Feds Mull Comments on Eastern Idaho Phosphate Mine

By The Associated Press
More time is needed to consider public comments following the release of an environmental study on plans by Monsanto Co. to open a new phosphate mine in eastern Idaho, federal officials say.

Officials with the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management said they need several additional months to make sure their final decision complies with the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and the Groundwater Protection Rule.

"We're pretty close to having the information we need to make a decision, maybe a month or two," said Jeff Cundick, minerals branch chief for the phosphate program of the Caribou National Forest and the Bureau of Land Management.

He added there are important issues that officials need to make sure were addressed appropriately in the environmental impact statement.

Monsanto is seeking approval to open the Blackfoot Bridge Mine in the area to produce ingredients for Roundup weedkiller because its current mine is expected to be depleted within a year and a half. The impact statement was released in early March following a process that included a draft impact statement.

Monsanto Co. officials said additional delays in opening the mine could harm the company financially and cost jobs.

"Many of the environmental safeguards designed into the Blackfoot Bridge Mine must be constructed when the ground is not frozen, and ambient temperatures are moderate to warm," Dave Farnsworth, minerals lead for Monsanto Soda Springs, told the Idaho State Journal. "In Soda Springs, that gives us a very short window for construction. If the delay is a few weeks, we may yet be able to make progress this year. A longer delay, however, could severely compromise our timetable for transition from the old mine to the new one. That, in turn, jeopardizes the competitiveness of our business and puts jobs at risk."

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Despair Not: by Sandra Steingraber

By Sandra Steingraber
In Alton, Ill., downstream from Peoria, the Illinois River town where I grew up, the abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy was pumped full of bullets on a dark November night by a mob intent on silencing the man once and for all. On this evening, they succeeded.

By dawn, Elijah was dead, and his printing press-the means by which he distributed his radical ideas-lay at the bottom of the Mississippi River. The year was 1837. The Rev. Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister who attended Princeton Theological Seminary, was buried on this 35th birthday.

But the story doesn't end there.

Almost immediately, membership in antislavery societies across the nation swelled. Vowing to carry on the work of his fallen friend, Edward Beecher, president of Illinois College in Jacksonville, threw himself into abolitionist efforts and, in so doing, inspired his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who went on to write the most famous abolitionist treatise of all: Uncle Tom's Cabin. Meanwhile, Elijah's brother, Owen Lovejoy, turned his own house into a station along the Underground Railroad. Owen went on to win a seat in Congress and, along the way, befriended a young Illinois politician by the name of Abraham Lincoln. 

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We've Borrowed from the Planet and the Debt's Due

By Paul Gilding
THE Earth is full. In fact our human society and economy is now so large we have passed the limits of our planet's capacity to support us and it is overflowing.

Our current model of economic growth is driving this system, the one we rely upon for our present and future prosperity, over the cliff.

This in itself presents a major problem. It becomes a much larger challenge when we consider that billions of people are living desperate lives in appalling poverty and need their personal economy to grow rapidly to alleviate their suffering. But there is no room left.

This means things are going to change. Not because we will choose change out of philosophical or political preference, but because if we don't transform our society and economy, we risk social and economic collapse and the descent into chaos. The science on this is now clear and accepted by any rational observer.

While an initial look at the public debate may suggest controversy, any serious examination of the peer-reviewed conclusions of leading science bodies shows the core direction we are heading in is now clear. Things do not look good.

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Finding Justice for Vietnamese Victims of Monsanto's Agent Orange

By Len Aldis
On 10th August 1961 an event began that was to last for ten-years, and would leave a tragedy that has yet to find an end.  Fifty years on, the Vietnamese people and their many friends around the world will be commemorating this special anniversary.

Let's recall and reflect on what happened on that day of 10th August 1961, and the consequences, so horrific, it is difficult to grasp, to understand.  It raises in the minds of many the questions: WHY? And what can be done to overcome the criminal legacy of Agent Orange?

When the first planes took off from their base in South Vietnam on that fateful day, with its cargo of Agent Orange that was itself contaminated with Dioxin the world's most poisonous substance, and to begin the first spraying that was to continue for ten long years, none of the pilots or their crews were to know that they had set out on a mission that was to be repeated by others time and again resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent unborn babies, further, their actions were to cause the early deaths of many more thousands of innocent children, denying them their human rights, a right never to reach beyond their teenage years.

The results of the use of Agent Orange/Dioxin over those years have travelled down the years with devastating results; for the magnificent forests on which the chemical was sprayed, for the people living and fighting for their country's independence within the forests, the animal life, insects, all so vital for any forest.

For the people going about their daily lives in the fields outside the cities growing their crops, and tending to their animals, they too were to become victims of Agent Orange as were the children walking to school and who later, on returning home, were to help their parents in the fields. As the spaying continued, so the soil itself became poisoned as did the food being grown ..As did the fish in the rivers and lakes.

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The Problem With Patents

By J. Maureen Henderson
 During the 80s, I remember learning that IBM held the original patents for stuff like DMA and interrupt controllers,1 which surprised me because by that time those things were like oxygen: just a standard part of every computer in the world. But hey - someone had to invent that stuff, and in the end the patents didn't really slow anyone down. Basically, the technology got incorporated into chips, the chipmakers presumably paid royalties, and everyone else just bought the chips. There was a modest cost, but it didn't prevent Steve Wozniak from designing the Apple II. The same thing happens with patent pools for things like MPEG and other standards. It's all a gigantic pain in the ass, and it can impede progress while the lawyers hash everything out, but once they do, all the little guys end up using the patented technology without having to jump through hoops.

The question always becomes, without all those patents and protections of incumbent players and barriers to entry, how fast would innovation occurred? How many potential startups and innovators were shutdown by big entities like IBM, or later Microsoft or Intel, due to legal protections that reward capital over entrepreneurship?

Of course, maybe it's hard to get a handle on the costs since tech has expanded so much in recent decades. What about other parts of the economy where IP law has a major impact? This is nowhere more insidious than agriculture and the world of genetically modified crops.

Take it away Kevin Carson:

 Take, for example, "intellectual property" - a state-granted monopoly central to the corporate neoliberal order, but which has precious little to do with anything remotely resembling an actual free market. Your Internet service provider isn't a business performing a service for you - the paying customer - so much as an adjunct of the RIAA and MPAA and their lackeys in government. Your ISP spies on you on behalf of Big Content to ensure you're not downloading any big torrents.

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Big Ag Won't Feed the World

By Tom Philpott
Back in March, USDA secretary Tom Vilsack spoke at an event called the Commodity Classic in Tampa, Fl. Sponsored by agribusiness giants Monsanto, BASF, Syngenta, John Deere, Dow AgroSciences, Dupont, Syngenta, and Archer Daniels Midland, among others, the event hails itself as the "premier national trade show and convention for corn, soy, wheat and sorghum farmers."

According to an account in the trade journal Agri-Pulse, Vilsack spoke "with sometimes evangelistic fervor." He thundered against critics ofcorn-based ethanol, reiterated the Obama administration's goal of doubling US farm exports by 2014 by ramming open foreign markets, and praised the assembled farmers and agribusiness flacks for their record of "ensuring affordable food for US families," Agri-Pulse reported. The former governor of Iowa ended his speech on an evem more flattering note: "The farmers in this room have provided the prescription that this nation must follow to get itself back totally on its feet ... You should never ever bet against the American farmer because if you do, it's a losing bet." The audience roared its approval.

The ag secretary was essentially promoting an agribusiness-as-usual vision of farm policy: maximum production of a few commodity crops, mainly to be used to fatten confined animals, create cheap sweeteners and fats, and fill gas tanks. He did so amid much rhetoric about "jobs," the Agri-Pulse account shows. But that's ludicrous. The modern food system lionized by Vilsack has been a massive net destroyer of jobs. And the fixation on doubling US ag exports can't be good news for farmers in the global south, who struggle to compete with their highly capitalized US peers. Ever get a threatening phone call from your ISP? You might as well be their employee, rather than the reverse. Ever get a DMCA takedown notice? Ever have a website taken down by your host in response to an unsubstantiated complaint? Welcome to "our free market system."

Remember the Pinkertons, uniformed private thugs the bosses used to hire to bust union organizers' heads? Now Monsanto hires them to snoop around private farms, testing farmers' crops to see if they contain any genetic material from engineered seeds under patent. The Runyons, an Indiana farm family, were invaded in 2008 by Monsanto's hired goons in response to an "anonymous tip" that their farm hosted Roundup-ready soybeans.  Sounds almost like - ahem - the Drug War, doesn't it? 

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Record 'Dead Zone' Predicted in Gulf of Mexico

By Doyle Rice
The "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico - a region of oxygen-depleted water off the Louisiana and Texas coasts that is harmful to sea life and the commercial fishing industry - is predicted to be the largest ever recorded this year, federal scientists announced Tuesday.

The unusually large size of the zone is due to the extreme flooding of the Mississippi River this spring.

The dead zone occurs when there is not enough oxygen in the water to support marine life. Also known as "hypoxia," it is created by nutrient runoff, mostly from over-application of fertilizer on agricultural fields. It flows into streams, then rivers and eventually the Gulf.

Forty-one percent of the contiguous USA drains into the Mississippi River and then out to the Gulf of Mexico. The majority of the land in Mississippi's watershed is farm land.

Excess nutrients such as nitrogen can spur the growth of algae, and when the algae die, their decay consumes oxygen faster than it can be brought down from the surface, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). As a result, fish, shrimp and crabs can suffocate, threatening the region's commercial fishing industry.

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Smoking Could Kill 8 Million a Year by 2030: WHO

By Kate Kelland

Tobacco will kill nearly six million people this year, including 600,000 non-smokers, because governments are not doing enough to persuade people to quit or protect others from second-hand smoke, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

Since there is often a lag of many years between when people start smoking and when it affects health, the epidemic of tobacco-related disease and death has just begun, the WHO said. But by 2030, the annual death toll could reach 8 million.

The United Nations health body urged more governments to sign up to and implement its tobacco control treaty, warning that if current trends persist, tobacco could cause up to a billion deaths in the 21st century, a dramatic rise from the 100 million deaths it caused in the previous century.

So far, 172 countries and the European Union have signed up to the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which came into force in 2005 and obliges them to take steps over time to cut smoking rates, limit exposure to second hand smoke, and curb tobacco advertising and promotion.

The WHO noted some encouraging recent moves -- Uruguay now requires health warnings that cover 80 percent of the surface of tobacco packs, and China last month implemented a ban on smoking in public places such as restaurants and bars.

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Dangerous Toxins From Genetically Modified Plants Found in Women and Fetuses

By Jeffrey Smith

When U.S. regulators approved Monsanto's genetically modified "Bt" corn, they knew it would add a deadly poison into our food supply. That's what it was designed to do. The corn's DNA is equipped with a gene from soil bacteria called Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) that produces the Bt-toxin. It's a pesticide; it breaks open the stomach of certain insects and kills them.

But Monsanto and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) swore up and down that it was only insects that would be hurt. The Bt-toxin, they claimed, would be completely destroyed in the human digestive system and not have any impact on all of us trusting corn-eating consumers.

Oops. A study just proved them wrong.

Doctors at Sherbrooke University Hospital in Quebec found the corn's Bt-toxin in the blood of pregnant women and their babies, as well as in non-pregnant women.i (Specifically, the toxin was identified in 93% of 30 pregnant women, 80% of umbilical blood in their babies, and 67% of 39 non-pregnant women.) The study has been accepted for publication in the peer reviewed journal Reproductive Toxicology.

According to the UK Daily Mail, this study, which "appears to blow a hole in" safety claims, "has triggered calls for a ban on imports and a total overhaul of the safety regime for genetically modified (GM) crops and food." Organizations from England to New Zealand are now calling for investigations and for GM crops to be halted due to the serious implications of this finding.

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Family Farmers Amplify Legal Complaint Against Monsanto's GMOs

New York: New threats by Monsanto have led to the filing of an amended complaint by the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) in its suit on behalf of family farmers, seed businesses, and organic agricultural organizations challenging Monsanto's patents on genetically modified seed.

"Our clients don't want a fight with Monsanto, they merely want to be protected from the threat that they will be contaminated by Monsanto's genetically modified seed and then accused of patent infringement," said PUBPAT Executive Director Daniel B. Ravicher. "We asked Monsanto to give our clients reassurances they wouldn't do such a thing, and in response Monsanto chose to instead reiterate the same implicit threat to organic agriculture that it has made in the past."

Over the years Monsanto has sued farmers alleging they have stolen the corporation's intellectual property by saving their proprietary seed rather than purchasing new seed each year that would include a "technology fee." Because pollen, and genetics, can be spread through the wind, or by insects, farmers are vulnerable to having their crops contaminated and then subsequently being sued by Monsanto.

Soon after the March filing of the lawsuit, Monsanto issued a statement saying that they would not assert their patents against farmers who suffer "trace" amounts of transgenic contamination. In response, and in the hope that the matter could be resolved out of court, PUBPAT attorneys wrote Monsanto's attorneys asking the company to make its promise legally binding.

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Organic Agriculture's Resilience Shows Untapped Potential

By Supriya Kumar

Washington, D.C. - Despite the crippling effects of the recent economic slowdown on many industries, the organic agriculture sector not only sustained itself during this period but also showed signs of growth. "In 2009, organic farming was practiced on 37.2 million hectares worldwide, a 5.7 percent increase from 2008 and 150 percent increase since 2000," writes policy analyst E.L. Beck, in the latest Vital Signs Online release from the Worldwatch Institute.

The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) defines organic agriculture as: "a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems and people. It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects. Organic agriculture combines tradition, innovation and science to benefit the shared environment."

Although organic agriculture is practiced around the world, certified organic agriculture tends to be concentrated in wealthier countries. The Group of 20 (G20), comprising both developing and industrialized countries, is home to 89 percent of the global certified organic agricultural area. But nongovernmental organizations, including Slow Food International and ACDI/VOCA, are working with farmers to promote organic agriculture in developing countries as a means of bettering livelihoods and rejuvenating the land.

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Mom-and-Pop vs. Big-Box Stores in the Food Desert

By Gary Nabhan and Kelly Watters

A few weeks ago, when the Obama administration released its Food Desert Locator, many of us realized that a once-good idea has spoiled like a bag of old bread. If you go online and find that your family lives in a food desert, don't worry: You have plenty of company. One of every 10 census tracts in the lower 48 has been awarded that status.

Two years ago, when one of us (Gary) moved to the village of Patagonia, Ariz., he inadvertently chose to reside in what the USDA deems to be on the edge of a food desert. Its maps show that Gary now lives more than 15 miles away from a full-service supermarket or chain grocery store that has 50 or more employees and grosses $2 million or more in food sales each year. Apparently, that's bad. Gary and his low-income neighbors are now being told that if they were bright enough to reside within walking distance or five minutes driving distance to a Safeway, Alberston's, Winn-Dixie, or Walmart, they would undoubtedly be more "food secure."


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European Leaders Don't Want Cell Phones and WiFi in Schools

By Dr.Mercola

A Council of Europe committee examined evidence that the cell phones and wireless internet connections have "potentially harmful" effects on humans, and decided that immediate action was required to protect children. They ruled that the technologies pose a health risk and should be banned from schools.

The committee report argued that it was crucial to avoid repeating the mistakes made when public health officials failed to recognize the dangers of asbestos, tobacco smoking and lead.

According to the Telegraph:

 "The report also highlighted the potential health risks of cordless telephones and baby monitors, which rely on similar technology ...  The Council of Europe ... is highly influential in policy-making and has often seen its decisions enacted through conventions and treaties."


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Natural and Organic Products Industry Sales Hit $81 Billion

BOULDER, Colo.-- Natural Foods Merchandiser magazine's 2010 Market Overview reports healthy growth for the natural and organic products industry. With more than $81 billion in total revenue last year, the industry grew 7 percent over 2009, showing that consumers are spending again and that the natural products industry is healthy and growing.

Natural Foods Merchandiser's 2010 Market Overview is a comprehensive report detailing sales results for the natural and organic products industry. In addition to overall spending figures, the Market Overview also reports product segment sales, average sales per store and overall business statistics for natural products retailers.

Market research found that certain categories experienced double-digit growth. Dairy and produce, for example, grew 12 percent and 13 percent, respectively, over the previous year. "Double digit growth in 2010 is impressive," said Carlotta Mast, Editor-in-Chief of Natural Foods Merchandiser magazine. "These numbers demonstrate that shoppers are returning to natural products stores for everyday groceries," she said. The pet products category boasted 10 percent growth last year, as Americans continue to feed their furry friends food fit for a king. In the supplements aisle, sports nutrition products grew a whopping 22.2 percent, a reflection of new and innovative products on the market and the improving economy. Digestive aids and vitamin D continued on their upward trajectories in 2010.

Also included in the Market Overview is the Gourmet Guide, which shows that specialty natural products sales grew 15.6 percent in natural products stores last year. "The lines between natural and gourmet are blurring, as more  natural retailers stock specialty products that meet their stringent ingredient and packaging standards," Mast said. 

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Humans May Have Loaded the Bases, but Nature Bats Last

By David Suzuki

Humanity is facing a challenge unlike any we've ever had to confront. We are in an unprecedented period of change. Exponential growth is causing an already huge human population to double in shorter and shorter time periods.

When I was born in 1936, just over two billion people lived on the planet. It's astounding that the population has increased more then threefold within my lifetime. That staggering growth has been accompanied by even steeper increases in technological innovation, consumption, and a global economy that exploits the entire planet as a source of raw materials and a dumping ground for toxic emissions and waste.

We have become a new kind of biological force that is altering the physical, chemical, and biological properties of the planet on a geological scale. Indeed, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen has suggested that the current geologic period should be called the Anthropocene Epoch to reflect our new status as a global force -- and a lot of scientists agree.

As noted in a recent Economist article, "Welcome to the Anthropocene," we are altering the Earth's carbon cycle, which leads to climate change, and we have sped up by more than 150 percent the nitrogen cycle, which has led to acid rain, ozone depletion, and coastal dead zones, among other impacts. We have also replaced wilderness with farms and cities, which has had a huge impact on biodiversity.

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Good News in Nevada on Health Freedom

Good News In Nevada

AB289 (Dietitian Licensing Bill) was successfully amended

SB412 (Complementary Integrative Medicine Bill) did not move out of Committee.

Thank you to Nevada Assemblyman John C. Ellison for advocating for a last minute successful health freedom amendment that makes it clear that the Nevada Dietitian licensing bill AB289 will not apply to a person "who furnishes nutrition information, provides recommendations or advice concerning nutrition, or markets food, food materials or dietary supplements and provides nutrition information, recommendations or advice related to that marketing, if the person does not represent that he or she is a licensed dietitian or registered dietitian .".

On May 30 th, AB289 passed both House and Senate and was enrolled. (Click Here to read the enrolled bill) The health freedom amendment was an important addition in the last committee. Assemblyman Ellison and his staff as well as Committee Chair Senator Schneider deserve congratulations on their work to listen to citizen concerns to the fast moving bill and find and accept a solution that would preserve and protect consumer access to so many nutrition practitioners who are currently practicing in the public domain and who do not intend to become Dietitians. Especially citizen Jim Jenks, herbalist and coordinator of Nevada Sunshine Health Freedom Foundation and Citizen Debbie Pawelek, owner of a local health food store, deserve our deepest thanks for their important lobbying and educational efforts on behalf of health freedom. 

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Charges of Corruption Taint Organic Trade Association

By Jeff Nield
A new short film claims that the board of the Organic Trade Association (OTA) is undermining the ethic of of the organic movement. The film, embedded below, was released by an anonymous person or group called Organic Spies, suggests that at least four current board members of the OTA are in conflict of interest because the companies they represent overwhelmingly rely on genetically engineered ingredients, something that is anathema to the organic movement.

I love a shadowy figure as much as the next guy, but I also checked with former OTA director and board member Arran Stephens, CEO of the still independent and fiercely organic cereal company, Nature's Path, to get his take on this breaking scandal.

" My comments are based upon my own experience as a former Board Member of the OTA: I served as a director and Board Member of the OTA and helped with the long process of developing the organic standards that were adopted by the National Organic Program and eventually, the launching of the USDA organic seal. I was proud of the fact that the OTA had worked with the USDA in establishing legal guidelines for organic, so that everyone was under similar obligations: playing on a level field. Please note that prior to the USDA NOP rule, many of the so-called organic product companies were cheating or stretching the rules. Then, there were no laws to enforce compliance, and because Nature's Path did follow all the organic guidelines to the letter, we were at an economic disadvantage to competitors who were buying cheap non-organic ingredients and labeling them as "organic").

The reason I resigned my role on the Board was because there was a tight-knit group of four or five at the top which did not listen or respond to me whenever I urged the OTA to take a firm stance against GMOs--which I considered to be the greatest-ever threat to organics, but I was consistently ignored. Although a couple of other Board members quietly supported me, they didn't have the courage to take on the cabal at the top."


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Obama Deregulates GMO Crops Despite Supreme Court Injunction

By Robbie Hanna Anderman

Early this spring, while the world was distracted by Egypt's uprising, President Barack Obama pushed the Secretary of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deregulate genetically engineered alfalfa and sugar beets in the United States. The USDA came through as he directed, totally deregulating these Monsanto-patented genes in early February.

In so doing, Obama and the USDA have chosen to override and ignore decisions and injunctions made by the U.S. Supreme Court that banned planting of genetically engineered alfalfa and sugar beets without consideration of the Environmental Impact Assessments, which showed high risks to organic and conventional (chemical) farmers.

So how does this affect you and me? Neither of us remembers seeing alfalfa or sugar beets on our breakfast table or even on our Seder table. Or do we?

Sugar beets provide over 50 percent of the sugar Americans use in their coffee, cereals, and desserts. For the moment, let's not focus on the fact that sugar beets can cross-pollinate with red beets and make our borscht genetically modified.

Alfalfa reaches our tables within milk, cream, butter, and meat, as it is used as a major animal feed in the dairy industry. It is also used to enrich soils in organic farming.

At this time, no genetically engineered crops are permitted for sale in the European Union (though WikiLeaks has revealed that the U.S. government is exerting strong pressure on the EU to allow them). Thus this new deregulation will potentially close off present markets for organic farmers' crops.

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US-Led Global War on Drugs a Failure: Report

A 19-member international panel has condemned the US-led "War on Drugs" campaign as a failure and has recommended major reforms of the global drug prohibition regime.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy report, released on Thursday, argues that the four-decades-long campaign has failed to make significant changes in the international drug scenario and has, in fact, devastating consequences on human societies across the world.

The term "War on Drugs" was first used by US President Richard Nixon on June 17, 1971 and was intended to define and reduce illicit drug trade globally. However, the new report points out that the result of this campaign has been nothing but a drastic increase in drug violence, especially in regions like Brazil and Mexico.

"Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the US government's global war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed," stated former president of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso. "Let's start by treating drug addiction as a health issue, reducing drug demand through proven educational initiatives and legally regulating rather than criminalizing cannabis." 

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Three Strikes and You're Hot: Time for Obama to Say No to the Fossil Fuel Wish List

By Bill McKibben

In our globalized world, old-fashioned geography is not supposed to count for much: mountain ranges, deep-water ports, railroad grades -- those seem so nineteenth century. The earth is flat, or so I remember somebody saying.

But those nostalgic for an earlier day, take heart. The Obama administration is making its biggest decisions yet on our energy future and those decisions are intimately tied to this continent's geography. Remember those old maps from your high-school textbooks that showed each state and province's prime economic activities? A sheaf of wheat for farm country? A little steel mill for manufacturing? These days in North America what you want to look for are the pickaxes that mean mining, and the derricks that stand for oil.

There's a pickaxe in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, one of the world's richest deposits of coal. If we're going to have any hope of slowing climate change, that coal -- and so all that future carbon dioxide -- needs to stay in the ground.  In precisely the way we hope Brazil guards the Amazon rainforest, that massive sponge for carbon dioxide absorption, we need to stand sentinel over all that coal.

Doing so, however, would cost someone some money.  At current prices the value of that coal may be in the trillions, and that kind of money creates immense pressure. Earlier this year, President Obama signed off on the project, opening a huge chunk of federal land to coal mining.  It holds an estimated 750 million tons worth of burnable coal. That's the equivalent of opening 300 new coal-fired power plants. In other words, we're talking about staggering amounts of new CO2 heading into the atmosphere to further heat the planet.

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Corporate Dictatorship: Citizens United 2.0

By George Zornick

Campaign fundraisers are already at work on the upcoming presidential election-Obama 2012 is soliciting donations, and Republican candidates like Tim Pawlenty are spending more time meeting donors than voters.

Outside groups like Karl Rove's American Crossroads, which spent $50 million on the recent midterm elections, are also no doubt revving up the money machine. Crossroads and similar groups with benign names like Americans for Job Security, FreedomWorks, and yes, the US Chamber of Commerce will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the presidential race.

The Supreme Court's ruling in Citizen's United, which allowed unlimited corporate expenditures on political advocacy efforts, has vastly improved the fundraising abilities of groups like American Crossroads. (Karl Rove has admitted this). Corporations can funnel unlimited money into an outfit like American Crossroads, and then let it do the dirty work of conceiving, producing, and airing advertisements that bash or support a chosen candidate.

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States Along the Mississippi Battle Over Farm Runoff

By Leslie Kaufman

As the surging waters of the Mississippi pass downstream, they leave behind flooded towns and inundated lives and carry forward a brew of farm chemicals and waste that this year - given record flooding - is expected to result in the largest dead zone ever in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dead zones have been occurring in the gulf since the 1970s, and studies show that the main culprits are nitrogen and phosphorus from crop fertilizers and animal manure in river runoff. They settle in at the mouth of the gulf and fertilize algae, which prospers and eventually starves other living things of oxygen.

Government studies have traced a majority of those chemicals in the runoff to nine farming states, and yet today, decades after the dead zones began forming, there is still little political common ground on how to abate this perennial problem. Scientists who study dead zones predict that the affected area will increase significantly this year, breaking records for size and damage.

For years, environmentalists and advocates for a cleaner gulf have been calling for federal action in the form of regulation. Since 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency has been encouraging all states to place hard and fast numerical limits on the amount of those chemicals allowed in local waterways. Yet of the nine key farm states that feed the dead zone, only two, Illinois and Indiana, have acted, and only to cover lakes, not the rivers or streams that merge into the Mississippi.  

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Down with Healthy School Lunches, Says House GOP

By Tom Laskawy

Having already moved to gut USDA programs promoting agricultural conservation and renewable energy and strip the USDA of its authority to enact the first meaningful reform of the irredeemably monopolistic livestock industry, House Republicans have now turned their attention to that other great threat to American freedom: USDA nutrition guidelines.

According to the Associated Press, Republican appropriators in the House of Representatives (the lawmakers who control the government's purse) are on the verge of defunding significant parts of school-lunch reform and elements of Michelle Obama's Let's Move! program, as well as the recently announced voluntary Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines that would restrict junk-food advertising aimed at young children.

As a spokesperson for House Appropriations Committee Chair Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) put it, the new FTC rule in particular is "classic nanny-state overreach":

 "Our concern is those voluntary guidelines are back-door regulation," he said, deploring the fact that kids can watch shows that depict sex and drugs on MTV, but "you cannot see an advertisement for Tony the Tiger during the commercial break."

Ah, the House GOP -- making the world safe for Tony the Tiger. But the fury of the Cuddly Corporate Marketing Character Lobby pales in comparison to that of the Potato Lobby. Big Spud is furious -- furious, I tell you -- that the new USDA guidelines for school lunches would restrict starchy vegetables such as the potato to a one-cup-a-week appearance on the plates of schoolchildren nationwide. In place of the mighty potato would come additional servings of whole grains, orange and green veggies, and low-fat milk. It's enough to drive you around the bend!

Never mind that the potato is by far the most-consumed vegetable in America and that restricting it at school would still allow parents to stuff their children with French-fried, mashed, and chipped potatoes outside of school hours. Attention must be paid! So the Potato Lobby and representatives from potato-growing regions are fighting back hard.

And how about the new calorie-labeling requirement that was included in health-reform legislation? The House GOP is going after that, too.

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