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Highlights This Month

Will Washington Fix the Mortgage Mess?

David Brancaccio, NOW, PBS

This week (Nov 16, 2007), NOW travels to North Minneapolis to investigate the mortgage meltdown that has left the city scarred with boarded-up and abandoned houses. What's happened in communities like this one has investors everywhere shaken. Wall Street firms are stumbling and markets around the globe are nervous. Economists worry the mortgage bust may lead to a recession.

NOW connects the dots to see the extent to which recklessness, corruption and greed created this subprime mess that now threatens to undermine our entire economy. David Brancaccio talks to Rep. Keith Ellison, who grew up in North Minneapolis and who has pushed legislation to address the crisis. He also talks to Ameriquest whistleblower Mark Bomchill, who explains the competitive "boiler room" culture that encouraged brokers to aggressively push mortgage products they knew clients would be unable to repay.

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Patrick Chappatte: World Food Crisis

Questions to ask before buying a supposedly "green" product

Tom Watson, The Seattle Times

How many "green" products will it take to stop global warming?

If you answered, "as few as possible," you're on the right track. We can't buy our way to a greener world. It takes behavioral change, which often involves buying fewer products, not more. Every product has an environmental cost, from processing to transportation to disposal.

That doesn't mean we should spurn all of the thousands of green products now flooding the marketplace. But before you buy a product trumpeted as eco-friendly, ask yourself these questions:

• Is it less wasteful or less toxic than a product you use regularly? Those types of products — such as recycled-content toilet paper, organic food or a front-loading washing machine — are often the most effective at reducing our environmental impact.

• Do you really need it? Sales of "natural" household cleaning products have soared, increasing 26 percent in the past year, according to industry research. But many of those products are superfluous, since cleaning jobs can often be handled with nontoxic ingredients you already have around the house, such as vinegar or baking soda.

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The Deadly History of Monsanto Corporation

Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, Vanity Fair, in reclaimdemocracy.org

ReclaimDemocracy.org's Editor's note: This lengthy report by two of America's finest journalists is well worth the time for those seeking to understand Monsanto (the historical account begins midway into the article). This is among several fine stories in the magazine's May 2008 "green issue."

Gary Rinehart clearly remembers the summer day in 2002 when the stranger walked in and issued his threat. Rinehart was behind the counter of the Square Deal, his “old-time country store,” as he calls it, on the fading town square of Eagleville, Missouri, a tiny farm community 100 miles north of Kansas City.

The Square Deal is a fixture in Eagleville, a place where farmers and townspeople can go for lightbulbs, greeting cards, hunting gear, ice cream, aspirin, and dozens of other small items without having to drive to a big-box store in Bethany, the county seat, 15 miles down Interstate 35.

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Mike Luckovich

Smokestack Injustice? Toxic Texas Smelter May Reopen

Kent Paterson, CorpWatch

The big smokestack's red lights that flash through the night send the unmistakable message that the mothballed smelter is not dead yet. The old American Smelting and Refining Company (Asarco) copper smelter in El Paso, Texas, may have temporarily stopped spewing toxins, but it still unsettles the Paso del Norte borderlands.

Government agencies and environmental groups have blamed the 111-year- old smelter for severe air, soil and groundwater contamination. Nonetheless, on February 13, 2008 the plant was given a new lease on life when the three members of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) voted unanimously to grant Asarco a five-year air quality permit. The vote was a stinging rebuke to hundreds of border residents who had traveled to the state capital of Austin to convince TCEQ to finally shut it down.

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Mike Lane: Obscene Oil Profits

Are Transnational Corporations Good for America?

Michael Mandel, Business Week, in reclaimdemocracy.org

High in the hills overlooking Corning, N.Y., the company named after the town has recently broken ground on a $300 million expansion of its research laboratories. Flush with cash from booming overseas sales, the glass giant is amping up its product development efforts at home. "It's important for the functioning of our innovation machine that we be in one location," says Corning Inc. President Peter F. Volanakis.

That's good news for the residents of Steuben County , where Corning is the largest employer. Since 2005 they have watched their unemployment rate drop faster than that of neighboring counties, in part because of Corning's commitment to the area and its ability to sell around the world.

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Series: Corporate Rule: A Hidden History

Part III: The Corporate Return to Power

Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As the result of the War, corporations have been enthroned. ... An era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated in a few hands... and the Republic is destroyed." – Abraham Lincoln, 1864

Only one year after the Civil War ended, individual states began to compete for corporate charters, and the income which charters generated. At the same time people’s movements against corporations were growing in strength. These movements were fueled by fear and resentment of concentrated corporate power that had boomed as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the Civil War.

This raging struggle led President Rutherford B. Hayes to say in 1876: "This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations."

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