Archive for December 2009
Nation’s Largest RN Organization Says Healthcare Bill Cedes Too Much to Insurance Industry
By National Nurses United Dec. 21, 2009
The 150,000 member National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in the U.S., today criticized the healthcare bill now advancing in the U.S. Senate saying it is deeply flawed and grants too much power to the giant insurers.
“It is tragic to see the promise from Washington this year for genuine, comprehensive reform ground down to a seriously flawed bill that could actually exacerbate the healthcare crisis and financial insecurity for American families, and that cedes far too much additional power to the tyranny of a callous insurance industry,” said NNU co-president Karen Higgins, RN.
America’s Artificial Rift: The Two Party System
Anthony Gucciardi
Infowars.com December 28, 2009
On any given day you can find a news story that focuses on the conflict between democrats and republicans, or Group A and Group B. These groups could be anything, but as long as they are toted as being the opposite of each other, they will clash. When one party supports a bill, the other tends to oppose it. This holds true for both sides, creating a never-ceasing battle over political parties, as opposed to policy.
World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco
Because of a myopic focus on greenhouse gas reduction only, and a lack of accountability to local communities, many projects are producing other environmental and social ills that are diametrically opposed to the program’s stated objectives.
In the name of environmental protection, the World Bank is brokering carbon emission trading arrangements that destroy indigenous farmlands around the world.
The effort to coordinate global action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions began with the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1997 and now has been ratified by 183 nations. While many of the strategies established in the protocol are encouraging, some are proving to have fatal flaws. One such program, known as Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) investment, has become a means by which industrialized countries avoid reducing their own emissions through the implementation of “emissions reduction” projects in developing nations.
More herbicide use reported on genetically modified crops
A report has found that farmers are using more herbicides on genetically engineered soybeans, corn, and cotton because of resistant weeds.
By Julie Masis Contributor to the Christian Science Monitor / December 21, 2009
A report released by the Organic Center found that the amount of herbicides used on genetically engineered crops has increased in the past 10 years, not decreased as might be expected. Since many genetically engineered crops were modified so that farmers could spray Roundup, or Glyphosate, to kill the weeds in their fields but not the crops themselves, the expectation was that less herbicide would be required. But the new report found that this is not what happened.
Wisconsin farmer Jim Lange loads a hopper of genetically modified corn. The blue color is insecticide covering kernels.
Chevron Using Six Public Relations Firms to Discredit Indigenous Groups In Ecuador
Daryl Hannah tests water in Ecuador
Chevron Using Six Public Relations Firms to Discredit Indigenous Groups In $27.3 Billion Environmental Case In Ecuador
Lobbyists – Mac McLarty, John Breaux, Trent Lott, Mickey Kantor, Carla Hills and Others – Charged With Misrepresenting Facts
Amazon Defense Coalition
20 November 2009
Washington, DC – Chevron has retained at least twelve public relations firms and lobbyists to discredit claims of Amazon indigenous groups on the eve of an expected multi-billion dollar judgment against the oil giant in an environmental lawsuit in Ecuador, according to representatives of the tribes in the U.S.
Although Chevron is near the top of the list of highest-spending lobbyists in Washington, the campaign seems to be backfiring. Politico, one of the most influential publications on Capitol Hill, reported this week that Chevron’s lobbying was “drawing fire from environmentalists, media ethicists, state pension funds, New York’s attorney general, members of Congress, and even Barack Obama when he was a Senator.”
Farmers Encouraged To Spread Toxic Coal Ash On Fields
Beth BuczynskiDespite what coal industry executives and opponents of renewable energy research would have you believe, America is running out of this filthy, costly, fossil fuel- and not a moment too soon.
Businessweek Magazine recently reported that “the federal government is encouraging farmers to spread a chalky waste from coal-fired power plants on their fields to loosen and fertilize soil even as it considers regulating coal wastes for the first time.”
Just over a year ago, an enormous coal ash spill took place at Tennessee’s Kingston TVA Coal Plant, spewing 525 million to 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge (enough to cover 400 acres in coal ash about 6 feet deep) into the Emory River, potentially contaminating the water supply for Chattanooga, Tennessee as well as millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.
With clean up efforts STILL underway for the TVA spill, which the EPA called “one of the worst environmental disasters of its kind in history,” both the EPA and U.S. Department of Agriculture are now brazenly promoting what they call the wastes’ “beneficial uses” in an effort to deal with the excessive ash piling up around the nation’s coal-fired plants.
Wendell Berry: Compromise, Hell!
Economic WMDs are being used against our own people in a version of “freedom” that makes greed the dominant economic virtue
by Wendell Berry Orion Magazine
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY—I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all—by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians—be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.
How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.
S. 1681, “The Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act Of 2009”
Senator Leahy has introduced S. 1681, “The Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act Of 2009, but it has not progressed to a vote. Sen. Leahy’s bill removes anti-trust exemptions for health insurers granted by the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, a loophole that has been seriously abused. Insurance industry lobbyists have seen to it that this loophole has not been closed in the current health legislation under consideration.
As columnist Bob Buckley has written: “Since health insurers and medical malpractice insurers are not subject to the anti-trust laws, they can get together and determine the prices that they charge for health insurance. The two key provisions of the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act [S. 1681] will repeal the federal anti-trust exemption for health insurance and medical malpractice insurance companies for flagrant anti-trust violations, including price-fixing, bid rigging, and market allocations, and subject health insurers and medical malpractice insurers to the same good-competition laws that apply to virtually every other company doing business in the United States.
The insurance companies are prospering behind this exemption. The health insurance industry does not have to play by the same good-competition rules as other industries. According to Senator Leahy, anti-trust oversight of the insurance industry will provide consumers with confidence that insurance companies are operating in a competitive marketplace.”
Please support Bill S 1681 and insist that it receives the vote it deserves! Take Action
US launches Cruise Missiles on Yemen
dead Yemeni child
How many wars do we need? What possible ‘self-defense’ justification can we offer from thousands of miles away?
Cruise Missile Attacks in Yemen
By Glenn Greenwald
December 21, 2009 – “Salon” — Given what a prominent role “Terrorism” plays in our political discourse, it’s striking how little attention is paid to American actions which have the most significant impact on that problem. In addition to our occupation of Iraq, war escalation in Afghanistan, and secret bombings in Pakistan, President Obama late last week ordered cruise missile attacks on two locations in Yemen, which “U.S. officials” say were “suspected Al Qaeda hideouts.” The main target of the attacks, Al Qaeda member Qasim al Rim, was not among those killed, but: “a local Yemeni official said on Sunday that 49 civilians, among them 23 children and 17 women, were killed in air strikes against Al-Qaeda, which he said were carried out ‘indiscriminately’.” Media reports across the Muslim world — though, not of course, within the U.S. — are highlighting the dead civilians from the U.S. strike (one account from an official Iranian outlet began: “U.S. Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Barack Obama has signed the order for a recent military strike on Yemen in which scores of civilians, including children, have been killed, a report says”)………
Call for AIG Open Source Investigation (and Goldman Implications)
December 20, 2009 Nakedcapitalism.com
Spitzer, Partnoy, Black Call for AIG Open Source Investigation (and Goldman Implications)
An op-ed in the Sunday New York Times by former investigators and prosecutors Eliot Spitzer, Frank Parnoy, and William Black calls for AIG to put non-privileged e-mails, accounting documents, and financial models on line to allow for an “open source” investigation. The questions they want to examine include:
Wake-up Call 