The Human Rights Campaign Foundation's new Corporate Equality Index is out.

Worse Than Slave Trade --  Pakistan Sells Human Beings to US -- for Permanent Detention & Torture

The USA began in early 2002 to distribute flyers offering substantial amounts of money for the capture of suspected enemies. One such flyer says:

"Get wealth and power beyond your dreams ... You can receive millions of dollars helping the anti-Taleban forces catch al-Qaida and Taleban murderers. This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. Pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people."

There is overwhelming evidence of Pakistanis, both officials and private individuals, selling people into US custody.
Amnesty Reports Human Rights Abuses Pakistan

The tragedy of the Sago Mine Disaster didn’t end in January, when twelve miners died from an explosion in the West Virginia mine. It has continued, and last week it claimed another life.

Last year, I wrote a few posts intended to provide information - facts and figures - you can use when you hear someone making claims - claims that are widely held - but that are not true. The problem with these false ideas is that they lead to legal and social changes that have bad consequences. For example, in the 108th Congress, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 4571, the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act of 2004. It did not pass the Senate.

So let's talk a bit about the supposed avalanche of frivolous lawsuits. This claim is being used to cut back on the right to sue for all sorts of even very serious injuries.

Cross-posted from Colorado Confidential

On Monday, Colorado Confidential broke the news that Republican political operative, Scott Shires, was charged with multiple counts of federal corporate tax crimes.

These revelations add to an interesting pattern of unreported financial transactions and noncompliance with filing legal documents among some of the political committees that Shires manages in Colorado.

From the looks of its home page, you would never suspect that the Department of Labor has plans to contract out its Women's Bureau. Not only does it have lovely aesthetics, it even announces the DOL's Women’s Bureau Strategic and Performance Plan 2003-2008, suggesting its longevity. You would never know that the DOL is planning to gut the Women's Bureau. But appearances are deceiving.

A key Colorado political operative linked to the GOP fundraising committee, Trailhead Group, LLC, faces federal tax charges in connection with an unrelated business deal.

Scott Shires was charged with three counts [PDF] of willfully failing to file corporate income tax for Octane International, Ltd., a fuel research and development firm, for the years 1999, 2000, and 2001 and three counts of aiding and abetting while serving as the company’s secretary-treasurer.

Shires is a busy guy. He manages the Senate Majority Fund, LLC, among dozens of other state and federal Republican political committees. In fact, his company, Campaign Compliance Center, describes itself as “government reporting and contribution experts”.

In a series of investigative news stories last week, Colorado Confidential reported on the cozy relationship of the Senate Majority Fund and the influential Trailhead Group LLC, the high profile Republican fundraising committee founded by Gov. Bill Owens and others. Unreported transactions totaling $100,000 between the two groups generated recent complaints to the Internal Revenue Service and Colorado Secretary of State — including an allegation of money laundering.

Now, Shires faces potentially more serious trouble in his role as a director of Octane International.

Move over Paper Chase and One-L. There's a whole new game in town when it comes to law schools as a blood sport.

The El Paso Exploration and Production Corporation of Houston, Texas has successfully beaten the people of Colfax County, New Mexico back into place.

Yes, seeds too have evolved. The first plants had to reproduce without seeds, but seeds have been here a very long time. The first evolved during the late Devonian, 365 MYPB (million years before the present). This first website is all about seeds. The story includes archeological evidence, illustrative charts, and links to sources.

But tosay is not all about evolution. Links also discuss germination, seed structure, homones, dormancy, and much much more.

A couple weeks ago, the New York Times Magazine published an article that suggested obesity may be caused by infection or othe physical phenomena, rather than being a problem of willpower. Meanwhile, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals is sticking with blame the fattie.

Earlier this week, the MacArthur Foundation announced the 25 winners of its 2006 MacArthur Fellowships. I was happy to see that surgeon/writer Atul Gawande was on the list.

On Sept. 16, 2006, Governor Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania joined Maine and New Jersey in announcing a coaltion of states opposed to Sweatshop Labor.

A new report on teacher education is a scathing indictment of teacher training.

The 2002 honesty meltdown in US businesses led to the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley. - SOX, as it's commonly called, was supposed to rein in the unethical behavior made famous or notorious by Enron, Global Crossing, and the list goes on.

There are even SOX blogs.

So now a few years out, what impact has SOX and the public outcry had on the business leaders of tomorrow? Now, don't cheat on your answer . . . .

The following exchange published in the September 18, 2006 Congressional Record is priceless.

Take a look on the flip...

I admit it. I'm a study addict. I like to pore over the data and see if it makes sense. Recently two employer groups released new studies about unions and work. They're intriguing because they're not necessarily what you would predict. If you are in a union or not or an employer or not, what do you think of these results?

The woman behind the counter frowned when I came through the door. It was a typical Finnish coffee shop.

The walls had been painted hospital white and it had been furnished with a random assortment of benches from the 1980s. The wallpaper was of sailing ships and dated from the 1960s. There were green, breast-shaped lamps swinging above the plastic tables and the paintings were all blotchy landscapes and had been on the walls since the 1970s. The floor tiles dated from before the Second World War. The toilet was tiled completely in blue. It was rusty but clean; one of the bulbs had burned out and the door wouldn’t close if you had to sit down. The whole place was terribly overheated and smelled of dishrag.

OK, I admit that death and disease is not exactly fun except to a few weird folks. But, these are life's certainties - death and disease. Could be worse. At least I'm not also talking taxes.

More important, some of the information here could save your life.

All across America, every day at shift time, you will find working poor parents making a child exchange in the parking lot. Between the 2nd and 3d shift, the kids may be drowsing in their pajamas, left alone in the dark car for a few minutes while one parent scurries to punch in and the other is punching out. Day in and day out, the parents become strangers to one another as they sacrifice time together to put food on the table and make sure the kids are cared for.

Yes, in America, nothing is too bad when it comes to the working poor. Yes, these are our family values.

Posted by Jason Bane with additional reporting from Colorado Confidential reporters Wendy Norris, Nancy Watzman and Cara DeGette.

As this high-stakes political season enters its final weeks, one of the biggest and most influential political committees at work in Colorado appears to be playing fast and loose with the campaign finance rules. Are they cheating? An exclusive Colorado Confidential investigation of the Trailhead Group reveals questionable financial transactions that literally don't add up.

What happened when neoliberal cronyism interfered with the ubiquitous Mexican tortilla? As Tom Philpott explains in Grist, “local-food infrastructure, public health, and rural economies suffered while corporate profits fattened.” Here’s the story he tells:

The prior post noted that one report found that one higher education statistic outs the US on a par with Mexico - the percentage of students who begin a college education and end up with a degree - 50%. One reason for that dismal statistic - in the world's richest country - is financial barriers to education. Truly, we are Mortgaging Our Future - How Financial Barriers to College Undercut America’s Global Competitiveness.

This week two new reports came out on education with a mix of good and bad news - plus a conference worth taking note of. And some links to other education news.

The future is now. As I've said before, I've always been concerned about climate change. But what I have seen the past few years has me down right scared.

Here in the Southwest, we are drowning in a monsoon that wont seem to end. Meanwhile, the fires in Montana wont stop burning. And according to the firefighters up there, there is something different going on. Simply put, the fires wont stop burning.

Global Warming hits home.

“People who aren’t from around here don’t feel the same way we do about 9/11,” one of my co-workers remarked to me today. She grew up in New Jersey, close to Manhattan. “New York was the first city I went to – it was my city. At 8:46, I had to just be quiet for a minute, you know?”

Everyone tacks “and Washington” or “and the Pentagon” on to their remarks about New York and the World Trade Center, but the two sites aren’t really comparable when it comes to remembering 9/11. Even living in DC, I know more people who lost friends, neighbors, or family members from one of the two towers than from the federal building out in Virginia.

My series on the CONSERVATION ECONOMY makes these main points:

1. Conservation pays, conservation pays immediately and conservation pays on multiple levels. Whether you are talking wilderness or windfarms, conservation pays;

2. The conservation economy is a bridging issue.  One that can cross boundaries to bring divergent interests together, bring the conservation movement into the mainstream and realize sustainable economic benefit for communities that seek to be conservation-minded.

In late 2005, the Dept. of Interior released a report entitled Banking on Nature 2004: The Economic Benefits to Local Communities of National Wildlife Refuge Visitation, that demonstrated that national wildlife refuges generated almost $1.4 billion in total economic activity during the 2004 fiscal year.

Hat Tip to DKOS Naturegalfor pointing me to this study.

Joni Mitchell warned us that you don't know what you got till it's gone. So check out this week's links to what may be going, going, gone

As wild fish stocks have been depleted, the business of aquaculture has grown. The FAO’s “State of World Aquaculture,” released at the biennial meeting of its Sub-committee on Aquaculture in New Delhi earlier this week, reported that nearly half of the fish consumed as food worldwide are raised on fish farms. Other statistics from FAO include:

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education released report cards for each state's educational performance today: Measuring Up 2006.

The website has easy-to-use links to national performance, the ability to select specific states for comparison, as well as links to reports for individual states. It also has links to reports giving international comparisons.

This past week, GAO has issued three reports on information security. In one study on outsourcing medical information, GAO reports that security breaches of private information are common, but the extent is not known, because there has been little effort to keep track of outsourcing or information breaches.

World opinion of America has been dramatically sinking, as the Bush war rhetoric against the "Islamofacists" escalates. Pew Research On September 2, when Bush said: "The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq," what was the civilized world's reaction?

"At the time, one spoke openly of the "civilized world" and the "uncivilized world," the one inhabited by the empowered peoples of the West and the other by the colonized ones of the East. America's 'Wacky Ideas About Islam' and the Gulf In Understanding

You can find it at WatchingAmerica.com, the best single source of opinion about the US gathered from original international sources and translated into English daily.

We live in such complex moral times. Take Exxon, for example. What comes to mind? Huge profits. Contribution to global warming. In Europe there have been Stop Esso Campaigns against Exxon. But is there a kindler, gentler environmentalist Exxon?

And we at unbossed should not let it pass without some mention.

Today there will be speeches and mentions of Labor Day. NPR had a piece by Clancy Sigal remembering his union organizer mother. link

This afternoon, I'm heading off to a Labor Day picnic for union members and their allies.

But, friends, we live in a country whose leaders declare that unions are anti-American. You don't buy that? Well, check this out. link

Over at Daily Kos, I found a neglected diary about to scroll off the page so I decided to have a read. I found a short piece. The author was reading a book by someone named Karl Zinsmeister who worked for the American Enterprise Institute. The name sounded so Nazi-esque that I figured it must be a joke. But there really is a Karl Zinsmeister. And he is now embedded with a post in the Administration.

This is huge.

California has become the first state in the nation to cap global warming pollution. The Governor has signed the bill as of last week. Again, this is huge. California is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla. With the seventh largest economy in the world, this move will have major reprocutions throughout the nation and will change the nature of energy economics in the American West.

This is a huge victory.

Bird diaper! Darn! I know: You're thinking: Wish I'd thought of it first. Me too. Who wouldn't be?

A new report by the Education Trust, Promise Abandoned: How Policy Choices and Institutional Practices Restrict College Opportunities, documents how current education policies and practices have failed minority and impoverished students.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that some large companies are willing to demand greater social and environmental responsibility from their suppliers in order to defend their brands against public outcry -- and sometimes they'll even take those steps before the outcry can start:

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:

The U.S. Education Department has given the Federal Bureau of Investigation information on hundreds of students who applied for financial aid over the past five years as part of the federal government's antiterrorism investigations following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The program, known as Project Strike Back, was aimed at finding out if suspected terrorists were financing their operations through federal student aid obtained by using other students' identities. The secret effort was uncovered by a journalism student at Northwestern University, Laura McGann.

link

One thing that has been consistent about charter schools is that they have failed to do what their proponents claimed they would do - leave ordinary public schools in the dust.