We are being robbed big-time, but you can't say we haven't been warned. Not after the release Tuesday of a scathing report by the Treasury Department's special inspector general, who charged that the aptly named Troubled Asset Relief Fund bailout program is rife with mismanagement and potential for fraud. The IG's office already has opened 20 criminal fraud investigations into the $700 billion program, which is now well on its way to a $3 trillion obligation, and the IG predicts many more are coming. Meanwhile, William Greider ask is Obama Strong Enough to Stand Up to the Titans of Finance.

The Green Party of New York State said today the Democratic leaders at the State Capitol and in DC still fail to support the radical measures needed to deal with climate change, energy and other key environmental issues. Climate change is worsening at a much more rapid rate than scientists predicted even a few years ago. The proposals being pushed by Obama and Paterson might have helped if they have been implemented 15 years ago under Clinton but they fall far short of what is needed today.

In the streets, on the campuses and on Capitol Hill, the anti-war movement is no longer moving anywhere. It has been crippled by the Obama Effect, the deep and wide delusion that imperialism with a Black face is somehow – something else. When a movement disbands itself without coming even close to achieving its objective, that is a defeat.

Single payer health care has the greatest support among Americans as the way to provide universal health care. Outside the beltway cesspool/hot tub, the majority of doctors, nurses, small businesses, health economists, and the majority of the American people – according to recent polls – want a Canadian-style, single payer, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital, national health insurance system. Inside the beltway cesspool/hot tub, the corrupt elite will have none of it. In addition to the normal suspects, AARP, HCAN (Citizen Action), Families USA and Barack Obama are out to kill single payer health care.

Join farmworkers and allies from across the state in our State Capital on May 12th as we send a clear message that all New Yorkers deserve respect, equality, and recognition for their contributions. The Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act (A.1867/S.2247) has been introduced by Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan in the assembly. Senator Onorato is joined by Senator Breslin as co-prime sponsor of the bill in the Senate. The labor protections that New York affords to other employees in the state such as workers' compensation, disability coverage, a day of rest, overtime and unemployment insurance should apply equally to farm workers.

The media just doesn't seem to be able to give adequate coverage to health care reform. They do a good job with providing stories about how individuals are impacted by a lack of health care coverage or about progress in confronting a particular disease. But they can't seem to do evidence based analysis of health care reform proposals. So they cover the politics of national health care reform - will a public option model be presented as an alternative? - without bothering to analyze whether the reform will actually work. So they keep on reporting that yet another state has taken a groundbreaking step to enact universal health care - without figuring out or reporting that all these reforms ultimately end in failure for the same reason time after time. Namely, that they never confront the insurance industry and their impact upon health care costs.

Vermont is the fourth state to enact gay marriage but it is the first state to do so by a vote of the legislature. Right after the Vermont legislature voted (100 to 49, precisely the 2/3 needed) to over-ride Governor Jim Douglas' veto this morning of a law permitting gay marriage, my daughter got a text message, "Yeah, Vermont!" These men and women in the legislature are not professional politicians; they are citizen legislators representing small districts where voters know who they are, meet them at the general store chat with them at the gas station. This follows the recent Iowa court ruling in favor of gay marriage.

Momentum is building in Congress for new food safety reforms aimed at addressing the growing cycle of food contamination outbreaks. But Cornucopia caution legislators not to trample organic farmers, backyard gardeners, and consumers of fresh local foods in the rush to fix the nation's food safety problems. Green Party US noted that the bills do not address the problems of the large corporate farms: poor working conditions, limitations on fast marketing because of large quantities of produce, long-distance markets, overuse of chemicals, petroleum dependence, and lack of quality, nutrition, taste, and freshness. Recent breakdowns in food safety have been the result of major corporate farming practices that fail to control pathogens, because of indequate regulatory oversight caused by the influence of agricultural monopolies on state and national agencies responsible for protecting consumers. The Organic Consumers Association is calling on Congress to focus its attentions on the real threats to food safety: globalized food sourcing from nations such as China where food safety is a joke, domestic industrial-scale and factory farms whose collateral damage includes pesticide and antibiotic-tainted food, mad cow disease, E.coli contamination and salmonella poisoning--and to support a massive transition to organic farming practices.

Since his conviction in 1982 for the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, Mumia Abu-Jamal has become the face of the anti-death penalty movement. According to critics such as Amnesty International, Abu-Jamal’s case has been politically charged from the beginning. His tortuous appeal process has been fraught with "judicial machinations." Claims that won the day in other cases were repeatedly denied him, . On Monday, the US Supreme Court said it will not take up Abu-Jamal's claims that prosecutors improperly excluded blacks from the jury that convicted him. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia upheld Abu-Jamal's conviction but held his death sentence invalid. The appeals court said it would not second-guess state court rulings rejecting Abu-Jamal's claims of bias in the composition of the jury. The high court considered only the conviction. The state has separately asked the court to reinstate the death sentence, but the justices have not acted on that request.

the carbon trading that President Obama supports is an unenforceable, shell game that allows polluters to pay to pollute. Shifting greenhouse gas pollution around is not going to result in the dramatic cuts in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases that we need. The draft Markey-Waxman climate bill is proof that the green groups leading the climate charge won't fight for investments in clean energy technologies and a new energy economy. Instead, they'll throw these critical investments overboard to preserve precious regulations and an increasingly compromised "cap" on carbon.

By a strict party line vote of 32-30, the State Senate today passed legislation that included the expansion of the state bottle bill. Water containers will now be covered as well as the existing carbonated beverages but lawmakers dropped juice containers. 80% of the unclaimed deposits, as much as $200 million a year, will now be turned over to the state rather than being kept by the bottles. The fee for those who handle the redemption will be increase from 2 to 3.5 cents a year. Judith Enck of the Governor's office and Laura Haight of NYPIRG led the fight.

The justifiable outrage over AIG's use of taxpayers' money for executive bonuses has distracted Americans from the far greater scandal -- that the Obama Administration is bailing out the giant financial corporations whose unchecked power created this mess. President Obama will fail if his goal is to rescue companies like AIG and return to the days of monster corporations controlling nearly every aspect of the US economy. Green Party leaders today offered a set of urgent economic steps for the White House and Congress, saying that President Obama's Wall Street rescue scheme was merely "throwing hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars into the Wall Street money hole."