Last spring, President Obama signed a bill into law that raised the tax on roll-your-own cigarette tobacco from $1.10 per pound to a whopping $24.78 per pound. The revenue from the tax was to be put towards expanding children’s health insurance programs. But tobacco companies have found a way to sidestep the new tax: they have started re-labeling the same product as pipe tobacco, which is taxed at only $2.83 a pound. As a result, the market for roll-your-own tobacco has exploded, quintupling in just five months. Exploiting the tax loophole this way also lets tobacco companies thumb their nose at the new U.S. Food and Drug Administration's tobacco regulations by continuing to sell sweet and fruity-flavored tobaccos, which are banned under the new rules because they are attractive to youngsters. Tobacco companies are saying they've merely found a way to save themselves from a prohibitively high tax that would force them out of business.

Last week, a humbled Goldman Sachs canceled its holiday parties and trumpeted a noble new program to mentor and loan to small businesses. The cost, $500 million, made headlines across the country. The program was announced on the heels of an embarrassing and widely panned interview given by Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s CEO, to The Times of London, where he claimed he was doing “God’s work.” In its coverage of the new program, the New York Times noted that the amount was about 3 percent of the $16 billion in bonus money laid aside for Goldman executives this year. And the Wall Street Journal went a step further interviewing a variety of tax experts who noted that a big chunk of the money will go to charitable institutions creating sizeable tax deductions for Goldman. “All in all, tax experts say, the ultimate cost to Goldman could total roughly $136 million to $150 million—70% or more below the half-billion figure that helped generate so much publicity for the firm this week. Interest income from the loans could lower the final bill even more.” Thanks to these reporters for a little truth in lending.

The Lansing State Journal is the latest in a long line of media outlets to provide a pro-nuclear platform to former Greenpeace activist turned corporate PR consultant, Patrick Moore, without disclosing his consultancy with the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). In its Take 5 column, subtitled 'five questions. five answers", five questions were softballed to Moore. "How do you go from being a founder of Greenpeace, which is adamantly opposed to nuclear energy, to a proponent of nuclear energy?," was one. Moore said that "we got a lot of things right in the early years: stop the bombs, save the whales, stop toxic waste, but we made a mistake (on) nuclear power." Moore could have mentioned that he is now a consultant to the NEI, which was created by the PR firm Hill & Knowlton, but didn't.

The President of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, Steve Roberts, wants West Virginia's Senators Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller to "withhold voting to advance national health care reform until the Obama Administration, particularly the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, backs down on its campaign against coal." One of the measures that Roberts objects to in particular are moves by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to tighten sulphur dioxide emission standards. The EPA states that the proposed rule changes are intended to protect the health of people with asthma and notes that "children and the elderly are especially susceptible to the health problems associated with breathing SO2." They estimate that tighter pollution standards would yield health benefits of between $16 billion and $100 billion from "reduced hospital admissions, emergency room visits, work days lost, cases of aggravated asthma and chronic bronchitis, among others."