Ed Schultz interviews Florida Rep. Alan Grayson about Congress finally demanding more transparency from the Federal Reserve, and auditing their massive secret bank bailouts. The recently passed legislation will now allow the Government Accountability Office to independently audit the Fed, and their nefarious Wall Street deals.  Alan Grayson and Ron Paul co-authored the amendment, which also had a whopping 311 co-sponsors in the house.

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“We need to stop giving money to the bad banks, they just eat it, they don’t actually hand it out to people and do anything useful with it. We have to give money to the good banks. The fundamental strategy that has been followed since the Bush Administration to try to recover from this is flawed…the good banks will go and make good loans to people, to businesses, to small businesses in particular, and the economy will recover.”

—Rep. Alan Grayson

More money was distributed today by the Department of Energy. 141 million dollars to be more precise. This time Hawaii, Maine, Nebraska, New Mexico, the Northern Mariana Islands and Texas will play beneficiaries of the Recovery Act.

As a part of the Department’s State Energy Program, which has been apportioned $3.1 billion, states and territories propose plans to prioritize energy savings, create or retain jobs, increase the use of renewable energy, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And that’s where this $141 million will be going. Each state receives funding according to its needs (population based), with Texas receiving more than half of the allotted $141 million dollars. They will receive $87.5 million.

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In one of his first moves upon taking office, President Obama has ordered a freeze on all new or pending regulations from the Bush administration. The bold action could delay, and possibly even prevent, the removal of gray wolves from endangered species lists in more than a dozen states.

In a memorandum released by Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Obama has informed all department and agency heads that “…no proposed or final regulation should be sent to the Office of Federal Register for publication unless and until it has been reviewed and approved by a department or agency head appointed or designated by the President after noon on January 20, 2009.”

According to Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, the hiatus will give President Obama and new Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar the chance to reconsider the Bush administration’s plans to remove wolves from the endangered species list.

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The Bush administration has taken steps to open the Californian coast to oil exploration and drilling in as few as three years. The move could potentially tap more than 10 billion barrels of oil, enough to power the U.S. for 17 months.

The proposal has been greeted with horror in environmental circles, wary of the threat of oil spills, air pollution and increased shipping traffic in an area rich with migrating whales, millions of seabirds, sea otters, fish and crab feeding grounds. According to Richard Charter, a lobbyist for the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, “You couldn’t design a better formula to create adverse impacts on California’s coastal-dependent economy.”

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The Brazilian government has today signed a federal decree establishing the Brazilian Whale and Dolphin Sanctuary, which will drastically increase protection for all cetacean species along the country’s entire 5,000 mile long coast.

According to José Truda Palazzo, Jr., Brazilian Commissioner to the International Whaling Commission, “the initiative sends a clear and powerful message to the international community in relation to Brazil’s commitment towards whale conservation, and also reinforces our campaign for a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary to be established in the entire oceanic basin.”

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A high profile Congressional committee investigation has revealed that, since 2006, the outgoing Bush administration has dropped or stalled enforcement actions on more than 500 cases of severe water pollution.

According to the Committee chairmen, the situation is now so bad that, “the federal government’s Clean Water Act enforcement program has been decimated over the past two years, imperiling the health and safety of the nation’s waters.”

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Endangered US animal and plant species are in danger of losing vital legal protection designed to prevent them from extinction.

The outgoing Bush administration is proposing to rush through legislation that will remove the right of government experts to ensure that dams, highways and other big infrastructure projects don’t pose an unacceptable threat to fragile plants and animals under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Crucially, the regulations must be approved by Friday if they are to come into effect before President-elect Obama’s swearing-in ceremony on January 20th.

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In a landmark case, the US Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the US Navy can carry out sonar training exercises off the southern California coast, without safeguards designed to protect whales, dolphins and other marine mammals.

The decision is a major setback for environmentalists, who had hoped the Court would uphold an earlier injunction by a federal judge requiring the navy to take precautions while undertaking submarine-hunting exercises. Environmental groups originally launched the lawsuit claiming that the use of sonar can injure or even kill a wide range of marine species, including sea-lions and endangered blue whales.

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When (and if) finally approved, much of the loan will be used to convert production to smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles, which are increasingly popular in Europe as a result of the escalating energy crisis. The money will also be added to existing U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium grants to help fund the development and manufacture of next-generation battery technology, such as those used in the forthcoming Chevrolet Volt.

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