Saturday, April 7th, 2012
DAVID FERGUSON, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Governor Walker is an apparatchik of the Theocratic Right; a creature of their aspirations. He is, in his state, where the transformed Republican Party wants to go at both state and federal levels. It is the boldest attempt since the Volstead Act in 1918 to impose a minority's social values on the country as a whole. And, like Prohibition, it is about taking something away.
The bills Wisconsin and other states are imposing express intentioned purpose in the service of a very clear perspective on women. One that offends me as a man and, I hope, outrages women of any age. Yet, I know that there will be a cohort of women who will vote for their own subjugation. As a trend though what matters is that women can swing the election.
By banding together women can completely Aikido this assault. In attempting to make you weaker, the Right, by drawing you together transforms what was formerly inchoate mass into a coherent political force, thereby ceding you the power to determine the Presidency, and many other elections. You save yourselves. That will change the entire tone in the country going forward
With little fanfare, union-busting Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) yesterday signed a repeal of Wisconsin’s equal pay act, which gave people who discover they’ve been discriminated against more time to file suit and the right to do so outside of federal courts.
The Equal Pay Enforcement Act was passed in 2009 and gave workers avenues to pursue complaints about pay discrimination in the workplace and press charges where necessary. The law conferred upon workers the ability to pursue their cases in circuit court rather than the federal court system, which is costlier and less accessible to average citizens. It also expanded the window in which complainants are allowed to file their complaints relative to the time when they worked under discriminatory conditions.
Much like the federal law, known as the Ledbetter Act (which President Obama signed as one of his first acts of office), the Wisconsin law was spurred by the case of Lilly Ledbetter, who suffered decades of pay discrimination without her knowledge. After she sued her employer, Goodyear, and won, the Supreme Court threw out the case because she didn’t file shortly after the discrimination began – when she didn’t know it was happening.
The Republican dominated state Senate passed SB […]
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Saturday, April 7th, 2012
SARA ROBINSON, - Truthout.org
Stephan: This is polemic, and I don't usually do this. But this essay so closely parallels my own thinking I had to use it. There is a kind of slow motion coup being attempted by the Theocratic Right, a minority attempting to defeat a majority through intimidation and fear. We must resist this with our votes. Masses of Republicans need to be defeated in both houses and the Democrats need to retain the White House. I know this sounds partisan but it is, in fact, based on data concerning social outcomes. The Theocratic Right's approach to the world produces significantly worse both personal and societal outcomes. That world view is dangerous to your health.
A marriage counselor friend once told me that he almost always knows by the end of the very first session whether he’s being hired to guide a damaged couple back to health, or to help them work toward a divorce — even when the couple doesn’t know the answer to this question themselves.
It’s easy to see, he explained. The relationship’s future success or failure all hinges on one simple thing: How much goodwill and trust they have left. Even if they’ve hurt each other badly, the couples who make it are the ones that still retain a few shreds of faith in each other’s basic good intentions. She didn’t mean to hurt me. He’s not always a bastard. Deep down, she still loves me. Deep down, he really wants things to be better.
These couples are still seeing same future together, and still cling to the tattered memories of why they first fell in love. Just a few frayed threads of trust are all that’s needed — if they’ve got that, the odds are high that with time and work, they can re-weave the fabric of the marriage into something that’s once again strong and good.
On the other hand, the tell-tale […]
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Saturday, April 7th, 2012
NEELY TUCKER, - The Washington Post
Stephan: There is nothing in this that will surprise SR readers in terms of the power of meditation, but the source is well worth noting. I take this as very good news. A public figure speaking out on what is accomplished through the daily practice of meditation, or mindfulness should be remarked upon. I completely agree with Representative Tim Ryan (D-Oh).
Thanks to Abraham Walter.
Rep. Tim Ryan (D) is a five-term incumbent from the heartland. His Ohio district includes Youngstown and Warren and part of Akron and smaller places. He’s 38, Catholic, single. He was a star quarterback in high school. He lives a few houses down from his childhood home in Niles. He’s won three of his five elections with about 75 percent of the vote.
So when he starts talking about his life-changing moment after the 2008 race, you’re not expecting him to lean forward at the lunch table and tell you, with great sincerity, that this little story of American politics is about (a) a raisin and (b) nothing else.
‘You hold this one raisin right up to your mouth, but you don’t put it in, and after a moment your mouth starts to water,
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WILL ALLEN and RONNIE CUMMIN, - AlterNet
Stephan: The very act of threatening to sue the state of Vermont tells you how much Monsanto has to hide. For my readers in Vermont, please contact your state legislators and tell them to find their spines.
The world’s most hated corporation is at it again, this time in Vermont.
Despite overwhelming public support and support from a clear majority of Vermont’s Agriculture Committee, Vermont legislators are dragging their feet on a proposed GMO labeling bill. Why? Because Monsanto has threatened to sue the state if the bill passes.
The popular legislative bill requiring mandatory labels on genetically engineered food (H-722) is languishing in the Vermont House Agriculture Committee, with only four weeks left until the legislature adjourns for the year. Despite thousands of emails and calls from constituents who overwhelmingly support mandatory labeling, despite the fact that a majority (6 to 5) of Agriculture Committee members support passage of the measure, Vermont legislators are holding up the labeling bill and refusing to take a vote.
Instead, they’re calling for more public hearings on April 12, in the apparent hope that they can run out the clock until the legislative session ends in early May.
What happened to the formerly staunch legislative champions of Vermont’s ‘right to know
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, - The Economic Times (India)
Stephan: You thought Fukushima was under control? Think again. Large parts of Tokyo are now contaminated to a level of nuclear toxicity (see SR searching on Fukushima for more information.) and, now, reports are coming out that water is leaking into the ocean that is highly contaminated. This story is far far from over, and people in Hawaii, and we on the West Coast may have a big toxic surprise coming.
WASHINGTON — Scientists have found radioactive material from the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactor in tiny sea creatures and ocean water some 600 km off the coast of Japan, revealing the extent of the release and the direction pollutants might take in a future environmental disaster.
Using 24 specially equipped drifting buoys, a team led by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts found radioactive isotopes — slightly different versions of elements — derived from the plant in seawater as well as in various microorganisms and a small sample of fish.
In some places, the WHOI team discovered cesium radiation hundreds to thousands of times higher than would be expected naturally, with ocean eddies and larger currents both guiding the ‘radioactive debris’ and concentrating it.
With these results, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers estimate that it will take at least a year or two for the radioactive material released at Fukushima Daiichi plant to get across the Pacific Ocean.
‘We saw a telephone pole,’ study leader Ken Buesseler, a marine chemist and oceanographer at WHOI, told LiveScience. ‘There were lots of chemical plants. A lot of stuff got washed into the ocean.’
The Fukushima nuclear plant […]
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