Monsanto Sues Maui for Direct Democracy, Launches New PR Campaign
Residents of Maui County voted to ban the growing of GMO crops on the islands of Maui, Lanai, and Molokai. Monsanto and Dow have sued the county to stop the people's law.
Public Relations
Edelman TransCanada Leak: Aggressive PR for Keystone Alt
Leaked documents expose a plan by Edelman for TransCanada to launch an "aggressive" American-style PR campaign to get controversial tar sands oil to refineries in eastern Canada for export.
Rick Berman Exposed in New Audio; Hear His Tactics against Environmentalists and Workers Rights
Rick Berman, the king of corporate front groups and propaganda, has been caught on tape. Listen:
Pesticide Firms Use Tobacco Playbook to Spin Bee Crisis
Despite huge losses of bees that are crucial to pollination of food plants, pesticide companies selling neonicotinoid (neonic) insecticides -- which a growing body of science indicates contribute to bee declines -- have ramped up efforts to sew doubt about and distract from pesticides' contribution to the problem.
Science Media Centre Spins Pro-GMO Line
A new report commissioned by Prime Minister David Cameron suggests that GMOs have now been shown to be safe and that the United Kingdom may need to grow them in order to rely less on imports.
NFIB and AHIP: Hidden influence-peddling in Washington
-- by Wendell Potter, The Center for Public Integrity
I was not among those who believed the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision would open the floodgates of corporate money to influence elections and public policy. While the decision enables corporations to call for the election or defeat of federal candidates, those expenditures have to be reported and few corporations will take the risk of losing customers by getting involved in politics so publicly.
Trade Group Offers Free Sewage Sludge "Compost" to Community Gardens in "Million Tomato Campaign" for Food Banks
Beautiful spring weather has gardeners outside seeding lettuce and transplanting tomatoes. Community gardens are ramping up for a growing season full of hot peppers and trailing squash vines. The sewage sludge "composting" industry wants in on the action. May 6 to May 12 has been declared "International Compost Awareness Week" by the sewage sludge industry trade group the U.S. Composting Council (USCC).
“ALEC Who?” ALEC Has an Identity Crisis
The American Legislative Exchange Council, which for decades has been known by the acronym "ALEC," is asking members to stop calling it ALEC because the name is now associated with a "distant, mysterious, Washington alphabet organization of unknown intentions."
Conversation with "Fix the Debt," Help Count the Pinocchios
Last week, the Center for Media and Democracy and The Nation magazine worked together to publish a package in The Nation and a new online wiki resource on Pete Peterson and the Campaign to Fix the Debt, an entity we consider an "astroturf supergroup" with a huge budget working hard to create the fantasy that Americans care more about national debt and deficits than jobs and the economy. Fix the Debt is currently exploiting the "sequester" debate in Congress to encourage steep cuts to incredibly popular social programs like Medicare and Social Security.
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