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PROJECT CENSORED'S Top 25 NEWS STORIES CENSORED'S PROJECT STORIES TOP News The team from Project Censored once again highlights the most important national and global news stories of the past 18 months that received little or no coverage by the US corporate media. ach year, the Project Censored team from Sonoma State University, California, selects and evaluates thousands of published news stories by journalists working in the national and international mainstream as well as the alternative press. Students, faculty staff and community experts participate in this process, which ultimately decides on the top 25 stories that were the most underreported by the US corporate media. Following is an edited summary of Project Censored's 2008-09 selection. To see the full report with sources, references and updates, visit the web page http://www. projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/two-thousand-and- ten-book/. — Editor 1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street Federal lawmakers responsible for overseeing the US economy have received millions of dollars from Wall Street firms. Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated USS64.2 million to congressional and presidentia candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties. As senators, Barack Obama and John McCain received a combined total of $3.1 million. The donors include investment bankers Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, insurer American International Group and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Some of the top recipients of contributions from companies receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money are the same members o Congress who chair committees charged with regulating the financial sector and overseeing the effectiveness of this unprecedented government program. In total, members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, the Senate Finance Committee and the House Financial Services Committee received $5.2 million from TARP recipients in the 2007-2008 election cycle. President Obama collected at least $4.3 million from employees at these companies for his presidential campaign. Nearly every member of the House Financial Services Committee, who in February 2009 oversaw hearings on how he $700 billion of TARP bail-out was being spent, received contributions associated with these financial institutions during the 2008 election cycle. In 2004, when the US Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a major tule change that freed investment banks to plunge tens of billions of dollars in borrowed money into sub-prime mortgages and other risky plays, congressional banking committees held no oversight hearings. Congressional inaction also allowed mortgage agents to earn high fees for peddling loans to unqualified omebuyers and prevented states from toughening regulations on predatory ending practices. By early 2009, a whole series of new government operations had been invented to inject cash into the economy, most of them under the completely secretive control of the financial sector. Compiled by Project Censored © 2009 Sonoma State University 1801 East Cotati Avenue Rohnert Park, CA 94928, USA Telephone: +1 (707) 664 2500 Email: censored@sonoma.edu Website: www.projectcensored.org Compiled by Project Censored © 2009 NEXUS ° 13 DECEMBER 2009 - JANUARY 2010 www.nexusmagazine.com