Cover Story: This Drug’s For You by Lisa Belkin Is TV advertising of prescription medicine hooking Americans on expensive and unneeded drugs? The Mother Jones 400 Industry pumped in a record $696 million to elect George W. Bush and a GOP Congress. The Mother Jones 400 reveals the nation’s top contributors — and what they expect in return.

FEATURES

The Rules of the Row By Russ Rymer
For years, the flophouses and cardboard encampments of Los Angeles’ Skid Row have been the focus of social experiments and redevelopment plans. But now the neighborhood faces its greatest challenge — economic growth.

The Wild Ones photo essay by Seamus Murphy
text by Verlyn Klinkenborg
Training a wild horse takes determination, compassion, and infinite patience. A Colorado program turns the job over to convicts — with surprising results.

Future Schlock by Jack Hitt
In an age of visioning, trend-casting, and focus groups, the future is just another commodity.

The Conscience of Place: Highway 75, Iowa by Verlyn Klinkenborg
Thousands of striking farmers blockaded Iowa roads in 1932, making what they called “the last stand of American agriculture.” In the second of a series, the author revisits the site of the Sioux City Milk War.

DEPARTMENTS

Backtalk
Readers sound off on labor-inducing drugs, online education, globalization, and Senator Paul Wellstone.

Outfront
— Hog Heaven?: Members of South Dakota’s Rosebud Sioux tribe don’t like the smell of their latest economic development project.
— Fish or Foul?: You’ve heard about transgenic corn, soybeans, and tomatoes. But the biotech industry is developing a whole new menu of genetically engineered foods–and this time the product will have instincts, mobility, and the ability to breed of its own volition.
— 21st Century Abolitionists: Antislavery advocates turn to an extreme measure: buying humans.
— The Smoggy Seas: Cargo ships are the workhorses of trade — and a growing source of pollution.
— Hellraiser: Darlene Jespersen, rebel without rouge.

The Commons by Sue Halpern
In Whiteville, North Carolina, eight former textile workers blend gospel and labor songs into a soundtrack for the picket line.

Exposure
Latin American dreams

Media Jones

• How America learned to love prisons — Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joseph T. Hallinan examines America’s predilection for prisons.
• Tookie Williams interview — Making peace from Death Row
• Plus: Mood-altering commercials; more book, music, and film reviews.

Browse through Bush’s biggest backers
The biggest spenders from the Mother Jones 400

P.S. Cartoon by Barry Blitt