New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Tuesday was kicked off the committee leading the 50-state task force charged with probing foreclosure abuses and negotiating a possible settlement agreement with the nations five largest mortgage firms, according to an email reviewed by The Huffington Post.

Schneiderman was one of roughly a dozen state attorneys general leading the talks with the five companies, alongside representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other federal agencies. The government launched the negotiations in the spring after widespread reports of foreclosure irregularities, such as so-called “robo-signing” and illegal home seizures, emerged.

via New York Attorney General Kicked Off Government Group Leading Foreclosure Probe.

It seems to me that the New York Attorney General’s office is one of the few offices doing the people’s work. The Obama administration and all of its allies in this matter are flatly not.

We dont know what Keenans abortion experience was like. She could, like many women who ended up injured or dead from abortions in that era, have tried to self-induce. Douching with soap or bleach was a “common and frequently fatal method,” though there were many others, according to Leslie Reagans book ”When Abortion Was a Crime.” Big city hospitals treated thousands of women each year for often brutal injuries related to illegal abortions. By the early 1960s, as childbirth became safer, abortion-related deaths made up nearly half of the entire maternal mortality rate in New York City, according to one study.

via The abortion that Mitt doesnt talk about anymore – War Room – Salon.com.

This is absolutely terrifying and horrible. We cannot allow this country to return to the day’s of Mitt Romney’s youth! This is barbaric. It must have been like living under the Taliban for a woman back then.

From the pages of history and the beginning of the atomic age comes a story of why journalism is so important. In The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation by Gayle Greene we learn about the audacity of industry and government to cover-up the truth.

When Tokyo Radio announced that people who entered the cities after the explosion were dying of mysterious causes, American officials dismissed the allegations as propaganda intended to imply that the United States had used an inhumane weapon.

Well what is a nuclear weapon if not inhumane? How is a nuclear bomb different from anthrax or mustard gas?

General Leslie Groves, who had headed the Manhattan Project, ordered a team of Manhattan Project doctors and technicians in, with the mission of proving “there was no radioactivity from the bomb.” The first scientists and doctors allowed into the cities, in late 1945, were with the U.S. Armed Forces. Most journalists also entered the cities under U.S. military escort and similarly concluded that tales of radiation poisoning were groundless.”

Even the NY Times was on the bandwagon with a headline that said “No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin.” This reminds me of the time when the Bush administration sent inspectors into Iraq to prove that there were weapons of mass destruction.

As for as Hiroshima goes it took an independent journalist unescorted by military personnel to get the truth. The reporter’s name was Wilfred Burchett who found people in hospitals whose hair fell out along with bluish spots appearing on their bodies. There was also bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth and they were dying at the rate of one hundred people a day. Burchett’s piece the Atomic Plague can be found here.

On the Wikipedia page for Burchett I found an interesting quesiton that is posed in a documentary of the journalist by filmaker David Bradbury and that is, “can a democracy tolerate opinions it considers subversive to its national interest? How far can freedom of the press be extended in wartime?”

With all that is covered here does the national interest really reflect what is best for the people? What is the national interest? Is it a point of view that is foisted upon people and whipped up by propagandists? The only way to ensure the opinions of the people are fully informed is to have unfettered democracy. We must allow differences of opinion no matter how much we may not agree with some of them. Lastly, we need a press that is independent and not consolidated.

Despite fire-and-brimstone opposition to taxes among many in a state that still has “Heart of Dixie” on its license plates, officials never stopped collecting a property tax that once funded the Alabama Confederate Soldiers Home, which closed 72 years ago. The tax now pays for Confederate Memorial Park, which sits on the same 102-acre tract where elderly veterans used to stroll.

via News from The Associated Press.

How sad is that? The anti-tax southern stronghold is still making people pay a tax for confederate soldiers who don’t exist anymore!

Mr. Kundra declined to estimate the job impact of eliminating hundreds of data centers. The closings are determined by technology managers in the federal agencies. Data centers are not huge employers, as military bases are, for example. Yet even in the first wave of closings, Mr. Kundra said, “We have had some pushback from members of Congress, but tough decisions have to be made.”

via U.S. to Close 800 Computer Data Centers – NYTimes.com.

I’m happy to see that the Obama administration is going to cloud services and that they’re not just using one vendor but both Google and Microsoft. The only downside is the loss of jobs, but if what Kundra is saying is true and that the data centers weren’t huge employers to begin with–then hopefully those affected can find Information Technology work elsewhere in the government.

Bachmann: Divert black farmer money to flood victims | The Raw Story

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (R-MN) used her tour of flood damage in Iowa Monday as an opportunity to assert that it was a waste to pay African American farmers who sued the government over discrimination.

How ridiculous is this woman? I feel sorry for her children whom she is purported to have home schooled. We all know how twisted her husband is already. Shame. 

The U.S. government agreed to pay African American farmers $50,000 each if they had been unfairly denied loans by the United States Department of Agriculture. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed legislation authorizing $1.2 billion for black farmers who were denied payouts in an earlier settlement.

Why is it that the only way to help the flood victims in MO would be to take away money from these farmers? Michelle Bachman and Steve King are dangerous people. Bachman’s candidacy must be destroyed at all costs. She may be a fringe candidate but she is still a threat to the republic. The birchers are now mainstream.

I wish planners all across America would take this to heart.

As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city’s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. “Driving is a stop-and-go experience,” he said. “That’s what we like! Our goal is to reconquer public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers.”

I’d love to see this really put into practice in the DC metro area.

I had no idea that is was such a problem.

Karen Shay and Lynn Kissick have become reluctant experts in the medicines which killed their daughters and which are eating away at rural communities throughout the area.

Both have lent their passionate voices to an education campaign being led by Kentucky’s Attorney General Jack Conway.

People don’t realize that it’s the rural conservative areas that often have a lot of the social problems that conservatives often rail against. Teen pregnancy, drug abuse it’s all there. If you ended all the social programs that conservatives hate like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare it is these rural areas that would be hurt the most. That’s why Paul Ryan can’t get support for his budget his own base depends on these programs. It’s time to see the reality.

Walter Issacson wants to rewrite the laws that forbade the United States from turning the propaganda from Voice of America and its siblings towards an American audience.

The United States government may be the largest broadcaster that few Americans know about. Although its networks reach 100 countries in 59 languages, they are banned from distribution in the United States by a 1948 law devised to prevent the government from turning its propaganda machine on its own citizens. Mr. Issacson wants to rewrite that law, saying it is obsolete in the Internet age.

While I understand the reason for these media outlets to exist. I don’t think subjecting Americans to them is wise. Sure, they might be able to discern that what they are listening to is American propaganda for all intense and purposes, but there will be some who will not make that distinction. Besides I think there is actually a lot of propaganda already being directed toward the American people from the corporate controlled media.

I think it’s great that the state is trying to help local farmers more easily transport food throughout the state. I mean local farmers and not agribusinesses.

On May 23, the Senate passed bill S.614-b/A.1389-a, which was introduced by Sen. Jeffrey Klein, D-Morris Park and would allow the Urban Development Corp. and the Empire State Development Corp. to make low-interest loans and award grants to assist farmers transport their agricultural products. The economic development financing would be made available for transportation projects that help farmers deliver New York farm products to institutional food service purchasers such as restaurants, schools and other food service operations, especially in underserved urban areas.

Urban areas are often under-banked, under-shopped and under-super marketed. So it’s good that they can have access to fresh produce and etc.