When I was 17, my mother died of colon cancer. Lots of other members of my family have died of cancer too—and it’s partly as a result of this history that I have gone into a career of social justice advocacy, believing that we all need to care for one another instead of leaving people to fend for themselves.

Today, the organization where I work, Brave New Foundation, is hosting the world premiere of its new film Koch Brothers Exposed. This film shows how these two billionaire brothers have managed to maintain their wealth by exploiting others and corrupting the political process. One part of the film that especially resonates with me deals with cancer.

The Koch brothers have a chemical plant in Crossett, Arkansas, that releases large amounts of formaldehyde, which is known to contribute to cancer. The plant also emits hydrogen sulfide, which can be deadly. In the film, residents of that town talk powerfully about how many people in their community are dying of cancer, and they link it to the nearby Koch plant. Respected scientists agree: Anthony Samsel, a former consultant to groups including the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers, says that in his opinion, “these chemicals cause great harm to Crossett’s residents” and represent a “disregard for public safety.”

To date, the Kochs have done no investigation that we know of to determine what’s causing cancer in Crossett. They say what they’re doing is legal, though that’s sort of a footnote: when you’ve got lawmakers in your pocket, is it any great victory to say that the laws permit you to emit high levels of cancer-causing pollutants? In fact, the Kochs are one of the top 10 polluters in the United States and worked (unsuccessfully) to keep formaldehyde from being labeled a carcinogen. And so I am proud to be working on exposing what the Kochs are up to and seeking justice for those they’ve stepped on to stay at the top.

Today, the Kochs posted audio of me leaving a message for them months ago asking them to respond to our cancer investigation and laying out why the issue is personal for me. The Kochs accompany the audio with text saying I’m “harassing” them and “exploit[ing] [my] own family to push [my] agenda.” From the Koch brothers’ vantage point as billionaires with mansions all over the country, politics may be an abstraction or a game. But to the 99%, it’s no game. It’s personal. And while smearing me and diminishing the importance of my family may be preferable to them than actually looking into the problems in Crossett, that is not what will help make our country a stronger, healthier place. Shame on them.

So as we prepare for tonight’s premiere in New York, I’m eager. I’m excited. I’m hoping that bringing a little more sunlight on these guys will make it a little less likely that they’ll be able to keep doing what they’re doing to those who lack their wealth and power. Yeah, social justice is personal, and cancer is more than a negligible cost of doing business. For some of us, anyway.

America just got rickrolled.

There we were last week, innocently partaking in the annual testosterone-fest that is the Super Bowl, when we were treated to an ad featuring a group of supposed auto mechanics lamenting that they never voted for the union they’re in. But look closely. One of these “mechanics” is sporting a gold watch, manicured hands, and a brand new shirt. That’s because he’s not a mechanic, or even an actor.

He’s Washington lobbyist Rick Berman.

Imagine Charles and David Koch testifying, under oath, in Congress.

Even though the billionaire oil industry brothers continue trying to dodge accountability, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) invited the Koch brothers to testify and answer a few simple questions about how the Kochs are positioned to gain financially by the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a 1,700-mile long boondoggle that would make the Koch brothers even richer.

There’s ample evidence linking the Kochs’ business to the Canadian tar sands, which is the dirtiest energy in North America. Indeed, the Koch brothers’ stand to be among the pipeline’s biggest beneficiaries. Even the Koch brothers’ website confesses to being a party to tar sands oil.

What’s happening to academia in Florida demands national attention. Billionaires Charles and David Koch are infringing on intellectual freedom and independence in colleges and universities. It’s an old fashioned quid pro quo where the Koch brothers get allied professors who’ll preach Ayn Rand, supply side economic policies and the values of the 19th century Guilded Age to students and the college gets some funding.

Every year, thousands of individuals move through the Koch-supported classes, lectures and fields of study, which in their totality amount to an ideological assembly line bought and paid for by the Koch brothers. There are Koch-funded agreements at more than 150 American colleges and universities.

“The Koch brothers have paid tens of millions of dollars to get their point of view instilled in classrooms, amongst faculty members and in students,” said Cary Nelson, President of the American Association of University Professors. “Programs they start tend to be one point of view only.”

Billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch were stopped today. The Keystone XL oil pipeline will meet its end today in a Washington DC press conference. The pipeline would’ve been one of the largest oil developments in American history. The pipeline would’ve destroyed American homes, farmlands and sensitive ecosystems along the nearly 2,000-mile path from Northwest Canada and through six U.S. states to the Gulf of Mexico.

But it also represented a win for brothers Koch, who’ve used their net worth to influence politicians and the media to support policies that would make them richer.

The Koch brothers helped fund and start the Tea Party group, Americans for Prosperity. It’s Nebraska chapter has actively promoted and organized around the Keystone pipeline despite numerous concerns voiced by the Republican governor of Nebraska and thousands of Cornhusker residents. Many activists in our Koch Brothers Exposed network have said they’ve seen Americans for Prosperity commercials in their communities supporting the pipeline.

Billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch look like they’re easy graders. Their tea party group released its rankings this week of senators and congressman who tow the Koch line most, and it gave a total of 44 A+’s for the 112th Congress.

Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group funded by the Kochs, based its grades on opposition to affordable health care, clean air, alternative energy and net neutrality. Scores were also boosted if the elected official signed the tea party group’s anti-revenue pledge.

In sum, the five senators who scored 100 percent on the Americans for Prosperity how-can-we-make-the-Kochs-richer test received $187,400 in campaign contributions from the Kochs and their allies.

Jamie Dimon, the infamous CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is back to doing what he does best: defending the bankers of the 1% against the petulant 99%. “Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I just don’t get it,” he said at a recent investors conference. “Sometimes there’s a bad apple, yet we denigrate the whole.”

Dimon says this as if he’s not one of the baddest apples in the barrel. Let’s review a few of his misdeeds:

• Under his leadership, JPMorgan Chase “misled” investors (that’s “defrauded,” in plain English) on mortgage sales to help spur the financial crisis. The company then successfully lobbied for a $25 billion bailout and $391 billion in virtually interest-free loans.
• He leaked false information about Washington Mutual’s finances so he could buy the company at a bargain price.
• JPMorgan Chase was part of the “robo-signing” scandal in which banks foreclosed on homes without verifying that such action was legal and justified.
• He hid the fact that one of JPMorgan Chase’s risky derivatives deals, known as “Squared,” was actually designed in part by a hedge fund that bet against a good chunk of the deal.
• JPMorgan Chase recently engaged in bid-rigging and made illegal payments to win bond deals from municipal governments across the country.

Media lapdogs are marked by stenographic tendencies, sympathetic frames and a reliance on industry jargon. Politico’s latest report about Congressional Republicans working to undo looming defense cuts meets all three criteria.

The piece is accurately headlined “GOP eager to scuttle defense cuts,” and nowhere in the article is any reference to data disputing the Republicans’ assumptions. The cuts on the table only take us back to the huge 2007 levels.

By the second paragraph, the story has begun parroting partisan talking points. The so-called Republican plan will “undo hundreds of billions of dollars in defense cuts by replacing it with budget savings elsewhere,” the article by Seung Min Kim says. However that’s the last we hear of the plan’s specifics until much later when the savings are pegged at $100 billion.

It’s was like a meaningless coda, as the war contractors at Blackwater USA changed its name again, two weeks after delivering Katy Helvenston-Wettengel with another insult.

For the last eight years, Helvenston-Wettengel has been fighting for justice and accountability for the preventable death of her son, a Blackwater employee named Scott Helvenston, in Iraq.

“Child prostitution, gun-running, rendition– Blackwater has this history, but to this day, there’s been zero accountability,” Helvenston-Wettengel said. “I feel like I not only lost my son, but I lost my country.”

She spoke directly to company President and Founder Erik Prince in 2004, having got his number from a reporter. She requested Prince send her son’s contract and an incident report, which documented the mission that sent her son to his death.

“He said he’d send it Fed-Ex in a few weeks,” she said. “Blackwater said I was going to have to sue them to get it.”

As more Americans sour on our 10-year-old national nation-building experiment in Afghanistan, there’s a growing community of policy mandarins, activists and elites uniting to expose the myriad of ways war spending and military contracting have plunged our nation into a jobs crisis.

The existing counter insurgency operation in Afghanistan is hurting the American economy, and there is data to prove it.