"The Salazar Quotient: How Big Oil Bought the Interior Department"

By Billy Wharton

The time of big oil and coal energy was supposed to have faded with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Obama hailed the beginning of a new age of political sanity, where the US would be brought into line with global opinion about pressing issues such as carbon emissions and the transition to clean energy sources. But who did Obama select to be the new Secretary of the Department of the Interior. Ken Salazar. Read more…

Counterpunch (5/12/10)
http://counterpunch.org/wharton05122010.html


"How Do We Get Out of Here: Next Financial Crisis is in Public Services"
by Frédéric Lordon

Austerity is not the only way to make up for massive government debt and lack of revenue following self-induced disasters in private finance. There are fairer ways to balance the books. Short of radical transformation in the assumptions underlying international financial speculation, Frédéric Lordon examines various tax approaches.

Le Monde Diplomatique (March 2010)
http://mondediplo.com/2010/03/02financialreforms


"Sugar-coated: Jamie Oliver’s ‘Food Revolution’ Is Camera-Ready"
By Arun Gupta

There's talk about Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution” reality TV series airing on ABC. Olivier landed on America’s shores with the self-anointed mission to remake US eating habits for the better. Ground zero is Huntington, West Virginia, a city of 50,000 “recently named the unhealthiest city in America." But viewers are not supposed to know that Olivier is substituting high-end foodstuffs that normally grace three-star restaurants for the cheap, institutional fare dished out in public schools like West Virginia’s Central City Elementary School, the setting for the first two episodes. Read more…

The Indypendent (4/21/10)
http://www.indypendent.org/2010/04/21/sugar-coated/