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This week on Uprising:

* Federal Commission on Oil Spill Agrees 90% with BP’s Own Assessments
* Parents Disturbed by Scholastic Books’ Promotion of Artificial Drink Sunny D
* Legal Case of Mumia Abu Jamal Continues
* Black Agenda Report on the Black Caucus and the GOP
* Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con that is Breaking America

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Federal Commission on Oil Spill Agrees 90% with BP’s Own Assessments

The Federal commission established to investigate the events surrounding the BP oil spill announced some of its preliminary findings. On Monday Fred Bartlit, the lead counsel of the Commission, said his panel’s ability to assess the objective truth is hindered by its lack of subpoena power. According to its government website, the Commission was created on May 22nd of this year to, “Examine the facts and circumstances to determine the cause of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster”. Bartlit said he is receiving conflicting testimony from the three companies involved, BP, Halliburton, and Transocean. He said when testimony is not given under oath, he is not able to, “cross-examine and find out what’s believable and what’s not believable.” Politico reports that the Senate has not yet voted on the proposal to grant the Commission subpoena powers. The House approved it over the Summer. In spite of the legal obstacle Bartlit expressed confidence in his preliminary findings, saying so far his commission agreed with 90% of BP’s internal investigation. He also drew criticism when he said there was no evidence yet that BP intentionally put profits before safety. Bartlit reiterated that BP would be held responsible for actions that led to the explosion.

GUEST: Tyson Slocum, Director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program

Find out more at www.citizen.org.

Parents Disturbed by Scholastic Books’ Promotion of Artificial Drink Sunny D

Scholastic Books is synonymous with school for kids around the nation. The company hosts mobile book fairs on elementary campuses multiple times a year and is awarded multi-million dollar contracts to provide whole school districts with materials. Scholastic is expected to promote a love of reading. However, in an unlikely pairing that is disturbing parents and advocates, it has been marketing literacy combined with junk food. The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood is calling on Scholastic to end its most recent partnership with SunnyD, a highly artificial imitation orange-juice drink. The campaign, called the “SunnyD Book Spree”, tells school children to collect labels from SunnyD bottles to exchange them for school books. Scholastic donates 20 books for every 20 labels it receives from a classroom. The SunnyD website has a form letter parents can print out and send to their child’s teacher. The letter begins by saying the parent is very excited about a new program to bring more books to the classroom and ends with the high pressure sales point, “For the sake of all our kids, I hope you’ll consider taking advantage of this free program.” However the program is not free. The drink must first be purchased, and unwitting parents have been told by their children to buy it in order to help their school. In the past Scholastic books has engaged in joint marketing with M&M’s and Dairy Queen video games.

GUEST: Susan Linn, Executive Director of Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood

Find out more at www.commercialfreechildhood.org.

Legal Case of Mumia Abu Jamal Continues

A Philadelphia Third Circuit Court of Appeals will heard arguments this past week in the ongoing Mumia Abu-Jamal case. Abu-Jamal was convicted in 1982 for the murder of a police officer, and sentenced to death. For the past 28 years Abu-Jamal and an international coalition of lawyers and supporters have maintained that he was not afforded a fair trial due to racism and political prejudice. A break-through moment for Abu-Jamal’s defense came on January 19th, 2008 when the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled in its favor. The defense successfully argued that their client had been sentenced to death by a jury working under misleading instructions regarding the consideration of mitigating circumstances in applying the death penalty. In their arguments the defense cited a 1988 Supreme Court case, Mills v. Maryland, wherein the Court vacated the death sentence for the defendant “Mills” due to misleading jury instructions. Prosecutors appealed the decision to grant a re-sentencing hearing for Abu-Jamal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court’s decision, announced in January, disagreed with the lower court’s ruling. Only days before, in the separate case of Smith v. Spisak, the Supreme Court had ruled that a Neo Nazi did not deserve to have his death sentence reconsidered using “Mills” as precedent, saying the courts were interpreting the Mills case too broadly. The Supreme Court sent Abu-Jamal’s case back to the lower court, saying it must reconsider its decision to grant a new sentencing hearing using a narrower interpretation of Mills. The hearing was held in Philadelphia, and argued by Attorney and Law Professor Judith Ritter.

GUEST: Heidi Bogosian, Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild & Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal

Find out more at www.nlg.org and www.mumialegal.org.

Black Agenda Report on the Black Caucus and the GOP

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is on the Black Caucus and the GOP

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con that is Breaking America

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines the word “grift” in this way: “to obtain (money) illicitly (as in a confidence game).” The title of Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibbi’s new book is then fairly straightforward, sort of: It’s called Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con that is Breaking America.” Tabbi is perhaps best known as the astute, if brash, journalist who in 2009 described Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” In this new book Griftopia, he analyzes the Tea Party phenomenon, Alan Greenspan’s role in the financial crisis, the mortgage scam, the commodities bubble, and healthcare reform, all in his trademark colorful eloquence. The book is described by one reviewer as “the most lucid, justifiably angry description of what happened and what continues to happen to our nation’s economy.”

GUEST: Matt Taibbi, contributing editor of Rolling Stone Magazine, author of The Great Derangement, Spanking the Donkey, and Smells Like Dead Elephants

Read Matt Taibbi’s work at www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“[P]olitical power is simply taken from most of us by a grubby kind of fiat, in little fractions of a percent here and there each and every day, through a thousand separate transactions that take place in fine print and in the margins of a vast social mechanism that most of us are simply not conscious of.” — Matt Taibbi