Joni:
Trouble everyday
I’m not black/ But there’s a whole lots a times/ I wish I could say I’m not white.
Kind of sums up the current state of our nation, doesn’t it? Frank Zappa:
Happy Hour: Ramsey Lewis Trio – Carmen …
Panhandle Slim… Art for Folk…
California crops and oil wastewater
This doesn’t just affect California’s — most of the nation’s produce is grown there. So it seems urgent that this is dealt with:
Until now, government authorities have only required limited testing of recycled irrigation water, checking for naturally occurring toxins such as salts and arsenic, using decades-old monitoring standards. They haven’t screened for the range of chemicals used in modern oil production.
No one knows whether nuts, citrus or other crops grown with the recycled oil field water have been contaminated. Farmers may test crops for pests or disease, but they don’t check for water-borne chemicals. Instead, they rely on oversight by state and local water authorities. But experts say that testing of both the water and the produce should be expanded.
Last month, the Central Valley water authority, which regulates the water recycling program, notified all oil producers of new, broader testing requirements and ordered the companies to begin checking for chemicals covered under California’s new fracking disclosure regulations. The law, which legislators approved last year, requires oil companies to tell the state which chemicals they use in oil-extraction processes. The water authority gave producers until June 15 to report their results.
“We need to make sure we fully understand what goes into the wastewater,” said Clay Rodgers, assistant executive officer of the Central Valley Water Quality Control Board.
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Dark money
Lee Fang takes a look at the bankruptcy filing for the for-profit Corinthian Colleges, and comes up with the usual suspects — on both sides of the aisle, but of course much more to the Repug side:
The filing doesn’t list amounts, but shows that Corinthian made payments to Crossroads G.P.S., a group co-founded by Karl Rove that has raised over $300 million to elect Republican members of Congress through campaign advertising. Crossroads G.P.S., a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, does not disclose any of its donors.
Crossroads G.P.S. spent over $700,000 to help elect Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., during his 2010 election. As Bloomberg News revealed, Rubio later filed a letter with the Department of Education, requesting that the agency “demonstrate leniency” with Corinthian.
Corinthian registered only two lobbying firms last year — Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and Akerman LLP. But the filing shows that Corinthian also paid a myriad of other consulting firms that work to influence the political process.
Corinthian’s creditor list includes: TheGroup DC LLC, a public affairs firmfounded by Art Collins, an advisor to Barack Obama’s 2008 election; Stanton Communications Inc., a firm that specializes in “crisis management”; and Strategic Partnerships LLC, a Virginia-based public affairs company founded by Kenneth Smith, a former Reagan administration advisor who now serves as the president of Jobs for America’s Graduates, Inc.
APCO Worldwide, a lobbying firm, is among the Corinthian creditors, though the firm never registered to represent Corinthian under the Lobbing Disclosure Act.
The listing reveals a number of payments to influential D.C. groups that have battled regulations on the for-profit college industry. The U.S. Chamber of Commere is listed multiple times as a Corinthian creditor. The Chamber has run campaign advertisements on behalf of opponents of the Department of Education’s “gainful employment” regulation, which would measure the performance of vocational programs. The Chamber made defeating the rules a top priority.
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Will Clinton Cash author be Vince-Fostered?
Right-wing attention-seeker Dana Loesch and Peter Schweizer share their paranoid insanity:
LOESCH: We’re going to have more on the terror attack in Garland, Texas, last night. I’m glad that they had security, well-thought-out security for that event. And I was reading an article just the other day where author Peter Schweizer, whose new book Clinton Cash — and this book is just, is really making a lot of people uncomfortable — Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. I was reading the other day that Peter Schweizer who, the author who joins us by phone right now, was very smart and ended up getting himself security. And I know that Peter, first off, thanks so much for joining me. I know you don’t want to talk too much about it, but there is that, there is always that concern for anyone who goes up against the Clinton machine that they could be Vince Fostered, and I’m sure that that was something that you took into consideration.
SCHWEIZER: Well, Dana, first of all thanks for having me on the show. I always love doing it. Yeah, I mean look — there are security concerns that arise in these kinds of situations. You know, you don’t like to go into too much detail, there were some things that were going on that we felt needed to be addressed. The decision on security wasn’t actually made by me, it was made by board members of Government Accountability Institute, and you know, it’s I think showing an abundance of caution. The reality is we’ve touched on a major nerve within the Clinton camp. They are very, very upset, and they are pulling out all the stops to attack me in an effort to kill this book off.
Oh, please. The media is finding so much wrong with this book, it’s a wonder people don’t ask for their money back.
Scott Walker promises national ‘right to work’ law
Though he has yet to officially declare his bid for president, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is frequenting early primary states and hinting at what he would do if elected to the White House. In a recent interview with Radio Iowa, Walker said he would champion a federal version of the controversial ‘right-to-work’ law he signed earlier this year.
“As much as I think the federal government should get out of most of what it’s in right now, I think establishing fundamental freedoms for the American people is a legitimate thing and that would be something that would provide that opportunity in the other half of America to people who don’t have those opportunities today,” he said.
With Walker’s blessing, Wisconsin became the 25th state to pass a so-called ‘right-to-work,’ which bans workplaces that have voted to unionize from collecting mandatory dues to support their collective bargaining efforts. Since then, the state’s union membership has been decimated. Two-thirds of the state’s members of American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) have dropped out, causing membership to plummet from 63,000 to less than 20,000.
Governor Walker’s pledge to bring this policy to the “other half of America” would exacerbate the existing decline in union membership that began in the late 1960s and sped up in the 1980s, and would hit hardest the country’s few remaining labor strongholds: Kentucky, New York, California, Alaska and West Virginia. With the sharp falling off of union membership comes increasing economic inequality and a drop in middle class incomes. Several studies have also found that ‘right-to-work’ laws result in lower wages and a lower likelihood of health care and pensions for all workers, both union and non-union.
As new ‘right-to-work’ bills come up for debate in Maine, Illinois, Ohio and other states, Walker vowed to aid those efforts if elected in 2016 by governing the US as he has governed Wisconsin.
“Really what we did wasn’t just fight unions,” he said. “It was fight the stranglehold that big government special interests had on state and local governments. I think in Washington we need that even more.”
