Are motorists getting ripped off? Sen. Bernie Sanders on Saturday checked out gas prices at a station in Burlington, Vt., charging $3.60 for regular and stations 35 miles away in Middlebury, Vt., charging $3.36. and $3.31. Why the big difference? That's what the senator wants to know. That's why he asked for a federal investigation. In Washington, D.C., on Saturday, temperatures hit 105 degrees at National Airport by late afternoon, the latest in what's become a pattern of record hot weather around the country. "Climate change is real, is significantly man-made and already is causing billions of dollars in damage," the senator said Friday on The Thom Hartmann Program. The Labor Department on Friday said the official unemployment rate in June stayed at 8.2 percent. The Justice Department announced on Monday that GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay a $3 billion fine, a relative slap on the wrist. Sanders has proposed a crackdown on pharmaceutical fraud. 

Gas Prices

A federal investigation into unusually high gasoline prices in northwestern Vermont was called for by Sanders. He asked the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate why gasoline prices in Chittenden, Grand Isle and Franklin counties are substantially higher than other parts of the state. Gas prices in Burlington exceed the maximum price projected by a Federal Trade Commission computer model for the region, according to commission computer analysis that Sanders made public on Thursday.

Climate Change?  

The National Weather Service reported that 3,215 daily high temperature records were set or tied across the country during June.  More than half were for temperatures of 100 degrees or hotter. So far this year, more than 40,000 hot temperature records were set in the United States. Fewer than 6,000 cold temperature records were set since Jan. 1, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Cold and hot records evened out during most of the 20^th century, but in the first decade of this century there were two hot records for every cold one, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Scientists are cautious about connecting short-term weather data with long-term climate change. As the evidence mounts, "We don't want to do it in an I-told-you-so kind of way," John Topping, president of the Washington-based Climate Institute, told The Washington Post.

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Jobs 

Employers created more jobs in June, but not enough to significantly reduce the backlog of nearly 13 million unemployed American workers. When workers forced into part time jobs and others who gave up looking for work are counted, the real unemployment rate rose 0.1 percent to 14.9 percent. Some help is in sight from a two-year transportation funding bill that President Obama signed on Friday. It will preserve, create or save about 3 million jobs.  Sanders called it "a very modest bill." But at least, he added, "we made a start."

Rx Fraud 

The Justice Department announced the GlaxoSmithKline settlement on criminal and civil violations for bribing American doctors, pushing antidepressants on children and hiding the heart attack risk of a diabetes drug. Widely ballyhooed as the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history, the fact is that "it is a pittance to Glaxo," Lawyers.com editor Larry Bodine blogged Friday for The Huffington Post. "These fines ... are chump change in comparison to the company's bottom line and highly unlikely to bring real change to its - or, indeed, the industry's - future practices," Judith Warner blogged at Time. By our calculations, the drug maker may have made $70 billion or more from sales of these three drugs. So to Sanders, the question is: "Is fraud within the pharmaceutical industry the exception, or is it, simply put, their business model?" He has proposed tough new penalties to combat rampant fraud. Companies fined for overcharging Medicare or Medicaid, or for dangerous illegal marketing practices, would be stripped of their government-granted monopolies on those medications. 

Watch Sanders' May 23 Senate speech » 
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Citizens United 

There is growing grassroots anger over the millions of dollars in Super PAC money pouring into elections since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. In a largely-overlooked ruling last week, the court used a case from Montana to reaffirm the ruling in Citizens United. In an editorial on Thursday, The National Catholic Reporter sympathized with Sanders' call for a constitutional amendment. In a television commentary, veteran news anchor Tom Van Howe talked about the "loony" ruling in Citizens United and agreed with Sanders' warning that the United States is rapidly becoming a plutocracy. 

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