Andrew Kimbrell of the Huffington Post on Vilsack for Sec of USDA

By Andrew Kimbrell of the Huffington Post
Posted December 23, 2008 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-kimbrell/obamas-choice-of-vilsack_b_153213.html
 
Subdued approval greeted President-elect Obama’s choice of Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture last week. This came from mainstream environmental groups, such as Sierra Club, and even organizations that have been critical in the past of the Iowa governor’s policies. Vilsack comes across in nearly all [...]

A Data Based Argument for Universal Health Care, Part 3: Profiting from Life and Death

We argued in our previous two posts, found here, that people in the United States are less healthy than Japan, the social democracies in western Europe, Cuba, and Costa Rica despite the fact that Americans spend more than twice as much, on a per capita basis, on health care. The next piece of the puzzle [...]

Organic Consumers Unite: Stand Up Against Vilsack for USDA

Despite a massive public outcry, including over 20,000 emails from the Organic Consumers Association, President-Elect Obama has chosen former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to be the next Secretary of Agriculture.
Sign OCA’s Petition to the US Senate Now!
While Vilsack has promoted respectable policies with respect to restraining livestock monopolies, his overall record is one of aiding [...]

Vilsack to be named Secretary of Agriculture

It looks as if the original rumors were true. Former Iowa governor and one time presidential hopeful Tom Vilsack was reported to be named Obama’s Secretary of the USDA. It was reported earlier that Vilsack was eliminated from the short list; apparently he survived.
This, much like the newly designated Secretary of Education, may not rest [...]

Japanese Automobile Corporations Are Better? Toyota’s Race to the Bottom

by Barbara Briggs, Special to CorpWatch 
September 16th, 2008
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15182
 Beneath Toyota’s buffed shine lies a dark undercoat. The Toyota Corporation enjoys a fine reputation for well-built cars, environmental innovation, flexible production lines and effective management practices. But in its quest for ever-increasing efficiency, profitability and growth, the world’s largest auto manufacturer has sparked a race to the bottom that, [...]

Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture: Support a New Way of Thinking about Food

Sign the Food Democracy Now! petition at http://www.fooddemocracynow.org and support one of these candidates for Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture: 

Gus Schumacher, Former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture.
Chuck Hassebrook, Executive Director, [...]

Obama’s “Secretary of Food”?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Op-Ed Columnist for the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/opinion/11kristof.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
As Barack Obama ponders whom to pick as agriculture secretary, he should reframe the question. What he needs is actually a bold reformer in a position renamed “secretary of food.”
A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming. [...]

US Business Groups Urge Obama to End Cuban Embargo

By Doug Palmer  (Editing by Jackie Frank)
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE4B36G620081204
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-electBarack Obama should start soon to loosen five decades of trade curbs on Cuba and begin a comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward the communist-run island, U.S. business groups said on Thursday.
“We support the complete removal of all trade and travel restrictions on Cuba. We recognize that [...]

Obama and the New USDA Chief: Vilsack Out, Two Remain

Posted by Tom Philpott at The Grist
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/11/24/134851/03
Until very recently, speculation around who would take the top spot at Obama’s USDA centered on former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, a champion of both genetically modified seed technology and farm-subsidy reform.
But now Vilsack’s out of the running, the Des Moines Register reports. Evidently, a petition from the Organic Consumers Association helped sink his prospects.
What [...]

A Message for Obama: Think Trains

Posted by STANLEY CROUCH
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST, New York Daily News
As posted at: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/388649_crouchonline21.html
While Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson performs a mysterious magic act in which he shows us what a deregulated bailout looks like, some of us are trying to imagine what President-elect Barack Obama can do to turn our country away from the disastrous and corrupt [...]