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NPR's Marketplace reported that last year the EPA made a significant change to the summary conclusion on a five year long fracking study just one day before the study's findings were released to the press. This change downplayed the risk of fracking to drinking water sources, stating that they found no "widespread systemic impacts" despite finding dozens of instances in which drinking water sources were contaminated and hundreds of instances in which spills had reached water or land. This misleading headline dominated the news and was a boon to the industry, which is now able to claim that fracking is safe with the backing of the government's environmental regulatory agency. This watering down of scientific evidence is another example of how our government is not serving the people, but rather wealthy oil and gas industry donors.

In an interview with Now This earlier this month, Obama took a very weak stance on the Dakota Access Pipeline fight. He failed to acknowledge that peaceful protestors were being brutally suppressed with rubber bullets, mace, dogs, sound cannons and illegal arrests. His lukewarm stance on this blatant violation of free speech and the constitutional right to protest is allowing the situation to escalate.  Obama could call in the National Guard to ensure the safety of these peaceful protesters, but instead he said he will "let it play out for a few more weeks". Now he appears to be deferring the issue to President Elect Trump, who received campaign donations from Energy Transfer CEO Kelcy Warren and is personally invested in the pipeline company.

Trump's victory in the presidential election took many in the U.S. and around the world by surprise. While it is disheartening that someone who campaigned on such divisive rhetoric has won the highest office in the land, many other factors including the public's disgust with the political corruption, frustrations over wealth inequality, and Clinton's inability to resonate with voters eviscerated by neoliberal trade deals ultimately lost her the election. We challenge the notion that every Trump supporter is a racist, sexist, homophobic bigot. Rather, we postulate that faced with a political system that has utterly failed to respond to the needs of everyday Americans, many Trump supporters voted in protest of the political establishment which Clinton unfortunately embodied.

The international trade agreement CETA was signed by Canada and the European Union on October 30th after being declared dead when Belgium's region of Wallonia refused to sign on to the deal. In a last minute compromise, Wallonia signed on to the agreement, which still has to be ratified individually by each European Union member state.

East Austin's Blue Cat Café is experiencing the feelings of a pained and threatened community that is watching their neighborhoods disappear as gentrification continues in East Austin. The Café replaced a family owned Pinata store called Jumpolin that was demolished without prior notice by the property owners  F&F Real Estate Ventures, an LLC owned by Jordan French and Darius Fisher.  These infractions against the community are causing an understood but unfortunate backlash.

In this newly formatted abbreviated episode, we discuss the failure of the CETA trade agreement between the European Union and Canada.

Sadly, bombing schools, hospitals, and funerals are not enough to stop the US from supplying weapons and military aid to countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia. By perpetuating attacks like these, the US is fueling terrorism and promoting more war in the Middle East. The US has taken a step further by bombing three Houthi rebel sites in retaliation to strikes targeted at a US Naval warship. The strikes missed, the Houthi rebels deny firing those rockets, and they are claiming that the US is trying to hide their ties has to Saudi Arabia after they bombed a funeral. War has no end, and the civilians are being attacked by all sides.