Open for Discussion

Miracle-Gro to pay big fine for fake pesticides, poison bird feed

Lawn and garden products company Scotts Miracle-Gro will pay $12.5 million in fines for poisoning bird feed and violating pesticide laws, officials said Friday.

Scotts will pay record criminal and civilian penalties for a litany of pesticide violations, including “illegally applying insecticides to its wild bird food products that are toxic to birds,” the Justice Department said in a statement[...]

As part of the criminal settlement, Scotts will contribute $500,000 to organizations that protect bird habitat.

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Terror Takes Back Seat; Americans Safer Now

As Americans debate whether they are better off now than they were four years ago, there is another question with a somewhat easier answer: Are you safer now than you were when President Barack Obama took office?[...]

In some cases, the Obama White House simply continued or escalated programs and policies begun by the Republican administration of George W. Bush. But Obama implemented a more aggressive drone campaign to target top terror leaders, broadening efforts to help at-risk nations beef up their own defenses, and implemented plans to end the war in Iraq and bring troops out of Afghanistan.

As a result, terrorism worries have taken a back seat to the nation's economic woes.

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Thank you, Senator Sanders

Democratic socialism (PDF), he explained, “means that health care should be a right of all people,” he said. “That higher education should be a right, kids shouldn’t graduate $50,000 in debt. Which means we should pass legislation that represents the interests of working families and not the moneyed interests. Which means that we should be aggressive at global warming and protecting the environment for future generations. Which means workers earn a decent wage. All of these ideas which people have talked about from Eugene Debs on.”

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Ex-prosecutor claims O.J. Simpson attorney tampered with glove

Former Los Angeles deputy district attorney Christopher Darden on Thursday accused Simpson defense lawyer, the late Johnnie Cochran, of "manipulating" one of the infamous gloves that the prosecution said linked Simpson to the grisly double murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

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(Update) I forgot to add this:

Happy 46th Anniversary Star Trek

And you can celebrate with a Google Doodle

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Good morning.

Glinda's picture

Ummmm, if corporations are people, too, then why don't they go to jail when they commit a crime?

Or... let's just assign a dollar figure to each crime a person commits and call it a day.

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Exactly ....

BruceMcF's picture

... and with the corporate-sponsored expansion of the prison labor system, it gets easier and easier to specify the corporate version of time in prison ~ put the corporation under public receivership and the profits earned while in jail in the public coffers.

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Morning Glinda

LaEscapee's picture

thanks for the links, here is one I found in my in-box this morning.

29 Dead in 8 Days as U.S. Puts Yemen Drone War in Overdrive

And here is the kicker.

“This is not going to end well,” Princeton University’s Gregory Johnsen, an expert on the region, recently wrote. “In an effort to destroy the threat coming out of Yemen, the U.S. is getting sucked further into the quicksand of a conflict it doesn’t understand and one in which its very presence tilts the tables against the U.S.” Meanwhile, the strikes keep coming.

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Good Morning

priceman's picture

I feel so safe that I forgotten what the Bill of Rights even is. IF Obama says we don't need it, that's fine with me.

*wakes up* Ahhh! Oh no! IT wasn't a dream! We are living in the GWB national security state under Obama. I don't feel safer at all.

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If Americans actually felt safe

geomoo's picture

They wouldn't be so easily fooled by repeated hysterical insistence that they need to give up all their rights and money like yesterday.

How self-centered does a country need to be to think that their right to have fun romances and plenty of toys justifies killing innocent people all over the world?

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Corporations (and my dancing horse) are people - unlike you scum

sartoris's picture

Thanks for the excellent roundup. Couple of points on the Scotts story that really struck me as pathetic. This was a plea agreement. The Justice Dept took a plea and this was the best freaking deal they could reach? A plea? Couldn't even go to trial? Oh, and 500k for freaking bird organizations? I think that my lawyer friend who lives in the trailer park down the road could have reached a better deal.

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Sanders is great and proves the lies of the Pragmatists

sartoris's picture

Sanders is great but his influence is too nominal. I love the fact that the Blue Dog caucus lost 28 of its 54 members in the 2010 election. People don't want fake Democratic representatives. In 2010 the Progressive Caucus lost 1 seat and retained 79 seats. When was the last time you saw a member of the Progressive Caucus on any of the Sunday talk shows, or even on the supposedly librul channel MSNBC? The way the pragmatists talk the country will not accept Progressives but the Progressive Caucus is the largest caucus in Congress. Pragmatists are devoid of facts and ideas and are a drag on moving the Democratic party forward.

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