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, quintu... Read Full Story

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 $... Read Full Story

Wendell Potter is featured in today's Le Monde for his work on behalf of the Center for Media and Democracy. It's in French, of course, and in the article he talks about the influence of the insurance industry lobbyists on elected politicians and candidates. I'd translate it for you, but even as a former tutor in French the verb tenses still elude me. read more Read Full Story

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?," ... Read Full Story

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 s... Read Full Story

New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson does it again in her Sunday column “Revisiting a Fed Waltz With A.I.G.” She reviews the damning conclusions of a government report released this week and skewers Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner with information only she could know. read more Read Full Story

According to the Associated Press, "Americans for Quality and Affordable Healthcare" (AQAH) is a "secretive" group that organizes "below-the-radar" activities to drum up opposition to health care reform. AQAH is opposed to a government-run public health insurance option, but supports a mandate to require all citizens to purchase health insurance -- views that happen to exactly match those of the health insurance industry. The group's Web site contains no address, telephone number or other con... Read Full Story

The pharmaceutical industry-funded front group Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI) is helping its corporate funders fight health care reform by disseminating misinformation and orchestrating campaigns to generate fear about health care reform. CMPI arose out of the Pacific Research Institute, a corporate front group that worked with Philip Morris in the past to fabricate academic support for the tobacco industry. CMPI has been sponsoring anti-Obama Tea Party protests, producing ... Read Full Story

The article in the November 14 issue of the New York Times about the extent to which the biotech firm Genetech was able to put their own words into legislators' mouths raises the next logical question: To what extent are corporations in the U.S. actually drafting laws and getting them passed? We can't deny this is happening, yet few want to talk about it. Tobacco industry documents, though, show exactly how corporations can and do co-opt legislative processes from start to finish, and ... Read Full Story

President Barack Obama has announced his intention to nominate Dana Perino as a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Perino, who is currently Chief Issues Counselor for the global PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, and a commentator on Fox News. Perino was spokesman for President George W. Bush between 2007 and 2009. BBG is the body that oversees several U.S. funded international broadcast channels, including Voice of America, Radio Sawa, Al Hurra and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.... Read Full Story