Last year, a hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") chemical fluid disclosure "model bill" was passed by both the Council of State Governments (CSG) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It proceeded to pass in multiple states across the country soon thereafter, but asBloomberg recently reported, the bill has been an abject failure with regards to "disclosure."

That was by design, thanks to the bill's ...

Today, SUNY Buffalo closed the doors of its Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI), what we at DeSmog have described as an epicenter for “frackademia” and a public relations front for the oil and gas industry to promote hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) under the guise of scientific legitimacy that a university offers.

A letter from SUNY Buffalo President Satish K. Tripathi said that the nail in the coffin for SRSI was what we coined its “shill gas study,” the first paper published by SRSI. All of the co-authors of this paper had direct ties to the oil and gas industry, as did four out of five of its peer reviewers.

Tripathi explained his rationale behind slamming the door shut on SRSI, writing,

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The pundit class has offered a slew of postmortems in the attempt to extract meaning in the aftermath of the 2012 elections. Missing from the majority of these analyses altogether: the real winner of the 2012 election.  No, not Democratic Party President-elect Barack Obama nor Republican candidate Mitt Romney, but rather what Portland State University Professor of Urban Studies and Planning called the “Global Electioneering” industry in his 2005 book by that namesake.  “Corporate domination, centralization, and professionalization of political space have eliminated almost all but limited symbolic participation of ordinary people” in the electoral politics, Sussman explained in the first chapter of his book. On Nov. 10, The Washington Post reported that tens of millions of dollars were made by private consultants during the 2012 presidential campaign alone, writing:

In the presidential race alone, the two main media firms working for President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney earned profits for handling more than half a billion dollars of campaign advertising, according to disclosures and ad tracking data. Neither company is required to report how much it received in compensation for that work, but their combined cut could easily be $25 million or more at standard industry rates. 

Other big earners were the digital strategy companies, telemarketing firms, air charter services, pollsters and consultants who saw a spike in business in a presidential contest that cost at least $2.6 billion. The surge in spending was a ...

How do you sell a rotten bag of goods? Rule number one of effective propaganda: repackage it into something seemingly less grotesque.

In that spirit, the Houston Chronicle recently reported the American Petroleum Institute (API) has created yet another front group, this one to promote tar sands crude, one of the dirtiest sources of fuel in the world, as a safe and secure energy resource.

It's name? "Oil Sands Fact Check" (OSFC).

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There was an expression among activists that went “One year longer, one year stronger” a year after the beginning of the “Wisconsin Uprising” here in Madison, WI. The reality is that one year+ longer, the left as an organizing force is “one year weaker.”

The truth? People, as a mass movement in the United States, are attracted to right-wing populism, embodied by the likes of Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who recently won the recall election by an astounding 7-percent landslide.

Sure, there are refrains, such as “this was an auction, not an election,” and that “money won this election.” But people still voted and have agency. And Walker won by a long-shot.

Many important questions arise for those who consider themselves, ...

On November 29, 2011, Rocky Anderson – former Democratic Party Mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah – announced he’d be running for President of the United States.

Though the majority of his adult life a loyal Democrat, in recent years, Anderson’s criticisms of the Party have been sharp, never mincing words in describing his displeasure. For example, Anderson once stated, “I don't know what people were expecting, all this hope and change nonsense...There's no question that we're seeing a continuation [of the harm to], and even in some instances a worsening of our republic under this administration.”

Anderson’s discontent with the Party and, in particular, the first term of incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama, has moved him not only to run for President in 2012 as a third party candidate, but to form a completely new third party, the Justice Party. Anderson hopes the Party will not merely serve as a one-and-done venture for the 2012 election, but rather, a long-term vehicle for social justice movements of all stripes, as well as a viable electoral outlet for the 99-percent.

I had the opportunity to interview Rocky Anderson over the phone on March 2 to talk about, among other things, his stances on civil liberties and the Constitution, his motives for running for President of the United States even though the electoral game is rigged against independent challengers, why he broke from the Democratic Party and formed the Justice Party, his jobs platform, his climate and energy platform, his foreign policy platform, and his plans for getting in the debates.

Steve Horn: What motivated you to run for President of the ...