Without naming names, though those interested are free to research this, my school spawned Timothy "the Tool" Geithner, Ex-SecTreas Paulsen, Sen. Rob Portman, and ex officio the head of the IMF. There are also a couple of corpoDems occupying elective office, amongst the alumni. And one last "confession", my school also spawned ex-felon Dinesh D'Souza. I don't wish to denigrate the vast majority of graduates, almost of whom "have turned out well" but the neoliberal administration is pro-corporatist.

I wasn't thinking about myself but rather the many, many people who do not have the option. There are still numerous people who do not or cannot go to college.

My alma mater does have a credit union and it is open to all residents of five California counties as well as students, alumni and employees, but that still leaves a huge portion of people not covered by that particular credit union, and while I am sure there are other CUs that will cover more people, it will still not be an option for many.

This thread, however, did make me go look at the practices of my current bank. Ouch! I may have to take advantage of alumni status after all.

Here is an article that is a little bit dated but may help with your search. It is about locating Green Friendly device manufacturers.

I don't know if I could boycott Amazon. I love my Kindle and the unlimited books program they have. I could never afford to read as much as I do if I had to buy every book I read and many are not even available at the library.

So many difficult choices. I have though successfully managed to eliminate EVERY Koch manufactured product that I am aware of from my shopping.

I am still trying to figure out why my milk lasts so much longer than it used to,

My guess: "Enhanced" pasteurization (read: irradiating the milk while heating it as in traditional pasteurization).

Add just a touch of ionizing radiation, and you can essentially wipe out all microbial life in a container of milk.

There are small packages of milk prepared by irradiation which don't ever need refrigeration as long as they're in virginal state (never opened). And they can last for decades on a shelf.

(Note the date)
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/monsantoatms-monopoly-challenged-in...

Monsanto's Monopoly Challenged in Munich

Team Treehugger
Living / Green Food
April 30, 2007

[This is a guest-post by Hope Shand of the ETC Group. -Ed.]

Patents, globalization and social injustice are the stuff of public protest across the world. This week, however, a drawn-out battle against corporate monopoly will come to a head — not in the streets — but in an arcane technical hearing at the European Patent Office. ...
... Patents, exclusive legal monopolies granted by governments, are a
favorite tool of big business to exercise power over the little guy.
Giant pharmaceutical firms have most notoriously used patents to
price anti-HIV drugs out of the reach of poor people in the global
South. Less familiar are biotech battles in the agricultural sector,
where multinational seed companies are using patents to deny farmers
— or entire nations — the right to use and sell seeds from patent-
protected crops."Patents, we are told, are designed to promote innovation. Instead,
they are allowing giant seed companies to secure exclusive monopolies
that undermine the economic security of farming communities and
jeopardize access to seeds — the first link in the food chain. And
lest we forget: Whoever controls the seeds controls the food supply.

Instead of fostering agricultural research, breathtakingly broad
patents are shutting down competition and stifling research. Perhaps
no patent symbolizes the brokenness of the patent system more than
Monsanto's European patent on all genetically engineered soybean
varieties and seeds — European Patent No. 301,749. Critics call it a
"species-wide" patent because its claims extend to all biotech
soybean seeds—— irrespective of the genes used or the genetic
engineering technique employed — unprecedented in its broad scope. ...

... Monsanto's legal defense of its patent may not be surprising, but it
is hugely hypocritical. Before Monsanto acquired the patent in 1996 —
the company vigorously opposed the patent — which was then owned by
US-based biotech company, Agracetus. In 1994 Monsanto submitted an
exhaustive, 292-page opposition statement to the EPO that shredded
the technical merits of Agracetus's soybean patent. Monsanto's
lawyers wrote that the soybean patent should be "revoked in its
entirety," is "not novel," "lacks an inventive step," and "sufficient
disclosure [of scientific method] is woefully lacking." But after
Monsanto acquired Agracetus in April 1996, Monsanto withdrew its
challenge, reversed its position and announced that it would defend
its newly acquired patent! ...

... In 2003 — more than nine years after the patent was first awarded and
legally challenged — an EPO patent tribunal heard legal arguments
against the notorious patent. Opponents were shocked when EPO upheld
Monsanto's monopoly in 2003. Today, nearly two-thirds of the patent's
20-year term has expired. On 3 May 2007 EPO's appeal tribunal will
have one last chance to revoke Monsanto's unjust monopoly on one of
the world's major food crops. Failure to do so, after 13 years of
bureaucratic delays, will simply confirm that corporations can use
unjust patents to monopolize markets, destroy competition and
jeopardize worldwide struggles for food sovereignty.

Edited to add that there is nothing 'scientific' about allowing polluting industry control over the food supply to insist that people must have no choice but to buy and consume their products, because corporate profits come before anything else, including such concepts as those of human rights and democracy.

are in themselves dangerous. The same argument I advance for the existence of gods, ghosts, goblins, gnomes, and gremlins. At the same time there is no proof that all our fiddling and futzing 500 or 1000 years down the road won't turn our biota into a gray mass of anaerobes.