Before Occupy Wall Street, I had followed livestream news - you likely did, as well - except it was usually big breaking news on CNN, or MSNBC and a headline would say "Watch live here." Now there are at least as many livestreamers are there are occupy movements in the nation, and since I've been here at Crooksand Liars' OccupyAmerica site, there have been times when I've been keeping my eyes on up to six different streams simultaneously. The livestreamers are worlds apart from our msm's livestreamed news, there are no edits, no scripts, and you always see the truth in their news.

As our own Tina Dupuy writes in a new article at Alternet, "You can sum up livestreamers as those who came to protest and stayed to tell the story. They’re armed with a smart phone, an app and an audience of people at home watching every frame."

Dupuy points out that as Occupy has evolved, that caught in the middle of the debate over peaceful protests vs. diversity of tactics are the livestreamers. What you see on their livestreams are events exactly as they happen. You can't control what everyone is doing while you're filming. If police throw tear gas at protesters, you'll see it live, and by the same token if an occupier throws a bottle or a brick at police that's what you'll see as well. “People are tired of being lied to by the media,” Tim Pool tells Dupuy, and adds, “Transparency is paramount.”

The important moments - and they are countless - of the occupy movement that are captured by the livestreamers are what their new-found profession are all about. The moments that will become part of history, and re-told for generations to come. Events that might not even be believed if it weren't for the citizen journalists.

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By Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein, ProPublica

Dr. Jon W. Draud, the medical director of psychiatric and addiction medicine at two Tennessee hospitals, pursues some eclectic passions. He's bred sleek Basenji hunting dogs for show. And last summer, the Tennessee State Museum featured "African Art: The Collection of Jon Draud."

But the Nashville psychiatrist is also notable for a professional pursuit: During the last four years, the 47-year-old Draud has earned more than $1 million for delivering promotional talks and consulting for seven drug companies.

By a wide margin, Draud's earnings make him the best-paid speaker in ProPublica's Dollars for Docs database, which has been updated to include more than $2 billion in payments from 15 drugmakers for promotional speaking, research, consulting, travel, meals and related expenses from 2009 to 2012.

Payouts to hundreds of thousands physicians are now included.

Draud is not the only high earner: 21 other doctors have made more than $500,000 since 2009 giving talks and consulting for drugmakers, the database shows. And half of the top earners are from a single specialty: psychiatry.

"It boggles my mind," said Dr. James H. Scully Jr., chief executive of the American Psychiatric Association, referring to the big money paid to some psychiatrists for what are billed as educational talks.

Paid speaking "is perfectly legal, and if people want to work for drug companies, this is America," said Scully, whose specialty has often been criticized for its over-reliance on medications. "But everybody needs to be clear — this is marketing."

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Whole Foods announced Friday that it plans to start labeling all genetically modified food it sells, requiring all of its stores to do so by 2018. But it's not paranoia, co-CEO Walter Robb says, the chain is just reacting to the "steady drumbeat" of customer demand. In November, California shot down a ballot measure in favor of such labeling, and now some see the company as doing what the government won't.

Via:

Whole Foods Co-Chief Executive Walter Robb described customer demand for the labeling as "a steady drumbeat."

"This is an issue whose time has come," he said. "With cases like horse meat discovered in the U.K., plastic in milk in China, the recalls of almond and peanut butter in the U.S., customers have a fundamental right to know what's in their food."

Activists have long pushed for more transparency on supermarket shelves. Some see Whole Foods' pledge as evidence of retailers' growing power to force policy changes when voters and regulators can't.

Voters in California struck down Proposition 37 last November, a controversial ballot meaure that called for labeling of certain genetically modified products. But agriculture, food and beverage companies opposed to the measure poured millions of dollars into advertising and lobbying to defeat the measure.

Monsanto alone poured $8.1 million into the attack campaign and Pepsi contributed $2.5 million, according to a MapLight analysis of data from the California secretary of state. By voting day, opponents had raised $46 million against Proposition 37 -- five times the $9.2 million pieced together by supporters.

Whole Foods, with more than 300 locations, including seven British stores that already require such labeling, had endorsed the measure. "We are growing, we need more supply and that's compelling for manufacturers who want to be part of that," Robb said of the chain's new labeling initiative. "If a supplier chooses not to do that, they won't be in Whole Foods."

Now if Whole Foods CEO John Mackey would just stop referring to Obamacare as "fascist," climate change as something we "can successfully adapt to," and "perfectly natural," his attitude towards labor unions...

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

By Jennifer LaFleur, ProPublica, Feb. 11, 2013

After eight years of tightened access to government records under the Bush administration, open-government advocates were hopeful when Barack Obama promised greater transparency.

Four years later, did the president keep his promise?

"It's a mixed bag," said Patrice McDermott, executive director of OpenTheGovernment.org, a consortium of right-to-know groups. "I think they've made progress, but a whole lot more remains to be done."

The Obama administration set the bar high. In his first inaugural address, Obama said that "those of us who manage the public's dollars" will "do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government."

The next day, the president issued two memos. In one on the Freedom of Information Act, he wrote that FOIA "should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails."

A second memo addressed transparency: "My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government." And that "openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in government."

But transparency was not defined in detail, said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). "People were left to imagine whatever they wanted to be the content of those statements. Inevitably, disappointment soon followed."

Next came more memos and directives, including a memo from Attorney General Eric Holder encouraging federal agencies to release discretionary information and a White House directive outlining an open-government to-do list for agencies.

Among the assigned tasks:

• Make data available online
• Create an open-government website
• Create a FOIA point person within the agency
• Devise a plan on how the agency will become transparent

In early 2010, ProPublica tracked how well agencies followed up. Some agencies missed key deadlines. Others did not complete all tasks.

Two months ago, the National Security Archive found that "66 of 99 federal agencies" never updated their FOIA regulations even though Holder ordered them to make changes in a March 19, 2009, memorandum.

"It takes somebody beating up on the chief FOIA officer and the head of the agency to make sure the message is being heeded all through the agency, " McDermott said. "And they haven't done that."

But all has not been dark and cloudy. The secrecy veil is beginning to lift in some areas.

Last year, the White House released its visitor logs, and Obama signed legislation that provided greater protection for government whistleblowers.

Citizens can get more information about government spending than they could have previously through websites such as Recovery.gov and USASpending.gov.

The administration also created Data.gov as a repository of federal data. A December 2009 White House memo directed agencies to make "high-value" data sets available on the site. Although Data.gov was criticized for its lack of usability and the selection of data, it now has more than 350,000 data sets from agencies.

Another website, FOIA.gov, tracks data about how agencies respond to FOIA requests for records and provides tools to help citizens make requests and track for information.

"We know more today than ever before about intelligence spending," Aftergood said, citing bright spots. "And we know more today than before about the size of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal." (Estimates put the U.S. stockpile at just more than 5,000 in 2012, according to an FAS report.)

Some basics also have changed. Many agencies employ simple, yet helpful practices such as communicating with FOIA requesters and giving them ways to check the status of their requests. Some agencies have posted contact information for their FOIA offices and other personnel on their websites.

Still, many requesters say they continue to face delays and costly processing fees. Although government data show that agency FOIA backlogs are significantly lower than in 2008, the figures for 2011 show an increase from the two prior years. An analysis by Bloomberg News last fall found that 19 out of 20 cabinet-level agencies failed to properly fulfill FOIA requests.

"Other areas are like duck feet paddling beneath the surface," McDermott said. "You may not see them, but they are moving."

In fiscal year 2011, agencies processed 8 percent more FOIA requests even though the number of incoming requests went up. And now, more than 40 years since the passage of FOIA, government employees who process requests have an actual job category — "government information specialist."

Obama's second inaugural address contained no mention of transparency, however, and no memos or directives have called for a more open government. That leaves some to wonder if the commitment to transparency continues.

According to White House spokesman Eric Schultz, it does. "While creating a more open government requires sustained effort," he said, "our continued efforts seek to promote accountability, provide people with useful information and harness the dispersed knowledge of the American people."

"Reducing secrecy and improving transparency are still compelling ideas that are good for reducing costs, improving efficiency and engaging the public in a constructive way," Aftergood said. "Those of us who do advocacy in that area shouldn't be disappointed. We should get to work."

More transparency coverage:

• FOIA Eyes Only: How Buried Statutes Are Keeping Information Secret • Government Could Hide Existence of Records under FOIA Rule Proposal

Like presidential candidates before him, President Obama has released 12 years of tax returns to the American public.

Mitt Romney, however, is bucking the precedent of transparency by refusing to release more than one full year of tax returns, even after asking his running mate Paul Ryan for 10 years of tax returns.

This video from the Obama-Biden campaign takes a look at five reasons Romney is refusing to meet his own standard.

Political Ad Data Comes Online 2014 But It's Not Searchable

by Justin Elliott ProPublica, Aug. 2, 2012, 2:38 p.m.

After a bruising months-long fight between media corporations and the Federal Communications Commission, a government website came online today that will feature political ad data from television stations around the country.

This means that detailed files about political advertising 2014 which show who is buying political ads, how much they are paying, and when the ads are running, among other information 2014 will finally be available online. In the past, those interested in the files, which are by law public, had to travel to stations to get physical copies.

Though the new system is far from perfect, it will likely give the public and journalists a new window into how an expected few billion dollars are spent on political ads on local television this election cycle.

For now, only the affiliates of the top four broadcast networks in the top 50 markets will have to upload their political files to the FCC site. (The Sunlight Foundation has a map of the missing markets here.) All broadcasters will have to start complying in July 2014.  And the rule is not retroactive for political ad data 2014 so the site will only have information on political ad buys going forward.

The FCC requires broadcasters to upload information on political ad purchases "as soon as possible, which the Commission has determined is immediately absent extraordinary circumstances."

So what can we find on the new site? So far, not very much. Few broadcasters have uploaded files. But there are a few examples of what we'll get more of in the coming weeks.

Here, for example, are the files posted by WCPO, the ABC affiliate in Cincinatti. If you navigate to the "Federal" folder, then the "President" folder, then the "Obama" folder, you will find this contract (.pdf) for an ad buy the campaign made this week.

You can see that GMMB Inc., a Democratic ad firm in Washington that works with the Obama campaign, paid a total of $67,110 for three days worth of ads on the station this week. The ads were targeting the 35 demographic and ran on shows including Jeopardy and the Jimmy Kimmel Show. The filing does not make clear which specific ad was run.

The new system has a few serious limitations.

It is difficult to get an overall picture of spending by a single campaign, super PAC, or other outside group. You can only search by station name, network affiliation, or channel number, not by, say, typing in the name of the political campaign or outside group that bought an ad. I asked the FCC about this and an agency official who declined to be named said that "plans are to have a search function shortly but the scope is yet undetermined."

Then there's the fact that, as we've previously noted, the FCC declined to require broadcasters to upload files in a single format. That means that it won't be easy to aggregate data and analyze it in volume. That's in contrast, for example, to federal election filings, which are uploaded in a single, so-called "machine-readable" format that can be analyzed with computers.

The head of the FCC's media bureau has said that putting the files in a single format is a "long-term goal."

The new FCC website is also still under construction. The "Help" section, for example, is blank. And a page for developers also appears incomplete.

Another part of the public file that is worth keeping an eye on requires broadcasters to post "a list of the chief executive officers or members of the executive committee or board of directors" of any entity that pays for ads or programming on a "political matter or matter involving the discussion of a controversial issue of public importance." This could come in handy when, as often happens around Election Day, opaque outside groups are created and start buying ads.

It's also worth noting that there's a range of other non-political information from broadcasters' public file that will be going online, including: information on who owns a station; an Equal Employment Opportunity file describing the racial makeup of a station's employees; a map showing where a station's signal reaches;  descriptions of children's programming on the station; and a range of other information. 

ProPublica launched a project earlier this year, Free the Files, to get readers to go to TV stations and send in political files to be posted on our site. Stay tuned for more coverage of the FCC and political ad spending. 

Via Moveon.org: Rob of Team Romneymobile tracked "Tricky Mitt" Romney to yet another high dollar fundraiser in Pittsburgh, PA. Find out why folks are calling Romney, "Tricky Mitt".

[This video is a shocking compilation of various instances of police brutality, including the shooting death of Oscar Grant. Please be warned of the graphic violence before viewing.]

An Anonymous message:

No corporate police officials where harmed during the making of this video only serfs get killed or harmed.

Its time to realize the elite have enslaved us all while using costumed thugs to make you fall into line even with brute force and the thugs never face criminal charges because there is a law for slaves and one for masters, who gave police fake powers over humans? Politicians who have no power over us because they are there to serve us not oppress us, so wake up, they tell police they can have all the toys and powers they want all they must do is serve the corporate elite while being funded by the people.

The United States and UK has growing problem with police abuse, brutality, and corruption. It is essential for civilians to document their encounters with police officers to ensure transparency, accountability, and safety to all of those involved.

Police departments have, for too long, tried to bully, intimidate, threaten, arrest, or otherwise harass law abiding citizens from recording the activities of law enforcement in public. Enough is enough! It is time for all of us to take a stand and expose police brutality when we witness it and as they refuse to be held accountable we must now disarm them when we see them acting outside the law we have a duty to unite and strip them of their weapons and costume and send a message to the elite that their hired thugs will no longer be tolerated in a civil society we will police ourselves without the need for revenue raising agents..

If you see something, film something, the freedom of press begins with you!