Saturday, February 9th, 2013
LIZETTE ALVAREZ, - The New York Times
Stephan: One of the nastier policies of the Right, part of their trend attempting to make the lives of the poor more miserable, was the mad scheme about drug testing welfare recipients. I think they thought it would push many poor off the rolls, because they believed their own fantasies about the poor as all being drug addicts and layabouts.
It was mean spirited and, as this report makes clear, ill advised at every level. Note, however, that facts appear to have no impact on the Republicans of Georgia. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. Any state that would elect Paul 'lies from the pit of hell' Broun is capable of almost any fact free folly.
MIAMI — Ushered in amid promises that it would save taxpayers money and deter drug users, a Florida law requiring drug tests for people who seek welfare benefits resulted in no direct savings, snared few drug users and had no effect on the number of applications, according to recently released state data.
‘Many states are considering following Florida’s example, and the new data from the state shows they shouldn’t,
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Friday, February 8th, 2013
Stephan: This is overly polemic for SR. But what it is reporting is so corrupt and blatant I decided to put that aside and run it anyway.
The same forces that don't want any GMO labelled, don't want natural products to be labelled as free of GMO. The FDA agreed to this. Could a government regulatory agency be more in the pocket of the industries it is supposed to oversee?
When the FDA approves genetically modified salmon, you would think that it would, at least, be possible to avoid it. Certainly, any producer of non-GM salmon would be sure to label it, since the vast majority of people want to know. However, in the Monsanto-controlled FDA, what the people want has little to do with what they get. The agency will not allow foods to be labeled as non-genetically engineered, and excuses are as absurd as can be imagined.
The FDA’s Claims
Only Following the Law
The FDA claims that there is no material difference between genetically engineered foods and their natural counterparts. Apparently, the inclusion of genes from other species in every single cell in the organism doesn’t amount to a ‘material difference
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Friday, February 8th, 2013
LAURA BASSETT, - The Huffington Post
Stephan: This is the second of these pieces. I am running together because I think scale is important to understanding why I see this as a trend.
North Dakota has only one abortion clinic and has been rated the worst state in the country for women, but the State Senate passed two bills on Thursday will make it even more difficult for women in the state to access abortion care.
North Dakota lawmakers passed a Personhood Constitutional Amendment initiative on Thursday that would amend the state’s constitution to give legal rights and protections to human embryos. If the ballot initiative passes the House, North Dakota voters will decide on it during the 2014 elections.
‘We are intending that it be a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, since Scalia said that the Supreme Court is waiting for states to raise a case,’ state Sen. Margaret Sitte (R), the sponsor of the personhood initiative, told HuffPost.
The Senate also passed a bill on Thursday that could shut down the North Dakota’s one abortion clinic, the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, by requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. A similar law in Mississippi is currently threatening to close the only clinic in that state because the hospitals near the Jackson clinic are all refusing the applications of doctors who perform abortions.
Sitte said that while the bill […]
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Friday, February 8th, 2013
DAVID EDWARDS, - The Raw Story
Stephan: This and the following article have just appeared. And there are several more similar stories, all showing this trend: the attack on the ability of a woman to control her body. It constitutes the rejection of the idea that people own and control their own bodies. I see it as an 'unalienable right.'
What is particularly notable about these attacks is that they are 100 per cent the efforts of Republicans. It isn't so much that any given bill will, or will not become law, but that the assault on personal liberty is constant. It is very hard for me to see how a woman can be a Republican, although I know many are.
A bill introduced by nine Republican state lawmakers in Iowa on Wednesday would define abortion as ‘murder,
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Friday, February 8th, 2013
Stephan: I live on a rural island off the coast of Washington State, and for much of my young life lived in the rural Virginia Tidewater county of Gloucester. For four years I lived on a bus travelling the United States and Canada. All these experiences taught me why the Post Office is the only non-military guaranteed government service agency mentioned in the Constitution.
Post offices are gathering places in rural areas; they are the place for posting community events; they link a community together. And these functions have not been replaced by the digital world. Maybe some day but, at least in America, not now, or in the foreseeable future. Our aging, archaic infrastructure is deteriorating with increasing rapidity.
Only around 74 percent of the nation's adults had Internet access in their homes in 2010, the last year for which we have data, and 6 percent are still relying solely on dial-up Internet connections to go online, according to a Federal Communications Commission report that looked at broadband access. That means for rural families and businesses the Post Office remains a critically important lifeline.
As this report makes clear Congresspersons from the Right, who are the servants of their corporate masters, are trying to destroy the Post Office so it can be privatized. Just as is happening with the prison and educational systems. Once again, only citizen outrage and voting will stop this.
You know that feeling of pleasure you get when you see someone stand up to a bullying, incompetent boss? It’s viscerally satisfying, isn’t it?
That’s the way I felt this morning when I heard Postmaster General Patrick Donahue announce that the U.S. Postal Service intended to move forward with a plan to stop Saturday delivery of mail, effective sometime in August. In doing so, Donahue stuck his thumb in the eye of the U.S. Congress, the mail agency’s ultimate boss. Bravo, Mr. Donahue.
You may think I have incorrectly identified the incompetent party here. After all, it’s a deeply ingrained part of Americans’ worldview that our postal service is the epitome of inefficiency and bad management, the perfect example of a bungling, poorly run government bureaucracy. That view gets reinforced from all kinds of sources – jaded journalists, editorial cartoonists given more to clichés than to cleverness, free-market economists, and others.
And it’s certainly true that the Postal Service faces serious problems. Mail volume is falling. The organization’s annual deficits are rising. The postal system is slowly circling the drain. If you pay any attention to postal issues, you’re familiar with some of the proximate causes of these problems: Email is eroding […]
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