Under a new law, doctors in Pennsylvania can access information about chemicals used in natural gas extraction—but they won’t be able to share it with their patients. A provision buried in a law passed last month is drawing scrutiny from the public health and environmental community, who argue that it will “gag” doctors who want to raise concerns related to oil and gas extraction with the people they treat and the general public.

This is absolutely preposterous, and should not be tolerated in a so-called free society, a democracy to boot. Further, is this not an attack on the First Amendment? “The government shall make no law….” but the government did. I would say it MUST BE CHALLENGED in court, but my faith in the courts and especially SCOTUS is at an all time low.

Ryan J. Reilly March 29, 2012, 11:05 AM 6332 35

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark is jumping into the voting rights fight, with his group craigconnects publishing an infographic that illustrates the surge of voting restrictions that have been enacted in states around the country in recent years.

“What I learned in high school civics class is that an attack on voting rights is virtually the same as an attack on the country,” Newmark said in a statement. “So I asked people smarter than me to help me do what George Washington would have wanted me to do, collect and release the information you’re getting from us today.”

“I think all Americans should be concerned about these new voter restrictions,” Newmark said. “Voting is our fundamental right. If the states continue to restrict who can vote, who knows where they will stop?”

The infograph is embedded below, larger version here.

Craig Newmark, Voter Identification, Voter suppression, Voting, Voting Rights Act, voting

Voter suppression is rampant these days. It’s not NEW, it’s just been taken to a high art this year by Republicans who are serious about winning at all costs, even if they turn this into the fascist totalitarian state of their dreams. (So ironic to abuse democracy to create a fascist theocracy, isn’t it?)

Wendell Potter spent 20 years as top executive with CIGNA. He wrote “Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans”. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act – with a decision expected in June – the insurance industry whistleblower says the industry’s real goal is not to repeal the law, but to defeat Democrats in November.

[Wendell Potter]: “They don’t want the bill – quite honestly – to be overturned or repealed. They want the bill to go forward with the individual mandate intact. But what they want to do is to get people to vote out the Democrats who voted for the bill so that they’ll have more friends in Congress to strip out the consumer protections.”

Potter says for-profit health insurers are killing health health care and their unsustainable system will implode within a few years.

This needs to be widely disseminated and understood!

As­par­tame works as an ex­ci­to­toxin, stim­u­lat­ing a re­sponse in cells to sim­u­late the ef­fects of sweet­ness with­out ac­tu­ally being sweet. Over ex­er­tion of these cells leads to the var­i­ous health con­di­tions that cur­rently wreak havoc on the pub­lic.

Ex­ci­to­tox­ins have been found to stim­u­late can­cer growth and metas­ta­sis. As­par­tame, es­sen­tially, feeds can­cer cells. If this weren’t enough to con­vince you to drop the diet soda habit, the process by which as­par­tame is made in­volves a highly toxic and volatile and ge­net­i­cally en­gi­neered form of bac­te­ria waste — hardly some­thing that would be con­sid­ered safe by a rea­son­able stan­dard.

And yet, the ‘safe and rea­son­able’ FDA has ap­proved as­par­tame for use. Know­ing the ga­mete of health risks that as­par­tame is re­spon­si­ble for, and know­ing the his­tory of FDA ap­proved prod­ucts, your health be­comes your own re­spon­si­bil­ity. Being aware of its pres­ence in over 6,000 prod­ucts and count­ing is es­sen­tial.

They really don’t care that they are poisoning us slowly, so slowly we don’t notice at first. Just say NO to aspartame — always. In fact, your best option is to stay away from all artificial sweeteners.

How could local gov­ern­ments re­duce their bor­row­ing costs and in­sure against in­ter­est rate volatil­ity with­out putting them­selves at the mercy of this Wall Street cul­ture of greed?  One pos­si­bil­ity is for them to own some banks.  State and mu­nic­i­pal gov­ern­ments could put their rev­enues in their own pub­licly-owned banks; lever­age this money into credit as all banks are en­ti­tled to do; and use that credit ei­ther to fund their own pro­jects or to buy mu­nic­i­pal bonds at the mar­ket rate, hedg­ing the in­ter­est rates on their own bonds. 

The cre­ation of credit has too long been del­e­gated to a cadre of pri­vate mid­dle­men who have fla­grantly abused the priv­i­lege.  We can avoid the de­riv­a­tives trap by cut­ting out the mid­dle­men and cre­at­ing our own credit, fol­low­ing the prece­dent of the Bank of North Dakota and many other pub­lic banks abroad.

Yet another way the big banks are stealing our national — and personal — treasure. And Congress sits idly by (counting their donations!). Well, at least there’s an alternative mentioned, and it sounds like a good one. As we who support #OWS and the Occupy Movement wonder to ourselves “well, how could we structure things instead?” here’s one possible answer.

Elizabeth Warren has asked Congress to stop the secret bailout of AIG, and so should you.

At the height of the financial crisis, we spent billions of dollars bailing out failed insurance giant AIG after its reckless bets on mortgage-backed securities went south.

And now, according to recent reports, the Treasury is engaging in a second, secret bailout of the firm — one that’s costing U.S. taxpayers billions, and artificially boosting AIG’s profits, leading directly to higher share prices and bigger executive bonuses for some of the same people who ran the company into the ground.¹

Elizabeth Warren and three other members of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program she chaired — including two members appointed by Congressional Republicans — have denounced this stealth bailout of AIG and asked Congress to intervene.²

Tell Congress: Stop the secret AIG bailout.

The issue is about something called “net operating loss,” which in normal circumstances allows corporations to use losses in one year to offset their future tax bills.

But when companies are taken over, as AIG was when the government spent over $100 billion to keep the company afloat, they are supposed to be barred from using their net operating loss in this way.

Here’s where things become suspect. In 2008 the Treasury issued a special waiver to a handful of companies, including AIG, that allows for their net operating losses to offset taxes owed to the government.

At a time of brutal budget cuts at all levels of government, it would be simply unconscionable for Congress to allow for a multi-billion dollar subsidy to AIG’s shareholders and executives.

Tell Congress: Stop the secret AIG bailout.

By some estimates, the waiver given by the Treasury will allow AIG, a company that claimed over $19 billion in profits just from the last three months of 2011, to avoid paying anything in taxes for a decade.

With tens of billions in tax dollars on the line, Congress needs to step in and pass a law to revoke AIG’s waiver and require the company to pay its fair share in taxes.

Furthermore, the Treasury has clearly abused its discretion to grant waivers like this, and Congress needs to take away the U.S. Treasury’s ability to allow companies like AIG to dodge taxes.

Tell Congress: Stop the secret AIG bailout.

1. “Bending the Tax Code, and Lifting A.I.G.’s Profit,” Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times, 2-27-12
2. “Former bailout watchdogs criticize AIG tax break,” Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times, 3-12-2012.

Holy Cow, AGAIN??? I’ve got an idea on how we can save money. This’ll work, too. Just skip the government-as-middle-man and hand over all our money and let all these corporations write our laws. Easy, right? I mean why bother with the subterfuge that we HAVE a government that’s serving the people? It’s a lie. Our government, run by corporations and corporatists, serves corporations and corporatists. All the U.S. industrialists of the 1930s who loved Hitler for his pro-business policies would love the U.S. circa 2012.

F.B.I. Targets Peaceful Anti-Fracking & Rising Tide Activists, Washington Post Reveals

sparki –> [ in Featured News, RT Newswire, RT Press Releases ] Comments Off

–>

March 11, 2012
For Immediate Release
Rising Tide Press Contact:
Scott Parkin, 415-235-0596 (mobile)
sparki@risingtidenorthamerica.org

F.B.I. targets peaceful anti-fracking and Rising Tide activists, Washington Post reveals

Rising Tide North Texas subject of intimidation campaign by federal government

In today’s Washington Post, it was revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been investigating peaceful climate and anti-fracking activists as a threat. In response to anonymous complaints Rising Tide North Texas, a part of the Rising Tide North America network, has been the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation. The FBI has visited and called for an interview Rising Tide organizer, University of North Texas (UNT) student and a marine veteran of the Afghan war Ben Kessler, as well as UNT philosophy professor Adam Briggle.

“If all I have done to be investigated as a threat is to peacefully express my opinions, then we are in serious trouble,” said Ben Kessler. “Activism is not terrorism. The only dangerous threat in North Texas is the threat that hydro-fracturing, or “fracking,” has on the health and lives of the residents of our communities.”

The article also revealed cooperation between the F.B.I. and local police in Moscow Idaho around repeated protests organized by Wild Idaho Rising Tide around the tar sands heavy haul truck shipments.

Here is the article:

As eco-terrorism wanes, governments still target activist groups seen as threat

By Juliet Eilperin, Updated: Saturday, March 10, 5:12 PM

Ben Kessler, a student at the University of North Texas and an environmental activist, was more than a little surprised that an FBI agent questioned his philosophy professor and acquaintances about his whereabouts and his sign-waving activities aimed at influencing local gas drilling rules.“It was scary,” said Kessler, who is a national organizer for the nonviolent environmental group Rising Tide North America. He said the agent approached him this past fall and said that the FBI had received an anonymous complaint and were looking into his opposition to hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking.” The bureau respected free speech, the agent told him, but was “worried about things being taken to an extreme level.”

Even as environmental and animal rights extremism in the United States is on the wane, officials at the federal, state and local level are continuing to target groups they have labeled a threat to national security, according to interviews with numerous activists, internal FBI documents and a survey of legislative initiatives across the country.

Iowa Gov. Terry Brandstad (R) signed a law this month, backed by the farm lobby, that makes it a crime to pose as an employee or use other methods of misrepresentation to get access to operations in an attempt to expose animal cruelty. Utah passed a similar bill, nicknamed an “ag-gag” law, on Wednesday. Last month, Victor VanOrden, an activist in his mid-20s, received the maximum sentence of five years in prison under a separate Iowa law for attempting to free minks from one of the state’s fur farms.

At the same time, though, acts that might be defined as eco-terrorism are down. In recent years, the broad definition has included arson, setting mink free at fur farms, campaigns to financially bankrupt animal testing firms and protests in front of the homes of some of those firms’ executives.

Michael Whelan, executive director of Fur Commission USA, estimated that in the 1990s “there were close to 20 attacks per year on our farmers” and that since 2003 there have been fewer than two attacks a year on American mink farms.

“Overall we’ve seen a decline in activity, in terms of violent criminal activity,” FBI intelligence analyst Erin Weller said in an interview.

FBI officials say two factors contribute to the reduced threat.

One is their successful prosecutions of several activists, in particular the 15 convictions in 2007 for members of the Earth Liberation Front. The national sweep of radical environmentalists was chronicled in the Oscar-nominated 2011 documentary “If a Tree Falls.” Not only did several ELF members get long prison sentences — Stanislas Meyerhoff got 13 years — but also many activists testified against others to get lighter punishments.

“That’s had an impact on the movement as a whole,” Weller said.

The second factor is that environmental and animal rights activists may view a Democratic administration as more sympathetic to their goals and be less inclined to take radical steps.

“Obviously if you think there is going to be support for your position, you’re going to use legal means rather than illegal means,” Weller said.

Despite the decline in activity, the level of scrutiny has continued, say several who track state and federal enforcement.“There’s been very little change under the Obama administration,” said Will Potter, author of the book “Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Movement Under Siege.” After factoring in several state initiatives on top of federal enforcement, Potter said, “The political climate as a whole has gotten a lot worse.”

Read the rest of the article here

###

It’s not like they haven’t been targeting the peaceful protesters of at least several generations now, but fer cryin’ out loud. Haven’t they learned YET that there’s no “there” there?? Or if there is, they’re FBI plants?? Sheesh.

Rush Limbaugh’s Advertisers, March 7

March 07, 2012 1:23 pm ET by MMFA Staff

At least 45 advertisers have reportedly dropped their ads from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show in the wake of his misogynistic attacks on Sandra Fluke.

Here are his March 7 advertisers, in the order they appeared on WABC, the flagship station for Limbaugh’s show. Audio clips of the ads have been provided to help make advertisers aware of the placement of their ads on the program.

Advertisers with links on their names have already stated that they have asked to have their ads excluded from Limbaugh’s show.

HOUR 1, COMMERCIAL BREAK 1

[ABC News update]

• New York City Office of Emergency Management, and the Ad Council [Note: The Ad Council distributes public service announcements "to the media who donate free time and space to our campaigns which ensures our messages reach the American public."]
• The American Heart Association, and the Ad Council
• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council
• Big Brothers Big Sisters, and the Ad Council
• Feeding America, and the Ad Council
• Cintas 

You MUST see this. Drop everything and take a look.