January, 26 2011, 04:00pm EDT

Obama Speech Misfired on Ethanol, Ag Policy
WASHINGTON
President Barak Obama's call to "stop subsidizing yesterday's energy"
in his State of the Union speech last night was welcome, but the
President missed an opportunity to focus attention on the misguided
federal subsidies that prop up the corn ethanol industry and the equally
expensive and wasteful subsidies paid to farmers.
"While we heartily back the president's call to roll back fossil fuel
subsidies, ethanol is every bit yesterday's biofuel," said
Environmental Working Group Senior Vice-President Craig Cox. "That's
true whether it's ethanol from corn, corn-stover or the mythical
"next-generation" ethanol that always seems to be around the corner but
never here. With that in mind, we should make the $5.5 billion a year in
corn ethanol tax credits part of history too."
President Obama emphasized his desire to promote greater innovation
and more investment in clean energy technologies, specifically urging an
end to tax credits and other subsidies for fossil fuels.
Rather than furthering his goal to make America "the first country to
have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015," however, Obama's
focus on biofuels as the way "to break our dependence on oil" would
have the opposite effect if it means sending billions more taxpayers
dollars to corn country to finance ethanol infrastructure, Cox said.
"Building an ethanol infrastructure at taxpayer's expense will just lock
us further into the past rather than lead us to tomorrow's energy
future," added Cox, who heads EWG's Ames, Iowa, office.
Also absent from the President's remarks or the Republican response,
Cox noted, was any mention of protecting the environment or fundamental
reform of food and farm policies that currently throw money at the
largest producers of commodity crops and the wealthiest landowners while
encouraging practices that promote soil erosion and contaminate rivers,
streams and once-bountiful waters.
Farm households making more than $210,000 are year - three times US
average household income - harvest more than $30,000 a year in
government subsidies. So-called direct payments go out to them every
year in good times or bad, and times have been very good on the farm
recently even in the face of a severe recession. Farm income in 2010 is
projected to be up 31 percent from 2009 and to be 21 percent higher than
the 10-year average.
"We heard a lot from the Republicans, the Tea Party and the President
himself that we don't have the money to do many of things we would like
to do," said Cox. "But we do have the money in the food and
agriculture budget !- it's just going to the wrong places. There is no
better example of misdirected priorities than the Republican Study
Committee's 'bold' plan to cut spending, which proposes to cut a $56
million program to encourage organic food production while giving a pass
to $5 billion a year in direct payments."
EWG analysis shows that cutting the lavish direct payments to the
largest growers by 14 percent would generate enough money to purchase
all the fresh fruits and vegetables needed to improve school lunches
under the recently enacted Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act. A mere 7
percent cut in direct payments would fill the shortfalls in funding for
conservation programs that are critical to protecting water and soil.
"The President's call for 80 percent of our energy from clean energy
is laudable, but we urge the President and Congress to make sure that
energy is truly clean. Lawmakers need to hear from citizens whose
drinking water has been polluted by natural gas drilling. And those who
make their living in waters choked by agricultural runoff that pollutes
Chesapeake Bay and the Mississippi River Basin," Cox concluded.
The Environmental Working Group is a community 30 million strong, working to protect our environmental health by changing industry standards.
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Stateless Palestinian Woman Details 'Very Traumatizing' Abuse Suffered in ICE Detention
Trump administration immigration officials reportedly dismissed Ward Sakeik's ordeal as a "sob story."
Jul 06, 2025
A newlywed Palestinian woman from Texas released from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention earlier this week says she was shackled for long periods, denied food and water, and subjected to other human rights abuses during nearly five months in ICE custody—all because she is a stateless person.
Ward Sakeik, 22, was born in Saudi Arabia to Palestinian parents from Gaza. Because Saudi Arabia does not grant birthright citizenship to the children of foreign nationals, Sakeik was officially stateless when her family legally emigrated to the United States when she was 8 years old.
“I was moved around like cattle.”
Ward Sakeik, US college graduate and homeowner, speaks out following 140 days in ICE hellhole pic.twitter.com/bNTgs7362h
— World Socialist Web Site (@WSWS_Updates) July 5, 2025
Sakeik's parents subsequently applied for—and were denied—asylum in the U.S. but were allowed to remain legally in the country pending routine check-ins with ICE.
After graduating high school and the University of Texas, Arlington, starting a wedding photography business, marrying a U.S. citizen, and beginning the process of obtaining a green card, Sakeik and her husband went on their honeymoon in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She was detained shortly after arriving back in the United States after Customs and Border Protection agents flagged her for flying over international waters—a move that Department of Homeland Security officials said violated immigration policy.
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Sakeik said unhygienic conditions at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas—where an ICE officer was shot in the neck during a Friday evening attack—caused widespread illness among detainees.
"The restrooms are also very, very, very unhygienic," she said. "The beds have rust everywhere. They're not properly maintained. And cockroaches, grasshoppers, spiders, you name it, are all over the facility. Girls would get bit."
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Sakeik said she now plans to advocate on behalf of women and girls imprisoned by ICE.
"I... want the world to know that the women who do come here come here for a better life, but they're criminalized for that," she said. "They are dehumanized, and they're stripped away from their rights. We have been treated as a 'less-than' just simply for wanting a better life."
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Many studies have confirmed that human-caused climate change is making the heaviest short-term rainfall events more intense, largely by warming the world's oceans and thus sending more water vapor into the atmosphere that can fuel heavy rain events. Sea surface temperatures this week have been as much as 1°F below the 1981-2010 average for early July in the western Gulf [of Mexico] and Caribbean, but up to 1°F above average in the central Gulf. Long-term human-caused warming made the latter up to 10 times more likely, according to the Climate Shift Index from Climate Central.
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It’s hard to make the Texas flood tragedy worse, except to know that on the same day Trump signed a bill to stop our efforts to defeat the climate change that is causing increased frequency of disastrous floods. And giving us more expensive electricity. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/c...
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— Governor Jay Inslee (@govjayinslee.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 9:29 AM
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Metropolitan Police arrested at least 27 protesters who gathered in central London on Saturday to publicly support Palestine Action, a nonviolent direct action group now officially designated a terrorist organization by the U.K. government.
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"We would like to alert you to the fact we may be committing offenses under the Terrorism Act tomorrow, Saturday 5 July, in Parliament Square at about 1pm," the group said in an open letter to Met Commissioner Mark Rowley.
"If we cannot speak freely about the genocide that is occurring, if we cannot condemn those who are complicit in it and express support for those who resist it, then the right to freedom of expression has no meaning, and democracy and human rights in this country are dead," the letter argues.
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Members of the group Defend Our Juries publicly declare their opposition to Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza and their support for the proscribed group Palestine Action while Metropolitan Police officers look on before arresting them during a July 4, 2025 demonstration in London. (Photo: Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Images)
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At midnight, Palestine Action will be proscribed under the Terrorism Act.Their real “crime”? Exposing the UK’s role in arming Israel’s genocide.This is a dark day for our democracy.Criminalising non-violent resistance won’t silence the truth.We are all Palestine Action 🇵🇸
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— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana.bsky.social) July 4, 2025 at 2:38 PM
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