Thursday, October 4th, 2012
ERIC DOLAN, - The Raw Story
Stephan: As a result of Citizens United, and other decisions, such as Randall v. Sorrell, judges, taking their lead from the Supreme Court are beginning to build up case law in support of unlimited contributions by corporations to the political process. This process is weaving this corrupting trend into the legal fabric of the nation, to our collective peril.
A federal judge on Wednesday struck down Montana’s limits on contributions to state political candidates, allowing politicians in the state to receive unlimited donations from individuals, party committees and PACs.
U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell ruled that Montana’s contribution limit to candidates was unconstitutionally low.
‘Having reviewed and considered the entire record and the parties’ arguments and evidence, the Court concludes that Montana’s contribution limits in Montana Code Annotated § 13-37-216 are unconstitutional under the First Amendment,
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Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012
CAREY GILLAM, - The Huffington Post/Reuters
Stephan: This is what GMO is really about: creating the need to use more and more pesticides and herbicides which, in turn, means ever greater profits for the merchants of death like Monsanto and Dow. The fact that the earth and the living beings on it, including humans, pay a price in suffering and death is just collateral damage to these corporations. The cynicism is breathtaking.
U.S. farmers are using more hazardous pesticides to fight weeds and insects due largely to heavy adoption of genetically modified crop technologies that are sparking a rise of ‘superweeds’ and hard-to-kill insects, according to a newly released study.
Genetically engineered crops have led to an increase in overall pesticide use, by 404 million pounds from the time they were introduced in 1996 through 2011, according to the report by Charles Benbrook, a research professor at the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University.
Of that total, herbicide use increased over the 16-year period by 527 million pounds while insecticide use decreased by 123 million pounds.
Benbrook’s paper — published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Sciences Europe over the weekend and announced on Monday — undermines the value of both herbicide-tolerant crops and insect-protected crops, which were aimed at making it easier for farmers to kill weeds in their fields and protect crops from harmful pests, said Benbrook.
Herbicide-tolerant crops were the first genetically modified crops introduced to world, rolled out by Monsanto Co. in 1996, first in ‘Roundup Ready’ soybeans and then in corn, cotton and other crops. Roundup Ready crops are engineered through transgenic modification to tolerate dousings of […]
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Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012
JON BARDIN, - Los Angeles Times
Stephan: Here is the latest on Vitamin D as a preventative therapy for colds and sniffles. Apparently this idea needs to be retired.
If you’re trying to ward off the sniffles, you can take vitamin D supplements out of your shopping cart: A new study reports that dosing with the vitamin does nothing to prevent colds or other forms of upper respiratory tract infections (URTI).
The effect of vitamin D on the immune system has been debated for a long time. Controlled laboratory research has shown that vitamin D has several beneficial effects on the immune system, and some studies conducted in the past have suggested that people with low levels of the vitamin are at higher risk for URTIs. But the authors of the new study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., point out that the previous studies were poorly controlled and results have been mixed, calling into question whether the vitamin does anything at all for URTIs.
To answer the question, the researchers, who are based in New Zealand, conducted a randomized trial nicknamed VIDARIS, for ‘Vitamin D and Acute Respiratory Infection Study.’ They gave 161 subjects doses of vitamin D once a month for 18 months, and another group of 161 people a placebo. The doses used were those that appeared to have been the most effective against […]
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Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012
Stephan: There was no Tuesday edition because I was in the air flying to Budapest to carry out the first world webcast precognitive remote viewing experiment, with the help of my friend and research colleague James Spottiswoode. See www.esoguru.com
-- Stephan
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Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012
HOPE YEN, - Reader Supported News/The Associated Press
Stephan: Other countries recognize that getting as many of your kids through college is in the national interest since an educated population is one of a nation's major assets. The U.S. created its middle class on this principle. Unfortunately, today here in the U.S. the main importance of college is to produce profit for a few corporations which, in the process, beggars the middle class through debt. We are paying a terrible price for this, and the cost is only partly in money.
ith college enrollment growing, student debt has stretched to a record number of U.S. households – nearly 1 in 5 – with the biggest burdens falling on the young and poor.
The analysis by the Pew Research Center found that 22.4 million households, or 19 percent, had college debt in 2010. That is double the share in 1989, and up from 15 percent in 2007, just prior to the recession – representing the biggest three-year increase in student debt in more than two decades.
The increase was driven by higher tuition costs as well as rising college enrollment during the economic downturn. The biggest jumps occurred in households at the two extremes of the income distribution. More well-off families are digging deeper into their pockets to pay for costly private colleges, while lower-income people in search of higher-wage jobs are enrolling in community colleges, public universities and other schools as a way to boost their resumes.
Because of the sluggish economy, fewer college students than before are able to settle into full-time careers immediately upon graduation, contributing to a jump in debt among lower-income households as the young adults take on part-time jobs or attend graduate school, according to Pew.
As a share of […]
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