MEDIA ROOTS – Video documentation by independent media outlet Rogue Media exposes how police officers and county deputies from across Minnesota have been picking up young people in Minneapolis to participate in a DRE drug training program to “recognize drug-impaired drivers.”  Multiple participants of the program claim that the officers provided them with incentives such as free cigarettes and food in order to take illicit street drugs. 

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has been present at Peavey Plaza in Minneapolis since April 7th, and the OWS activists appear to be the primary targets of the DRE program.  Some of the participants claim they’ve even been offered free drugs by cops to become informants and snitch on other Occupy activists.

 Rough Cut Documentary about the Minnesota DRE Program

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Image by Johnny Firecloud

MEDIA ROOTS — “Which do you think came first: [Obama’s] announcement of his “support” for same sex marriage, or the marketing campaign to promote it?” –Media Roots Commenter.

Here at Media Roots, it’s sometimes hard to hold onto our ideals without having Obama’s ever vigilant marketing campaign evoke our most cynical tendencies.  Immediately after the President’s carefully orchestrated, yet commendable, announcement coming out in support of same sex marriage, an interesting link appeared in the official Obama campaign store.  The store section is called “LGBT for Obama” and it carries a plethora of items, including a shirt sporting the slogan “I’m Out for Obama” and a shirt for toddlers stating “My 2 Dads Support Obama.”  Actually, just take a look for yourself below at a few of the best… our cynicism has been tested enough for one morning. 

Disclaimer: While Media Roots supports civil liberties for all, including same sex marriage, we continue to be critical of the sitting President, notwithstanding campaign rhetoric. We are not content with mere proclamations, and will wait for action instead. 

Written by Robbie Martin

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MEDIA ROOTS – Pharmaceutical companies spend an astronomical amount of money on lobbying and advertising.  Sometimes a marketing campaign is so expensive that even if it’s discovered that a drug is ineffective once it hits the market, the money spent needs to be made back; instead of recalling the drug, they continue to push it. Risperdal, a drug designed to treat PTSD, is one such example; although proven equally as effective as placebo, it has cost the Department of Veterans Affairs $717 million dollars over the course of 9 years. 

Robbie Martin

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COUNTERPUNCH – Pharma is losing so much money from rising co-pays and prescription abandonment, it has launched cagey, public service announcement-sounding campaigns about “patients not taking the drugs they need,” as if it is a health and not revenue issue. Pharma has even instituted arrangements with some pharmacies to send visiting nurses to patients’ homes to ensure “compliance,” Big Brother overtones notwithstanding.

Prescription abandonment is an especially thorny issue for Pharma when the drugs are taken on faith, to reduce patients’ “risks” and patients do not necessarily feel them working. It is also a thorny issue when studies suggest the drugs being abandoned may not be necessary to begin with or working.

One such expensive placebo is the drug known by the brand name Risperdal. The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $717 million on the drug to treat posttraumatic stress disorder in Afghanistan and Iraq troops with PTSD over nine years, only to discover it worked no better than a sugar pill! Veterans Affairs doctors wrote more than 5 million prescriptions from 2000 through June 2010 for naught, says a 2011 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Last month, Johnson & Johnson also agreed to pay $1.2 billion in fines for minimizing or concealing Risperdal’s dangers. Many say unless a drug company’s chief officers go to prison or the company is banned from sales to Medicare and other government programs, penalties are a joke. 

Read more about When Big Pharma Writes The Laws.

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Abby Martin Interviews Dr. Darcy Smith about Big Pharma’s Direct to Consumer Advertising for RT TV

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Photo by Flickr US National Archives

MEDIA ROOTS – The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been widely criticized for its invasive procedures, most notably their nationwide implementation of naked body scanner machines.  Many Americans feel the TSA is an enormous waste of tax payer’s money, and that their safety measures are just a form of “security theater” that don’t really make us any safer.  One engineer turned blogger decided to expose the inefficient agency’s failed body scanners.  Jonathan Corbett, engineer and president of Fourten Technologies, put the $87 million scanners to the test and exposed their inability to detect metal objects when placed in insewn pockets.  He joins RT TV to discuss his upcoming presentation to Congress about his explosive findings in an attempt to rid of body scanners from airports.

Abby Martin interviews Jonathan Corbett, the blogger who exposed the failures of the body scanners.

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This is another RT TV interview about the TSA with Anthony Randazzo, director of economic research at the Reason Foundation.

Abby Martin interviews Reason’s Anthony Randazzo about the TSA’s incompetency.

MEDIA ROOTS — In a 2004 campaign stop for George W. Bush, former vice president and war criminal Dick Cheney was asked what he thought about same sex couples. He responded with the following:

“Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it’s an issue our family is very familiar with….With the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone. … People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to…..The question that comes up with the issue of marriage is what kind of official sanction or approval is going to be granted by government? Historically, that’s been a relationship that has been handled by the states. The states have made that fundamental decision of what constitutes a marriage.”

In 2004, Obama took a similar position when he was an Illinois state senator.  However, his position changed when he began his presidential bid in 2007.  Obama’s stance ‘evolved’ into a wishy-washy proclamation of the acceptance of same-sex couples while refraining from classifying it as traditional marriage.  Over the years, Obama’s ‘faith’ played more of a factor.

“I’m not in favor of gay marriage. I’m in favor of civil unions.” –Obama, 2007

“I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. I’m not somebody who promotes same-sex marriage.” –Obama, 2008

To the surprise of many, he just reversed his position to officially endorse same sex marriage in an ABC news interview—this time as sitting president.  It is a curiously timed announcement, right at the beginning of his re-election campaign.  Could it be in part an attempt to gain back some of the liberal base he lost with his first term continuation of Bush policies?

Some gay advocacy groups say that if they hadn’t put continuous pressure on the president about the issue, that nothing would have been accomplished, and Obama would continue to remain ‘unsure.’  If this is indeed the case, it points to the need for every activist group to continue putting pressure on Obama.  Instead of taking a ‘hands off’ approach to ensure the safety of his second term and hoping that only then will he create change, they should be actively lobbying to him for their cause. 

Other groups say that Obama simply hasn’t gone far enough and that leaving it up to the states is effectively a cop-out.  States can still choose to ban gay marriage if they wish.  Regardless, at Media Roots we can’t deny the positive symbolic power and sweeping effect this will have on the LGBT as well as homophobic sectors of the United States population.

Robbie Martin for Media Roots

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MOTHER JONES — A president endorsing, even as a “personal position,” marriage equality for gays and lesbians is, as Vice President Joe Biden once said, a big fucking deal. But Obama has endorsed marriage equality federalism—not the notion that marriage for gays and lesbians is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution that can never be taken away. Obama has adopted the same position that Vice President Dick Cheney did in 2004, when Cheney said he believed in marriage equality but that the states should be allowed to decide by a show of hands, as North Carolina did Tuesday, whether gays and lesbians have the same rights as everyone else.

Cheney served in an administration that was extremely hostile to gay rights. With the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the administration’s refusal to defend in court the federal ban on same-sex marriage, and Wednesday’s endorsement of same-sex marriage federalism, Obama is the most pro-LGBT rights president in US history. Nevertheless, the position he articulated today accepts the legitimacy of states like North Carolina subjecting the rights of gays and lesbians to a popular vote.

In other words, Obama has left room for more evolution.

Read more about Obama Endorses Marriage Equality, But Not For All.

Photograph: public domain