TV News LIES

Gold­man Sachs, which re­ceived more sub­si­dies and bailout-re­lated funds than any other in­vest­ment bank be­cause the Fed­eral Re­serve per­mit­ted it to be­come a bank hold­ing com­pany under its “emer­gency sit­u­a­tion,” has used bil­lions in tax­payer money to en­rich it­self and re­ward its top ex­ec­u­tives. It handed its se­nior em­ploy­ees a stag­ger­ing $18 bil­lion in 2009, $16 bil­lion in 2010 and $10 bil­lion in 2011 in mega-bonuses. This mas­sive trans­fer of wealth up­wards by the Bush and Obama ad­min­is­tra­tions, now es­ti­mated at $13 tril­lion to $14 tril­lion, went into the pock­ets of those who car­ried out fraud and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­ity rather than the vic­tims who lost their jobs, their sav­ings and often their homes.

The system Congress set up 21 years ago to clean up toxic air pollution still leaves many communities exposed to risky concentrations of benzene, formaldehyde, mercury and many other hazardous chemicals.

Pollution violations at more than 1,600 plants across the country were serious enough that the government believes they require urgent action, according to an analysis of EPA data by NPR and the Center for Public Integrity. Yet nearly 300 of those facilities have been considered "high priority violators" of the Clean Air Act by the Environmental Protection Agency for at least a decade.

There is still time to correct these problems by 2012. This story is not just about Shelby County, Tennessee, where I believe the elections commission is competently addressing these problems for 2012. Last-minute dumps of new voter registration forms was a national problem in 2008, and across America voters reported that when they showed up to vote, their name was missing from the list.

The 2008 presidential election brought millions of new voters to the polls, with enthusiasm especially high among youth and minority voters. Yet in Shelby County (the home of the great city of Memphis), over 15,000 voters, disproportionately young or Black voters, were omitted from the list of valid voters at the time of early voting; by Election Day, the names finally made it to the list.

I am an Iraqi citizen who worked as an interpreter with the U.S. military for two years. It was an honor to serve, and I did it because I believed that bringing freedom to Iraq required brave people to stand up and try to make a difference. Now, as a result of my service, I find myself in a dangerous limbo.

Before 2003, I thought of the U.S. primarily as the home of Bruce Willis, Hollywood and Las Vegas. But it was also a dream, a dream of freedom.

The State Department's inspector general's office will launch an inquiry into the department's decisions regarding the Keystone XL pipeline, which would ferry oil from Canada's tar sands formation across the Plains states to the Gulf of Mexico.

The inquiry, in response to a congressional request, will center on whether the department followed laws and regulations in preparing its environmental assessment and statement of national interest for the  1,700-mile-long pipeline.

More...

In a surprising turn of events, Cuadrilla Resources, a British energy company, recently admitted that its hydraulic fracturing operations "likely" caused an earthquake in England. Predictably, this news quickly sent a shockwave through the U.K., the oil and natural gas industries, and the environmental activist community. And it certainly feeds plenty of speculation that the same phenomenon could be occurring elsewhere.

Halliburton Co faces lawsuits over groundwater pollution near a now-closed facility in Oklahoma that cleaned missile casings for the U.S. Defense Department during the Cold War, the company said on Friday.

Halliburton, which now specializes in oilfield services, said one of its units cleaned solid fuel from missile casings between 1965 and 1991 at a semi-rural facility on the north side of Duncan, Oklahoma. It was closed in the mid-1990s.

Britain, France and Colombia plan to abstain from a UN Security Council vote on Palestinian statehood, in a setback to efforts to secure international support for the Palestinian bid.

The US has pledged to veto the Palestinian attempt if it is brought to the vote in the 15-member council, but the Palestinians had hoped to gather a nine-vote majority, forcing America to cast its veto, which would award the Palestinians a moral victory.