Tea Party Patriots Investigated: 'They Use You and Abuse You' | | AlterNet

Tea Party Patriots Investigated: 'They Use You and Abuse You'

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Two years ago, Tea Party Patriots got its start as a scrappy, ground-up conservative organization. Its rowdy activists demanded more transparency and less business-as-usual in the nation's capital, and they worked hard to elect candidates who they believed wouldn't succumb to the ways of Washington. But it didn't take long for the grassroots tea party organization to embrace the DC establishment—and some of its more questionable practices.

Lately, Tea Party Patriots (TPP) has started to resemble the Beltway lobbying operations its members have denounced. The group's leaders have cozied up to political insiders implicated in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and have paid themselves significant salaries. TPP accepted the use of a private jet and a large donation of anonymous cash right before a key election, and its top officials have refused to discuss how the money was spent. And recently, the group has hired several big-time fundraising and public relations firms that work for the who's who of the Republican political class, including some of the GOP's most secretive campaign operations.

As TPP's leaders entrench themselves in Washington, local activists the group represents have accused them of exploiting the grassroots for their own fame and fortune while failing to deliver any meaningful political results. "Tea Party Patriots? I can't attribute one victory to them at all," says Laura Boatright, a former TPP regional coordinator in Southern California who has become an outspoken critic. "Where's the success with what they've done with all this money? My view is that it's just a career plan" for its national leaders—namely Jenny Beth Martin, who in 2010 was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and Mark Meckler, now a regular commentator on Fox News. (Meckler and Martin did not respond to a request to comment for this story.)

In August, TPP inked a contract with MDS Communications, an Arizona-based phone fundraising firm that counts as clients the Republican National Committee and most of the GOP's congressional campaign organizations. MDS even handled the telephone fundraising for the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign. The firm specializes in working with the GOP's evangelical foot soldiers, including the National Right to Life Committee, Concerned Women for America, and the Family Research Council. It has been heavily involved in anti-gay marriage activities, once donating its services to help raise more than $7 million for Arizona's Proposition 102, which created a state ban on gay marriage.

The MDS deal with TPP is anything but cheap. Documents filed with the Colorado secretary of state indicate that MDS will keep at least 70 percent of the money it raises—nearly $3 out of every $4. In 2005, California's attorney generalreleased a report (PDF) showing that MDS was among a number of fundraising companies that returned less than 15 percent of what they raised to some of the charities they worked for. Out of more than $585,000 MDS pulled in for the Concerned Women for America, for instance, not a dime went back to the nonprofit group, according to the report.

TPP's leaders negotiated a similar deal with Capitol Resources, the most formidable GOP phone fundraising operation in the presidential bellwether state of Iowa. Corporate filings show the company will keep 75 percent of the money it raises hitting up tea partiers for donations.

The firm's owner, Nicole Schlinger, is a longtime GOP operative. She was the finance director of the Iowa Republican Party in the late 1990s, and she directed Mitt Romney's victorious 2007 Iowa presidential straw poll campaign. Schlinger also served as the original president and sole board member of the American Future Fund, an outside expenditure group that spent millions from anonymous donors during the 2010 midterms attacking Democratic candidates. (Earlier this month, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the IRS to investigate the group for allegedly violating its tax-exempt status.)

Rounding out TPP's new stable of political consultants is the Richard Norman Company, a Virginia-based direct-mail fundraising and PR firm. Norman, like the other firms on TPP's payroll, represents some of the country's most prominent GOP players, including the political action committee of former uber-lobbyist and current Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.

TPP has long insisted that it wants to avoid divisive social issues like abortion to focus on the core values of fiscal responsibility and limited government. But in hiring the Norman firm (and MDS, too), it has joined the ranks of a long list of evangelical organizations affiliated with the far-right wing that are represented by the company.

Norman clients include the Foundation for Moral Law, the group founded by the defrocked Alabama Supreme Court judge Roy Moore, who was kicked out of office for his refusal to remove a Ten Commandments sculpture from his courtroom. Also on the firm's client roster are several anti-immigration groups, including the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. Norman even represents a group headed by birther Gary Kreep.

TPP's new coterie of consultants and fundraisers may put the group in a new league politically—but they have sparked bitter complaints by affiliated tea party groups, whose members are tired of being hounded for money. Some see TPP morphing into the very type of slick, DC-centric special interest group they have been fighting against.

In an interview with Congress.com last month, TPP's Martin tried to play down such notions. "Any possible solutions that we come up with, especially policy related, we're going to go back to the local coordinators and say, 'Do you agree with this?'" she said.

Rank-and-file tea partiers aren't buying it. Last month, Jeanie Backus Coates, then the New Mexico state coordinator for TPP, sent out an urgent email to her grassroots compatriotswarning that TPP was using telemarketers to raise money from local activists. In a January 13 email, she wrote:

The Tea Party Patriots national website clearly states that 100% of the funds raised go to furthering OUR efforts. Well, I guess that's true AFTER paying out salaries, consultants, telemarketers, attorneys, etc...

And yes, Jenny Beth and [coordinator] Mark Meckler hired a consultant without most of us even knowing about it and now that consultant has encouraged and those two have decided to start soliciting donations from our own local tea party participants so that they can pay themselves, their consultant, their telemarketers, and their attorneys.

Coates was particularly angered because the national TPP leaders have relentlessly pressured local affiliates to turn over their valuable membership contact lists to the national organization, which the group is now using to sic telemarketers on tea partiers.

The list controversy dates back to September, when TPP announced that it had received a $1 million grant from an anonymous donor to conduct get out the vote work before the midterm elections. The money was distributed to local tea party groups, but initially only on the condition that they turn over their membership lists to the national organization, a move that raised suspicions that TPP intended to sell this valuable data. (Fueling these suspicions was the fact that Meckler works for a lead-generation company that provides email contacts to companies often considered to be pyramid schemes.)

"They make it seem like they help local groups. None of that money ever goes back to local groups."

Now, activists are furious to discover that TPP is leveraging those lists to mine tea partiers for money that will fund such things as Meckler and Martin's salaries, a winter conference in Phoenix, and of course, the high-priced fundraisers themselves.

Disgruntled former TPP volunteers and activists say that rather than partners in a movement, they have increasingly come to feel like fundraising marks. TPP's fundraising appeals, they say, can be quite deceptive.

One sent out recently by TPP's Martin pleads with "patriots" to donate to pay for sound-stage equipment, event security, travel expenses for speakers, and other tea party rally trappings. She promises that the money will fund the group's efforts to meet with local tea party groups and "to give them the advice, direction, and the logistical support they need to get off the ground." Respondents can return a form pre-addressed to Martin that reads, "Dear Jenny Beth, Thank you for sacrificing your former way of life to fight for our liberty and for the core values and principles our great nation was founded on."

Some tea partiers point out that Martin's "way of life" has improved considerably since she started making a reported $6,000 a month as TPP's national coordinator. Before she became a tea party star, she was working as a maid, scrubbing toilets for Atlanta suburbanites after her husband's company went belly up.

Cindy Chafian, the co-coordinator of California's Chino Hills Tea Party in California, used to donate monthly to TPP. She has since grown disillusioned with the group and its leaders. Far from helping local activists like her, Chafian says, TPP's fundraising efforts are actually diverting resources from the local groups that need them. "They make it seem like they help local groups," she says. "None of that money ever goes back to local groups."

TPP's nonstop fundraising efforts have reached the point where the group's weekly conference calls with activists have turned into little more than telethons, says the organization's former Georgia state coordinator, Joy McGraw. And, far from bolstering local groups, the national organization has left them holding the bag for bills they incur advancing the movement. Such was the case with McGraw, who says she arranged an event attended by Martin and Meckler that featured GOP talking head Dick Morris. McGraw says Martin had her deal with all the logistics for the event, even signing contracts for catering and other expenses, but refused to let her handle any of the money raised to pay for it, including through ticket sales. When the $5,000 catering bill came due, the national coordinators refused to pay, she says. When creditors began to come after her, McGraw was forced to raise money from fellow activists to pay off the debt.

"Tea Party Patriots don't really do anything for the local groups," she says."There are a lot of frustrated people. There are a lot of other people in the country who've done events and have gotten screwed over. We are all volunteers. We do not get paid like [Martin] does. They don't say, 'Thank you.' They use you and abuse you."**

The money TPP has raised is significant, and the hiring of professional fundraisers should only help matters. According to a financial statement filed with the Colorado secretary of state, TPP raised $538,009 between June 1, 2009, and May 31, 2010. It would later receive the $1 million donation. Given the amount of cash that has sloshed through TPP's coffers in the past two years, much of it from individual grassroots donors, many activists have begun to wonder how it's been spent by an organization that doesn't even have an office. Yet TPP has proven virtually inscrutable, and its leaders have refused to answer the question: Where's all the money going?

**Update 2/14/10 Mother Jones asked a tea party spokesman to comment on this story last week but did not get a response. After the story was published, Debbie Dooley, a TPP national coordinator in Georgia, emailed Mother Jones disputing McGraw's account of events, saying that McGraw approached TPP about doing the event with Dick Morris and offered to sign a contract pledging to handle all the expenses and debt from the event, in exchange for taking a 15 percent cut of any profits, with the rest going to the Atlanta Tea Party.

Stephanie Mencimer is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. For more of her stories, click here. You can also follow her on twitter. Get Stephanie Mencimer's RSS feed.

Defeating Corporations

Vision: How Small, Mostly Conservative Towns Have Found the Trick to Defeating Corporations | | AlterNet: "Towns Have Found the Trick to Defeating Corporations
As the Right pushes privatization as a solution to the economic collapse, one organization is teaching communities how to defeat corporations.

Across the country, small, disparate groups of people are wising up and taking action to combat corporate control by using a new strategy. And these citizens are winning. One of the first rallying calls has been against the privatization of public water infrastructure and attempts by corporate water bottlers to pilfer spring water, as well. Communities are welcoming "Democracy Schools," run by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, into their towns, in an attempt to better understand the laws that protect corporations and the ways to defeat them.

It's too early yet to call these small revolutions a movement, but something is afoot, mostly in America's rural towns, and if it continues to grow it may very well prove transformative.

Water For Sale

Falling on hard times, Coatesville, Penn. decided to sell off its drinking water and wastewater infrastructure in 2001 and invest the money in a trust fund to be used for city services. But privatization hasn't been the economic boon the city was hoping for. After even tougher economic times hit Coatesville, the trust has already been drained by two-thirds and residents have seen their water and sewer rates jump 85 percent since American Water, the larger water corporation in the country, took the helm. Last year the company even proposed a 229-percent rate hike for sewer services, forcing the city to cobble together money for legal fees to fight back.

The story of Coatesville is a wake-up call of sorts. Most of us don't think too much about where our water comes from, and it's usually one of our least expensive monthly bills. And right now, the vast majority of us (80 percent) get our water from a public utility. But this figure has multinational water corporations drooling -- the U.S. is a huge market that could be exploited if Americans can be persuaded (or tricked) into giving up control of their most important resource.

For decades private companies, mostly multinational corporations, have made inroads in the U.S. (and they've had great success elsewhere in the world). But their progress hasn't been major and an inspection of municipalities that have gone from public to private shows that consumers usually end up seeing higher rates and crappier services. And while those facts don't seem like they're changing anytime soon, more and more communities are contemplating privatization, thanks to disaster capitalism.

In a new report, "Trends in Water Privatization," Food and Water Watch found that from 1991 to 2010, private companies bought or leased about 144 public water systems -- an average of about seven deals a year. But since the economic collapse, things are changing. As of October 2010, at least 39 communities were considering whether they should sell or lease their water infrastructure. And the reasons for privatization are changing. Corporations used to swoop in to try and "rescue" communities when they couldn't afford expensive upgrades, but now, even cities with well-functioning, in-the-black water systems are looking to sell or lease them in hopes that privatization will bring an influx of cash to pay for other programs.

Sadly, that's not usually how it pans out. "It's always the same false claim: Private is more efficient than public. The public unions are impossible to work with, they'll say, and we have a corporation that can save us dollars," Jack E. Lohman, author of Politicians: Owned and Operated by Corporate America, wrote in the Capital Times. "Rarely is that true, especially after they add all of the exorbitant salaries, bonuses, shareholder profits, marketing and political bribes that must be passed on to the taxpayer. These costs usually far exceed government waste, unless offset by egregiously low salaries that further harm the economy."

Any sane financial adviser would know that selling off a recurring revenue stream for a one-time boost to the budget doesn't make sense in the long run. After looking at the 10 largest sales and concessions of public water systems, Food and Water Watch found that rates went up an average of 15 percent a year in the 12 years following a privatization deal.

Not only it does it end up being an economic loss for residents and their governments, but it is a huge abdication of power. Water is the lifeblood of our communities. By turning this over to corporations, whose first responsibility is to shareholders, how can we guarantee safe and affordable drinking water for everyone? Should corporations, whose short-sighted drive for profit brought our economy to its knees, really be trusted with our most vital resource?

Communities Revolt

From big cities like Atlanta, Georgia to small towns such as Felton, Calif., communities have fought back to regain public control after water privatization deals went sour. But it's not just drinking water infrastructure that has towns concerned -- water bottling companies, run by multinationals like Nestle, have also been targeting rural communities' spring and well water.

In the small town of McCloud, Calif., a former logging town in the shadow of Mount Shasta, Nestle quietly signed a 100-year deal to bottle 200 million gallons of spring water a year and unlimited amounts of groundwater without any public input and without an environmental impact statement. Concerned community members joined together to fight back, and six years later they succeeded in sending Nestle packing. While residents may have been successful in McCloud, their battle was resource- and time-intensive. Across the country, similar fights were also going on, as small towns worried about depletion and degradation of their water resources fought back against bottling companies, but only sometimes emerged victorious.

Thomas Linzey knows of an easier way to do things. Instead of trying to beat out corporations by fighting the regulatory system, Linzey has helped people to see a different path forward. A founder of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, Linzey and his colleagues help "communities to draft and adopt legally binding laws in which they asserted their right to self-govern," according to the organization's Web site.

"We think today's contemporary activism is the wrong frame, and in addition it is aimed at the wrong thing," Linzey said. "Most of it's federal and state activism. We think those things are pretty much dead. The only place where there is a window to operate is at the local level and then that can be used to up-end the state and federal to build a new system of law, which I think our communities are recognizing is needed."

Essentially, Linzey believes, the last 40 years of environmental activism hasn't accomplished very much, and by fighting within the regulatory system, we've been barking up the wrong tree.

His colleague Gail Darrell, an organizer in New England, explains, "Under the regulatory structure you're not allowed to say no to anything permitted by the state -- water withdrawals, sewage sludge, biomass plants, toxic waste dumps, landfills -- all of that is regulated and permitted by state agencies and they issue permits to industry guided by their regulatory statues that allow them to cause harm to the environment within in certain limits. But that structure doesn't allow a municipality to say no to any of those practices. Your feet are cut off at the beginning. When an industry goes to the regulatory agency and gets an application, once that application is administratively complete that permit must be issued by right."

Combine this regulatory bias with corporate rights being ingrained in our Constitution (yes, long before Citizens United) and the tables are stacked against ordinary folks. "Corporations have the same rights as people -- the first, fourth, fifth and fourteenth amendments," said Linzey. "They also have rights derived from the Commerce Clause of the Constitution that allows them to sue communities to overturn laws dealing with commerce." Before Citizens United there were 80-100 years of cases ingraining corporate rights, he said.

To even the playing field a bit, CELDF has helped around 120 communities pass binding ordinances that give them the ability to say no to corporate control. Ordinances they've helped to draft have given towns the right to eliminate corporate personhood -- to say no to water bottling companies drilling for water in their towns, for instance -- and to assert the rights of nature.

"Any citizen can stand in the shoes of that river or other piece of nature and advocate for it -- we don't have to own that piece of property" said Darrell. "And if there is a gas spill that happens from a tanker crossing the bridge and it dumps into our river, we can use our rights of nature language to force that corporation to recover the damages and those are paid to the town to restore the river."

Most of this work has been successful in small, rural towns. The organization has its roots in Pennsylvania, working first with communities that wanted to ban corporate factory farms and then with towns that didn't want sewage sludge being dumped where they lived. Later the work branched out to help communities fighting water bottlers, like Nestle, and most recently with towns concerned about the natural gas drilling process of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." The towns where they've been successful, Linzey says, are not liberal enclaves by any stretch; in fact, it's been just the opposite because it started out as a rights issue -- a conservative Republican issue.

"The hardest places to work are the liberal progressive communities because they think we have a democracy and they are intent on working within the existing structure to try to find a remedy rather than tossing it and working on something from scratch," said Linzey. "What's been fascinating to me is when you have south and north-central Pennsylvania towns passing binding local ordinances that refuse to endow corporations with constitutional rights in their communities. But in the liberal progressive bastion of Berkeley, they were passing non-binding resolutions urging Congress to do something about it. I think that difference in approach has become clear to me over the last decade. Here are rural conservatives passing things saying we won't let our rights be taken away and are using a local law as a municipal, collective civil disobedience tool to actually push up against the state to say 'fuck you.' Whereas in Berkeley people get in a huff and do some hand-wringing and pass a resolution which begs and pleads Congress to do something about corporate rights, which is never going to happen, at least in the next 20-30 years."

While most of CELDF's work has been in small towns, this fall the city of Pittsburgh became the largest municipality they've worked with to ban corporate personhood, establish the rights of nature and tell gas drillers interested in fracking to get out of town.

This big victory comes on the heels of many smaller wins that have gone under the radar.

Darrell lives in the town of Barnstead, New Hampshire. After spending years watching a neighboring town try to prevent a bottling company from extracting water in their community (it's going on nine years now), folks in Barnstead got together to find a different solution. They ended up working with CELDF, attending the organization's Democracy School, and passing an ordinance that protects them from bottling companies and corporate control and also establishes the rights of nature. Soon, other nearby towns followed suit.

The idea is pretty simple, but it's also radical. "We're the first folks to talk about really the need to rewrite the Constitution itself, to create a new constitutional structure and most folks aren't touching that," said Linzey. "You can't talk about it in polite company. People talk about amendments, we think the thing is archaic in many ways other than the Bill of Rights. We need a new constitutional structure that recognizes community local self-governance as well as the rights of nature. We can't get there with the document we have which was written in the 1780s. The question is, will enough people come together across the country to actually rise up to demand a new structure?"

Linzey and Darrell both believe the answer is a long way down the road -- perhaps 20 or 30 years. "We need a complete revolt of sorts from the local level," said Linzey, adding that communities in Pennsylvania and New England were already teaming up to try to influence change at higher levels. "I think all that is positive but it is too early, I don't think it's a movement at all, it's just disparate people in disparate places trying to grapple with what this structure delivered to them and figure out what they need to do to fix it."

As the campaign of disaster capitalism marches on, we may begin to see a groundswell of communities rising up to reclaim the rights of people against the advances of corporations. In many places it may spring from a desire to protect what is most critical -- such as water -- but it always, Linzey says, "takes real imminent harm -- that's the only thing powerful enough to get people to rip off the blinders."

Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet and editor of the new book Water Matters: Why We Need to Act Now to Save Our Most Critical Resource. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraLohan.

"We Were a Stalin-esque Mouthpiece for Bush" -- Fox News Insider | | AlterNet

Asked what most viewers anservers of Fox News would be surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”Indeed, a former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Matters confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.

We Were a Stalin-esque Mouthpiece for Bush" -- Fox News Insider "They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news,' says a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch.

We Were a Stalin-esque Mouthpiece for Bush" -- Fox News Insider

"They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news," says a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch.
“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”
And that’s the word from inside Fox News.
Note the story here isn’t that Fox News leans right. Everyone knows the channel pushes a conservative-friendly version of the news. Everyone who’s been paying attention has known that since the channel’s inception more than a decade ago. The real story, and the real danger posed by the cable outlet, is that over time Fox News stopped simply leaning to the right and instead became an open and active political player, sort of one-part character assassin and one-part propagandist, depending on which party was in power. And that the operation thrives on fabrications and falsehoods.
“They say one thing and do another. They insist on maintaining this charade, this façade, that they’re balanced or that they’re not right-wing extreme propagandist,” says the source. But it’s all a well-orchestrated lie, according this former insider. It’s a lie that permeates the entire Fox News culture and one that staffers and producers have to learn quickly in order to survive professionally.
“You have to work there for a while to understand the nods and the winks,” says the source. “And God help you if you don’t because sooner or later you’re going to get burned.”
The source explains:
“Like any news channel there’s lot of room for non-news content. The content that wasn’t ‘news,’ they didn’t care what we did with as long as it was amusing or quirky or entertaining; as along as it brought in eyeballs. But anything—anything--that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it. If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it. There’s a conservative take on every story no matter what it is. So you either get told what it is or you better intuitively know what it is.”
What if Fox News staffers aren’t instinctively conservative or don’t have an intuitive feeling for what the spin on a story should be? “My internal compass was to think like an intolerant meathead,” the source explains. “You could never error on the side of not being intolerant enough.”
The source recalls how Fox News changed over time:
“When I first got there back in the day, and I don’t know how they indoctrinate people now, but back in the day when they were “training” you, as it were, they would say, ‘Here’s how we’re different.’ They’d say if there is an execution of a condemned man at midnight and there are all the live truck outside the prison and all the lives shots. CNN would go, ‘Yes, tonight John Jackson, 25 of Mississippi, is going to die by lethal injection for the murder of two girls.’ MSNBC would say the same thing.
“We would come out and say, ‘Tonight, John Jackson who kidnapped an innocent two year old, raped her, sawed her head off and threw it in the school yard, is going to get the punishment that a jury of his peers thought he should get.’ And they say that’s the way we do it here. And you’re going , alright, it’s a bit of an extreme example but it’s something to think about. It’s not unreasonable.
"When you first get in they tell you we’re a bit of a counterpart to the screaming left wing lib media. So automatically you have to buy into the idea that the other media is howling left-wing. Don’t even start arguing that or you won’t even last your first day.
“For the first few years it was let’s take the conservative take on things. And then after a few years it evolved into, well it’s not just the conservative take on things, we’re going to take the Republican take on things which is not necessarily in lock step with the conservative point of view.
“And then two, three, five years into that it was, we’re taking the Bush line on things, which was different than the GOP. We were a Stalin-esque mouthpiece. It was just what Bush says goes on our channel. And by that point it was just totally dangerous. Hopefully most people understand how dangerous it is for a media outfit to be a straight, unfiltered mouthpiece for an unchecked president.”
It’s worth noting that Fox News employees, either current or former, rarely speak to the press, even anonymously. And it’s even rarer for Fox News sources to bad mouth Murdoch’s channel. That’s partly because of strict non-disclosure agreements that most exiting employees sign and which forbid them from discussing their former employer. But it also stems from a pervasive us-vs.-them attitude that permeates Fox News. It’s a siege mentality that network boss Roger Ailes encourages, and one that colors the coverage his team produces.
“It was a kick ass mentality too,” says the former Fox News insider. “It was relentless and it never went away. If one controversy faded, goddamn it they would find another one. They were in search of these points of friction real or imagined. And most of them were imagined or fabricated. You always have to seem to be under siege. You always have to seem like your values are under attack. The brain trust just knew instinctively which stories to do, like the War on Christmas.”
According to the insider, Ailes is obsessed with presenting a unified Fox News front to the outside world; an obsession that may explain Ailes’ refusal to publically criticize or even critique his own team regardless of how outlandish their on-air behavior. “There may be internal squabbles. But what [Ailes] continually preaches is never piss outside the tent,” says the source. “When he gets really crazy is when stuff leaks out the door. He goes mental on that. He can’t stand that. He says in a dynamic enterprise like a network newsroom there’s going to be in fighting and ego, but he says keep it in the house.”
It’s clear that Fox News has become a misleading, partisan outlet. But here’s what the source stresses: Fox News is designed to mislead its viewers and designed to engage in a purely political enterprise.
In 2010, all sorts of evidence tumbled out to confirm that fact, like the recently leaked emails from inside Fox News, in which a top editor instructed his newsroom staffers (not just the opinion show hosts) to slant the news when reporting on key stories such as climate change and health care reform.
Meanwhile, Media Matters revealed that during the 2009-2010 election cycle, dozens of Fox News personalities endorsed, raised money, or campaigned for Republican candidates or organizations in more than 600 instances. And in terms of free TV airtime that Fox News handed over to GOP hopefuls, Media Matters calculated the channel essentially donated $55 million worth of airtime to Republican presidential hopefuls last year who also collect Fox News paychecks.
And of course, that’s when Murdoch wasn’t writing $1 million checks in the hopes of electing more Republican politicians.
So, Fox News as a legitimate news outlet? The source laughs at the suggestion, and thinks much of the public, along with the Beltway press corps, has been duped by Murdoch’s marketing campaign over the years. “People assume you need a license to call yourself a news channel. You don’t. So because they call themselves Fox News, people probably give them a pass on a lot of things,” says the source.
The source continues: “I don’t think people understand that it’s an organization that’s built and functions by intimidation and bullying, and its goal is to prop up and support Republicans and the GOP and to knock down Democrats. People tend think that stuff that’s on TV is real, especially under the guise of news. You’d think that people would wise up, but they don’t.”
As for the press, the former Fox News employee gives reporters and pundits low grades for refusing, over the years, to call out Fox News for being the propaganda outlet that it so clearly is. The source suggests there are a variety of reasons for the newsroom timidity.
“They don’t have enough staff or enough balls or don’t have enough money or don’t have enough interest to spend the time it takes to expose Fox News. Or it’s not worth the trouble. If you take on Fox, they’ll kick you in the ass,” says the source. “I’m sure most [journalists] know that. It’s not worth being Swift Boated for your effort,” a reference to how Fox News traditionally attacks journalists who write, or are perceived to have written, anything negative things about the channel.
The former insider admits to being perplexed in late 2009 when the Obama White House called out Murdoch’s operation as not being a legitimate new source, only to have major Beltway media players rush to the aid of Fox News and admonish the White House for daring to criticize the cable channel.
“That blew me away,” says the source, who stresses the White House’s critique of Fox News “happens to be true.”

Eric Boehlert is is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America. He's the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush (Free Press, 2006) and Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press (Free Press, 2009). He worked for five years as a senior writer for Salon.com, where he wrote extensively about media and politics.

Sitting Long Is Dangerous To Heart Health -- Jon Barron Blog

Sitting Negates Workout Benefits

When Jon first wrote Lessons from the Miracle Doctors, he titled the chapter on exercise "Move or Die." Recent studies now show that's even more true than Jon thought at the time. It turns out that getting up from your desk even for a moment or two goes a long way toward preventing diabetes and heart disease. In fact, if you don't get up frequently, you raise your risk of disease even if you go to the gym for vigorous workouts.

A study of 4,757 adults just published in the European Health Journal found that those sedentary employees who barely moved from their desks during working hours imperiled their health. In general, the subjects who moved the least during working hours had the most risk factors for heart disease and diabetes, while those who both moved frequently during the day and engaged in regular exercise had the least.

The participants in the study wore devices called accelerometers attached to their hips. These devices measure walking, running, and standing activity. They also had regular testing of waist circumference, cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, and blood protein concentrations over a three-year period, from 2003 to 2006. The most sedentary participants were inactive for over 21 hours per day according to the report, while at the other end of the scale, the most active participants sat only two hours a day. But it was the number of breaks that subjects took rather than the number of hours they sat that made the biggest health difference -- even when the breaks lasted only a minute.

Lead researcher Genevieve Healy of the University of Queensland, Australia, says it isn't clear why breaking up long sedentary periods with frequent movement is so helpful, but she postulates that by regularly contracting large posture muscles, we "flush out the bad stuff." In fact, in her study, those who took the most breaks had the lowest levels of "bad stuff"-- lower levels of blood fats, higher levels of good cholesterol, less insulin resistance, and fewer protein inflammation markers. In other words, they have a decreased risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. Those who took the most breaks also had waist circumference measurements an average of 4.1 centimeters (1.6 inches) smaller than those who stayed glued to their desks the most.

Dr. Healy says, "Even if you exercise for 30 to 60 minutes a day, what you do for the rest of the day may also be important for your cardiovascular health. This research suggests that even small changes to a person's activity levels [as little as standing up regularly] might help to lower cardiovascular risk."

And Dr. JoAnn Manson of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, adds, "This is perhaps the most convincing evidence yet that prolonged sitting is dangerous to our health. It may be an independent risk factor for heart disease, even after accounting for structured exercise." (Think DVT on a long plane flight.)

How many breaks does it take to protect your health? The data showed that the most active subjects took up to 1,300 breaks per week, compared to only around 100 for the most sedentary. Consider that three breaks an hour in a 40-hour week only comes to 120 breaks -- and that's the lowest end of the scale. Also remember that the data showed that you can't make up for prolonged periods of inactivity by cramming it in on the weekend. Again, it's sitting for long periods of time without breaks that creates the problems, and exercise later on in the day doesn't compensate adequately.

On the other hand, the data does NOT suggest that you should run out to Starbucks for a Grande concoction every 15 minutes, nor that you should give up your afternoon jog because you stood up and stretched 40 times on Tuesday. The bottom line here is that activity leads to good health, and that means activity spread throughout the day and throughout all endeavors. If you have a sedentary desk job, you need to figure out how to keep yourself moving without going so kinetic that the boss calls in the EAP folks to administer valium. And surprise, it's not as hard as you think. There are countless opportunities throughout the day.

The experts suggest standing while talking on the phone, walking over to colleagues rather than emailing them, taking the stairs and strolling the corridors. All obvious stuff, but as the chair of the American Council for Fitness & Nutrition, Susan Finn, points out, "Setting up huge goals for people to get them to devote huge blocks of time during the day to exercise just doesn't work. People won't do it. Instead, getting people to engage in purposeful activity, trying to motivate small changes, is the way to go. It's all about making this stuff, these small changes, doable for people, and the workplace is a very good example, a very good place to start."

Now, if Jon can only figure out how to write his next book while standing up.

Hiyaguha Cohen
www.jonbarron.org

The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?

The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?:
By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association, Jan 27, 2011

• Straight to the Source
  
  

"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must." - Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

In a cleverly worded, but profoundly misleading email sent to its customers last week, Whole Foods Market, while proclaiming their support for organics and "seed purity," gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the "conditional deregulation" of Monsanto's genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa. Beyond the regulatory euphemism of "conditional deregulation," this means that WFM and their colleagues are willing to go along with the massive planting of a chemical and energy-intensive GE perennial crop, alfalfa; guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers and destruction of the essential soil food web by the toxic herbicide, Roundup; and guaranteed to produce Roundup-resistant superweeds that will require even more deadly herbicides such as 2,4 D to be sprayed on millions of acres of alfalfa across the U.S.

In exchange for allowing Monsanto's premeditated pollution of the alfalfa gene pool, WFM wants "compensation." In exchange for a new assault on farmworkers and rural communities (a recent large-scale Swedish study found that spraying Roundup doubles farm workers' and rural residents' risk of getting cancer), WFM expects the pro-biotech USDA to begin to regulate rather than cheerlead for Monsanto. In payment for a new broad spectrum attack on the soil's crucial ability to provide nutrition for food crops and to sequester dangerous greenhouse gases (recent studies show that Roundup devastates essential soil microorganisms that provide plant nutrition and sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases), WFM wants the Biotech Bully of St. Louis to agree to pay "compensation" (i.e. hush money) to farmers "for any losses related to the contamination of his crop."

In its email of Jan. 21, 2011 WFM calls for "public oversight by the USDA rather than reliance on the biotechnology industry," even though WFM knows full well that federal regulations on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) do not require pre-market safety testing, nor labeling; and that even federal judges have repeatedly ruled that so-called government "oversight" of Frankencrops such as Monsanto's sugar beets and alfalfa is basically a farce. At the end of its email, WFM admits that its surrender to Monsanto is permanent: "The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well True coexistence is a must."

Why Is Organic Inc. Surrendering?

According to informed sources, the CEOs of WFM and Stonyfield are personal friends of former Iowa governor, now USDA Secretary, Tom Vilsack, and in fact made financial contributions to Vilsack's previous electoral campaigns. Vilsack was hailed as "Governor of the Year" in 2001 by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and traveled in a Monsanto corporate jet on the campaign trail. Perhaps even more fundamental to Organic Inc.'s abject surrender is the fact that the organic elite has become more and more isolated from the concerns and passions of organic consumers and locavores. The Organic Inc. CEOs are tired of activist pressure, boycotts, and petitions. Several of them have told me this to my face. They apparently believe that the battle against GMOs has been lost, and that it's time to reach for the consolation prize. The consolation prize they seek is a so-called "coexistence" between the biotech Behemoth and the organic community that will lull the public to sleep and greenwash the unpleasant fact that Monsanto's unlabeled and unregulated genetically engineered crops are now spreading their toxic genes on 1/3 of U.S. (and 1/10 of global) crop land.

WFM and most of the largest organic companies have deliberately separated themselves from anti-GMO efforts and cut off all funding to campaigns working to label or ban GMOs. The so-called Non-GMO Project, funded by Whole Foods and giant wholesaler United Natural Foods (UNFI) is basically a greenwashing effort (although the 100% organic companies involved in this project seem to be operating in good faith) to show that certified organic foods are basically free from GMOs (we already know this since GMOs are banned in organic production), while failing to focus on so-called "natural" foods, which constitute most of WFM and UNFI's sales and are routinely contaminated with GMOs.

From their "business as usual" perspective, successful lawsuits against GMOs filed by public interest groups such as the Center for Food Safety; or noisy attacks on Monsanto by groups like the Organic Consumers Association, create bad publicity, rattle their big customers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger, Costco, Supervalu, Publix and Safeway; and remind consumers that organic crops and foods such as corn, soybeans, and canola are slowly but surely becoming contaminated by Monsanto's GMOs.

Whole Food's Dirty Little Secret: Most of the So-Called "Natural" Processed Foods and Animal Products They Sell Are Contaminated with GMOs

The main reason, however, why Whole Foods is pleading for coexistence with Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, BASF and the rest of the biotech bullies, is that they desperately want the controversy surrounding genetically engineered foods and crops to go away. Why? Because they know, just as we do, that 2/3 of WFM's $9 billion annual sales is derived from so-called "natural" processed foods and animal products that are contaminated with GMOs. We and our allies have tested their so-called "natural" products (no doubt WFM's lab has too) containing non-organic corn and soy, and guess what: they're all contaminated with GMOs, in contrast to their certified organic products, which are basically free of GMOs, or else contain barely detectable trace amounts.

Approximately 2/3 of the products sold by Whole Foods Market and their main distributor, United Natural Foods (UNFI) are not certified organic, but rather are conventional (chemical-intensive and GMO-tainted) foods and products disguised as "natural."

Unprecedented wholesale and retail control of the organic marketplace by UNFI and Whole Foods, employing a business model of selling twice as much so-called "natural" food as certified organic food, coupled with the takeover of many organic companies by multinational food corporations such as Dean Foods, threatens the growth of the organic movement.

Covering Up GMO Contamination: Perpetrating "Natural" Fraud

Many well-meaning consumers are confused about the difference between conventional products marketed as "natural," and those nutritionally/environmentally superior and climate-friendly products that are "certified organic."

Retail stores like WFM and wholesale distributors like UNFI have failed to educate their customers about the qualitative difference between natural and certified organic, conveniently glossing over the fact that nearly all of the processed "natural" foods and products they sell contain GMOs, or else come from a "natural" supply chain where animals are force-fed GMO grains in factory farms or Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

A troubling trend in organics today is the calculated shift on the part of certain large formerly organic brands from certified organic ingredients and products to so-called "natural" ingredients. With the exception of the "grass-fed and grass-finished" meat sector, most "natural" meat, dairy, and eggs are coming from animals reared on GMO grains and drugs, and confined, entirely, or for a good portion of their lives, in CAFOs.

Whole Foods and UNFI are maximizing their profits by selling quasi-natural products at premium organic prices. Organic consumers are increasingly left without certified organic choices while genuine organic farmers and ranchers continue to lose market share to "natural" imposters. It's no wonder that less than 1% of American farmland is certified organic, while well-intentioned but misled consumers have boosted organic and "natural" purchases to $80 billion annually-approximately 12% of all grocery store sales.

The Solution: Truth-in-Labeling Will Enable Consumers to Drive So-Called "Natural" GMO and CAFO-Tainted Foods Off the Market

There can be no such thing as "coexistence" with a reckless industry that undermines public health, destroys biodiversity, damages the environment, tortures and poisons animals, destabilizes the climate, and economically devastates the world's 1.5 billion seed-saving small farmers. There is no such thing as coexistence between GMOs and organics in the European Union. Why? Because in the EU there are almost no GMO crops under cultivation, nor GM consumer food products on supermarket shelves. And why is this? Because under EU law, all foods containing GMOs or GMO ingredients must be labeled. Consumers have the freedom to choose or not to choose GMOs; while farmers, food processors, and retailers have (at least legally) the right to lace foods with GMOs, as long as they are safety-tested and labeled. Of course the EU food industry understands that consumers, for the most part, do not want to purchase or consume GE foods. European farmers and food companies, even junk food purveyors like McDonald's and Wal-Mart, understand quite well the concept expressed by a Monsanto executive when GMOs first came on the market: "If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."

The biotech industry and Organic Inc. are supremely conscious of the fact that North American consumers, like their European counterparts, are wary and suspicious of GMO foods. Even without a PhD, consumers understand you don't want your food safety or environmental sustainability decisions to be made by out-of-control chemical companies like Monsanto, Dow, or Dupont - the same people who brought you toxic pesticides, Agent Orange, PCBs, and now global warming. Industry leaders are acutely aware of the fact that every single industry or government poll over the last 16 years has shown that 85-95% of American consumers want mandatory labels on GMO foods. Why? So that we can avoid buying them. GMO foods have absolutely no benefits for consumers or the environment, only hazards. This is why Monsanto and their friends in the Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations have prevented consumer GMO truth-in-labeling laws from getting a public discussion in Congress.

Although Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio) recently introduced a bill in Congress calling for mandatory labeling and safety testing for GMOs, don't hold your breath for Congress to take a stand for truth-in-labeling and consumers' right to know what's in their food. Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the so-called "Citizens United" case gave big corporations and billionaires the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) to buy media coverage and elections, our chances of passing federal GMO labeling laws against the wishes of Monsanto and Food Inc. are all but non-existent. Perfectly dramatizing the "Revolving Door" between Monsanto and the Federal Government, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, formerly chief counsel for Monsanto, delivered one of the decisive votes in the Citizens United case, in effect giving Monsanto and other biotech bullies the right to buy the votes it needs in the U.S. Congress.

With big money controlling Congress and the media, we have little choice but to shift our focus and go local. We've got to concentrate our forces where our leverage and power lie, in the marketplace, at the retail level; pressuring retail food stores to voluntarily label their products; while on the legislative front we must organize a broad coalition to pass mandatory GMO (and CAFO) labeling laws, at the city, county, and state levels.

The Organic Consumers Association, joined by our consumer, farmer, environmental, and labor allies, has just launched a nationwide Truth-in-Labeling campaign to stop Monsanto and the Biotech Bullies from force-feeding unlabeled GMOs to animals and humans.

Utilizing scientific data, legal precedent, and consumer power the OCA and our local coalitions will educate and mobilize at the grassroots level to pressure giant supermarket chains (Wal-Mart, Kroger, Costco, Safeway, Supervalu, and Publix) and natural food retailers such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe's to voluntarily implement "truth-in-labeling" practices for GMOs and CAFO products; while simultaneously organizing a critical mass to pass mandatory local and state truth-in-labeling ordinances - similar to labeling laws already in effect for country of origin, irradiated food, allergens, and carcinogens. If local and state government bodies refuse to take action, wherever possible we must attempt to gather sufficient petition signatures and place these truth-in-labeling initiatives directly on the ballot in 2011 or 2012. If you're interesting in helping organize or coordinate a Millions Against Monsanto and Factory Farms Truth-in-Labeling campaign in your local community, sign up here: http://organicconsumers.org/oca-volunteer/

To pressure Whole Foods Market and the nation's largest supermarket chains to voluntarily adopt truth-in-labeling practices sign here, and circulate this petition widely: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_22309.cfm

And please stay tuned to Organic Bytes for the latest developments in our campaigns.

Power to the People! Not the Corporations!

Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association
http://www.organicconsumers.org/Monsanto/ten-things-monsanto.pdf

More troops lost to suicide than deaths in battle.

Congress.org - News : More troops lost to suicide: "More troops lost to suicide
By John Donnelly

For the second year in a row, the U.S. military has lost more troops to suicide than it has to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The reasons are complicated and the accounting uncertain — for instance, should returning soldiers who take their own lives after being mustered out be included?

But the suicide rate is a further indication of the stress that military personnel live under after nearly a decade of war.

Figures released by the armed services last week showed an alarming increase in suicides in 2010, but those figures leave out some categories.

Overall, the services reported 434 suicides by personnel on active duty, significantly more than the 381 suicides by active-duty personnel reported in 2009. The 2010 total is below the 462 deaths in combat, excluding accidents and illness. In 2009, active-duty suicides exceeded deaths in battle.

Last week’s figures, though, understate the problem of military suicides because the services do not report the statistics uniformly. Several do so only reluctantly.

Figures reported by each of the services last week, for instance, include suicides by members of the Guard and Reserve who were on active duty at the time. The Army and the Navy also add up statistics for certain reservists who kill themselves when they are not on active duty.

But the Air Force and Marine Corps do not include any non-mobilized reservists in their posted numbers. What’s more, none of the services count suicides that occur among a class of reservists known as the Individual Ready Reserve, the more than 123,000 people who are not assigned to particular units.

Suicides by veterans who have left the service entirely after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan also are not counted by the Defense Department. The Department of Veterans Affairs keeps track of such suicides only if the person was enrolled in the VA health care system — which three-quarters of veterans are not.

But even if such veterans and members of the Individual Ready Reserve are excluded from the suicide statistics, just taking into account the deaths of reservists who were not included in last week’s figures pushes the number of suicides last year to at least 468.

That total includes some Air Force and Marine Corps reservists who took their own lives while not on active duty, and it exceeds the 462 military personnel killed in battle.

The problem of reservists’ suicides, in particular, has been a major concern to some lawmakers. A Pentagon study this year confirmed that reservists lack the support structure that active-duty troops have.

Some types of reservists are more cut off than others. Rep. Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, says that members of the Individual Ready Reserve and other categories of citizen-soldiers do not receive a thorough screening for mental health issues when they return from deployments.

One of those soldiers, a constituent of Holt’s named Coleman S. Bean, was an Army sergeant and Iraq War veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder but could not find treatment. He took his own life in 2008.

Moved by Bean’s story, Holt wrote a bill requiring phone contacts with these reservists every 90 days after they come home from war. The House adopted Holt’s provision as part of its defense authorization bills for both fiscal 2010 and fiscal 2011. But conferees writing the final version of the bills took it out both years.

Holt said in December that Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain was responsible for that decision in the most recent bill. A spokeswoman for McCain, Brooke Buchanan, would not state his position on the provision. Instead, she said House members had removed it.

A House Armed Services Committee spokeswoman, Jennifer Kohl, said the House reluctantly pulled the provision from the bill because of the opposition of senators, whom she did not name.

Holt said a fuller reckoning of the number of suicides among military personnel and veterans is needed not so much to tell lawmakers and the public that there is a problem — that, he says, they know. Rather, it is needed to more accurately gauge the extent to which programs to help troubled troops are having an effect.

"In order to know whether the steps we’ve taken work," Holt said, "we’re going to have to have more detailed knowledge of who’s out there."

the-eight-states-running-out-of-homebuyers: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

the-eight-states-running-out-of-homebuyers: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance:

The Eight States Running Out of Homebuyers

by Douglas A. McIntyre, Michael B. Sauter and Charles B. Stockdale
Tuesday, January 18, 2011

provided by

The single biggest problem in the U.S. real estate market is simple: There are very few homebuyers.

That seems obvious, but the "buyers' strike" has caused house prices to drop, along with an epidemic of foreclosures. What's worse, the long depression in real estate is probably not over. S&P has forecast that home prices will drop by 7% to 10% this year. The S&P Case-Shiller Index has dropped for most of the 20 largest real estate markets over the last several months. RealtyTrac recently reported that more than 1 million homes were foreclosed upon in 2010.

Many economists argue that the housing market may take four or five years to recover. Even if that's proven to be true, the all-time highs of 2006 may never be reached again.

More from 24/7 Wall St.: • Companies That Rely on Aging Products • OPEC's Funny Math for Oil Demand • Americans Expect Home Prices to Fall

The devastation in some regions will never be repaired. Parts of Oregon, Georgia and Arizona have become progressively more deserted. Since jobless rates may never recover, there is little reason to hope that the populations in these areas will ever rebound. Some homes will be torn down in these pockets of high foreclosures in the hopes that reducing supplies will boost prices. Whether that idea will work in hard-hit areas such as Flint, Mich., and Yuma, Ariz., remains to be seen.

[Click here to check home loan rates in your area.]

24/7 Wall St. looked at a number of the standard measures to find the housing markets facing the biggest problems attracting buyers. After a detailed examination, six metrics were chosen: (1) vacancy rates for 2010; (2) foreclosure rates for 2010; (3) November 2010 unemployment rates; (4) change in building permits from 2006 to 2010; (5) change in population from 2005 to 2010; and (6) price reduction by major cities for 2010. Taken together, they create a strong statistical base to describe markets which buyers have largely abandoned.

Several states nearly made it onto the list, such as Colorado and South Carolina, but did not get poor enough marks across all of our measurements. Each was among the 10 worst for declines in building permits. Colorado had one of the worst foreclosure rates, and South Carolina one of the worst vacancy rates. However, the populations in both states have rebounded enough to make a strong case that their housing markets may recover moderately over time.

The review of the data raises several public policy issues. The most important of these is whether the federal focus on reviving the housing market should be concentrated in the hardest hit regions. The counter to that point of view is that some cities, such as Flint, or states like Nevada are in such bad shape that they are beyond assistance. Unemployment rates are too high in these areas, and perhaps the number of homes on the market is too large.

One thing is certain. The housing recovery will be wildly uneven. A city like New York, which has a dense population and large numbers of middle class and upper class buyers who will wait until they believe prices hit bottom, will have a rapid recovery soon. Building permits granted in New York City over the last four years have been very low. The supply of apartments is also low. Those forces taken together with an even modest economic recovery will help push real estate prices higher in New York and regions with similar characteristics.

The real estate crisis has gone on for four years. In the states 24/7 Wall St. has chosen here, the crisis will go on much longer.

1. Michigan

Vacancy Rate: 15.98% (9th Worst)
Unemployment: 12.4% (Tied for 2nd Worst)
Population Change 2005-2010: -2.05% (Worst)

Michigan is one of only two states whose population has decreased in the last five years. The state has lost more than 2% of its population since 2005. Most of this population loss was undoubtedly due to the depression in the car industry that led to the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler. Flint, once one of the largest car manufacturing cities in America, has lost more than 10% of its population in the past 10 years. The state has the second-worst unemployment rate in the country at 12.4%. Michigan has a home vacancy rate of 15.98%, the ninth-worst in the U.S. There are large neighborhoods in Detroit that are vacant.

2. Nevada

2010 Foreclosures: 9.42% (Worst)
Unemployment: 14.3% (Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -84.39% (Worst)

In 2010, an incredible 9.42% of all housing units in Nevada were foreclosed upon. This is by far the highest foreclosure rate in the U.S., and is nearly twice that of the next-worst state. Nevada also has the highest unemployment rate in the United States, at 14.3%.The recession undermined profits in the gaming industry. Between 2006 and 2010, the state had an 84.3% decrease in building permit requests, the largest drop in the country. This has resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of construction jobs.

3. Arizona

Vacancy Rate: 17.3% (5th Worst)
2010 Foreclosures: 5.73% (2nd Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -81.36% (4th Worst)

Arizona is among a handful of states most deeply wounded by the real estate collapse. Some 5.73% of properties in the state have been foreclosed upon, the second highest rate in the country, and 17.3% of homes are vacant, the fifth greatest rate in the country. Also, Mesa, Phoenix and Tucson, the state's three largest cities, are all among the top five American cities with the greatest percentage of price reductions for homes in 2010, along with Minneapolis and Baltimore. As of December 2010, these cities had 43%, 42% and 38% of their listings with price reductions, respectively.

4. California

2010 Foreclosures: 4.08% (4th Worst)
Unemployment: 12.4% (Tied for 2nd Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -74.7% (6th Worst)

California's impact on the housing market is huge. The state is the largest among the 50 in total GDP and housing units. California's unemployment rate of 12.4% is now tied for second place with Michigan, once the jobless capital of the nation. In 2010, the state had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, at just over 4%. New construction has dropped off dramatically as well, with a 74 % decrease in new building permits between 2006 and 2010.

5. Illinois

2010 Foreclosures: 2.87% (9th Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -81.32% (5th Worst)
Population Change 2005-2010: 1.23% (8th Worst)

Although Illinois has a relatively low residential vacancy rate, finding people to buy homes can be difficult. The state's population only grew 1.23% between 2005 and 2010. This is the eighth worst growth rate in the country. Furthermore, the number of building permits issued since 2006 decreased 81.32%, the fifth greatest drop in the nation. The collapse of the state's industrial base has been so great that its economy will not recover anytime soon.

6. Georgia

2010 Foreclosures: 3.25% (6th Worst)
Unemployment: 10% (9th Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -82.29% (2nd Worst)

The number of building permits issued in 2006 in Georgia was 92,541. In 2010 that number dropped to 16,391. This is the second greatest decrease in the nation during that time. The state's unemployment rate, at 10%, is above the national average of 9.4%. Also in 2010, there were 130,966 foreclosures in Georgia, 3.25% of the state's properties. This is an increase of 53.62% since 2008.

7. Oregon

Unemployment: 10.6% (Tied for 5th Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -74.08% (7th Worst)
Number of Listings With Price Reductions (Portland): 35% (Tied for 8th Worst Among 50 Largest U.S. Cities)

Oregon's real estate market has suffered the double blow of a sharp drop in both building permits and price reductions on existing homes. Unemployment is 10.6%, the fifth worst rate in the country. The number of new building permits decreased by 74% from 2006 to 2010. In December 2010, 35% of listings in Portland, the state's largest city, had price reductions.

8. Florida

Vacancy Rate: 21.03% (2nd Worst)
2010 Foreclosures: 5.51% (3rd Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -81.37% (3rd Worst)

Unemployment in Florida is 12%, the fourth worst in the country. Approximately 1.1 million residents are out of work. Statistics show that 21.03% of the state's housing units are vacant. Furthermore, 5.51% of homes have been foreclosed upon. Florida was among five states that had the largest real estate booms from 2000 to 2006. Residential prices in some waterfront areas like Miami and Palm Beach rose by much more than double during that period. New home and condominium construction soared. Many of those residences have never been occupied and are still part of the inventory of homes for sale.

Sources:

1) Vacancy rates for 2010 -- American Community Survey (Census Bureau)
2) Foreclosure rates for 2010 -- RealtyTrac
3) November 2010 unemployment rates -- Bureau of Labor Statistics
4) Change in building permits from 2006 to 2010 -- Census Bureau
5) Change in population from 2005 to 2010 -- Census Bureau
6) Price reduction by cities for 2010 -- Trulia

What Are the U.S.'s Real Motives for Launching a Drug War in Mexico? | | AlterNet

What Are the U.S.'s Real Motives for Launching a Drug War in Mexico? | | AlterNet: "They enrich (mainly U.S.) bankers through secret arrangements to launder drug money, while recycling phenomenal amounts of dirty money into many sectors of the legitimate economy. They also keep up huge profits in the international drug market for the exporting countries and their governments, a large part of which is recycled into the international arms market for the benefit of arms manufacturers. The United States sells more weapons than all the other arms-producing countries put together. It is the world’s arsenal of death.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

USDA Certified Organic's Dirty Little Secret: Neotame | Farm Wars

USDA Certified Organic's Dirty Little Secret: Neotame | Farm Wars: "USDA Certified Organic’s Dirty Little Secret: Neotame


By Barbara H. Peterson
Farm Wars
Just when we thought that buying “Organic” was safe, we run headlong into the deliberate poisoning of our organic food supply by the FDA in collusion with none other than the folks who brought us Aspartame. NutraSweet, a former Monsanto asset, has developed a new and improved version of this neurotoxin called Neotame.

Neotame has similar structure to aspartame — except that, from it’s structure, appears to be even more toxic than aspartame. This potential increase in toxicity will make up for the fact that less will be used in diet drinks. Like aspartame, some of the concerns include gradual neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage from the combination of the formaldehyde metabolite (which is toxic at extremely low doses) and the excitotoxic amino acid. (Holisticmed.com)

But surely, this product would be labeled! NOT SO!!! For this little gem, no labeling required. And it is even included in USDA Certified Organic food.

The food labeling requirements required for aspartame have now been dropped for Neotame, and no one is clear why this was allowed to happen. Neotame has been ruled acceptable, and without being included on the list of ingredients, for:

• USDA Certified Organic food items.
• Certified Kosher products with the official letter k inside the circle on labels. (Janet Hull)

Let me make this perfectly clear. Neotame does not have to be included in ANY list of ingredients! So, if you buy processed food, whether USDA Certified Organic or not, that food most likely will contain Neotame because it is cost-effective, and since no one knows it is there, there is no public backlash similar to what is happening with Aspartame. A win/win situation!
But that’s not all. Just love chowing down on that delicious steak? Well, that cow most likely will have been fed with feed containing…..you guessed it…..Neotame! A product called “Sweetos,” which is actually composed of Neotame, is being substituted for molasses in animal feed.

“Sweetos is an economical substitute for molasses. Sweetos guarantees the masking of unpleasant tastes and odor and improves the palatability of feed. This product will be economical for farmers and manufacturers of cattle feed. It can also be used in mineral mixture,” said Craig Petray, CEO, The NutraSweet Company, a division of Searle, which is a part of Monsanto. (Bungalow Bill)

Why would we feed animals food that is so distasteful that we would have to mask the unpleasantness with an artificial sweetener? Most animals will not eat spoiled, rancid feed. They know by the smell that it is not good. Enter Sweetos (Neotame). Just cover up the unpleasant tastes and odors, and you can feed them anything you want to, courtesy of the oh, so considerate folks at Monsanto and company.
But of course, Monsanto is no longer associated with NutraSweet. In the time-honored tradition of covering its assets, Monsanto has a proven track record of spinning off controversial portions of its company that generate too much scrutiny, such as it did with the Solutia solution.

Says the Farm Industry News, “Monsanto, which has long resided in the crosshairs of public scorn and scrutiny, appears to have dodged at least one bullet by spinning off its industrial chemical business into a separate entity called Solutia a couple of years ago. Solutia has since been hammered by lawsuits regarding PCB contamination from what were once called Monsanto chemical plants in Alabama and other states” (Source Watch)

So what is the solution to this problem? Buy local organic food, know your local farmer, and don’t buy processed foods whether they are labeled “Organic” or not. This requires a drastic change in lifestyle that most will not want to make. For those who choose to ride the wheel of chance by succumbing to this genocidal adulteration of our food supply by those who stand to profit from our sickness and early demise, my only comment is….it is your choice. But for those of us who have decided to fight this battle one bite at a time by hitting these sociopaths in the pocketbook where it hurts……viva la revolucion!
(C) 2010 Barbara H. Peterson
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Vandana Shiva, Monocultures, myths and the masculinisation of agriculture

Vandana Shiva, Monocultures, myths and the masculinisation of agriculture: "Monocultures, myths and the masculinisation of agriculture

Monocultures, myths and the masculinisation of agriculture

Statement by Dr. Vandana Shiva

Director Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology at The Workshop on “Women's Knowledge, Biotechnology and International Trade — Fostering a New Dialogue into the Millennium” during The International Conference on “Women in Agriculture” Washington June 28—2 July 1998

I am writing this statement from beautiful Doon Valley in the Himalaya where the monsoons have arrived, and our Navdanya (Nine Seeds—Our National Movement on Conservation of Biodiversity) team is busy with transplanting of over 300 rice varieties which we are conserving along with the rich diversity of other agricultural crops. Our farm does not use any chemicals or external inputs. It is a self-regenerative system which preserves biodiversity while meeting human needs and needs of farm animals. Our 2 bullocks are the alternative to chemical fertilisers which pollute soil and water as well as to tractors and fossil fuels which pollute the atmosphere and destabilise the climate.[1]

One of the rice varieties we conserve and grow is basmati, the aromatic rice for which Dehra Dun is famous.

The basmati rice which farmers in my valley have been growing for centuries is today being claimed as “an instant invention of a novel rice line” by a U.S. Corporation called RiceTec (no. 5,663,454).[2] The “neem” which our mothers and grandmothers have used for centuries as a pesticide and fungicide has been patented for these uses by W.R. Grace, another U.S. Corporation.[3] We have challenged Grace's patent with the Greens in European Parliament in the European Patent Office.

This phenomena of biopiracy through which western corporations are stealing centuries of collective knowledge and innovation carried out by Third World women is now reaching epidemic proportions. Such “biopiracy” is now being justified as a new “partnership” between agribusiness and Third World women. For us, theft cannot be the basis of partnership. Partnership implies equality and mutual respect. This would imply that there is no room for biopiracy and that those who have engaged in such piracy apologise to those they have stolen from and whose intellectual and natural creativity they want to undermine through IPR monopolies. Partnership with Third World women necessitates changes in the WTO/TRIPs agreement which protects the pirates and punishes the original innovators as in the case of the U.S./India TRIPs dispute.[4] It also requires changes in the U.S. Patent Act which allows rampant piracy of our biodiversity related knowledge. These changes are essential to ensure that our collective knowledge and innovation is protected and women are recognised and respected as knowers and biodiversity experts.[5]

Women farmers have been the seed keepers and seed breeders over millennia. The basmati is just one among 100,000 varieties of rice evolved by Indian farmers. Diversity and perenniality is our culture of the seed. In Central India, which is the Vavilov Centre of rice diversity, at the beginning of the agricultural season, farmers gather at the village deity, offer their rice varieties and then share the seeds. This annual festival of “Akti” rejuvenates the duty of saving and sharing seed among farming communities. It establishes partnership among farmers and with the earth.

IPRs on seeds are however criminalising this duty to the earth and to each other by making seed saving and seed exchange illegal. The attempt to prevent farmers from saving seed is not just being made through new IPR laws, it is also being made through the new genetic engineering technologies. Delta and Pine Land (now owned by Monsanto) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have established new partnership through a jointly held patent ( No.5723785) to seed which has been genetically engineered to ensure that it does not germinate on harvest thus forcing farmers to buy seed at each planting season. Termination of germination is a means for capital accumulation and market expansion. However, abundance in nature and for farmers shrinks as markets grow for Monsanto. When we sow seed, we pray, “May this seed be exhaustless”. Monsanto and the USDA on the other hand are stating, “Let this seed be terminated so that our profits and monopoly is exhaustless”.

There can be no partnership between the terminator logic which destroys nature's renewability and regeneration and the commitment to continuity of life held by women farmers of the Third World. The two worldviews do not merely clash—they are mutually exclusive. There can be no partnership between a logic of death on which Monsanto bases its expanding empire and the logic of life on which women farmers in the Third World base their partnership with the earth to provide food security to their families and communities.

There are other dimensions of the mutually exclusive interests and perspectives of women farmers of the Third World and biotechnology corporations such as Monsanto.

The most widespread application of genetic engineering in agriculture is herbicide resistance i.e. the breeding of crops to be resistant to herbicides. Monsanto's Round up Ready Soya and Cotton are examples of this application. When introduced to Third World farming systems, this will lead to increased use of agri-chemicals thus increasing environmental problems. It will also destroy the biodiversity that is the sustenance and livelihood base of rural women. What are weeds for Monsanto are food, fodder and medicine for Third World Women.

In Indian agriculture women use 150 different species of plants for vegetables, fodder and health care. In West Bengal 124 “weed” species collected from rice fields have economic importance for farmers.[6] In the Expana region of Veracruz, Mexico, peasants utilise about 435 wild plant and animal species of which 229 are eaten.[7]

The spread of Round Up Ready crops would destroy this diversity and the value it provides to farmers. It would also undermine the soil conservation functions of cover crops and crop mixtures, thus leading to accelerated soil erosion. Contrary to Monsanto myths, Round Up Ready crops are a recipe for soil erosion, not a method for soil conservation.[8]

Instead of falsely labelling the patriarchal projects of intellectual property rights on seed and genetic engineering in agriculture which are destroying biodiversity and the small farmers of the Third World as “partnership” with Third World women, it would be more fruitful to redirect agricultural policy towards women-centred systems which promote biodiversity-based small farm agriculture.

A common myth used by Monsanto and the Biotechnology industry is that without genetic engineering, the world cannot be fed. However, while biotechnology is projected as increasing food production four times, small ecological farms have productivity hundreds of time higher than large industrial farms based on conventional farms.[9]

Women farmers in the Third World are predominantly small farmers.[10] They provide the basis of food security, and they provide food security in partnership with other species. The partnership between women and biodiversity has kept the world fed through history, at present, and will feed the world in the future. It is this partnership that needs to be preserved and promoted to ensure food security.

Agriculture based on diversity, decentralisation and improving small farm productivity through ecological methods is a women-centred, nature-friendly agriculture. In this women-centred agriculture, knowledge is shared, other species and plants are kin, not “property”, and sustainability is based on renewal of the earth's fertility and renewal and regeneration of biodiversity and species richness on farms to provide internal inputs. In our paradigms, there is no place for monocultures of genetically engineered crops and IPR monopolies on seeds.

Monocultures and monopolies symbolise a masculinsation of agriculture. The war mentality underlying military-industrial agriculture is evident from the names given to herbicides which destroy the economic basis of the survival of the poorest women in the rural areas of the Third World. Monsanto's herbicides are called “Round up”, “Machete”, “Lasso” American Home Products which has merged with Monsanto calls its herbicides ‘Pentagon’, ‘Prowl’, ‘Scepter’, ‘#8216Squadron’, ‘Cadre’, ‘Lightening’, ‘Assert’, ‘Avenge’. This is the language of war, not sustainability. Sustainability is based on peace with the earth.

The violence intrinsic to methods and metaphors used by the global agribusiness and biotechnology corporations is a violence against nature's biodiversity and women's expertise and productivity. The violence intrinsic to destruction of diversity through monocultures and the destruction of the freedom to save and exchange seeds through IPR monopolies is inconsistent with women's diverse non-violent ways of knowing nature and providing food security. This diversity of knowledge systems and production systems is the way forward for ensuring that Third World women continue to play a central role as knowers, producers and providers of food.[11]

Genetic Engineering and IPRs will rob Third World women and their creativity, innvoation and decision-making power in agriculture. In place of women deciding what is grown in fields and served in kitchens, agriculture based on globalisation, genetic engineering and corporate monopolies on seeds will establish a food system and worldview in which men controlling global corporations control what is grown in our fields and what we eat. Corporate men investing financial capital in theft and biopiracy will present themselves as creators and owners of life.

We do not want a partnership in this violent usurpation of the creativity of creation and Third World women by global biotechnology corporations who call themselves the “Life Sciences Industry” even while they push millions of species and millions of small farmers to extinction.

References and contact information

1. a) “Cultivating Diversity: Biodiversity Conservation and the Politics of the Seed”, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy (RFSTNRP), New Delhi, 1993

b) “Sustaining Diversity: Renewing Diversity and Balance Through Conservation”, RFSTNRP, New Delhi, 1994

c) “The Seed Keepers”, RFSTNRP, New Delhi, 1995

2. Vandana Shiva, “ Biodiversity and IPRs: Lessons from Basmati Biopiracy” and “The Basmati Patent: What it Implies? How Should India Respond?” Briefing Papers prepared for the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity held in Bratislava, May 1998

3. Vandana Shiva, K.Vijayalakshmi, K.S. Radha, “Neem: A User's Manual” RFSTNRP, New Delhi and CIKS, Madras, 1995

4. Vandana Shiva, “W.T.O,. Rules Against Democracy and Justice in the U.S. - India TRIPs Dispute”, Briefing paper prepared for the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, Bratislava May 1998)

5. Vandana Shiva, Afsar H.Jafri, Gitanjali Bedi, Radha Holla-Bhar, “The Enclosure and Recovery of the Commons”, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), New Delhi, 1997

6. Hope Shand, “Harvesting Diversity”, RAFI, 1997.

7. UNDP, Agroecology: Creating the Synerginism for a Sustainable Agriculture, 1995

8. Speech delivered by Hendrik Verfaillie, President, Monsanto at the Forum on Nature and Human Society, National Academy of Sciences, Washington D.C.— October 30, 1997

9. Vandana Shiva, “Betting on Biodiversity: Why Genetic Engineering Will Not Feed the Hungry”, RFSTE, New Delhi, 1998

10. a) Vandana Shiva, “Betting on Biodiversity: Why Genetic Engineering Will Not Feed the Hungry”, RFSTE, New Delhi, 1998

b) Vandana Shiva, “Globalisation of Agriculture, Food Security and Sustainability, RFSTE, New Delhi, 1998

11. Vandana Shiva, “Most Farmers in India are Women”, FAO, 1991

12. a) Vandana Shiva, “The Violence of Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics”, TWN, Malaysia, 1991 and the Other India Book Store, Goa, 1993

b) Vandana Shiva, “Monocultures of the Mind: Biodiversity, Biotechnology and the Third World”, TWN, Malaysia, 1993

US Government In Bed With Biotech and GMO Giant Monsanto

US Government In Bed With Biotech and GMO Giant Monsanto: "US Government In Bed With Biotech and GMO Giant Monsanto
By Alice Wessendorf on 01/16/2011

US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks reveal the Bush administration drew up ways to retaliate against Europe for refusing to use genetically modified seeds.

In 2007, then-US ambassador to France Craig Stapleton was concerned about France's decision to ban cultivation of genetically modified corn produced by biotech giant Monsanto. He also warned that a new French environmental review standard could spread anti-biotech policy across Europe. We speak with Jeffrey Smith of the Institute for Responsible Technology.

For a transcript of this video visit the Democracy Now site by clicking here.

To share this video with a friend click here.

Conflicting Interests at FDA

Conflicting Interests at FDA: "Conflicting Interests at FDA
August 8, 2008

On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) formally announced new policies intended to increase transparency and public disclosure for its advisory committees. Although a number of new policies were announced, the one creating the most buzz is the policy barring an advisor from participating in a meeting if the FDA determines that he or she has a financial interest of more than $50,000. If the financial interest is less than $50,000, a waiver may be granted, but only if FDA officials "determine that there is an essential need for the advisor's particular expertise."

According to the FDA's press release, a financial interest would include "grants, stock holdings and contracts with a company that would be affected by the committee's recommendations." A more detailed description can be found in the final guidance document.

The new policies are almost surely a result of the increased scrutiny of FDA advisory committees by the public and Congress. The public outcry has been fueled by recent scandals in which members of FDA advisory committees vote to recommend drugs that they have a financial interest in, even when those drugs are likely to be harmful.

According to the Washington Post, "advisory committees play a central role in regulating drugs, medical devices and diagnostic tests. Their decisions largely determine what drugs and medical products can be marketed to Americans--because the agency nearly always follows the panels' guidance." If the advisory committees are as influential as the Post claims they are, the new policies may go a long way towards alleviating some of the influence that industry has on the FDA approval process. But I'm not overly optimistic.

A 2006 report on FDA advisory committees by the National Research Center for Women & Families analyzed "the voting patterns and committee discussions of a random sample of 6 of 16 drug advisory committees and 5 of 18 medical device advisory panels" between 1998 and 2005. The findings of the report seem to corroborate the tight link between advisory recommendations and FDA approval decisions. Within the report's sample, all of the drugs and 94% of the devices recommended by advisory committees were subsequently approved by the FDA.

However, the report's findings also suggest that the influence of advisory committees may be overstated. 45% of drugs and 43% of devices that were not recommended by the advisory committees were approved by the FDA anyway. If the advisory committees are susceptible to industry influence and the FDA is approving drugs and devices that even the "corrupt" advisory committees won't recommend, what does that say about the FDA?

This is not to say that advisory committees do not have a strong influence on the FDA approval process. The new financial conflict of interest disclosure policies are certainly a step in the right direction. But while it's easy to use the committee advisors as scapegoats, they are but one piece of an agency that is overly dependent on and sympathetic to the industry it is supposed to regulate.

Founded in 1981, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is a nonpartisan independent watchdog that champions good government reforms. POGO's investigations into corruption, misconduct, and conflicts of interest achieve a more effective, accountable, open, and ethical federal government.

Rules to Watch for in 2011 | OMB Watch

Rules to Watch for in 2011: "Rules to Watch for in 2011
Posted on January 11, 2011


Federal agencies have released their rulemaking agendas for 2011, providing the public with a roadmap of the health, safety, and environmental safeguards it can anticipate in the new year.

Each spring and fall, the executive branch publishes the Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, commonly called the Unified Agenda. The agenda includes the individual rulemaking agendas for all executive branch agencies, including independent commissions. Agencies post online brief descriptions of their rules and projected timetables for milestones and completion.

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Reports | OMB Watch

Reports | OMB Watch:

Dismantling the Public's Right to Know

Under the Bush administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is slowly dismantling its flagship environmental information tool--the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). The program has been protected and improved for over the last 15 years, serving as a constant example of the vital role information plays in a democracy. Unfortunately, the program's success has made it a target for those that seek to reduce corporate oversight and accountability.

Read More >>

Will the Obama administration be the first to seriously regulate genetically modified food? | Grist

Will the Obama administration be the first to seriously regulate genetically modified food? | Grist: "U.S. farmers planted the first commercial GMO crops in 1996. Today, upwards of 90 percent of U.S. soy, and 60 percent of U.S. corn, come from GMO seeds. Those crops suffuse our food supply -- they provide the bulk of our cooking oil and sweetener, and feed the animals that feed us. By 2003, as much as 75 percent of processed food available in the United States contained GMO ingredients, according to an estimate cited by the USDA. GM corn and soy acreage have only expanded since then.

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Rainwater Scribd

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Another Kind of Energy

Another Kind of Energy: "PERMACULTURE HAS ITS GENESIS in the visionary work of J. Russell Smith, J. Sholto Douglas, Robert Hart, and others less well known, who, two generations ago and more, realized the urgency of transforming the basis of agricul­ture through the use of trees and other perennial crops. They saw the progressive devastation of land that followed the plow and knew that only by integrating forestry and farming could man’s impact on the Earth be tempered and hope for humanity’s future be secured into the next century.

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