Sunshine Week, according to its website, is “a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. The University of Virginia here in Charlottesville is doing its part by hosting book tour stops for the chief author of the worst secret laws ever established. John Yoo will be speaking at the Miller Center and at an event hosted by the Federalist Society. Yoo will be speaking in support of unlimited presidential power, including the power to create secret laws.
A Pennsylvania district attorney took campaign funds from an organization which promotes killing live pigeons in contests, and then refused to allow the prosecution of animal cruelty charges against a gun club that hosts pigeon shooting contests. DA John T. Adams of Berks County accepted $500 campaign contributions from the Flyers Victory Fund in August 2008 and August 2009, according to campaign finance reports issued by both the Pennsylvania Department of State and the Berks County Registrar of Voters.
Last month when we first wrote about the faux “Census” mailers from the Republican National Committee, we reported that though deceptive, the mailings were likely legal. That could change soon. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation that specifically bans misleading mailings that are designed to look like they’re from the Census Bureau. The new bill requires that any mailing marked “census” include the sender’s name and address, plus a disclaimer that the survey is “not affiliated with the federal government,” reports the Associated Press.
![Bill Moyers on The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States [Video & Audio]](http://pubrecord.org/wordpress/show_image_NpAdvInnerSmall.php?filename=/2010/03/bill-moyers.jpg&cat=19&pid=7162&cache=true )
When you are one of the 180 million Americans now living paycheck-to-paycheck, and you are working 12 – 14 hours a day, six days a week, you have to constantly ask yourself, “Is what I’m doing the most effective way to use my time?” When it comes to my work here on AmpedStatus, I’m putting more money into it than I’m getting out of it. So, even with the impact and success I’ve been having with recent reports, my mind still questions if I would be better off working on other, more financially rewarding projects. As each month passes, and the bills keep coming, your will and resolve are tested with increased intensity.
The Supreme Court recently freed corporations to spend more money on aggressive election ads. But if businesses take advantage of this new freedom, the public probably won’t know it, because it’s easy for them to legally hide their political spending. Under current disclosure laws for federal elections, it’s virtually impossible for the public to track how much a business spends, what it’s spending on, or who ultimately benefits. Experts say the transparency problem extends to state and local races as well.
As John Yoo’s visit to Mr. Jefferson’s university here in Charlottesville approaches, one is tempted to ask the same question people around here ask about everything: WWJD? What would Jefferson do? Of course, it’s almost taboo among the most serious peace and justice advocates to cite positive precedents from Jefferson, because he was a slave owner. But Jefferson’s views on the structure of a government don’t actually become less admirable (or more) when we remember the horrors he inflicted on the people at Monticello.
David Cole of Georgetown University and formerly of the Center for Constitutional Rights has been doing some good writing, not only on our failure to enforce laws against powerful people, but also on our out-of-control epidemic of incarceration which has struck those too unimportant to gain immunity.
“Yesterday Jay Bybee sat with the 9th Circuit as they modeled appellate court for 140 law students at the University of NV’s law school in Las Vegas. I sent out a plea to PDA’s Vegas list of edresses, and about 10 people responded. Of them, two showed up with signs and we handed out Impeach Bybee postcards and talked with the law students as they waited to get through security to go inside. I was appalled at their ignorance and/or lack of outrage. Two older students said he was a friend (he lives in Henderson, just outside Vegas), and a young one said his parents were friends of Bybee.
GlaxoSmithKline has paid out close to $1 billion to resolve lawsuits involving Paxil since the drug came on the market in 1992, according to a December 14, 2009 Bloomberg report. But the billion dollars does not cover the more than 600 Paxil birth defect cases currently pending in multilitigation in Pennsylvania.
An overwhelming majority of the population has come to the realization that our government doesn’t effectively represent us anymore. It is just a matter of time before people start taking it upon themselves to begin organizing on a mass scale. Our survival instinct will soon overwhelm our conditioned passivity and erupt into a powerful countervailing force. However, the longer we hesitate and delay action, the harder it will be to obtain economic and political justice.
![Bill Moyers on The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States [Video & Audio]](http://pubrecord.org/wordpress/show_image_NpAdvHover.php?filename=/2010/03/bill-moyers.jpg&cat=7&pid=7162&cache=true)
