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Alice WatersThe celebrity chef Alice Waters is probably the world's most famous advocate of growing and eating local, Organic food. In February 2010 her Chez Panisse Foundation chose as its new Executive Director the wealthy "green socialite" and liberal political activist Francesca Vietor. Vietor's hiring created a serious conflict of interest that has married Waters and her Foundation to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) and its scam of disposing of toxic sewage sludge waste as free "organic Biosolids compost" for gardens.

For the first time, thanks to an ongoing "open records" investigation by the Food Rights Network, the public and the press have easy online access to dozens of internal SFPUC files (SFPUC Sludge Controversy Timeline), documenting the strange tale of Chez Sludge, or how the sewage industry bedded Alice Waters.

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The state of New York has some of the cleanest drinking water in the country, but natural gas drilling is threatening water resources there. At issue is whether drilling companies know enough about how to protect groundwater sources from contamination by a drilling procedure called "fracking," the term used for the hydraulic fracturing of rock formations to make them produce more gas. Citizens also doubt whether existing rules and regulations can assure drilling companies will do enough to protect water sources, and whether there are enough qualified staff people to enforce current and future drilling regulations. In the Gulf of Mexico, drilling technology outpaced the industry's knowledge of how to cap an out-of-control well and clean up an environmental disaster caused by drilling activities. Similar problems exist with the natural gas drilling. Increasingly, land owners report that exposure to fracking chemicals has made them sick and that fracking contaminated streams and drinking water wells on their property, rendering them unusable. Gas companies fight having to reveal the secret cocktail of chemicals that make up their proprietary "fracking fluids," and fracking was exempted from the national Safe Drinking Water Act during the George W. Bush Administration, so there is little help for citizens trying to stop drilling companies from using the procedure. A Web site called "Clean Water Not Dirty Drilling" is urging people to contact the New York State Senate to ask for a "time out" on drilling until more is known about how to make the activity safer.

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The Environmental Working Group (EWG) performed laboratory tests on cash register receipts from major U.S. businesses and found bisphenol A (BPA) present on 40% of them, some at levels higher than those found in canned foods, baby bottles and infant formula. BPA is an estrogen-like, plastic-hardening chemical added to many everyday items and that has been linked to breast cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses. It reacts with dye to form the black or colored print on heat-sensitive paper receipts that millions of people are handed every day while doing business at retail stores. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had previously declared BPA safe, but announced in January, 2010 that in light of new studies it now has "concerns" about the chemical's potential effects on brain development of fetuses, infants and children. It stopped short of saying BPA is unsafe. The receipts EWG tested came from businesses in seven states and the District of Columbia, including Safeway, CVS, Whole Foods, Walmart, Chevron, McDonald's, the U.S. Postal Service and cafeterias in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The American Chemistry Council, which represents the chemical industry, maintains the concerns about exposure to BPA are overblown.

Elizabeth Warren
One of the strongest parts of the Wall Street reform bill that just passed Congress is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). But whether the new bureau delivers on its promise to protect consumers depends in large part on who runs it. The agency was the brain-child of Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren who has championed consumers and taxpayers for decades.

Apparently, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner would rather see his top aide, Michael Barr, in the position. While Barr has been good on the CFPB, he is off-base when he applauds Treasury's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) as a success.

Warren on the other hand has been a strong and consistent critic of the failures of HAMP in her position on the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout. Below, you can watch her grill Geithner on this point just a few weeks ago. Unlike Geithner and crew, she has brought a much-needed sense of urgency to the foreclosure crisis that is devastating so many lives and communities.

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The nation’s biggest insurers -- not happy with provisions of the four-month-old health care reform law that would force many of them to spend more of the money they collect in premiums for their policyholders’ medical care -- are pressuring regulators to disregard what members of Congress intended when they wrote the law, so that they can keep raking in huge profits for their Wall Street owners. If they are successful, many policyholders will soon be shelling out even more than they do today to enrich insurance company shareholders and CEOs. Billions of dollars are at stake, which is why the insurers and their symbiotic allies are pulling out all the stops to gut a key part of the law that would require them to spend at least 80 cents of every premium dollar they take in for medical care.

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The recent attempt by the right-wing propaganda machine to stir up interracial hatred by smearing Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod should be a call to action for traditional journalists. It is now clear that a component of the right's campaign against President Obama is creating racial backlash through the fabrication of false and outrageous propaganda. The Obama administration wrongly assumed that whatever narrative Fox News might concoct and broadcast about a given situation trumps all else in importance, even at the risk of defaming a reputable government worker. The truth is that mainstream journalism has been beaten into believing that writing a "balanced" story means they must take into account whatever defamatory garbage right-wing extremists produce, and portray it as "the other side of the story." The strategy of fabricating lies to influence policy and elections goes back years now. Claims that Al Gore said he "invented the Internet" and that there were "death panels" in the Democrats' health care bill are just two examples of lies that actually succeeded in influencing debates over substantive issues. The Scott Breitbarts of the world are turning into the traditional media's assignment editors. The Sherrod case should be the end of the line for this type of media climate. The mainstream media needs to summon enough courage to start differentiating real news from outright propaganda.

Democrats and Republicans agree that the federal deficit is a serious problem for the stability of American economy. But over the past few weeks, both parties have fought major battles on how to address this problem. The Democrats won the first round when last week, when President Obama signed a six-month extension of emergency unemployment benefits, surmounting Republican objections that the $34 billion measure would add too much to the deficit. The conflict this week is over the extension of the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire December 31. As expected, Republicans are fighting for extension of the entire package while many Democrats, including President Obama, vowed to keep them for families making less than $250,000 a year. It is estimated that keeping the tax cuts for households that make more than $250 thousand a year will cost about $40 billion a year. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner argued that tax increases on the richest Americans are necessary "to make some progress bringing down our long-term deficits." $34 billion and $40 billion are surely not trivial sums. But if Congress and the Administration are sincere about tackling the deficit, it should confront the biggest expense of federal funds: military spending.

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Andrew BreitbartAfter the media exposed conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart's smear of former Agricultural Administration employee Shirley Sherrod as race-baiting, Media Matters listed a string of other sensationalized stories Bretibart has spread that he based on sheer speculation, gross distortions and outright falsehoods. In addition to the recent episode involving a heavily-edited video of Sherrod, Breitbart also gave rise to a fake nationwide ACORN "child prostitution" investigation, leveled an anti-gay smear campaign against Department of Education employee Kevin Jennings, broadcast yet another selectively-edited video made in conjunction with James O'Keefe (the slice-n-dice right-wing videographer who tried to frame ACORN) claiming that Census supervisors encouraged federal employees to falsify their time sheets. Last year, Breitbart claimed on his Web site, BigGovernment.com, that "Transvestites, Mao and Obama Ornaments Decorate White House Christmas Tree." Breitbart also posted a video on September 29, 2009, that he claimed showed community organizers praying to President-elect Obama. The video bore captions that read, "Deliver Us Obama" and "Hear Our Cry Obama," suggesting a crowd of people shown in the clip who belonged to the group the Gamaliel Foundation were praying to Obama.

Photo by Kenny Rae, Oxfam America Recently, the newest batch of Israel-related hasbara was released on a mass scale by the Israeli news website, Ynetnews, which is the online English language news website of Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s most-read news source. It is akin to the New York Times or the Washington Post of the United States, and one of Israel's news sources of prominent distinction.

The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel hasbara-extraordinaire, Felix Frankfurter, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and Alan Dershowitz, are both on the record as saying that "there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza." They are not outliers in holding that opinion. Indeed, former neo-conservative Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, the current Foreign Minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, as well as Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev, are all on the record sharing these sentiments.

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Recently, the newest batch of Israel-related hasbara was released in the Israeli newspaper and website, Ynetnews, which is the online English language news website of Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s most-read newspaper, akin to the New York Times or the Washington Post of the United States.

BP officials have admitted that members of its staff manipulated official images posted on its Gulf of Mexico Response Web site, and promised to stop the practice. The most recent photo, apparently taken from inside a helicopter cockpit, was altered to make it look as though the helicopter was flying. Savvy photo observers, though, saw part of a building that looked like a control tower in the upper left window of the cockpit, and gauges showed the door was open and a parking brake was engaged. Anomalies in the photo were identified by a reader of Gizmodo.com, a technology news Web site. Other photos were found to have been doctored as well. A photo taken at BP's Houston office showed a team of employees meeting in front of a large projection screen. The screen was blank in the original photo, but the photo was edited to add an image on the screen. BP officials explained that the photo had been edited to "ensure the detail on the projection screen could be seen" by readers. In another photo, employees are shown sitting in front of a bank of video screens containing views of underwater operations around the blown-out well. In the original photo, three of the screens were blank, but in the faked photo the three screens were filled in with images.

America's voracious oil consumption is criticized for many reasons in the media today, but three reasons seem to dominate the headlines. First, the Gulf oil disaster has galvanized public outrage at oil companies and led to questioning of our energy needs which push oil rigs out into treacherous deep waters. Second, climate change attracts significant attention, as academy award-winning films are made on the topic and the manufactured "Climategate"; scandal fills news articles with tales of espionage. Finally, as the Iraq War drags on and tensions with Iran remain high, every politician is giving lip service to the national security threat created by "our dependence on foreign oil." But what often gets ignored is perhaps the most obvious and persistent problem involved with oil use: air pollution.

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A CMD Special Report by Anne Landman and Ross Wolfarth

In May, PRWatch reported on a controverisal new group, "Balanced Education for Everyone" (BEE), that is trying to stop public schools from teaching kids about climate change science. BEE argues that teaching climate change is too scary for kids and "unnecessary." But BEE's efforts also raised other questions, like what are kids learning about climate change in school, anyway, and who is influencing it?

It turns out that the issue of who is influencing climate change education in public schools has been flying under the radar screen. Especially now, as school budgets are being slashed and schools are increasingly desperate for resources, it is also an area ripe for corporate exploitation or influence, and that may be just what is happening.

In July of 2008, a new nonprofit organization called the "Alliance for Climate Education, Inc." (ACE), zoomed onto the scene to suddenly become a huge player in the much-overlooked field of climate education. ACE offers high schools free multimedia assemblies on climate change that utilize "cutting-edge animation, music and video." In short, this is not the usual low-budget presentation that school assemblies are known for.

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Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele's latest gaffe turned a lot of heads when, speaking at an RNC fundraiser, Steele stated that the war in Afghanistan is "a war of Obama's choosing" that the American public does not want. It is obviously ludicrous to assert that the war in Afghanistan, which began in October of 2001, when Barack Obama was a state senator, was somehow chosen by the sitting president. The statement caused conservative firebrand William Kristol to call for Steele's resignation. A dismayed Kristol stated that Steele's blunder put him "at odds with 100% of the Republican Party." Unfortunately, Kristol is totally wrong to say that all Republicans disagree with Steele. While Steele's statements may be extreme, they fall in line with a widespread pattern of conservative efforts to blame Obama for problems created by President Bush.

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EPA Administrator Lisa JacksonThe great environmental activist Derrick Jensen, in an article titled "Beyond Hope," published in the May/June 2006 issue of Orion Magazine, lamented,
Most ... environmentalists are fighting desperately, using whatever tools they have -- or rather whatever legal tools they have, which means whatever tools those in power grant them the right to use, which means whatever tools will be ultimately ineffective -- to try to protect some piece of ground, to try to stop the manufacture or release of poisons, to try to stop civilized humans from tormenting some group of plants or animals....[N]o matter what environmentalists do, our best efforts are insufficient. We’re losing badly, on every front. Those in power are hell-bent on destroying the planet, and most people don’t care. Frankly, I don’t have much hope. But I think that’s a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth.

He concludes, "A wonderful thing happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place. You realize that giving up on hope didn’t kill you. It didn’t even make you less effective. In fact it made you more effective, because you ceased relying on someone or something else to solve your problems—you ceased hoping your problems would somehow get solved through the magical assistance of God, the Great Mother, the Sierra Club, valiant tree-sitters, brave salmon, or even the Earth itself—and you just began doing whatever it takes to solve those problems yourself."

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Scott McInnisColorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis admitted plagiarizing an essay that a Colorado foundation paid him to write. In 2004, the Hasan Family Foundation of Pueblo hired former Colorado Congressman McInnis for a two-year fellowship and asked him to write a series of essays about water policy. The Foundation paid McInnis $300,000. When Colorado journalists raised questions about McInnis' writings in early July, McInnis admitted plagiarizing an essay he wrote for the Foundation from a 20-year-old work created by Gregory Hobbs, who is now a Colorado state Supreme Court Justice. McInnis issued a statement calling the plagiarism a "mistake," and the Hasan Foundation demanded McInnis return the $300,000 they paid him. McInnis agreed to pay the money back, hoping this would help "put the matter behind us." The Foundation issued a statement saying McInnis performed "only a fraction of the work he was obligated to perform under the terms of his fellowship," and after an internal review found that " ... of the little work that [McInnis] did, he has admitted it was neither fully completely by him, nor fully original." McInnis issued a statement blaming the plagiarism on a research assistant, Rollie Fischer, who is now 82 years old. Fischer told a Denver TV station that the McInnis campaign tried to force him to sign a statement taking blame for the plagiarism. Three of McInnis' campaign staffers have resigned since the plagiarism issue emerged.

The June update of federal government expenditures in the Wall Street bailout by the Center for Media and Democracy shows that the multi-trillion dollar legacy of the financial crisis largely remains on the government's balance sheet. Our calculations put the total bailout expenditure at $4.74 trillion and the total outstanding balance at $2 trillion.

These numbers are much higher than what is reported in the media because CMD's Wall Street Bailout Cost Table takes into account all 35 government programs, not just the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) managed by the U.S. Treasury Department. Still unpaid: $568 billion in TARP money and $1.4 trillion in Federal Reserve loans and investments.

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Graphic from AFF Web site, safefruitsandveggies.com, promoting the use of pesticides on produceThe Environmental Working Group (EWG) publishes a popular consumer guide called "Shoppers Guide to Pesticides in Produce" (pdf), which is credited with helping drive up sales of organic produce and reduce sales of conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables farmed with pesticides. The Guide contains a handy wallet-sized list of the "Clean 15" -- the top 15 types of produce that are lowest in pesticides, and the "Dirty Dozen" -- twelve types that are better bought organic. Consumers can now also download a handy I-Phone app with the same information. Now the EWG has come under attack by the Alliance for Food and Farming (AFF), a front group for industrial produce growers and pesticide and fertilizer interests. AFF commissioned an "expert report' (pdf) challenging EWG's consumer guide, and started a new Web site, safefruitsandveggies.com, that claims EWG's "Dirty Dozen" list misleads consumers and impedes public health by discouraging consumption of fresh produce. While AFF's "expert report" concedes that people who eat only organic produce will have lower levels of pesticides in their bodies, the report nevertheless concludes that "there is no reason why a consumer should use [the Shopper's Guide] to guide their purchasing decisions for fruits and vegetables."

Wendell Potter, CMD's Senior Fellow on Health Care, will be a special guest speaker at the conference of Progressive Democrats of America, to be held July 23-25 in Cleveland, Ohio. The conference allows progressive Americans to meet and learn from each other, and find out how to use tools and resources available to advance progressive issues in the U.S. Other special speakers include Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Daniel Ellsberg (of Watergate fame), and national radio commentator Jim Hightower. You can also hear CMD Executive Director, Lisa Graves, and Mary Bottari of CMD's BanksterUSA project speak this year at the Netroots Nation 2010 gathering July 22-25 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Lisa will speak on fighting against expanded corporate rights in the wake of the Citizens United decision, and Mary will talk about reforming Wall Street. Netroots Nation was formerly the YearlyKos Convention.

Nobu Su, the wealthy owner of TNT shipping, had a great idea: convert a supertanker into a giant skimming vessel that can suck up oily sea water, siphon off the oil and put the clean water back into the ocean. The shipping mogul, whose net worth is ten figures, did exactly that, spending $160 million right after the April 20th explosion of the Deepwater Horizon to convert a supertanker into the world's largest oil skimming vessel. The 10-story tall ship, dubbed "A Whale," can process 21 million gallons of oily water a day, close to the 28 million gallons processed over the last two and a half months by 500 smaller skimmers in the Gulf of Mexico. After its retrofit, Su dispatched the giant ship to the Gulf of Mexico to help with the BP oil disaster, hired the law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani to negotiate federal contracts and launched a media blitz to drum up public support for using the ship. The blitz worked, and the Coast Guard and Environmental Protection Agency agreed to test A Whale's effectiveness at cleaning Gulf sea water. Gulf coast residents had high hopes for the vessel's effectiveness, but the project was dumped after tests showed the ship was inefficient at sucking up oil from Gulf waters. Why did it fail? Because BP's high-volume use of chemical dispersants, added at the point where oil exited the gusher, has rendered the oil in the water too dispersed for the Taiwanese supertanker to process it.