Yesterday in Oak Brook, Illinois the world’s most well-recognized purveyor of unhealthy food held its annual shareholders’ meeting. Usually a forum to showcase profits made at the expense of the public’s health, food advocates and health professionals gave the burger giant’s dog and pony show pause.

For a second straight year, shareholders voted on a resolution requiring McDonald’s to publicly assess its impacts on the nation’s health. The resulting report would, no doubt, be damning. After all, no fast food corporation sells more high-fat, -salt, -sugar, and -calorie junk food worldwide. No fast food corporation spends more marketing its unhealthy offerings. And perhaps no food corporation has had a greater impact on how we eat or how food is grown.    Read more

The minimum wage increase that has passed the New York State Assembly but is stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate and is not drawing support from Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo would directly benefit 10.1 percent of New York workers. The proposed increase from the federal minimum wage of $7.25 to $8.50 would affect 880,000 workers currently earning less than $8.50 an hour, a new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute finds, and another 200,000 workers making just over $8.50 might benefit from a spillover effect.    Read more

 In recent years, the world's scientists have begun to show that climate change is altering the magnitude and frequency of severe weather, and polls say a majority of Americans now link droughts, floods and other extremes to global warming.

And yet, this country's TV weather forecasters have increasingly taken to denying evidence that warming is affecting weather—or is even happening at all. Only 19 percent accept the established science that human activity is driving climate change, says a 2011 report by the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, making TV meteorologists far more skeptical than the public at large.    Read more

 For someone who supports the prohibition of marijuana, and stands by idly as U.S. prosecutors bust state-sanctioned medical pot dispensaries, Barack Obama appears to have been quite the teenage stoner.  According to the book Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss, Obama was deeply involved in weed culture. Lucky for him, though, he never got caught. And so rather than lose federal loans for school or housing, among other terrible punishments, he was able to rip bongs and become President of the United States!    Read more

 Energy has turned into a contentious campaign issue in 2012, pitting “drill-baby-drill” against “clean energy now.” But multiple polls now make clear that the clean energy issue is a winning one for progressives.

The way the media and cable TV frame the national debate may make it seem like there’s an even split between supporters of fossil fuels and supporters of renewable alternatives. However, a new poll from the Pew Research Center finds that clean energy has far more support than fossil fuels support across the political spectrum — except among conservative Republican males.    Read more

Yesterday, Philadelphians reminded Mitt Romney why their city was dubbed Realadelphia, and let him know he has no business cruising through a deprived neighborhood, acting like he cares enough to do something for its people.  

Or, as one demonstrator made clear, Philly doesn’t forget: Romney can’t say he doesn't care about the poor and then stroll into a West Philly charter school (which will soon take over the city, now that the public school district has been killed)  “to promote his new education agenda":    Read more

Among working white voters who don't have a college degree, President Barack Obama is finding his re-election campaign engaged in the same struggle for votes as the Democratic presidential candidates who preceded him -- but you wouldn't know that from a Politico front-page headline, "Obama Struggling With White Voters," trumpeting a new Washington Post/ABC News poll on the match-up between Obama and GOP candidate Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and former CEO of Bain Capital. (The Washington Post, to its credit, does a better job describing the poll results in its front-page headline, "Obama fares worse among struggling whites.")    Read more

Senate Democrats, led by five female Senators, began a renewed push this week to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that protects women who sue over being paid less than their male counterparts.

But, as with much of the recent pro-woman legislation, the measure will spark a partisan fight. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) began efforts to prevent the vote from being filibustered. “Republicans deny they’re waging a war on women,” Reid said on the floor Thursday morning, “yet they’ve launched a series of attacks on women’s access to health care and contraception this year. Now they have an opportunity to back up their excuses with action.”    Read more

 Good news, criminals: You can sexually assault someone, get caught, decide you simply don’t feel like being questioned right at this moment and then walk free. Or at least those are the rules the NYPD plays by:

New details have emerged about a 22 year-old woman who was attacked yesterday morning around 5:30AM by a Hispanic male in his 40s. CBS New York reports that the woman was returning home from her job at a Manhattan night club when she exited the 4th Avenue/9th Street F/G station. As she walked on 16th Street between 4th and 5th Avenues she noticed a man was following her, but thought that she’d shaken him. Soon after, the man jumped at and groped her. Neighbors heard the young woman scream, and as they ran outside, the assailant fled. He didn’t get far though — a neighbor cornered him on Prospect Ave and 3rd Ave.    Read more

 You don't have to be a close watcher of politics to know that Barack Obama has been far friendlier to Wall Street than Wall Street deserves. A casual read of Matt Taibbi will tell you all you need to know on that front.

But to say that because of that, there's no difference between Romney and Obama on matters of Wall Street and austerity is an exercise in lazy equivalence. Mitt Romney just went out and proved that with his latest stance on student loans:

Mitt Romney has just released his plan for educating America’s young people, and it’s wholly consistent with his overall philosophy: Allow money to dominate politics, and everything will work out great. Except that, when it comes to policies on college education, we tried that approach under George W. Bush, and it was a disaster for students and taxpayers.    Read more