Inauguration 2017 Special Coverage w/ Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Ralph Nader & More
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Special coverage in the Trump Era
From Public Citizen's Corporate Presidency site: "44 Trump administration officials have close ties to the Koch brothers and their network of political groups, particularly Vice President Mike Pence, White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney."
Dark Money author Jane Mayer on The Dangers of President Pence, New Yorker, Oct. 23 issue on-line
Can Time Inc. Survive the Kochs? November 28, 2017 By Jane Mayer
..."This year, among the Kochs’ aims is to spend a projected four hundred million dollars in contributions from themselves and a small group of allied conservative donors they have assembled, to insure Republican victories in the 2018 midterm elections. Ordinarily, political reporters for Time magazine would chronicle this blatant attempt by the Kochs and their allies to buy political influence in the coming election cycle. Will they feel as free to do so now?"...
"Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America" see: our site, and George Monbiot's essay on this key book by historian Nancy MacLean.
Full interview with The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer March 29, 2017, Democracy Now! about her article, "The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency: How Robert Mercer Exploited America’s Populist Insurgency."
Democracy Now! Special Broadcast from the Women's March on Washington
The Economics of Happiness -- shorter version
Local Futures offers a free 19-minute abridged version of its award-winning documentary film The Economics of Happiness. It "brings us voices of hope of in a time of crisis." www.localfutures.org.
What's New?
October 30, 2017
Book review: “Whitewash – The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science” by Carey Gillam
Whitewash:The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science
272 pages, Island Press, by Carey Gillam
Book review by: Joan Baxter
Excerpt: ..."The book does not disappoint. Not only does it answer my initial questions, but it also raises and answers many more, and it does so dispassionately and meticulously. She draws on years of research and investigation, countless scientific studies, court documents, interviews with scientists, farmers and regulators, and her previous experience as a senior reporter with Reuters.
When she first started reporting on agriculture, Gillam — like most citizens in democracies — had a lot of faith in the government agencies whose job it is to protect consumers and ensure the safety of farm products and foods, assuming that they wouldn’t approve herbicides such as Roundup and the GM Roundup Ready seeds that Monsanto produced if they posed any risks. She even became a “fan” of Monsanto’s chief technology officer, and said she enjoyed her chats with “the affable Brett Begemann” who had risen through the ranks to become Monsanto’s president.
But, as time passed, and her research and reports began to expose doubts about GM crops and glyphosate-based herbicides, she discovered that Monsanto could also be far from affable. The company tried to have her editors take her off the beat and their surrogates engaged in smear campaigns.
Eventually, Gillam left Reuters and joined the non-profit, US Right to Know, with its stated goal of “pursuing truth and transparency in America’s food system.” Her book offers readers 251 pages of compelling evidence that there is an urgent need for just such truth and transparency, that glyphosate poses many risks for human health, farms, crops, soils and the environment, and that Monsanto and the agro-chemical industry have gone to extraordinary lengths and expense to hide these from regulators and the public."...
read full review