We are unwitting guinea pigs

At Common Dreams, David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz write that we are unwitting guinea pigs for chemical manufacturers. The worst part is that these untested (and sometimes demonstrably unsafe) substances can act synergistically. The whole danger might well be greater than the individual dangers.

Today, we are all unwitting subjects in the largest set of drug trials ever. Without our knowledge or consent, we are testing thousands of suspected toxic chemicals and compounds, as well as new substances whose safety is largely unproven and whose effects on human beings are all but unknown. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) itself has begun monitoring our bodies for 151 potentially dangerous chemicals, detailing the variety of pollutants we store in our bones, muscle, blood, and fat. None of the companies introducing these new chemicals has even bothered to tell us we’re part of their experiment. None of them has asked us to sign consent forms or explained that they have little idea what the long-term side effects of the chemicals they’ve put in our environment -- and so our bodies -- could be. Nor do they have any clue as to what the synergistic effects of combining so many novel chemicals inside a human body in unknown quantities might produce.

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More about the big foreclosure settlement

From Matt Taibbi:

In advance of that notorious settlement, the government ordered banks to hire "independent" consultants to examine their loan files to see just exactly how corrupt they were. Now it comes out that not only were these consultants not so independent, not only did they very likely skew the numbers seriously in favor of the banks, and not only were these few consultants paid over $2 billion (over 20 percent of the entire settlement amount) while the average homeowner only received $300 in the deal – in addition to all of that, it appears that federal regulators will not turn over the evidence of impropriety they discovered during these reviews to homeowners who may want to sue the banks. In other words, the government not only ordered the banks to hire consultants who may have gamed the foreclosure settlement in favor of the banks, but the regulators themselves are hiding the information from the public in order to shield the banks from further lawsuits."
You owe it to yourself to click the link to Rolling Stone. Taibbi's article features Senator Warren grilling the corrupt government agencies who are protecting the corrupt banks. This is unbelievable stuff, except that it's real.

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Democracy in action–American style–in Afghanistan

"Democracy" in action in Afghanistan is described in the NYT:

KABUL, Afghanistan — For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency. All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.
How has this cash benefited anyone?
[T]here is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.
Yes, this is democracy in action, American Style, complete with large amount of secret cash being transferred. And this is in addition to the two billion dollars per week that we have been wasting in Afghanistan for a decade. All of this occurring at a time when American politicians claim that they don't have enough money to provide the basics for Americans.

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Congress foists weapons on army

The army says it doesn't need new Abrams tanks, but Congress is buying them anyway. What more proof would one need that the political system is corrupt, that it is broken, that it is not responding to the needs of the American people, that we have pervasive corporate welfare?

Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams. But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, "No thanks." It's the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt. Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there's a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.

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