BRENDAN FISCHER, - Truthout.org
Stephan: Once again we see the influence a small group of conservative uber-rich are having on how the nation is governed. Citizens United legalized bribery and, in a dozen different ways, the pernicious effects of that Supreme Court decision are becoming evident.
The lead plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the National Federation for Independent Business (NFIB), is a highly partisan front group masquerading as the ‘nation’s leading small business association,’ critics say. The nation’s highest court is expected to rule on the federal health care law Thursday.
Bankrolled By Big Donors, Not Small Business
A recent analysis by Public Campaign and Alliance for a Just Society shows that the NFIB and its Legal Center received an influx of big dollar donations in 2010 and 2011 as their challenge to the federal health care law moved forward — suggesting the challenge is bankrolled by deep-pocketed special interests. The NFIB pocketed more than $10 million in six figure contributions in 2010 and 2011, with $8.5 million coming from just four contributors. As a non-profit, NFIB is not required to disclose its donors, but it is known that the organization received $3.7 million in 2010 from Karl Rove’s 501(c)(4) political group Crossroads GPS. In contrast, in 2009, the year before the healthcare lawsuit, the largest donation NFIB received was $21,000.
‘Small businesses don’t give multi-million dollar contributions, like the ones NFIB has recently received without disclosing their sources,’ […]
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SYDNEY BROWNSTONE, - Mother Jones
Stephan: This report provides the hard data in support of the point I make again and again. The food supply is compromised. If at all possible avoid all processed foods, and try to eat locally grown organic -- or grow it yourself.
For an industrial chemical released into the environment at more than 1 million pounds a year, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that bisphenol A also shows up in humans. Four years ago, researchers discovered that BPA, which is used in plastic manufacturing, was present in nearly 93 percent of the US population’s urine.
So it’s disturbing that a growing body of scientific literature suggests that BPA disrupts the body’s hormones. Exposure to the chemical has been associated with risk for obesity, breast cancer, prostate cancer, cardiovascular disease, infertility, diabetes, thyroid dysfunction, and neurological problems.
But the worst part for researchers can be trying to narrow down confounding factors and figure out how BPA makes its way into the body. If these chemicals are everywhere at once-in can linings, soft plastic, as well as leaching into the air and food-how can we even begin to study exposure?
One way is to study people whose lives are isolated from the normal barrage of potential sources. Today, University of Rochester and Mount Sinai Medical Center researchers published a pilot study in journal Neurotoxicology that was conducted with 10 pregnant women from an Old Order Mennonite community in upstate New York. Researchers hypothesized that […]
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JENNIFER LIBERTO, - CNN Money
Stephan: Having just spent two weeks cruising in Alaska I have seen over and over again the importance of the Post Office to the health of the isolated towns where we stopped to take on fuel or buy supplies. People often live far apart in isolation. In Alaska there are very few roads, and the only way one can really get around is by boat or plane. The Post Office is a central gathering place where people trade information or catch up with distant neighbors. To a person every postmaster with whom I talked told me how the cut backs being sought by conservatives, whose real agenda is to privatize the PO, will have a devastating effect on their town. This attempt to restructure the PO is a really, really, bad idea.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service will begin consolidating and closing parts of some 48 mail processing plants, beginning as early as next week, after a last-minute effort to halt the consolidations failed Friday.
The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) had asked the service’s regulator, the Postal Regulatory Commission to halt the consolidations while it appealed a plan to shrink its network and work force, and slow down the delivery of mail most consumers use.
But the postal regulator decided not to step in, saying that the potential harm to the Postal Service from halting consolidations ‘outweighs’ the potential harm to the union, according to the Postal Regulatory Commission.
The Postal Service plans to move forward with consolidations over the next two months, said spokesman David Partenheimer. Those consolidations will affect 5,000 employees, many of whom would be offered new jobs that might require them to move or retirement packages.
‘We are pleased with today’s ruling by the Postal Regulatory Commission,’ Partenheimer said. He said an ‘important part’ of the postal service’s plan for financial stability requires ‘consolidation of our current mail processing network to better match our existing and projected mail volumes.’
A request for comment made to the APWU was not immediately returned.
To […]
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BOB BERWYN, - Summit County Citizens Voice (Colorado)
Stephan: Climate change deniers continue to prat on, but the truth can be seen in your own backyard.
SUMMIT COUNTY — Showing signs of increasing desperation, global warming deniers are trying to deflect attention from the clear and present danger of heatwaves, severe storms and wildfires by publishing questionable long-range weather maps suggesting next winter will bring below average temperatures.
Hardly anyone is listening. It’s tough to pay attention to nonsense when the temperature outside is 107 and an unusually intense thunderstorm knocks out your power.
Plus, the same people, like infamous denier Joe Bastardi, to name just one, have made the same claims before, only to be proved wrong time and time again. During last summer’s brutal heat wave, they told us not to worry, next year will be cooler.
Guess what? Now it’s ‘next year
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SIMON SINGH, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Just before I left a reader wrote to ask me about 'the growing number of particles that seem to concern physics, whose names I barely recognize.' Maybe you feel the same way. Waiting in the airport today I found this, which may help sort these things out in your mind.
Simon Singh is the author of Big Bang and will be presenting '5 Particles', part of BBC Radio 4's special coverage of the LHC switch-on later this summer
Christening a particle is not easy. Do you name it after the person who proposed its existence, or the person who discovered it? Or do you give it a label that is abstract, poetic, whimsical, onomatopoeic, or just plain descriptive?
Democritus proposed the existence of a particle, so he could have named it the democriton, but instead this modest Greek philosopher decided to coin the word a-tomos, meaning ‘not cuttable’, which explains the origin of the word atom. Perversely, today we use the word atom to describe something that is ‘cuttable’, because we know that even the smallest atom, hydrogen, has components that can be pulled part. So we could rename atoms ‘aatoms’, which is to say ‘not not cuttable’.
Inside the atom we find the electron, which also traces its name back to Ancient Greece. Elektron is Greek for amber, and the ancients knew that rubbing amber with a dry cloth would enable it to attract very light objects. We now know that this is because rubbing amber can generate a charge, otherwise known as static electricity, so 19th century scientists used the term electron to describe the first particle that was proven to carry a charge.
The rest of the atom […]
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