News
It was hot in the vineyard east of Stockton on Wednesday, May 14, 2008. Hotter than the day before when the temperature reached 90 degrees by the early afternoon. Hotter than usual for May.
Russ Libby has been attending the Common Ground Fair far longer than the 14 years he's been executive director of the event's parent organization, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA).
"The great inter-war slumps were not acts of God or of blind forces. They were the sure and certain result of the concentration of too much economic power in the hands of too few men (who) felt no responsibility to the nation."
From the 1945 UK Labour manifesto Let Us Face The Future
A high-powered lobbying group is gearing up to push for what it calls health care reform--but the group has already made huge concessions to big business at the outset and endorses Barack Obama's inadequate health care plan.
In This Issue:
*Organic Dairy Scorecard Updated
*Almond Growers and Handlers File Federal Lawsuit
*Cornucopia Institute Calls for Food Safety Rules
*Got Fresh Spinach? Lettuce? Think again!
*USDA Kills Pesticide-Testing Program
Organic Dairy Scorecard Updated
RURAL ROUTES / Margot Ford McMillen
Last weekend, the big social event in my world was helping a friend move from her duplex apartment, in a complex that had been foreclosed, to a new apartment. The bank, who now owned her unit, didn't want to be in the rentals business, so they were moving everybody out. This is a short-sighted plan, in my opinion, because I believe that new buyers would want renters with good track records, but I'm not a bank. Maybe they had plans to upgrade the places, or maybe they had buddies that wanted to live there.
Mexico City.
Fury at the billionaire bail-out of the criminal class that has driven Wall Street into a disaster of 9/11 dimensions festers down at the bottom of the economic food chain on Main Street USA. It is a familiar syndrome south of the border. Bailing out the super rich on the backs of the rest of us has had Mexicans seething since the great FOBAPROA scam of the mid-1990s.
"We're still spending like we weren't at war . We can't have guns and butter both at the same time."
-- Fred Thompson, campaigning in Iowa, October 2007
We all learned - again -Truth occupies a unique space in American politics: the taboo corner. I don't refer to John McCain's "always putting my country first," or his pious eschewing of special interests; or Barack Obama's solemn oath to escalate the war in Afghanistan and kill Bin Laden.
The national fight over coal-fired power plants played out Thursday in Utah's highest court. Justices heard oral arguments on two cases intended to force the Sevier Power Co. to use the toughest pollution-control technology available for the 270-megawatt electricity-generating station it has planned for Sigurd.