Vermont's Push to End Corporate Personhood

By Greg Guma

As support builds to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, organizer David Cobb returned to Vermont last week to discuss pending state legislation and Town Meeting votes aimed at amending the US Constitution.

Over the last decade more than a hundred cities and towns across the country have passed ordinances putting citizens' rights ahead of corporate interests. They have banned businesses from dumping toxic sludge, building factory farms, mining, and extracting water for bottling.

Some have also refused to recognize corporations as people.

On Jan. 21, 2010, however, the US Supreme Court firmly rejected that idea in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, ruling that corporations are "persons" with First Amendment rights and cannot be prevented from spending unlimited funds on political campaigns.

David Cobb is determined to change that, and returned to Vermont this week to promote the next steps in a campaign to amend the US constitution. Last January, Cobb, a former Green Party candidate for president who leads the Move to Amend campaign, spoke about the issue in Burlington, Waitsfield and Montpelier during a tour of the state organized by the Women's International league for Peace and Freedom. He also met with 11 state senators who agreed to support a Vermont resolution calling on Congress to initiate the process.


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Corporate Agribusiness Launches National PR Campaign to Brainwash Americans

By Jill Richardson
Today marks the big launch of a $11 million PR campaign to make consumers like GMOs, fertilizer, pesticides, and factory farms. The U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance (USFRA) is hosting "Food Dialogues" in New York, California, Washington, DC, and Indiana and broadcasting it live on the internet. (The hashtag is #FoodD if you are following on Twitter.)

USFRA claims "The goal is not to advance an agenda or to persuade you to any particular point of view. We simply want to create a forum that, we hope, will result in all of us being better informed about issues that affect our lives, our health, our planet and our future" but that's only what they are saying AFTER they hired the major PR firm Ketchum to handle their campaign. Before the PR firm came on board, they were much more open about their goals. I guess the PR gurus told them to tone it down, and to instead discuss how they use "modern" technology in "production" (i.e. industrial) agriculture. Now instead of overtly promoting pesticides, GMOs, and veal crates, they say they "have collaborated to lead the dialogue and answer Americans' questions about how we raise our food - while being stewards of the environment, responsibly caring for our animals and maintaining strong businesses and communities."

Stewards of the environment? USFRA gets 25-30% of its funding from industry, including from some of the biggest pesticide companies on earth. And the agricultural groups that make up USFRA have long histories of lobbying against any environmental regulation, livestock welfare standards, labor reform, competition reform, and more. And as for their claim they don't want to convince anybody of anything - you don't hire a PR firm if you don't want to convince anybody of anything. 

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American Breakfast Foods Are a Corporate Scam

By Dr. Mercola
Starting your morning with a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice, a donut and a cup of coffee, or a bagel and cream cheese may seem like second nature, but did you ever stop to think about why or how these foods came to signify breakfast in America?

 It wasn't always this way, that's for sure.

 Generations ago Americans would have scoffed at a cold breakfast of flaked grain cereal. Instead, they fueled their bodies with a hearty meal of eggs and meats (sausage, ham, bacon), and sometimes pancakes or bread. This was intentionally the heaviest meal of the day, as workers, particularly farmers, often wouldn't eat again until dinner.

 What happened to make cold cereal, juice, donuts and bagels the "norm" of American breakfasts? Breakfast food became corporate food.

How Much of YOUR Diet is Dictated by Corporate Creations?

 You're probably well aware that nowadays most of the food Americans eat is no longer dependent on local farmers and seasonal growing conditions. Instead, it's dictated by corporate America. The foods you may call "staples" are actually wildly successful marketing creations drummed up by some of the forerunners of the modern-day food industry. 

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USDA and Corporate Agribusiness Continue to Push Animal ID Scheme

WASHINGTON, DC - The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is expected to issue its new proposed rule for mandatory animal traceability very shortly. While USDA already has traceability requirements as part of existing animal disease control programs, the proposed framework goes much further to require animal tagging and tracing even absent any active disease threat. The framework has raised significant concerns among family farm and ranch advocates, who criticize the agency for failing to provide a coherent, factual explanation for the new program's necessity.

"USDA brags about the success of past programs, but has abandoned the principles that made them successful," argued Bill Bullard of R-CALF USA. "Past programs were based on sound science and were developed in response to the transmission, treatment, and elimination of specific identified diseases. USDA's new approach is a one-size-fits-all approach that does not specifically aim at the control of livestock diseases."

The USDA has presented its traceability scheme as an animal health program, but it has also reiterated the importance of the export market to the United States in promoting its new plan. The powerful meatpacking lobby has continued to push for such mandated traceability requirements in order to develop international standards for exports. Critics have suggested this is not in the American public's best interest, however, since the U.S. is a net importer of beef and cattle and the profits from the export market go to a small handful of massive meatpacking companies.

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Van Jones Jumpstarts New Progressive Movement to Confront and Push Back American Conservative and Corporate Dominance

Tonight, in New York City's venerable Town Hall, Van Jones, arguably the most visible progressive "organizer" in America, and surely one of the country's best orators, steps up to assume a bigger role -- that of major progressive strategist and visionary. Tonight is Jones' opening gambit in a large-scale, ambitious effort to create what many hope will be the progressives answer to the Tea Party.

Jones, with major support from MoveOn.org and other groups, will present a big-picture vision for mobilizing progressive forces of many types and stripes under the patriotic umbrella brand of the "American Dream Movement." The goal is nothing less than a broad "open source" movement of millions who, via organizing, house parties, events, technological savvy, and electoral activity, will attempt to shift America's focus away from the budget-cut mentality and the protection of big corporations and banks, to the human and economic support of tens of millions of unemployed and downsized Americans, including returning war vets and young people. (The event, which also features musical group the Roots, will be streamed live beginning at 8:15pm EDT on many Web sites, including AlterNet. Tune in tonight.)

There is much anticipation for this moment, and more than a little skepticism. Many have been wringing their hands, wondering why progressives seem so impotent in the face of the Tea Party. We've been hugely disappointed in the Obama administration for not mounting a more populist, people-oriented challenge to the corporate and banking dominance of our economic system, which has resulted in both the bailout of the banks, and the obscene shift of wealth to an increasingly small number of super-rich Americans. Jones hopes to offer an answer.

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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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How Wal-Mart, Google and Other Corporate Giants Are Trying to Trick Progressive Consumers

The signature phrase of America's booming good food movement has been expanded from "organic" to "local and sustainable."

Good! The phrase suggests great quality, strong environmental stewardship and a commitment to keeping our food dollars in the local economy. If you support the local-economies movement, as I do, no doubt you'll be thrilled to hear that a new, local food store is coming soon to your neighborhood. In fact, it's even named Neighborhood Market.

Only, it's not. It's a Wal-Mart. Yes, the $400-billion-a-year retail behemoth, with 2 million employees laboring in 8,500 stores spread around the globe, now is putting on a "local" mask. The giant is promising to buy 9 percent of the produce it'll sell from local farmers. Big whoopie. This means that 91 percent of the foodstuffs offered in its "Neighborhood" chain will come from Wayawayland. Wal-Mart is to local what near beer is to beer. Near beer is not beer ... and Wal-Mart is not local.

But even the 9 percent number is a deceit, for Wal-Mart says that it defines "local" as grown in the same state. Excuse me, but in California, Florida, Texas and other such sizable states, that can be a mighty long truck-haul away.

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