The best of the week’s news:

• A California company is selling a mysterious “fat melting” device which some salons are falsely claiming to have been FDA-approved, the FDA knows but hasn’t shut them down
• How voter suppression hurts reproductive rights
• A joint Investigative Fund/PBS investigation has sparked a grand jury probe into the killing of an undocumented migrant.
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• Mitt Romney picks at his fast food, but he loves quick-serve campaign contributions, Tim Murphy of Mother Jones reports.
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• The long-term fallout of the subprime mortgage crisis is taking its toll on African Americans, the Washington Post reports.

Tweet your Sidney’s picks to @sidneyhillman, hashtag #sidney

Jack Abramoff’s Bible-thumping, Indian tribe-bilking crony Ralph Reed is back on the national political scene, fresh from a voter mobilization triumph in Wisconsin’s recall election, Adele Stan reports for AlterNet. Reed’s next target? Defeating president Obama in November.

[Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons.]

Black lung, that historical scourge of coal miners, is a horrifying disease that gradually suffocates the victim from the inside out. The good news is the disease is completely preventable. If coal dust levels in mines were kept in check, black lung would disappear. Congress ordered mining companies to make that happen in 1969, but they never followed through. Now, black lung is making a comeback. An joint investigation by NPR and the Center for Public Integrity found that the incidence of black lung has doubled in the past decade.

Ken Ward, Jr. writes about an 83-year-old retired miner with black lung who is watching his middle-aged sons succumb to the disease:

Marcum doesn’t have to look far to see that hasn’t happened. There’s his middle son, Donald, who, at 51, has had eight pieces of his lungs removed. He sometimes has trouble making it through a prayer when he’s filling in as a preacher at Solid Rock Baptist Church.

There’s James, the youngest.  At 50, his breathing is becoming more labored, and his doctor has already discussed hooking him up to an oxygen tank part-time.

Both began working in the late 1970s - years after dust rules took effect - and both began displaying symptoms in their 30s. Donald now has the most severe, fastest-progressing form of the disease, known as complicated coal workers’ pneumoconiosis.  James and the oldest Marcum son, Thomas, 59, have a simpler form, but James has reached the worst stage and is deteriorating. [Charelston Gazette]

In a companion piece, Ward explains how federal black lung control programs have faltered under pressure from industry and labor.

Erik Loomis of Lawyers Guns and Money isn’t convinced that labor deserves an equal share of blame for the lack of progress on black lung:

Ward also makes a big deal about labor rejection of black lung testing from Democratic administrations for being too weak, but I don’t see this as a big deal. Given how little Democrats listen to labor on every other issue, I don’t see much evidence that labor anger over lax testing systems would cause Democrats to abandon them. While Ward is usually quite good, his piece has a Both Sides Do It theme that is unwarranted here. The problem with black lung codes is not that the union cares about its members too much.

Regardless of who’s at fault, a black lung resurgence is a national disgrace.

[Photo credit: At the Atlas Coal Mine, by miss604, Creative Commons.]

Ann Romney’s “blind trust” invested $10 million in Tagg Romney’s fledgling hedge fund, Nicholas Shaxson reports in Vanity Fair:

All the assets on Mitt’s financial disclosures are in blind trusts or retirement accounts held by him and Ann. Blind trusts are designed to avoid conflicts of interest for those in public office by having politicians’ assets managed by independent trustees. The Romneys’ blind trust was created when Mitt was elected governor of Massachusetts. Curiously, the Romneys appointed Bradford Malt as their trustee. It’s certainly true that under Malt the trusts don’t appear to be as blind as they might be: for instance, in 2010 the Romneys invested $10 million in the start-up of the Solamere Founders Fund, co-founded by their eldest son, Tagg, and Spencer Zwick, Romney’s onetime top campaign fund-raiser; Solamere is now in the Ann Romney blind trust. Malt has said he invested in Solamere without consulting Mitt or Ann and explained he liked Solamere because of its diversified approach and because he knew the founders and had confidence in them.

Maybe that’s what Mitt had in mind when he told college students to borrow money from their parents to start a business.

[Photo credit: Grand Velas Riviera Maya, Creative Commons.]