When the Environmental Protection Agency abandoned its multimillion-dollar investigation, which found strong evidence of fracking contamination of water resources in Wyoming in June, industry groups cheered, and environmentalists fumed.
-- by John Nichols, The Nation
The most under-covered political movement in the United States -- and there are a lot of under-covered political movements in the United States -- is the broad-based national campaign to enact a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court rulings that ushered in a new era of big-money politics.
Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson's "astroturf supergroup," the Campaign to Fix the Debt, won't have much to celebrate this Independence Day weekend after missing its goal of achieving a "Grand Bargain" on austerity by July 4, 2013.
As cities and states struggle to raise revenue in a sagging economy, they have increasingly turned control of public services and assets over to for-profit corporations. But these short-term efforts to close budget gaps can have a disastrous long-term impact.
-- by Nick Surgey and Brendan Fischer
The Center for Media and Democracy filed a complaint yesterday with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission alleging that Nebraska Senator Jim Smith, a major proponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, failed to disclose significant travel expenses paid for by the Government of Alberta, Canada during Smith's participation in an "Oil Sands Academy" organized by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The trip was sponsored by the operator of the Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada, which may raise additional concerns under the ethics and lobbying code.
The Center for Media and Democracy will be hosting the inaugural event celebrating the publication of Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America, the new book from acclaimed authors John Nichols and Robert McChesney.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has vetoed a budget provision that would have radically changed the state's pre-trial justice system and another that would have kicked an independent journalism outfit off of University of Wisconsin campuses.
In October 2012, nine U.S. state legislators went on an industry paid trip to explore the Alberta tar sands. Publicly described as an "ALEC Academy," documents obtained by CMD show the legislators were accompanied on a chartered flight by a gaggle of oil-industry lobbyists, were served lunch by Shell Oil, dinner by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, and that the expenses of the trip were paid for by TransCanada and other corporations and groups with a direct financial interest in the Alberta tar sands and the proposed Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline.
What a monster of a week for court watchers. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act (U.S. v. Windsor), upheld same-sex marriage in California (Hollingsworth v. Perry), neutered the landmark civil rights legislation the Voting Rights Act (Shelby County v. Holder), and punted on affirmative action (Fisher v. University of Texas).
Here are the top ten quotes from justices writing majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions this week:
The decades-long effort to privatize public services and assets is hitting some bumps, with state and local governments reconsidering whether for-profit companies should be allowed to indiscriminately profit off of taxpayer dollars with limited accountability.
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