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Good News/Bad News October 3, 2002
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Health Care: It's Time for a Major Overhaul
Alexander Zaitchik
Democracy and Elections:
More Unfinished 2008 Election Business: Verifiable Vote Counts
Steven Rosenfeld
DrugReporter:
California Supreme Court Rules Unanimously Against Compassionate Care
Tamar Todd
Election 2008:
5 Great Progressive Columnists' Advice and Ideas on the Coming Obama Era
Environment:
Major Green Groups Offer Plan to Obama
Kate Sheppard
ForeignPolicy:
Hillary Clinton's Disdain for International Law -- Change We Can Believe In?
Stephen Zunes
Health and Wellness:
Obama's Plan to End the HIV/AIDS Crisis
Kaytee Riek
Hurricane Katrina:
From the Bayou to Baghdad: Mission Not Accomplished
Amy Goodman
Immigration:
Immigration Pathway Still Looks Uphill
Kirk Nielsen
Media and Technology:
Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
Doron Taussig
Movie Mix:
Love Bites: What Sexy Vampires Tell Us About Our Culture
Sarah Seltzer
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Economic Downturn Hits Women the Hardest
Brittany Schell
Rights and Liberties:
Obama: Close, Don't Repackage, Guantánamo
Michael Ratner, Jules Lobel
Sex and Relationships:
Virtual Sex: How Online Games Changed Our Culture
Damon Brown
War on Iraq:
Why Robert Gates is a Terrible Pick
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Water:
Water Neutral: Is the Latest Eco-Term Just Corporate Hype?
Jeff Conant
There's been so much Bad News this week that we hardly know what to focus on first -- Man-Cows, ice meteors, or the Bush administration's lifelong partnership with Pure Evil? It goes without saying that Bad News will be first this week.
Bad News
It was a strange week in the "Acts of God" department: above and beyond the "When Animals Attack" quality of lions, tigers and bears going on rampages world-wide, we've also seen the development of global-warming induced "ice meteors" falling from the sky. Makes us feel we'd be better off living underground...
Everyone, meet the Man-Cow; Man-Cow, meet everyone. A New Zealand company got approval to insert human genes into cows. Why? No one really knows. The company even admits this, we swear! "You do the research because you don't know the answers." Great jumpin' jesus!
In other great animal news, the factory farm industry is fighting a proposal to limit dosing animals with antibiotics for fear of breeding superbacteria. The argument here is sickening beyond belief: rather than give animals space to move around and fresh feed, the industry needs to medicate their animals (and, consequently, all you meat eaters) repeatedly to keep them from getting sick.
Here's a great exercise in reading between the lines: when this says "agricultural experts," it means "biotech PR flacks." When it says GM corn is "highly profitable," they're clearly referring to the biotech companies, not farmers. And when it says the conference was "organized by biotech," that just means that no one else is really interested in helping people eat right. Thank you, benevolent corporate rulers!
So we're thinking that maybe, just maybe, Bush had help crafting his environmental policies. Why, you ask? Well, no one reason in particular, except maybe the tooth-and-claw fight Bush's EPA is putting up to prevent the release of his policy-planning documents...
And we're certainly not reassured by the latest Republican push to loosen monopoly regulations on utility companies. Looks like that whole Enron fiasco is long forgotten, at least by greedy Republicans.
In the ongoing "forest-thinning" debate, we've got some seriously negative developments this week: Primarily because the Forest Service revealed that the report used to fuel this debate was "rushed and incomplete," and therefore the debate is based on faulty data. Despite this news, Congress agrees on a bill to "streamline regulations" preventing widespread forest logging. That bill is still subject to debate and a Congressional vote, so Bush took it upon himself to quietly "revise regulations" that protect old-growth forests. Good old Dubya, always working unilaterally and with no oversight.
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