This is not caused by our addiction to alcohol or drugs but to plain water. And to make our pain worse, its not the people of Texas who are hooked on a destructive water habit its the bone-headed executives and greed-headed investors in coal-fired and nuclear-powered plants that generate electricity.

Republican lawmakers, however, are crying that the Democrats' reform bill puts a crushing burden on the poor financial giants. While these Wall Street apologists wail and keen, though, slick operators like Dimon are wasting no time on tears. Instead, they're devising ways to slip out of the new regulatory reins.

For example: arms dealers. Youve probably paid no attention to the hard fact that the global recession caused worldwide arms sales to plummet by 8.5 percent last year, pinching the profits of U.S. weapons pushers.

The biotech and chemical giant has reaped huge profits by messing with the very DNA of the worlds food supply. During the past couple of decades, Monsanto has become the Frankenstein of agriculture, taking genetic parts of one or more species and engineering them into another.

OK, John Lennons lyric was not about poppies, but strawberries. However, I started humming the song because I was thinking about our countrys multitrillion-dollar mission to build a viable central government and a new economy in Afghanistan.

The Golden State was one of the first to legalize the use of medical marijuana, and a network of licensed growers, dispensaries and other related businesses has since flourished. It turns out that pot is a labor-intensive product, and the producers, distributors and retailers of weed have become something of a hotbed for local job growth.

You might remember that 29 miners were killed in April in a horrific explosion inside West Virginias Upper Big Branch mine, owned by Massey Energy. Massey, a $2 billion-a-year giant, is notorious for putting its workers down in inexcusably unsafe coal mines.

For example: arms dealers. Youve probably paid no attention to the hard fact that the global recession caused worldwide arms sales to plummet by 8.5 percent last year, pinching the profits of U.S. weapons pushers.

Last year, airline fees totaled nearly $8 billion a consumer subsidy siphoned right out of our pockets into the corporate coffers. Take the ticket change fee. If something comes up, forcing you to change a flight from the one youd booked, youre hit with a service fee of $150.

Not merely dirty in terms of the gross pollution, mountain destruction and mine worker deaths that the Appalachian coal giants are causing, but also in terms of the massive loads of campaign cash that theyre shoveling into Americas elections in a crass effort to get lawmakers wholl do their bidding in Congress.