Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Inside the Largest Fracked Oil Spill Ever
prn.fm | Steve Horn | 12/02/13

Tesoro Logistics -- the company whose pipeline spilled more than 800,000 gallons of fracked Bakken Shale oil in rural North Dakota in September -- has hired infamous contractor Witt O'Brien's to oversee its clean-up of the biggest fracked oil spill in U.S. history.

As revealed after ExxonMobil hired the same firm in the aftermath of a 210,000-gallon tar sands oil spill in April 2013, Witt O'Brien's -- formerly known as OOPS, Inc. -- is a firm with a history of oil spill cover-ups dating back to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It also oversaw the spraying of toxic oil dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico during BP's summer 2010 mega-spill and a literal cover-up of Enbridge's massive "dilbit disaster" tar sands pipeline spill in Michigan. ... Read more

I Tried to See Where My T-Shirt Was Made, and the Factory Sent Thugs After Me
MotherJones | Dana Liebelson | 11/29/13

... If Aruna were one of my friends in DC, no one would be asking her why she isn't hitched yet. But in Aruna's home village, if you haven't secured a husband by your early 20s, you're in for a hard ride. "In India, a woman is auspicious because she is married," says Srimati Basu, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky who is an expert on the status of women in India. "Lack of marriage is horrible for the person, the family, and the community."

In order to get married, Tamil village girls like Aruna need at least three gold British sovereigns -- bullion is the preferred currency for dowries -- the equivalent of about $1,200. Together, Aruna's parents make a little less than $400 a year.

As a child, Aruna dreamed of going to college. But by the time she was 15, when her government-subsidized schooling ended, she understood that she was too poor. Then, a stranger promised to change her life. He offered her a job at a textile factory that has supplied companies including, until recently, UK-based maternity wear maker Mothercare. Her pay would be about $105 a month -- enough for food for her family, her further education, and most importantly, the chance to build a dowry. ... Read more

Debate: Should The U.S. Break Up Big Banks?
NPR | NPR Staff | 10/23/13

Too big to fail.   Those four words loomed large in 2008, as a crisis in the banking world threatened the global economy. Fears that the failure of large financial institutions would undermine the entire economic system led Congress to step in, passing a $700 billion bailout package. ...

Hanford Nuclear Site Clean-Up: The Mess Gets Worse
khq.com & NBCNews.com | author | 11/18/13

The government's multi-billion-dollar effort to clean up the nation's largest nuclear dump has become its own dysfunctional mess.   For more than two decades, the government has worked to dispose of 56 million gallons of nuclear and chemical waste in underground, leak-prone tanks at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington State.

The waste is a legacy of the Cold War, when the site housed nuclear reactors churning out radioactive plutonium for thousands of atomic bombs. To clean up the mess, the Department of Energy (DOE) started building a factory 12 years ago to encase the nuclear leftovers in stable glass for long-term storage.   But today, construction of the factory is only two-thirds complete after billions of dollars in spending, leaving partially constructed buildings and heavy machinery scattered across the 65-acre site, a short distance from the Columbia River. ... Read more