Saturday, October 3, 2015

Monsanto's Migraine: Big Fiascoes Facing the World's Biggest Seed Company

The problems are piling up at the company's front door.
 
By Reynard Loki

Monsanto has been reeling from a number of setbacks around the globe. Here's a look at some of the main reasons that 2015 has been a giant headache for the biotech giant. But that headache could find some reilef if the U.S. Senate hands them a legislative victory that would keep American consumers in the dark about what's in their food.

Roundup Probably Causes Cancer

In March, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organization's cancer arm, said that the controversial herbicide glyphosate — the main ingredient in Monsanto's popular weedkiller Roundup — is "probably carcinogenic to humans." IARC noted, "Case-control studies of occupational exposure in the USA, Canada, and Sweden reported increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustment for other pesticides." Used by home gardeners, public park gardeners and farmers, and applied to more than 150 food and non-food crops, Roundup is the Monsantot's leading product and the world's most-produced weedkiller.

In June, France banned Roundup. French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal said, "France must be on the offensive with regards to the banning of pesticides." She added, "I have asked garden centers to stop putting Monsanto's Roundup on sale" in self-service aisles. And earlier this month, California issued a notice of intent to list glyphosate as a carcinogen. “As far as I’m aware, this is the first regulatory agency in the U.S. to determine that glyphosate is a carcinogen,” said Dr. Nathan Donley, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “So this is a very big deal.”
In April, U.S. citizens filed a class action lawsuit against Monsanto, claiming that the company is guilty of false advertising by claiming that glyphosate targets an enzyme only found in plants and not in humans or animals. The plaintiffs argue that the targeted enzyme, EPSP synthase, is found in the microbiota that reside in human and non-human animal intestines. In addition to its potential cancer-causing properties, Roundup has been linked to a host of other health issues, environmental problems and the record decline of monarch butterflies.

And in September, another of the company's herbicides got slammed when a French appeals court confirmed that Monsanto was guilty of chemical poisoning, upholding a 2012 ruling in favor of Paul Francois, whose lawyers claimed the company's Lasso weedkiller gave the cereal farmer neurological problems, including memory loss and headaches.

Tweet Backfires

Monsanto would probably love to forget one of their recent tweets that tried to put out the glyphosate-fueled public image fire. A day before the cancer-listing announcement by California's EPA, Monsanto posted a tweet, asking if people has questions about glyphosate with a link to a FAQ page:
The tweet wasn't the PR success that the company had hoped for. Instead of helping to alleviate consumer fears about the chemical, the tweet became a target for the Monsanto-hating Twitterati:
EU Nations Ban GMOs

In addition to the glyphosate backlash, Monsanto has had to deal with several EU countries who have said no to the company's GM crops. A new European Union law signed in March allows individual member countries to be excluded from any GM cultivation approval request. European opposition to GMOs has been strong: Unlike in the Americas and Asia, where GMO crops are widely grown, only Monsanto's pest-resistant MON810, a GMO maize, is grown in Europe. Several nations have taken advantage of the new exclusion law: Scotland, Germany, Latvia, Greece, France and recently, Northern Ireland, have all invoked it.

In August, Scotland became the first EU nation to ban the growing of genetically modified crops by requesting to be excluded by Monsanto's application to grow GMO crops across the EU. “Scotland is known around the world for our beautiful natural environment — and banning growing genetically modified crops will protect and further enhance our clean, green status,” said Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead.

Germany cited strong resistance from farmers and the public when it made its opt-out request. “Germany has committed a true act of food democracy by listening to the majority of its citizens that oppose GMO cultivation and support more sustainable, resilient organic food production that doesn’t perpetuate the overuse of toxic herbicides,” said Lisa Archer, food and technology director at environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth. “We are hopeful that more members of the EU will follow suit and that the U.S. Congress will protect our basic right to know what we are feeding our families by requiring mandatory GMO labeling.”
Soon after Germany's decision, Latvia and Greece announced that they too are taking advantage of the EU law. France, too, is using the opt-out law to ensure the country's GMO ban remains in place.
While anti-GMO activists warn of the dangers that genetically modified foods pose to health and the environment, the Big Food industry and many scientists argue that GMOs are safe and can help feed a skyrocketing human population. Monsanto told Reuters: "We regret that some countries are deviating from a science-based approach to innovation in agriculture and have elected to prohibit the cultivation of a successful GM product on arbitrary political grounds.” There is a significant political dimension as well: Newswire reported that the GMO opt-out law "directly confronts U.S. free trade deal supported by EU, under which the Union should open its doors widely for the U.S. GM industry." It remains to be seen how the opt-out law will play out in the long run.

But for now, could the GMO resistance in Europe be working? Following the announcements by Latvia and Greece, EurActiv, an online news service covering EU affairs, reported that Monsanto "said it had no immediate plans to request approvals for any new GM seeds in Europe."

The GMO Debate Rages On

The debate over genetically modified foods is complex, and not without its contradictions. While the anti-GMO movement appears to gaining steam, GMO foods have been a big part of the U.S. food system for many years. The vast majority of several key crops grown in the U.S. are genetically modified, including soy (93 percent), corn (93 percent) and canola (90 percent). As Morgan Clendaniel, editor of Co.Exist, points out, "Many crops are genetically modified so frequently, it’s nearly impossible to find non-GMO versions." He adds that, althought 80 percent of all packaged food sold in America contain GMOs, consumers are kept in the dark, because the U.S. is "one of the few places in the developed world that doesn’t require food producers to disclose whether or not their ingredients have any modifications."

One scientist who has been sharply critical of GM crops is David Williams, a cellular biologist at the University of California at Los Angeles. He says that "inserted genes can be transformed by several different means, and it can happen generations later," which can result in potentially toxic plants. In addition, faulty monitoring of GM field tests presents another danger. For example, from 2008 to 2014, only 39 of the 133 GM crop field trials in India were properly monitored, "leaving the rest for unknown risks and possible health hazards."

But within the scientific community, Dr. Williams is in the minority, In fact, as science writer David H. Freeman notes in Scientific American, "The vast major it of the research on genetically modified crops suggests that they are safe to eat." David Zilberman, an agricultural and environmental economist at the University of California at Berkeley (who Freeman describes as "one of the few researchers considered credible by both agricultural chemical companies and their critics") says that the use of GM crops "has increased farmer safety by allowing them to use less pesticide. It has raised the output of corn, cotton and soy by 20 to 30 percent, allowing some people to survive who would not have without it. If it were more widely adopted around the world, the price [of food] would go lower, and fewer people would die of hunger.”

The European Food Safety Authority said it will issue its scientific opinion on the GM crops by the end of 2017. For now, the GMO debate — filled with a host of pros and cons — rages on. But beyond the health and environmental threats that Monsanto's products may pose, some worry that about the how control of the global food system is increasingly concentrated in a few biotech and agriculture megacorps like Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Pioneer and DuPont. "Beating in the heart of every good capitalist is the heart of a monopolist," says Neil Harl, an agricultural economist at Iowa State. "So we have to have rules, we have to have the economic police on the beat. Or we end up with concentration and that means higher prices."

GMO Labeling Law: SAFE or DARK?

While Monsanto has been taking a beating lately, the company is crossing its fingers for a huge victory in the Congress. Any day now, the U.S. Senate could take up H.R. 1599, the misleadingly named "Safe and Accurate Food Labeling (SAFE) Act," which would make federal GMO labeling voluntary, while prohibiting states from labeling GMOs — even though it goes against the vast majority of the public wants.

According to a New York Times poll that, 93 percent of Americans want GMO foods to labeled as such, with three-quarters of survey respondents expressing concern about GMOs in food. The industry-backed bill, which opponents have nicknamed the "Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act" has already passed the House of Representatives and, if passed, could overturn democratically enacted state laws.

"The bill is a sweeping attack on states’ rights to self-govern on the issue of GMO labeling, and on consumers’ right to know if their food has been genetically engineered," warn Alexis Baden-Mayer and Ronnie Cummins of the nonprofit Organic Consumers Association. "If the Dark Act becomes law, there will never be GMO labels, safety testing of GMOs, protections for farmers from GMO contamination or regulations of pesticide promoting GMO crops to protect human health, the environment or endangered pollinators."

Going to Market

It remains to be seen how Monsanto will be impacted by the persticide and GMO backlash. Since the onslaught of bad news for Monsanto started in the spring, the company's stock price has plummeted from a February high of $125.46 to $87.61 as of September 21. This decline follows a first quarter decline of 34 percent that analysts have tied to the cut back on Monsanto's GMO corn by South American farmers.

Still, Roundup remains one of the world's most widely used weed killers and the most popular weedkiller in the U.S. The global market for glyphosate is expected to reach $8.79 billion by 2019 (up from $5.46 billion in 2012). In addition, Transparency Market Research reported that "Monsanto Company, Dow AgroSciences and DuPont have been shifting their focus to develop integrated weed management systems, in order to reduce reliance on single dominant herbicide such as glyphosate."

"Stocks in the fertilizer space have struggled all year long," said TheStreet's Bryan Ashenberg and Bob Lang of Trifecta Stocks, noting that Monsanto in particular "has been hit hard" and their "performance has been dreadful." Perhaps a sign of that economic reality is the fact that last month Monsanto dropped its $46.5 billion hostile bid for rival Syngenta, the world's biggest pesticide company. To many Monsanto-watchers, this development may have been the company's biggest setback of the year.

However, the Ratings Team at TheStreet sees things differently and rated Monsanto as a buy, saying "The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, growth in earnings per share, increase in net income, expanding profit margins and notable return on equity."

But that review holds little value for those who value health, the environment and the fate of world's food supply more that a "notable return on equity."

RELATED STORIES
How Monsanto Could Get Even Bigger and More Powerful
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Low Levels of Exposure to Monsanto's Roundup May Cause Kidney and Liver Damage
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Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Planned Parenthood fires back

 Republicans want to cut the money Planned Parenthood gets from the federal government. But now we have new information about that video Republicans are using to try and destroy the organization.


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How The Pro-Corporate Elite Has Rigged The System Against The Rest Of Us

By Robert Reich

You often hear inequality has widened because globalization and technological change have made most people less competitive, while making the best educated more competitive.

There’s some truth to this. The tasks most people used to do can now be done more cheaply by lower-paid workers abroad or by computer-driven machines.

But this common explanation overlooks a critically important phenomenon: the increasing concentration of political power in a corporate and financial elite that has been able to influence the rules by which the economy runs.

As I argue in my new book, “Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few” (out this week), this transformation has amounted to a pre-distribution upward.

Intellectual property rights—patents, trademarks, and copyrights—have been enlarged and extended, for example, creating windfalls for pharmaceutical companies.

Americans now pay the highest pharmaceutical costs of any advanced nation.

At the same time, antitrust laws have been relaxed for corporations with significant market power, such as big food companies, cable companies facing little or no broadband competition, big airlines, and the largest Wall Street banks.

As a result, Americans pay more for broadband Internet, food, airline tickets, and banking services than the citizens of any other advanced nation.

Bankruptcy laws have been loosened for large corporations—airlines, automobile manufacturers, even casino magnates like Donald Trump—allowing them to leave workers and communities stranded.

But bankruptcy has not been extended to homeowners burdened by mortgage debt or to graduates laden with student debt. Their debts won’t be forgiven.

The largest banks and auto manufacturers were bailed out in 2008, shifting the risks of economic failure onto the backs of average working people and taxpayers.

Contract laws have been altered to require mandatory arbitration before private judges selected by big corporations. Securities laws have been relaxed to allow insider trading of confidential information.

CEOs now use stock buybacks to boost share prices when they cash in their own stock options.

Tax laws have special loopholes for the partners of hedge funds and private-equity funds, special favors for the oil and gas industry, lower marginal income-tax rates on the highest incomes, and reduced estate taxes on great wealth.

Meanwhile, so-called “free trade” agreements, such as the pending Trans Pacific Partnership, give stronger protection to intellectual property and financial assets but less protection to the labor of average working Americans.

Today, nearly one out of every three working Americans is in a part-time job. Many are consultants, freelancers, and independent contractors. Two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck.

And employment benefits have shriveled. The portion of workers with any pension connected to their job has fallen from just over half in 1979 to under 35 percent today.

Labor unions have been eviscerated. Fifty years ago, when General Motors was the largest employer in America, the typical GM worker, backed by a strong union, earned $35 an hour in today’s dollars.

Now America’s largest employer is Walmart, and the typical entry-level Walmart worker, without a union, earns about $9 an hour.

More states have adopted so-called “right-to-work” laws, designed to bust unions. The National Labor Relations Board, understaffed and overburdened, has barely enforced collective bargaining.

All of these changes have resulted in higher corporate profits, higher returns for shareholders, and higher pay for top corporate executives and Wall Street bankers – and lower pay and higher prices for most other Americans.

They amount to a giant pre-distribution upward to the rich. But we’re not aware of them because they’re hidden inside the market.

The underlying problem, then, is not just globalization and technological changes that have made most American workers less competitive. Nor is it that they lack enough education to be sufficiently productive.

The more basic problem is that the market itself has become tilted ever more in the direction of moneyed interests that have exerted disproportionate influence over it, while average workers have steadily lost bargaining power—both economic and political—to receive as large a portion of the economy’s gains as they commanded in the first three decades after World War II.

Reversing the scourge of widening inequality requires reversing the upward pre-distributions within the rules of the market, and giving average people the bargaining power they need to get a larger share of the gains from growth.

The answer to this problem is not found in economics. It is found in politics. Ultimately, the trend toward widening inequality in America, as elsewhere, can be reversed only if the vast majority join together to demand fundamental change.

The most important political competition over the next decades will not be between the right and left, or between Republicans and Democrats. It will be between a majority of Americans who have been losing ground, and an economic elite that refuses to recognize or respond to its growing distress.

Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He also served on President Obama's transition advisory board. His latest book is "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future." His homepage is www.robertreich.org
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Tuesday, September 29, 2015

A flagrant liar for President?

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary
 
We've got a new darling in the GOP presidential race: Carly Fiorina!

Being the darling du jour, however, can be dicey – just ask Rick Perry and Scott Walker, two former darlings who're now out of the race, having turned into ugly ducklings by saying stupid things. But Fiorina is smart, sharp witted, and successful. We know this because she and her PR agents constantly tell us so. Be careful about believing anything she says, though, for Darling Fiorina is not only a relentless self-promoter, but also a remorseless liar.

Take her widely-hailed performance in the second debate among Republican wannabes, where she touched many viewers with her impassioned and vivid attack on Planned Parenthood. With barely-contained outrage, Fiorina described a video that, she said, shows the woman's health organization in a depraved act of peddling body parts of an aborted fetus. "Watch a fully-formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking," said a stone-faced Fiorina, looking straight into the camera, "while someone says, 'we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain'."

Oh, the horror, the monstrosity of Planned Parenthood! And how moving it was to see and feel the fury of this lady candidate for president!

Only… none of it is true. While she urged the audience to go watch it, there is no such video – no fetus with kicking legs and beating heart, and no demonic Planned Parenthood official luridly preparing to harvest a brain.

So, did Fiorina make up this lie herself, or did her PR team concoct it as a bit of show-biz drama to burnish her right-wing credentials and advance her political ambition? Or, maybe she's just spreading a malicious lie she was told by some haters of Planned Parenthood. Either way, there's nothing darling about it… much less presidential.

"Fantasies And Fiction," The New York Times, September 18, 2015.
"The Fight for Unplanned Parenthood," The New York Times, September 19, 2015.
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Monday, September 28, 2015

Fear Factory


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Bundle of Marijuana worth $10,000 falls from the sky and crushes dog house

Maya Donnelly awoke to what sounded like thunder in the early morning hours, but dismissed it as a typical monsoon storm and went back to sleep. Later that morning, she looked in the carport at her home in Nogales, near the US-Mexico border, and saw pieces of wood on the ground.
She found a bulky bundle wrapped in black plastic. Inside was roughly 26 lbs of marijuana – a package that authorities say was worth $10,000 and was likely dropped there accidentally by a drug smuggler’s aircraft.

Police are now trying to determine whether the bundle was transported by an aircraft or a pilot-less drone. Such runs usually occur at night.

“It’s all right on top of our dog’s house,” Donnelly said of the incident, which occurred on 8 September and was first reported by the Nogales International newspaper. “It just made a perfectly round hole through our carport.”

Living near the border, Donnelly said she assumed the object contained drugs. She immediately called her husband, Bill, who told her to call 911. The couple said officers who responded told them an ultralight aircraft smuggling marijuana from Mexico had probably let part of its load go early by accident before dropping the rest farther north, the newspaper reported.

Nogales police chief Derek Arnson said it was the first time in his three-year tenure that he had seen a load of drugs hit a building.

“Someone definitely made a mistake, and who knows what the outcome of that mistake might be for them,” Arnson said.

Maya Donnelly said she thought it unlikely someone would come looking for the drugs, which are now in police custody. Arnson agreed but said police had boosted patrols in the neighborhood.

The family will have to pay the estimated $500 in repairs, as well as pay for a new home for their German Shepherd, Hulk. But the scenario could have been much worse for the couple and their three teenage daughters.

“Where it landed was clear on the other side of the house from the bedrooms,” Maya Donnelly said. “We were lucky in that sense.”

Friends and family also have gotten a laugh. Several joked that the couple could have profited from the surprise package.

“That’s what everybody says: ‘Why did you call 911?”’ Maya Donnelly said. “But how can you have a clear conscience, right? We could have made lots of home repairs with that.”
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Lawrence Wilkerson discussed the possibility of the breakup of the US

Lawrence B. "Larry" Wilkerson (born 15 June 1945) is a retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson has criticized many aspects of the Iraq War, including his own preparation of Powell's presentation to the UN.


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White Man Trying To Buy Gun Shoots Self In Penis, Blames It On A Black Guy

When pressed by police he admitted he made the story up.
 
By Tom Boggioni

South Dakota man is currently in custody after telling police officers he was shot in the penis by a “black guy” when he actually shot himself while attempting to purchase a gun illegally, reports the Argus Leader.

Convicted felon Donald Anthony Watson, 43, was admitted to a local emergency room late at night on Sept. 6  for a gunshot wound to his penis, and told local law enforcement that he had been shot during a botched robbery.

According to the arrest report, Watson said he was shot by “a black guy (who) tried to rob” him while he was taking out the trash at his apartment.

Investigators who went to Watson’s apartment said there was no evidence of a shooting outside, but neighbors told them they heard screaming coming from his apartment earlier in the evening.

After obtaining a search warrant, officer entered his home and found blood, bullet fragments, and an empty gun case.

Pressed by police, Watson admitted that he made the story up and was looking at a handgun he was thinking about buying and placed it in his pocket where it went off, with the bullet hitting his genitals.

Watson — who refused to tell police where the gun disappeared to — has been charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, possession of a firearm by a drug offender, and two counts of false reports to law enforcement.
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Friday, September 25, 2015

The Resignation Of John Boehner

“The speaker believes putting members through prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable damage to the institution.”


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Jason Reed / Reuters


John Boehner will resign as speaker of the House at the end of October and leave Congress, choosing to end his tumultuous tenure rather than fight a conservative revolt against his leadership.

Boehner had battled conservatives aligned with the Tea Party for most of his nearly five years as speaker, and in recent weeks they had threatened to try to oust him from power if did not pursue a strategy of defunding Planned Parenthood that would have likely led to a government shutdown.

Conservatives said that if Boehner failed to fight on the government spending bill, they would call up a procedural motion to “vacate the chair” and demand the election of a new speaker. Facing the likelihood that he would need Democrats to save him, Boehner instead chose to step down. In one of his last acts as speaker, Boehner is now expected to defy conservatives by bringing up a funding bill that would prevent a government shutdown beginning next week but that would not cut money from Planned Parenthood.

An aide confirmed the news on Friday morning, which Boehner announced to House Republicans in a private party meeting in the basement of the Capitol. “The speaker believes putting members through prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable damage to the institution,” the aide said.

“He is proud of what this majority has accomplished, and his speakership, but for the good of the Republican Conference and the institution, he will resign the speakership and his seat in Congress, effective October 30.”

The aide said Boehner had planned to leave Congress at the end of 2014, but his plans changed after his chief deputy and likely successor, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, lost in one of the biggest electoral upsets in U.S. history. Boehner’s decision comes just a day after what was arguably his most memorable moment as speaker: The Irish Catholic son of a barkeep hosted Pope Francis in the first-ever address by a pontiff to Congress.

By ballot or by pressure, conservatives have now succeeded in toppling the top two Republican leaders of the House within a span of 15 months. Boehner’s announcement sets off a race to succeed him, with Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, the second-ranking Republican in the House, the early favorite to take his post. Another popular House Republican, Representative Paul Ryan, immediately took himself out of the running, according to the Washington Post’s Paul Kane.

“It’s McCarthy,” the 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee said Friday. Ryan later put out a statement in which he called Boehner’s decision to resign “an act of pure selflessness.”


Boehner, 65, was first elected to the House in 1990 and, as he frequently reminds reporters, was himself part of a group of conservative rabble-rousers during his first decade in Congress. He rose to a position in the leadership before being ousted in 1998. He returned to committee work, playing a key role in the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act under President George W. Bush. Boehner then worked his way back up the leadership ladder, first becoming minority leader and then speaker after Republicans reclaimed the House majority in the 2010 election.

While it was well-known that Boehner’s job was in jeopardy, his announcement Friday morning came as a shock. He has insisted in recent weeks that he was unconcerned with the potential conservative mutiny, with his spokesmen saying he wasn’t “going anywhere.” But the end came rapidly, less than 24 hours after Boehner stood weeping next to the pontiff on a Capitol balcony, overlooking throngs of people gathered to see Pope Francis.

Conservatives outside the Capitol rejoiced at the news. When Senator Marco Rubio announced Boehner’s resignation at the Values Voters Summit in northwest Washington, the crowd erupted in cheers. “I’m not here to bash anyone,” Rubio said, “but the time has come to turn the page.”

Democrats, meanwhile, said they hoped Republicans learned “the right lesson” from Boehner’s experience: to work with them rather than the Tea Party. “Speaker John Boehner is a decent, principled conservative man who tried to do the right thing under almost impossible circumstances,” Senator Charles Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat, said in a statement. “He will be missed by Republicans and Democrats alike.”
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Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Sorry, Scott Walker. Sarah Palin Is Still The Best Quitter Of All Time!

Scott Walker learned from the best. We remember Sarah Palin’s amazing speech announcing she was quitting Governor of Alaska...

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Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Ed Schultz News and Commentary: Tuesday the 22nd of September

On Tuesday’s Show, Ed Schultz gives commentary on Scott Walker exiting the Presidential race.

Ed speaks with Con. Mark Pocan, D-WI, at Fighting Bob Fest to discuss averting a Government Shutdown.

We are also joined by Ruth Conniff, Editor of the Progressive, to discuss Wisconsin helping to start the Bernie Sanders movement.

John Nichols, Washington Correspondent for The Nation, joins Ed to discuss Sen. Sanders’ path to the Democratic nomination.

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Monday, September 21, 2015

TOM TOMORROW: It's All Fun and Games Until...


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Drug Goes From $13.50 A Tablet To $750, Overnight

By


Martin Shkreli is the founder and chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, which raised the price of the drug Daraprim to $750 a tablet from $13.50. Paul Taggart/Bloomberg, via Getty Images
Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.

The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“What is it that they are doing differently that has led to this dramatic increase?” said Dr. Judith Aberg, the chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. 

She said the price increase could force hospitals to use “alternative therapies that may not have the same efficacy.”

Turing’s price increase is not an isolated example. While most of the attention on pharmaceutical prices has been on new drugs for diseases like cancer, hepatitis C and high cholesterol, there is also growing concern about huge price increases on older drugs, some of them generic, that have long been mainstays of treatment.

Although some price increases have been caused by shortages, others have resulted from a business strategy of buying old neglected drugs and turning them into high-priced “specialty drugs.”

Cycloserine, a drug used to treat dangerous multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, was just increased in price to $10,800 for 30 pills from $500 after its acquisition by Rodelis Therapeutics. Scott Spencer, general manager of Rodelis, said the company needed to invest to make sure the supply of the drug remained reliable. He said the company provided the drug free to certain needy patients.

In August, two members of Congress investigating generic drug price increases wrote to Valeant Pharmaceuticals after that company acquired two heart drugs, Isuprel and Nitropress, from Marathon Pharmaceuticals and promptly raised their prices by 525 percent and 212 percent respectively. 

Marathon had acquired the drugs from another company in 2013 and had quintupled their prices, according to the lawmakers, Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, and Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland.

Doxycycline, an antibiotic, went from $20 a bottle in October 2013 to $1,849 by April 2014, according to the two lawmakers.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association sent a joint letter to Turing earlier this month calling the price increase for Daraprim “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.” An organization representing the directors of state AIDS programs has also been looking into the price increase, according to doctors and patient advocates.

Daraprim, known generically as pyrimethamine, is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasite infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems for babies born to women who become infected during pregnancy, and also for people with compromised immune systems, like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients.

Martin Shkreli, the founder and chief executive of Turing, said that the drug is so rarely used that the impact on the health system would be minuscule and that Turing would use the money it earns to develop better treatments for toxoplasmosis, with fewer side effects.

“This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business,” Mr. Shkreli said. He said that many patients use the drug for far less than a year and that the price was now more in line with those of other drugs for rare diseases.

“This is still one of the smallest pharmaceutical products in the world,” he said. “It really doesn’t make sense to get any criticism for this.”

This is not the first time the 32 year old Mr. Shkreli, who has a reputation for both brilliance and brashness, has been the center of controversy. He started MSMB Capital, a hedge fund company, in his 20's and drew attention for urging the Food and Drug Administration not to approve certain drugs made by companies whose stock he was shorting.

In 2011, Mr. Shkreli started Retrophin, which also acquired old neglected drugs and sharply raised their prices. Retrophin’s board fired Mr. Shkreli a year ago. Last month, it filed a complaint in Federal District Court in Manhattan, accusing him of using Retrophin as a personal piggy bank to pay back angry investors in his hedge fund.

Mr. Shkreli has denied the accusations. He has filed for arbitration against his old company, which he says owes him at least $25 million in severance. “They are sort of concocting this wild and crazy and unlikely story to swindle me out of the money,” he said.

Daraprim, which is also used to treat malaria, was approved by the F.D.A. in 1953 and has long been made by GlaxoSmithKline. Glaxo sold United States marketing rights to CorePharma in 2010. Last year, Impax Laboratories agreed to buy Core and affiliated companies for $700 million. In August, Impax sold Daraprim to Turing for $55 million, a deal announced the same day Turing said it had raised $90 million from Mr. Shkreli and other investors in its first round of financing.

Daraprim cost only about $1 a tablet several years ago, but the drug’s price rose sharply after CorePharma acquired it. According to IMS Health, which tracks prescriptions, sales of the drug jumped to $6.3 million in 2011 from $667,000 in 2010, even as prescriptions held steady at about 12,700. In 2014, after further price increases, sales were $9.9 million, as the number of prescriptions shrank to 8,821. The figures do not include inpatient use in hospitals.

Turing’s price increase could bring sales to tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year if use remains constant. Medicaid and certain hospitals will be able to get the drug inexpensively under federal rules for discounts and rebates. But private insurers, Medicare and hospitalized patients would have to pay an amount closer to the list price.

Some doctors questioned Turing’s claim that there was a need for better drugs, saying the side effects, while potentially serious, could be managed.

“I certainly don’t think this is one of those diseases where we have been clamoring for better therapies,” said Dr. Wendy Armstrong, professor of infectious diseases at Emory University in Atlanta.

With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim’s distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.

The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. Still, controlled distribution was a strategy Mr. Shkreli talked about at his previous company as a way to thwart generics.

Some hospitals say they now have trouble getting the drug. “We’ve not had access to the drug for a few months,” said Dr. Armstrong, who also works at Grady Memorial Hospital, a huge public treatment center in Atlanta that serves many low-income patients.

But Dr. Rima McLeod, medical director of the toxoplasmosis center at the University of Chicago, said that Turing had been good about delivering drugs quickly to patients, sometimes without charge.

“They have jumped every time I’ve called,” she said. The situation, she added, “seems workable” despite the price increase.

Daraprim is the standard first treatment for toxoplasmosis, in combination with an antibiotic called sulfadiazine. There are alternative treatments, but there is less data supporting their efficacy.

Dr. Aberg of Mount Sinai said some hospitals will now find Daraprim too expensive to keep in stock, possibly resulting in treatment delays. She said that Mount Sinai was continuing to use the drug, but each use now required a special review.

“This seems to be all profit-driven for somebody,” Dr. Aberg said, “and I just think it’s a very dangerous process.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2015, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Once a Neglected Treatment, Now an Expensive Specialty Drug.
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Sunday, September 20, 2015

Nate Silver Reveals His ‘Editorial Bias’ About Racism

By Tommy Christopher

For weeks, the mainstream media has contorted itself like a pretzel in a yoga class in order to avoid identifying racism as the key factor in Donald Trump‘s success, alternately attributing it to angst at Washington DC (even though 12 of the original 17 candidates are not Washington legislators) and ignoring direct evidence of it while they’re discussing that evidence. Finally, their golden boy has admitted why that is.

Nate Silver is the closest thing there is to a mainstream media avatar for “objectivity,” a polling whiz kid who is supposed to be an unflinching believer in data. On Friday night, Silver appeared on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes to discuss the racist (possibly planted) Donald Trump supporter who asserted President Obama’s alleged Muslimhood and lack of American citizenship during a town hall meeting, and whom Trump failed to correct.

That incident naturally led to discussion of recent polls indicating that an overwhelming majority of Republicans (as much as 86%) wouldn’t have corrected that guy, either. Right off the bat, Silver revealed, point blank, that he automatically resists ascribing things to racism, and then demonstrated that he’s also willing to make stuff up in order to do that:


Silver: “This may be my editorial bias. I tend to prefer explanations for the vote that don’t, as a default, invoke race and Islamophobia and whatnot… ”
“…PPP, not my favorite pollster, but 2/3 of Trump supporters believe that Obama is a Muslim. That’s 54% of voters overall in the GOP primary electorate.”
Hayes: “You said PPP is a democratic-leaning firm, and I think they do poll sometimes, like, troll polls. But we’ve got other polling, CNN polling that shows 43% of Republicans…”
Silver: “It depends on how you ask the question. right? Some pollsters say ‘What do you really think deep down,’ so they ask in different ways.”
Here are two guys who sit suspensefully for years hoping they get to play the word “empirical” in a game of Scrabble, yet they each choose to ignore facts that lead them to an uncomfortable conclusion, and even make up a fake polling question to do it. They also neglected to mention that Silver’s non-favorite pollster was also the most accurate pollster during the 2012 election, and even according to Silver himself produced results that tended to favor Mitt Romney.
I confronted Hayes and Silver about this on Twitter Friday night, and only Hayes responded:
There’s no mystery to how PPP asked the question, because they printed it in their survey, and when Chuck Todd made the very same assertion that Silver did (and to which Hayes audibly agreed), I asked the pollster about it, just to be sure.  While Hayes is correct that he did point to the CNN poll, discrediting the PPP poll has the effect of taking the Muslim assertion from a majority Republican view to a significant minority opinion, thus allowing the media, Silver, and Hayes to still consider that maybe this is all anger at Washington, and not what it plainly is: the crystallization of white male resentment.

But the poll questions actually are there for us to look at. PPP asked “Do you think Barack Obama is a Christian or a Muslim, or are you not sure?” which gave Republicans, at worst, a 50/50 shot at guessing correctly, or saying they weren’t sure, like Scott Walker. CNN, on the other hand, gave voters seven choices, and did not offer them “not sure” as an option. They also didn’t ask voters what religion they “think” Obama belongs to, they asked “Do you happen to know what religion Barack Obama is? Is he Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, something else, or not religious?”

Therefore, you could easily interpret these polls to mean that while 28% of Republicans are willing to concede that President Obama professes to be a Christian, only 14% of them actually believe that. I’m not even saying you should discount the CNN poll, I’m saying you shouldn’t discount either of them, and certainly not by making something up or following a preconceived bias.

So why do it? I don’t know Nate Silver, but Chris Hayes is an extremely intelligent guy who suffers from Acute Chronic Good Faith Syndrome. Like Hayes, I have a lot of very good friends who are also prominent conservatives. He and I first met at a CPAC afterparty hosted by Michelle Malkin, and we both know a lot of conservatives who aren’t just nice, but are some of the most decent and wonderful people in the world. I understand how hard it would be to look a good friend in the eye, someone like Ed Morrissey or Matt Lewis or Ben Domenech, and say “Most of your party is racist.”

Unfortunately, that’s the fact, Jack, and it’s not crazy liberal Tommy Christopher saying that. These polls demonstrate, empirically, that the birther/secret Muslim view is held by a majority of Republicans, and tolerated by almost all of them, and several prominent Republicans have said that those views are racist, and science says it, too. I love my conservative friends, and it pains me that this is not a deal-breaker for them.

Having a bias against attributing things to racism is one thing if you’re a political commentator looking to engage with the other side, but for a renowned pollster like Nate Silver, it’s like a doctor announcing he’s got a diagnostic bias against attributing things to cancer. I don’t necessarily want a doctor who sees cancer everywhere, but I’m not going to the one who’s looking to ignore it.

But such a bias is also a luxury (or even a privilege, you might say) that only certain people can afford, like people who have benefited from it their entire lives. At the very least, racism will never harm Nate Silver, so he can afford not to see it in order to make his own world seem like a better place.

When you’re the Muslim kid building a clock, or the black guy without a front license plate, you want someone to be staring extra-hard at those x-rays. Ignoring or resisting the existence of racism isn’t being nice, it’s being an accomplice.
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Glenn Beck Concocts Conspiracy Theory For Conspiracy Theorists

By Karoli



I'd love to see Glenny's chalkboard for his latest conspiracy theory. Be forewarned, it concerns Donald Trump punking the Tea Party. No, really.
As Beck sees it, his listening audience contains more Tea Party members than that of any other right-wing radio host and yet Trump consistently fares poorly when Beck's network takes its monthly presidential poll. If his audience doesn't support Trump and his audience contains lots of Tea Party members, then Trump's support cannot be coming from the Tea Party, Beck reasons. Of course, actual scientific polls show Trump leading among Tea Party supporters.
"The Tea Party is eating its own," Beck said. "If I'm a guy who is a Republican establishment guy or I'm a liberal, I want to destroy the Tea Party. But if I'm a businessman, I want to destroy it as well. The reason why the GOP isn't suffering with their goals on campaign funds is because big business just wants business to go on. They know how to play the game. Look, Donald Trump as said, 'I give to everybody." He knows how to play the game. He doesn't know how to play the game with a libertarian, small government guy who says, 'There's no game for you to play here, Donald, and we stand by the Constitution.' So you can't buy that person or bully that person out of their house any more."
"It makes sense that he doesn't want the Tea Party," Beck continued. "So what's as good as getting the presidency of the United States? Discrediting and destroying a movement that stands for true principles. Small government and maximum freedom, stand for those who want to disrupt the system that makes everybody rich."
"I think is is really important that you stand up," he warned, "and you separate yourself as a tea partier and say, 'That is not us, that is not us.'"
But Glenn. It is absolutely you, and those who follow you. From the day you declared that President Obama hated white people, you set the bar, and your followers are simply rising to the challenge.
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Poker players targeted by card watching malware

The malware spies on the cards being dealt to online poker players

Online poker players are being targeted by a computer virus that spies on their virtual cards.

The software shares the cards with the virus's creators who then join the same game and try to fleece the victim.

The sneaky malware has been found lurking in software designed to help poker fans play better, said the security firm that found it.

The software also targets other useful information on a victim's computer such as log in names and passwords.

Card counter

The malware targets players of the Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker sites, said Robert Lipovsky, a security researcher at Eset, in a blogpost.

When it infects a machine, the software monitors the PC's activity and springs to life when a victim has logged in to either one of the two poker sites. It then starts taking screenshots of their activity and the cards they are dealt. Screenshots are then sent to the attacker.

The images show the hand the player has been dealt as well as their player ID. This, said Eset, allows the attacker to search the sites for that player and join their game. Using information about a victim's hand gives the attacker a significant advantage.

"We are unsure whether the perpetrator plays the games manually or in some automated way," wrote Mr Lipovsky.

Eset found the Windows malware lurking in some well-known file-sharing applications, PC utilities as well as several widely used poker calculators and player databases.

Eset said the spyware had been active for several months and most victims were in Eastern Europe, particularly Russia and the Ukraine.
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Saturday, September 19, 2015

Why America's Deadly Love Affair With Bottled Water Has To Stop

Last year, Americans drank more than 10 billion gallons of bottled water. Wildlife and the environment paid.

By Tara Lohan

This spring, as California withered in its fourth year of drought and mandatory water restrictions were enacted for the first time in the state’s history, a news story broke revealing that Nestlé Waters North America was tapping springs in the San Bernardino National Forest in southern California using a permit that expired 27 years ago.

And when the company’s CEO Tim Brown was asked on a radio program if Nestlé would stop bottling water in the Golden State, he replied, “Absolutely not. In fact, if I could increase it, I would.”

That’s because bottled water is big business, even in a country where most people have clean, safe tap water readily and cheaply available. (Although it should be noted that Starbucks agreed to stop sourcing and manufacturing their Ethos brand water in California after being drought-shamed.)

Profits made by the industry are much to the chagrin of nonprofits like Corporate Accountability International (CAI), a corporate watchdog, and Food and Water Watch (FWW), a consumer advocacy group, both of which have waged campaigns against the bottled water industry for years. But representatives from both organizations say they’ve won key fights against the industry in the last 10 years and have helped shift people’s consciousness on the issue.

A Battle of Numbers

In 2014 bottled water companies spent more than $84 million on advertising to compete with each other and to convince consumers that bottled water is healthier than soda and safer than tap. And it seems to be paying off: Americans have an increasing love of bottled water, particularly those half-liter-sized single-use bottles that are ubiquitous at every check-out stand and in every vending machine. According to Beverage Marketing Corporation (BMC), a data and consulting firm, in the last 14 years consumption of bottled water in the U.S. has risen steadily, with the only exception being a quick dip during the 2008-2009 recession.
In 2000, Americans each drank an average of 23 gallons of bottled water. By 2014, that number hit 34 gallons a person. That translates to 10.7 billion gallons for the U.S. market and sales of $13 billion last year. At the same time, consumption of soda is falling, and by 2017, bottled water sales may surpass that of soda for the first time.

But there is also indication that more eco-conscious consumers are carrying reusable bottles to refill with tap. A Harris poll in 2010 found that 23 percent of respondents switched from bottled water to tap (the number was slightly higher during 2009 recession). Reusable bottles are now chic and available in myriad designs and styles. And a Wall Street Journal story tracked recent acquisitions in the reusable bottle industry that indicate big growth as well, although probably not enough to make a dent in the earnings of bottling giants like Nestlé, Coke and Pepsi.

Why the Fight Over Bottled Water

“The single most important factor in the growth of bottled water is heightened consumer demand for healthier refreshment,” says BMC’s managing director of research Gary A. Hemphill. “Convenience of the packaging and aggressive pricing have been contributing factors.”

That convenience, though, comes with an environmental cost. The Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research organization, found that it took the equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil to make all the plastic water bottles that thirsty Americans drank in 2006 — enough to keep a million cars chugging along the roads for a year. And this is only the energy to make the bottles, not the energy it takes to get them to the store, keep them cold or ship the empties off to recycling plants or landfills.

Of the billions of plastic water bottles sold each year, the majority don’t end up being recycled. Those single-serving bottles, also known as PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles because of the kind of resin they’re made with, are recycled at a rate of about 31 percent in the U.S. The other 69 percent end up in landfills or as litter.

And while recycling them is definitely a better option than throwing them away, it comes with a cost, too. Stiv Wilson, director of campaigns at the Story of Stuff Project, says that most PET bottles that are recycled end up, not as new plastic bottles, but as textiles, such as clothing. And when you wash synthetic clothing, micro-plastics end up going down the drain and back into waterways. These tiny plastic fragments are dangerous for wildlife, especially in oceans.

“If you start out with a bad material to begin with, recycling it is going to be an equally bad material,” says Wilson. “You’re changing its shape but its environmental implications are the same.” PET bottles are part of a growing epidemic of plastic waste that’s projected to get worse. A recent study found that by 2050, 99 percent of seabirds will be ingesting plastic.

Ingesting plastic trash is deadly for seabirds, like this unfortunate albatross. (image: USFWS)

“We notice in all the data that the amount of plastic in the environment is growing exponentially,” says Wilson. “We are exporting it to places that can’t deal with it, we’re burning it with dioxins going into the air. The whole chain of custody is bad for the environment, for animals and the humans that deal with it. The more you produce, the worse it gets. The problem grows.”

Even on land, plastic water bottles are a problem — and in some of our most beautiful natural areas, as a recent controversy over bottled water in National Parks has shown. According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), more than 20 national parks have banned the sale of plastic water bottles, reporting that plastic bottles average almost one third of the solid waste that parks must pay (with taxpayer money) to have removed.

After Zion National Park in Utah banned the sale of plastic water bottles, the park saw sales of reusable bottles jump 78 percent and kept it 60,000 bottles (or 5,000 pounds of plastic) a year out of the waste stream. The park also made a concerted effort to provide bottle refilling stations across the park so there would be ample opportunity to refill reusable bottles.

There might be more parks with bans but 200 water bottlers backed by the International Bottled Water Association have fought back to oppose measures by parks to cut down on the sale of disposable plastic water bottles. The group was not too happy when National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis wrote that parks “must be a visible exemplar of sustainability,” and said in 2011 that the more than 400 hundreds entities in the National Park Service could ban the sale of plastic bottles if they meet strict requirements for making drinking water available to visitors.


Water bottle filling stations at Grand Canyon National Park provide free spring water from the park's approved water supply located at Roaring Springs. (image: Michael Quinn/National Park Service/Flickr CC)

Park officials contend that trashcans are overflowing with bottles in some parks. The bottling industry counters that people are more apt to choose sugary drinks, like soda, if they don’t have access to bottled water. The bottled water industry alliance used its Washington muscle to add a rider to an appropriations bill in July that would have stopped parks from restricting bottled water sales. The bill didn’t pass for other reasons, but it’s likely not the last time the rider will surface in legislation.

Changing Tide

Bottlers may be making big money, but activists have also notched their own share of wins. “When we first started, really no one was out there challenging the misleading marketing that the bottled water industry was giving the public,” said John Stewart, deputy campaign director at CAI, which first began campaigning against bottled water in 2004. “You had no information available to consumers about the sources of bottling and you had communities whose water supplies were being threatened by companies like Nestlé with total impunity.”

If you buy the marketing, then it would appear that most bottled water comes from pristine mountain springs beside snow-capped peaks. But in reality, about half of all bottled water, including Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani, come from municipal sources that are then purified or treated in some way. Activists fought to have companies label the source of its water and they succeeded with two of the top three — Pepsi and Nestlé. “We also garnered national media stories that put a spotlight on the fact that bottling corporations were taking our tap water and selling it back to us at thousands of times the price,” said Stewart. “People finally began to see they were getting duped.”

When companies aren’t bottling from municipal sources, the water is mostly spring water tapped from wilderness areas, like Nestlé bottling in the San Bernardino National Forest, or rural communities. Some communities concerned about industrial withdrawals of groundwater have fought back against spring water bottlers — the biggest being Nestlé, which owns dozens of regional brands like Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Ice Mountain and Poland Spring. Coalitions have helped back communities in victories in Maine, Michigan and California (among other areas) in fights against Nestlé.

One the biggest was in McCloud, California, which sits in the shadow of snowy Mount Shasta, and actually looks like the label on so many bottles. Residents of McCloud fought for six years against Nestlé’s plan for a water bottling facility that first intended to draw 200 million gallons of water a year from a local spring. Nestlé finally scrapped its plans and left town, but ended up heading 200 miles down the road to the city of Sacramento, where it got a sweetheart deal on the city’s municipal water supply.

CAI and FWW have also worked with college students. Close to a hundred have taken some action, says Stewart. “Not all the schools have been able to ban the sale of bottled water on campus but we’ve come up with other strategies like passing resolutions that student government funds can’t be used to purchase bottled water or increasing the availability of tap water on campus or helping to get water fountains retrofitted so you can refill your reusable bottle,” says Emily Wurth, FWW’s water program director.


In just six months, Lake Mead National Recreation Area visitors have kept more than 13,600 water bottles out of landfills by using a new hydration station. (image: National Park Service)

Changes have also come at the municipal level. In 2007, San Francisco led the charge by prohibiting the city from spending money on bottled water for its offices. At the 2010 Conference of Mayors, 72 percent of mayors said they have considered “eliminating or reducing bottled water purchases within city facilities” and nine mayors had already adopted a ban proposal. In 2015, San Francisco passed a law (to be phased in over four years) that will ban the sale of bottled water on city property.

These victories, say activists, are part of a much bigger fight — larger than the bottled water industry itself. “We are shifting to fight the wholesale privatization of water a little more,” says Stewart. He says supporters who have joined coalitions to fight bottled water “deeply understand the problematic nature of water for profit and the co-modification of water” that transcends from bottled water to private control of municipal power and sewer systems.

Currently the vast majority (90 percent) of water systems in the U.S. are publicly run, but cash-strapped cities and towns are also targets of multinational water companies, says Stewart. The situation is made more dire by massive shortfalls in federal funding that used to help support municipal water and now is usually cut during federal budget crunches.

“Cities are so desperate that they don’t think about long-term implications of job cuts, rate hikes, loss of control over the quality of the water and any kind of accountability when it comes to how the system is managed,” says Stewart. “We need to turn all eyes to our public water systems and aging infrastructure and our public services in general that are threatened by privatization.”
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