Vermont state lawmakers have introduced a measure to end corporate personhood. The idea is to counteract the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and raises some interesting legal questions. To read more click here

See additional article here: http://www.alternet.org/story/149620/

Power does not rest with the electorate. It does not reside with either of the two major political parties. It is not represented by the press. It is not arbitrated by a judiciary that protects us from predators. Power rests with corporations. And corporations gain very lucrative profits from war, even wars we have no chance of winning. All polite appeals to the formal systems of power will not end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must physically obstruct the war machine or accept a role as its accomplice.

Read the article here: http://www.alternet.org/story/149478/

Not surprising if you were with us in campaign season, but it does make it official: Outside groups poured more money into Colorado's U.S. Senate election than any other race in the country, according to an analysis of election spending by The Sunlight Foundation.
The foundation report found that the race between Democrat Michael Bennet and Republican Ken Buck and drew more than $30 million and, with primary spending included, the figure jumped to $32.78 million.
In the wake of the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, outside money flooded the 2010 mid-terms, at a total of $454,697,852.52.

Congress isn't going to regulate hydraulic fracturing any time soon. But the Department of Interior might. For starters, Interior is mulling whether it should require drilling companies to disclose the chemicals they use to frack wells drilled on public lands, and already the suggestion has earned Interior Secretary Ken Salazar an earful.
On January 5, a bipartisan group of 32 members of Congress, who belong to the Natural Gas Caucus, sent Salazar a letter imploring him to resist a hasty decision because more regulations would "increase energy costs for consumers, suppress job creation in a promising energy sector, and hinder our nation's ability to become more energy independent."

To read the article click here

While visiting a seed corn dealer's demonstration plots in Iowa last fall, Dr. Don Huber walked passed a soybean field and noticed a distinct line separating severely diseased yellowing soybeans on the right from healthy green plants on the left (see photo). The yellow section was suffering from Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS), a serious plant disease that ravaged the Midwest in 2009 and '10, driving down yields and profits. Something had caused that area of soybeans to be highly susceptible and Don had a good idea what it was.
 

Read Article here: http://www.responsibletechnology.org/blog/664

Last week, ThinkProgress http://thinkprogress.org/ conducted an impromptu interview with David Koch - one of the richest men in America, co-owner of the conglomerate Koch Industries, and a top financier of right-wing front groups - after we found him leaving the swearing-in ceremony for Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). In the first part of the interview, Koch said that he "admire[s]" the Tea Party movement, and that "the rank and file are just normal people like us." In the second part, Koch denied the existence of climate change and shrugged when asked if carbon pollution causes global warming. Koch Industries, which owns a coal shipping company, several of the country's largest oil refineries and pipeline networks, and several fertilizer plants and factories, is a major contributor to climate change and funds much of the climate change-denying propaganda machine.   
Read more click here

David Chavern, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce, appeared on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning to discuss his organization and the state of the economy. At one point, a caller with a "pet peeve" against the minimum wage dialed in on the Republican line and laid out a typical far right stance about how the minimum wage hurts employment. Asked to respond to the caller, Chavern said the Chamber would "agree with you." Chavern explained that the minimum wage is "counterproductive" to employment, but acknowledged that its political popularity made it something that "we are going to have to get used to living with it"

Read the article here: http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/11/chamber-minimum-wage/

A team of Bank of America officials is scrambling to investigate its own documents and executives' hard drives in an effort to be prepared, should WikiLeaks release devastating materials about the bank.

Raw Story first reported in late November that Bank of America may be the next big WikiLeaks target, citing a 2009 interview in which Julian Assange said he had 5GB of secret documents from the bank. Assange said in an interview this fall that WikiLeaks was prepared to "take down" a major U.S. bank in early 2011. As a result of that report, Bank of America's stock fell 3 percent in a day.    To read more click here 

They committed widespread fraud - largely whitewashed by the corporate media - and, in the process, threw the economy into a tailspin. They've broken into and stolen people's homes, and, in the name of "efficiency," bilked state governments out of billions of dollars in real estate transfer fees. They've even admitted to ripping off - and foreclosing on - soldiers deployed overseas, in violation of the law.

And they shredded a bedrock principle of capitalism, throwing hundreds of years of settled property law into doubt and in turn creating a massive drag on Main Street's economic "recovery."

They got rich in the process. The mortgage industry did all of that for a fat stream of profits while the going was good, but now that they face the prospect of being held accountable by the justice system -- as would you or I had we routinely broken the laws -- analysts expect the "banksters" to lobby hard for another bailout.

Read story here: http://www.alternet.org/story/149631/

On January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued his prophetic warning about the military-industrial complex, anticipating the increased political, economic, military and even cultural influence of the Pentagon and its allies. Several weeks earlier, he had privately told his senior advisers in the Oval Office, "God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn't know the military as well as I do." Several months after his inauguration in 1953, he warned against warfare that had "humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
In the spring of 1961, I was part of a small group of undergraduates who met with the president's brother, Milton Eisenhower, who was then president of Johns Hopkins University. Milton Eisenhower and a Johns Hopkins professor of political science, Malcolm Moos, played major roles in the drafting and editing of the farewell speech of January 1961. The actual drafter of the speech, Ralph E. Williams, relied on guidance from Professor Moos. Milton Eisenhower explained that one of the drafts of the speech referred to the "military-industrial-Congressional complex" and said that the president himself inserted the reference to the role of the Congress, an element that did not appear in the delivery of the farewell address. When the president's brother asked about the dropped reference to Congress, the president replied: "It was more than enough to take on the military and private industry. I couldn't take on the Congress as well."

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"THE NEW CONGRESS: The 112th Congress convened last week.  Republicans now control the House of Representatives and have increased their membership in the Senate to 47.  The media and pundits will talk about a million things with regard to this new Congress, but let me stress to you what I consider to be the most important.
"The right-wing Republicans now leading their party are extremely confident that the political momentum is with them.  They not only won decisive victories in the last election but, as a result of the disastrous Citizens United  Supreme Court decision, they correctly believe that they will have a huge financial advantage in future elections because billionaires and corporate interests can now contribute as much as they like into the political process without disclosure.  At this moment, Karl Rove and other Republican operatives are organizing big money interests to become financially involved in the next election in a way that will completely revolutionize campaign financing.  Republicans now believe that no matter what they do or say, they will be able to buy many seats in Congress because of their financial advantage.
"Further, and equally important, the right-wing media echo chamber of Fox TV and talk radio (Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, etc.) are becoming increasingly effective in transmitting a reactionary world view to the tens of millions of Americans who watch or listen to them every day.  For many of these Americans, the only news that they receive comes from these extreme right-wing commentators.  While the progressive community has made some significant media gains with excellent websites and informative blogs, compelling television news and commentary on MSNBC and some fine and engaging radio talk shows, we would be very naïve not to understand that our progressive analysis of contemporary political issues is being overwhelmed by the right wing.  We have some good shows on MSNBC; they have a network.  We have over a million radio listeners to Thom Hartmann and Ed Schultz; Rush Limbaugh has 14 to 25 million, and Sean Hannity has 13 million.
"All of which brings me to what the Republican agenda, pushed by an extreme right-wing, will likely be in the coming Congress. And here it is.  The Republicans in this Congress, in a way unprecedented in modern American history, will begin a political assault on the very foundations of modern American society.  Yes, of course they will continue their usual day-to-day efforts to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut back on programs desperately needed by the middle-class, but now they are prepared to go much further.  Now, in a very well-orchestrated effort, they are determined to undo virtually all of the major pieces of social legislation passed since the 1930s, and move this country back to a time when workers, the elderly and the poor had virtually no protections against the vicissitudes of life.  They want to return this country to a time when large corporations and the rich had all the power - economic and political.
"They do not simply want to repeal the Health Care Reform bill passed last year.  There are many Republicans in Congress who believe that any federal efforts in health care are unconstitutional.  This means, over a period of time, completely eliminating Medicare, Medicaid and other public health programs.  In other words, if you're sick and you don't have a lot of money, you're on your own.  Good luck.