Saturday, June 28th, 2014
SCOTT KAUFMAN, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Almost every day I see stories like this one. They make it clear that something very strange and unexpected has happened to American democracy: One of the parties has been taken over by loons and morons. People who are demonstrably challenged mentally and emotionally, and whose principle emotions appear to be fear and anger. I am just going to run two of these stories in today's edition but you can take them as examplars of a much bigger trend. It is quite notable and almost entirely a phenomenon of the Theocratic Right. This is one of the main reasons the Congress has become a dysfunctional institution productive of almost nothing positive.
It is easy to laugh, and I did, but it is a serious symptom of American decline.
The loser in a recent Republican primary is claiming that his opponent, Oklahoma Representative Frank Lucas, is unqualified for office because he has been replaced by a robot.
Timothy Ray Murray posted a press release – addressed to ‘News Person” – in which he demanded the Oklahoma Board of Elections shift votes from Rep. Lucas to him on account of the fact that ‘it is widely known Rep. Frank D. Lucas is no longer alive and has been displayed [sic] by a look alike.”
Murray claimed that Rep. Lucas was ‘executed by The World Court on or about Jan. 11, 2011 in Southern Ukraine. On television they were depicted as being executed by the hanging about the neck until death on a white stage and in front of witnesses.”
He stated that while ‘it is possible to use look alike artificial or man-made replacements,” such ‘replacements” are not human, and therefore ineligible to serve in office. He also assured the board that he ‘will NEVER use Artificial Intelligence look alike to voice what The Representative’s Office is doing nor own a robot look alike.”
‘Many things have been said about me, said to me during course of my campaigns,” Rep. Lucas told KFOR. ‘This […]
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Saturday, June 28th, 2014
DAVE GILSON, - Mother Jones
Stephan: The corporate media either doesn't seem to know or doesn't care, that all the screaming coming out of the Red value states about the need for small government obscures the fact that those same states could not function if they were not propped up with the tax money of the Blue value states. If a state like Mississippi did not have Federal socialism, they would be third world countries. As it is so poor is their governance by the Rightists that even with support they are failures.
Click through to see the various maps.
States receiving the most federal funding per tax dollar paid:
1. New Mexico: $2.63
2. West Virginia: $2.57
3. Mississippi: $2.47
4. District of Colombia: $2.41
5. Hawaii: $2.38
6. Alabama: $2.03
7. Alaska: $1.93
8. Montana: $1.92
9. South Carolina: $1.92
10. Maine: $1.78
It’s no secret: The federal budget is expanding faster than tax revenues, a trend that’s been fueled by the rapid growth of entitlement programs and exacerbated by the recession. As a recent New York Times article documents, even as fiscally conservative lawmakers complain about deficit spending, their constituents don’t want to give up the Social Security checks, Medicare benefits, and earned income tax credits that provide a safety net for the struggling middle class.
This gap between political perception and fiscal reality is also reflected in the distribution of tax dollars at the state level: Most politically “red” states are financially in the red when it comes to how much money they receive from Washington compared with what their residents pay in taxes.
A look at 2010 Census and IRS data reveals that the 50 states and the District of Columbia, on average, received $1.29 in federal spending for every federal tax dollar they paid. That means that […]
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Saturday, June 28th, 2014
JANET ALLON, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: The hypocrisy of the Supreme Court has nowhere been more evident than in this decision about women's health clinics. A country cannot have a proper fair Justice system when this is the way the highest jurists in the land behave.
Here’s a nice little piece of irony to get your blood boiling. It concerns buffer zones and the Supreme Court. On Thursday, the Court ruled that women seeking abortions and healthcare in Massachusetts are no longer entitled to the 35 foot buffer zones where they can enter and exit unmolested by right-to-lifers.
The Roberts Court said that the 35 foot buffer zone violates the protestors’ First Amendment rights.
But pro-choice advocates have pointed out that the Supreme Court recognizes the value of buffer zones, because the high court itself enjoys a rather large one-way larger than 35 foot buffer zone in Massachusetts the Justices ruled unconstitutional.
The plaza between the Court’s entrance and the sidewalk is subject to a number of rules banning activity that “is reasonably likely to draw a crowd or onlookers” and saying these rules are necessary “to maintain suitable order and decorum within the Supreme Court building and grounds.”
The plaza is at least five times as big as the 35 foot buffer zone.
Of course, legally speaking, the Supreme Court might not stand up to the test either, but no one has yet litigated it.
Some of the background, according to Vox [3]:
In the 1983 […]
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Saturday, June 28th, 2014
Carey Gillam, Reporter - Reuters
Stephan: Here is some modestly good bee news, and may it prosper. Maybe this trend of decline is going to be arrested. It will depend on whether neonic or neonicotinoid toxins are pulled from the market as DDT was. We are much more corrupt as a country than we were in the DDT era, so we'll see whether the political will to do that can be mustered.
Home Depot and other U.S. companies are working to eliminate or limit use of a type of pesticide suspected of helping cause dramatic declines in honeybee populations needed to pollinate key American crops, officials said on Wednesday.
The moves include requiring suppliers to label any plants treated with neonicotinoid, or neonic, pesticides sold through home and garden stores.
Atlanta-based Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer, is requiring its suppliers to start such labeling by the fourth quarter of this year, said Ron Jarvis, the company’s vice president of merchandising/sustainability. Home Depot is also running tests in several states to see if suppliers can eliminate neonics in their plant production without hurting plant health, he said.
“The Home Depot is deeply engaged in understanding the relationship of the use of certain insecticides on our live goods and the decline in the honeybee population,” Jarvis said in an email.
Also on Wednesday, BJ’s Wholesale Club [BJ.UL], a warehouse retailer with more than 200 locations along the East Coast, said it was asking all of its vendors to provide plants free of neonics by the end of 2014 or to label such products as requiring “caution around pollinators” like bees.
At least 10 other smaller retailers, […]
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TARA CULP-RESSLER, - Think Progress
Stephan: This is a story of blatant corporate evil. It is a form of deliberate slow mass murder. That we tolerate it ought to embarrass us.
Click through to see the accompanying illustrations which are very helpful.
Fifty years ago, the U.S. surgeon general tied tobacco to lung cancer for the first time. Since then, additional scientific research has linked smoking with a host of other health issues, and efforts to publicize those harmful side effects helped spur a historic decline in the number of Americans who regularly smoke. Nonetheless, more than 42 million adults remain addicted to cigarettes, and the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that tobacco is still the greatest public health challenge of our time.
Why is tobacco still at the top of the CDC’s list? Why haven’t we moved past this yet? Largely because cigarette manufacturers have worked hard to keep their products relevant even in the midst of aggressive public health campaigns to crack down on smoking, according to a new report released on Monday by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
The cigarettes sold today are quite different from the cigarettes that were on the market five decades ago, according to the new report, and that’s because tobacco companies have done extensive research to figure out how to make smoking appealing for new customers. They’ve essentially made it easier to get hooked on their products by increasing the […]
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