eroded again, and Obama isn’t doing enough to stand up for them. For the best article I’ve seen, see Politico’s http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2011/12/obama-pulls-veto-t....

Finally, Some Clarity

As someone who spent many years battling genetic engineering, I’m totally opposed to cloning. But if I had to make an exception, it would be Bernie Sanders, independent senator from Vermont. I’d sure like to see more Bernie’s in Congress.

This is from a speech he recently gave entitled “Despair Is Not an Option” http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/8866-focus-despair-is-not.... He clarifies the problems, the frustrations, the solutions and why we must keep up the good fight:

“Our job is to simply bring to fruition what the overwhelming majority of the American people want. They want an economy that works for the middle class and working families and not just for the rich. They want everybody in this country to have health care as a right. They want to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They want to move away from these gross inequalities in income and wealth.

We have the people behind us. They have the money. And at the end of the day, the people will be stronger than the money.”

– I had a lot of responses on the Post Office segment in my newsletter a few days ago, including some very good questions. I did more investigating, talked to several union and government officials, and have some additional information that should help clarify the issue.

The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act was a major bill with many provisions, some of them helpful. The not-helpful one which created the 75-year funding for retiree benefits was added by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) at the last minute. There were a lot of complicated issues regarding funding former military veterans’ benefits, including which government pot of money should fund them. Collins’ amendment addressing the issues, in my opinion (others may disagree), wasn’t a mean-spirited attempt to harm unions, although at least one major union opposed it.

The bill passed both chambers of Congress by a voice vote, meaning it was virtually unanimous. At that time, during the height of prosperity, most believed the Post Office would have enough volume and income to pay the costs of this provision. Even though e-mail had cut into regular mail, the Post Office was still setting records for volume. When the recession hit, everything changed and volume plunged. So although the provision was introduced by a Republican, my broad-brush statement blaming it completely on the GOP wasn’t fair, and I want to clarify and say I’m sorry about that. I believe it was more miscalculation than harmful intent.

Having said that, I still firmly believe that what is going on now is all about busting the unions and the GOP’s anti-government ideology. The two main House bills introduced are the one I mentioned, H.R. 1351, introduced by Rep. Steven Lynch (D-MA) and H.R. 2309, introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This is the committee that deals with these bills.

Issa’s bill has one sponsor – Issa. According to the American Postal Workers Union, it would “destroy the Postal Service as we know it.” It aims to lay off hundreds of thousands of postal workers, eliminate processing centers and post offices and unilaterally cut wages and abolish benefits. It would gut collective bargaining. It could lead to the elimination of home delivery for about 90% of homes and businesses. And it would do absolutely nothing about the 75-year pre-funding of retiree health benefits. It passed Issa’s committee 22-18, with all Republicans but one voting for it and all Democrats voting against it.

Lynch’s bill has 227 co-sponsors, including 29 Republicans. This is already more than half the members of the House. First and foremost, it would help address the 75-year pre-funding. It would save jobs, processing centers, and post offices, and preserve 6-day mail delivery. It never went anywhere in the committee because Issa and Republican leadership buried it.

Finally, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently introduced a bill in the Senate, S. 1853, that would accomplish many of the objectives of the Lynch bill.

For anyone interested in more details, the two main union websites are http://www.nalc.org/ and http://www.apwu.org/index2.htm, and Bernie Sanders’ is http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=54f1531a-0ee1-4726-961d-59e1....

Please take action – see the basics on this URL http://www.saveamericaspostalservice.org/2309.html and contact your Congressional representatives. Negotiations are going on right now for the future of the post office. Thank you!

Going Postal
Two days ago, I read an Associated Press article in the Oregonian on the proposals to cut back the services of the U.S. Post Office. This would include closing 250 of the mail processing centers and eliminating Saturday and one-day mail deliveries of first class mail. It would also include closing 3,700 local post offices, which would be especially harmful for rural communities. In all, about 100,000 jobs would be lost. These cuts would harm people receiving drugs through the mail, weekly magazines that depend on timely deliveries and companies like Netflix that market their speedy deliveries.

Yesterday, riding my bike at the gym, I watched the news on the Today Show on NBC, basically saying the same things. It’s certainly accurate that mail volume has declined due to communication on the Internet. But the narrative has been reduced to this - too little income and too high expenses, especially labor. What are you going to do?

Here’s one thing we can do – shine a light on what the MAJOR problem is with the funding of the post office, which is being ignored or suppressed by the corporate media. (One exception – the NY Times ran an op-ed today from the president of the postal workers union – see below.)

Q. So what IS the real problem?
A. The Post Office, since 2007, has had to pre-fund retiree benefits 75 years ahead over a 10-year period. In other words, they have to set aside money for people they haven’t even hired yet.

Q. Huh?
A. That’s right. No other employer, public or private, in the country or, as far as I know, in the world, has this requirement. In fact, this requirement doesn’t exist anywhere else in the solar system, including Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto. However – full disclosure – I’m not sure Pluto is counted as a planet any more.

Q. How is taxpayer money affected by this?
A. Our taxes aren’t affected at all, since the Post Office doesn’t get any taxpayer money. It’s totally self-sufficient, paying for itself through postage products and services.

Q. How has it been affecting the Post Office’s bottom line?
A. The $5.5 billion annual payments since 2007 - $21 billion - have turned a profitable operation into red ink. If this fast-forwarded money hadn’t been counted, the Post Office would have shown a profit of $611 million over the past four years.

Q. Isn’t this 75-year requirement crazy?
A. Of course.

Q. How did this happen?
A. In 2006, the Republican-controlled Congress passed a bill that contained this little time bomb, ensuring that the Post Office couldn’t be profitable. President Bush happily signed it.

Q. Why would the Republicans pass a bill that would force the Post Office to raise rates, cut back services, delay deliveries, and create so much unemployment?
A. One word – unions. The Post Office is the second largest employer in the country and the single largest unionized work force in the country. Even though they’re smaller and weaker than before, union members, who vote predominantly Democrat, are essential for turning out campaign volunteers. Unions are still the single largest organizational counter-force preventing a complete corporate take-over of the country. Also, this fits perfectly with the R’s ideological obsession that “Government is bad” and their efforts to privatize virtually everything.

Q. Could companies like UPS and Federal Express pick up mail delivery if the Post Office was destroyed?
A. UPS and Federal Express already work in cooperation with the Post Office to deliver their packages to many small, rural communities, because it isn’t profitable for them. They’re in it for the money, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The Post Office is in it for serving the public – a big difference that saves consumers lots of money.

ABC News estimated that to avoid cuts in the current system, the Post Office would need to raise first class postage to 63 cents. Fed Ex would charge $8.66 and UPS $19.72.

Q. So bottom line, if this 75-year requirement was eliminated, we wouldn’t have to look at all these cuts in services?
A. Yep, although that wouldn’t necessarily rule out some rate increases and not hiring additional employees following retirements.

Q. Any chance of that happening in Congress?
A. Slim. Rep. Steven Lynch (D-MA) introduced a bill to do this a few months ago with 193 co-sponsors, including a few Republicans. But with Mitch McConnell and John Boehner calling the shots in Congress, it never saw the light of day.

For details, see http://crooksandliars.com/kenneth-quinnell/assault-american-unions-exten... and http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/12/06/how-to-help-the-post-off....

Going Nuclear

Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician, was the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, my former employer and the winner of the 1985 Nobel Prize for its work on preventing nuclear war and spreading the word about the dangers of nuclear power and radiation.

She has written an excellent article on the lessons of Fukushima, a situation that is far more dangerous than what we’re hearing about, and the corporate push to build more nuclear power plants. An excerpt:

“Studies in Belarus found that in 2000, 14 years after the Chernobyl disaster, fewer than 20 percent of children were considered "practically healthy," compared to 90 percent before Chernobyl. Now, Fukushima has been called the second-worst nuclear disaster after Chernobyl. Much is still uncertain about the long-term consequences. Fukushima may well be on par with or even far exceed Chernobyl in terms of the effects on public health, as new information becomes available.”

For the full article, see http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/271-38/8713-after-fukushima-....

You Really Don’t Want to Eat This Stuff

Atrazine is a pesticide, produced by the Syngenta corporation, that is routinely applied to about 75% of the corn grown in the U.S. There are some things you should know about it:

• It’s a proven endocrine disrupter, totally messing up animal sexual organs and interfering with human women’s menstruation
• There’s a strong chance it’s causing several different kinds of cancer
• It’s been banned in the European Union for the past seven years and the corn crops are doing just fine there
• The EPA is doing virtually nothing to take it off the market here

For a great story in Grist on the lack of strong regulations in the U.S., see http://www.grist.org/industrial-agriculture/2011-11-30-Dont-drink-the-we.... And for your own protection, eat organic as much as possible.

Time for a Laugh

I know, I know, nothing can match the hilarity of the Republican presidential primary campaign. How can you beat Donald Trump, feuding with George Will and Jon Huntsman, hosting a debate after which he will anoint one of the candidates (if any show up) with his endorsement?

But this Jonathan Stewart segment on Fox News’ “War on Christmas” is right up there – enjoy. http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/tue-december-6-2011-jonah-hill.