U.S. Forest Service plans to boost timber production, forest health work, “Stewardship Contracting’s” dishonest destruction and lies. See the article appended below.

The Big Lie of Stewardship Contracting – One large forestland owner and logging company, Collins Pine, is getting a $3.5 million grant to log already overcut national forests in south central Oregon near Lakeview. Of course they call it “green alternative biomass energy production”, “thinning” and “restoration logging” even if it is calling for 85% removal or “heavy commercial thinning”. TGH  

Rules for Radicals: 10 Ways To Spark Change in a Post-Occupy World?

The first rule is this: The world is different now. The rules have changed.

Since Occupy, we all understand this. Nothing works now the way it did even just a couple of years ago. Political tactics that haven’t budged public opinion in years – like petitions and big street demonstrations – are suddenly working again. Narratives that seemed unassailable – like the primacy of free markets and low taxes – are being openly questioned. Doors that used to be closed to us are now opening. The media that once ignored us is now starting to listen. The conservatives are shaken and fumbling, stuck on autopilot and unable to re-route away from their old course even as disaster looms dead ahead. What’s going on here?  

Organic News Bytes – Monsanto and Big Ag: Partners In Crime

Energy-intensive industrial farming practices that rely on toxic chemicals and genetically engineered crops are not just undermining public health, they’re destroying the planet.  

Super PACS, made possible following the outcomes of two court decisions in 2010 — the Citizens United v. FEC decision and the SpeechNow.org v. FEC decision, can take unlimited donations from individuals, corporations, associations and unions.

As the disclosures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) late last night show, not only have millions been flowing to these Super PACs, the disclosures show these are clearly donations from the “0.1%” — corporations and individuals donating tens of thousands, one hundred thousand, even donations of millions of dollars.  

Obama administration says new forest rules stress science, What nonsense!

Like Wall Street’s prior Administrations the Obama Administration is also dishonest in claiming more logging is scientifically sound. What nonsense. With 95% of our Country’s native forest cut at least once and only 5% left uncut and very fragmented not only does honest science but reasonable common sense says it is time to stop cutting what still remains and, as well, the naturally recovering native forest. And remember that baby old-growth native forest is just as important if not more so than the old, old-growth forest. SAVE WHATs LEFT AND LET WHATs BEEN LOST NATURALLY RECOVER, in order to regain our forest commonwealth’s vital and most important role as the lungs-of-the-planet. Or we too shall not long survive – and go extinct. UNLESS . . . . .?  

King Coal’s Politically Greased Export Plans Fuels a Fight in Oregon (same process by which ENRON’s takeover of Oregon’s largest public utility was approved with its many tax breaks and giveaways) | Wall Street Journal

Environmentalists who scuttled development of a coal-export terminal in Washington last year are back at it in Oregon, trying to keep two ports from becoming transit points for coal shipped to the Far East.

But while many local residents share the activists’ concerns about pollution, the projects’ promise of jobs also resonates widely in a region suffering from declines in fishing, timber and other resource-related industries.  

Moyers: How the Banks Have Rewritten Our Economy’s Rules, his 55 minute program video

Bill Moyers is back on television! Here is last night’s episode of “Moyers and Company,” which asks: “how did our political and financial class shift the benefits of the economy to the very top, while saddling us with greater debt and tearing new holes in the safety net?”

Moyers investigates how the Glass-Steagall act was “brought down” by politicians, and what can be done to end this era of financial industry domination?