Zach Weiner of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal sums up why Tim DeChristopher is going to jail while the Kochs and other business magnates are still free to hump the environment like the sad little doggies they are, and also conveniently every other problem you might have been wondering about.

Source photos: Republican Conference and Bill V.So, remember how Republicans triumphantly reinstated styrofoam cups in congressional cafeterias, presumably as part of their plan to save jobs and mom and apple pie and small businesses and stuff? Well, they got the "business" part right: The cups they'll be using are made by a company belonging to a former Koch Industries executive. Those little scamps do just crop up everywhere, don't they. GOP leaders didn't dictate the choice of WinCup, owned by former Koch fiend George Wurtz. So this isn't some kind of Koch conspiracy. (What, AGAIN with defending the Kochs? We're …

Looking to lower your impact? Here's your cheat sheet. GoodGuide offers greenness and social responsibility ratings, via web or app, for tens of thousands of products, including food, clothing, toys, and cleaning supplies. Obviously, it's massively useful to be able to look up a brand on your phone and see its health and environment score before you buy. But there's another interesting side effect of the GoodGuide website: Because it scores companies and not just products, you can use it to find out who owns your favorite brands. Even if you don't trace your meal all the way back to …

Okay, not ALL public-spirited millennials are becoming chuggers, i.e. those well-meaning people with clipboards who waylay you.Photo: Howard LakeWell, The New York Times has finally found a trend to report on that doesn't consist of three people in Park Slope. The trouble is, they're not sure exactly what that trend is. Either millennials -- otherwise known as "kids these days" -- are more likely to get do-goodnik jobs because they're big-hearted givers, or they're more likely to get do-goodnik jobs because the recession put soulless corporate money out of reach. Interest in nonprofit and service jobs is definitely going up: …

Photo: Cesar HaradaCan art save our cities? If it's Candy Chang's crowdsourced fantasy urban planning, then yeah, probably. Chang's "I Wish This Was" project challenges New Orleans residents to project their ideal neighborhood onto the still-struggling post-Katrina landscape. The installation is simple: just a bunch of blank "my name is"-style stickers that say "I Wish This Was." What would you like to see in that boarded-up shop window? Food? Bikes? Tacos? Art supplies? A sex place? Fill in a sticker and slap it on up there. It's all fantasy, of course, and everyone knows it. But it gets people thinking …

Source photos: Republican Conference and Bill V.Finally, our long national nightmare is over: Styrofoam cups and plastic cutlery are back in the Congressional cafeterias. Yes, the Republicans' campaign to save America by needlessly trashing it continues apace, and on Monday John Boehner announced a hard-won victory over even the most trivial and symbolic environmental concessions. "The new majority -- plasticware is back," he tweeted. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! It's not a big surprise that the Speaker, who is constructed largely of rawhide and artificial coloring, doesn't approve of things that degrade naturally. But it's telling that the GOP is willing to crow …

Source photo: Lunar CausticThe Ohio state legislature is preparing to hear testimony from a 9-week-old fetus, which I assume will actually be a lawyer making a squeaky voice from behind a picture of an ultrasound. The fetus is testifying about whether it should be able to freeload off a woman's organs while it's waiting to turn into a person, but we think there are a lot of other bills a fetus should have a say in. Like the ones covering pollution, climate change, and oil. Here are some of this week's committee meetings that we think would benefit from the …

Photo: Davidlohr BuesoGreen-minded folks in the know about celebrity stuff -- i.e. not me -- have been on tenterhooks waiting to see what Colin Firth's wife Livia would wear to the Oscars. That's because she's attempting the Green Carpet Challenge again this year, and has sworn to wear nothing on the red carpet that isn't repurposed, upcycled, or made of sustainable fabric. At an over-the-top expensive event like the Oscars, full of starlets in single-use dresses clutching goodie bags filled with gadgets and travel vouchers, that seems like kind of a drop in a million-dollar bucket. But in terms of …

Photo: Rosa SayWhat happens if Republicans, frustrated by opposition to their spending bill amendments (some of which defang the EPA), decide to hold their collective breath until they get their way? Well, the government shuts down. That means a whole lot of government employees get an unwanted furlough (JOBS!). It could also spell disaster for the country's national parks. Petulant, makes the economy worse, kills Bambi's mom ... yup, sounds like the GOP. Real Americans hate nature: Never mind the 16,000 parks employees who'd be sitting at home and the 267,000 private-sector employees who depend on the parks for their …

Photo: Fibonacci BlueHacker hivemind Anonymous took some potshots at the Koch-fueled Americans for Prosperity website yesterday, taking the site down intermittently and disrupting the late-night propaganda snacking of insomniac right-wingers. It's always fun to see Anonymous spank people, at least the ones who deserve it, but this time they may have misfired. The grievances that Anonymous cites in its press release might just be fantasies. Anonymous cracks down on Koch deals: The digital gadflies are pissed that Scott Walker is trying to help the Kochs sneak a power monopoly past the goalposts, allowing them to buy state power plants without …