Category Archives: politics

The Farm Bill

by

Alliance for Natural Health has this report up on the Farm Bill. (hat tip to organic consumers).

From the article:

The aforementioned Farm Bill riders would outlaw any EPA review of a genetically engineered crop under the Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. This terrible legislation would ensure that no agency other than the USDA (which is decidedly pro-GMOs) will be allowed to provide analysis of the impacts of GMO crops. Further, the riders also establish extremely short deadlines for approval of GMOs. If the crops are not reviewed and approved within the extremely short timeline, they would default to immediate approval and commercialization.

So…if this is true, then there’s an underhanded reason why Obama is urging the passage of the Farm Bill–given that he appointed Vilsack as Secretary of Ag, who is a Monsanto toadie…yeah, well, it’s real hard not to think Obama is doing their bidding...

(Note that Methinks They Lie also brings up the Shirley Sherrod fiasco…yeah, that was a great move. Not.)

Well, this is depressing…

by

…but not really that surprising:  http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/08/07/court-ruling-brings-end-to-legal-challenge-against-bush-warrantless-wiretapping/

And yet there are still those who criticize the public for not speaking out and getting off their duffs to do anything–where is the justice?  Who are the people obeying the law of the Constitution?  Not the courts–as someone pointed out, this is the Ninth Circuit–a court that the rightwing continually blasts as “liberal”.  Pffft.

 

They’re buying air, land, water…

by

Good God, it’s come to fruition…

…how in the hell does one, in good conscience, try to make a profit off of something one had no hand in creating…?  What kind of soulless being thinks it’s okay to do such a thing?

From the story:

Like other aspects of neoliberalism, the commodification of nature forestalls democratic choice. No longer will we be able to argue that an ecosystem or a landscape should be protected because it affords us wonder and delight; we’ll be told that its intrinsic value has already been calculated and, doubtless, that it turns out to be worth less than the other uses to which the land could be put. The market has spoken: end of debate.

~~~~~~

Exactly.  Once the price tag has been set, the $$$ will trump all other values…because one cannot put a price tag on beauty, on value to other beings besides two-leggeds (because all the rest don’t matter, according to these folks), nor can a value be assigned when the benefits are unknown, as most of the natural world’s benefits aren’t known until they’re lost…

Romney’s tax returns

by

The Sunlight Foundation has this up on the lack of sunlight by Romney.  (hat tip to washington post)

The rightwingers are all over this–saying that Romney is a private individual who does not have to disclose his returns.

Um…does anyone else wonder why the rightwing (and the Dems)  are all about snooping into other people’s lives…saying “if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t mind someone reading your emails, watching what books you check out, who you call on the phone (and what you say), and generally destroying the Fourth Amendment…so, um…why do they have a problem with Romney laying his tax return out there?  I mean, if he has nothing to hide….

Looking at the stats on Romney…good grief look at the disparity between him and Obama.  And man, it warmed my heart to see Obama was paying 32%, but as the article states, it’s because of the classification of income–Obama’s coming from book sales.

The rightwingers will make the case that Romney somehow deserves to only pay 13 -15% of his income because it’s investment income…they have wrongly stated that he would be paying taxes on income he’s already paid taxes on. Not true–the investment capital is not taxed again, but the profits he makes on those investments is.   He should be paying 35% on the profits he makes–whether its from investments or from a paycheck.  Incidentally, if he loses money, he gets to deduct that from his taxes owed.

Lastly,  I’m sick of hearing about how great the rich are in contributing to charity–some statement was made awhile back on how much more they give to charity.  Sitting where I am, there is just as much charity with the poor–only they don’t get to deduct that off their taxes, so it isn’t documented.  They will help others out the best that they can–a few bucks or few sheets of typing paper or a few slices of bread to tide one over…that sort of thing.

So…speaking of taxes…here is the 2011 tax table figures:  http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040tt.pdf

If one takes the standard deduction (single), they start taxing you when you make $15,000–minus the $7,000 standard deduction.    It’s stunningly pathetic that the one-percenters like Romney can take taxes off to feed his horse, but a person who every week has to decide whether to pay the light bill or food on the table has to pay taxes on a measily $15k.  Poverty level….

Here is the poverty level, by the way–which is waaaay too low:  http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/11poverty.shtml

A person making $20,000 per year would be more like it–you can’t afford decent housing at even that level.  You certainly couldn’t put any money away in savings nor could one take even the most simple vacation (camping, etc.).  You’re one paycheck away from being homeless.

I think the reasons for keeping the level so low are listed on the page–it’s used to determine food stamp eligibility and other social services…it’s the same with the false 8% unemployment figures…if you don’t acknowledge a problem exists, or acknowledge the scope of the problem, then you don’t have to get off your butt and do something about it.

 

West Nile

by

…well, it’s that time of year for the Health Dept to put out its dire warnings of West Nile virus, spread by mosquitoes.  This is an annual warning by the dept. so you would think that thousands of people die of the disease...nope.

Here’s  a story on a death by West Nile.  Note that it’s the first one since 2007:  http://www.statesman.com/news/local/west-nile-death-first-since-2007-2425637.html

The state’s Health Dept. was recommending people use DEET to avoid mosquitoes, and subsequently, the virus.  I was at the beginning of chemical awareness and asked the director of the office I was in whether citronella was as effective.  He said yes, but citronella had to be applied every 30 minutes.  When I asked about an article I had just read about DEET being linked with epileptic seizures, he confirmed that it did cause seizures in some people.  So, I asked why the public wasn’t informed of this, and that citronella was a non-chemical solution, he blew me off. The health dept. denied people information so that they could make their own decisions.  This was another reason I left that job.

Here’s  a link (gov) on it: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002763.htm

Here’s a less biased link:  http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2005/DEET-Cox-NCAP17oct2005.htm

A good link here.  She outlines the dangers and then gives helpful suggestions on natural repellants.   When I still had my house, I would light three or so citronella candles before going out to the patio, and never had a problem with being bitten.  And I also had natural citronella bug repellant wipes that I used when I was out.

I tried to look up deaths from DEET, and there are few reported cases.  Since it is known to cause seizures, and other neurological issues, I have to be skeptical of the statistics–how many had seizures that caused death, but it was not attributed to DEET?  Since there is such denial in the medical profession of the devastating effects of chemicals (toxins) on our health, I’m just not that confident that they are inquiring about the chemicals a person uses.

Greenwald on Extremism Normalized

by

…continuing to boil the frog…

From the comments section, a few posters are arguing about the uninformed public making poor choices because…they’re uninformed.  SiouxRose makes the point that a single mother with 2 kids doesn’t have the time to do what we do–looking for the news on the internet…because she sure the hell isn’t getting the information she needs to make an informed decision on the network news.

Then another poster comments that people need to take responsibility.

The problem with that is  with media consolidation into the rightwing mania, the information access is extremely limited.  It’s difficult to get accurate, mostly unbiased (there’s no such thing as un-biased) news reported by intelligent individuals with a grasp of the subject at hand.  Like I reported earlier, the only station that reports news like it used to be reported, prior to Reagan’s assault on the Press and Marketplace of Ideas, is a rightwing station.  They report every half hour.  The other stations?  You’re lucky if you get the news in the morning, and then you’re SOL for the rest of the day.  Nothing. Nada.  And when the storm hit my area, there was nothing the next day–Saturday–to tell folks what was happening and where they could go for a cooling center.  But you can be sure that there will be half-hour segments when/if a ter__ist event is happening.

So…to blame the public for not getting access to information is blaming the wrong folks–they already have very little power.    And if you’re like me, you only get access to news through the internet.  As has been said before–you control information, you control people.

I just wish there were as much outrage over the consolidation of media and the end of the Fairness Doctrine as there is against war.