New research takes a look at decades of corruption convictions to find the crookedest states in the union.

When we think of government corruption (as one tends to do), our biased minds often gravitate to thoughts of military juntas and third world governments. But, of course, corruption is everywhere, in one form or another. And it’s costing U.S. citizens big time.

A new study from researchers at the University of Hong Kong and Indiana University estimates that corruption on the state level is costing Americans in the 10 most corrupt states an average of $1,308 per year, or 5.2% of those states’ average expenditures per year.

The researchers studied more than 25,000 convictions of public officials for violation of federal corruption laws between 1976 and 2008 as well as patterns in state spending to develop a corruption index that estimates the most and least corrupt states in the union. Based on this method, the the most corrupt states are:

1. Mississippi
2. Louisiana
3. Tennessee
4. Illinois
5. Pennsylvania
6. Alabama
7. Alaska
8. South Dakota
9. Kentucky
10. Florida

That these places landed on the list isn’t exactly surprising. Illinois, which has gain notoriety for its high-profile corruption cases in recent years, is […]

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Here’s President Obama at a fundraiser Wednesday night for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Houston, Texas: “This has become the least productive Congress in modern history, recent memory. And that’s by objective measures, just basic activity.”

So, is he right? And, if he is, so what?

We’ve written extensively on the productivity debate in this space. So, let’s start with the facts first. And the facts are these: In terms of actual laws or bills passed, the 113th Congress is headed toward historic levels of unproductivity.

Here’s a comparison of how many laws the 113th has passed as compared to previous Congresses:

At the moment, according to the Federal Register, there have only been 23 public laws enacted in the second session of the 113th Congress — a number that virtually ensures that this Congress will pass the fewest number of laws of any in history. (It’s hard to imagine that, in an election year, Congress is going to go on a law-passing spree.)

Don’t like laws passed as a measure of productivity? How about bills passed — although this stat can be slightly misleading since not all bills are created equal with some mattering far more than others. Still, the […]

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It’s going to be a little more difficult to ferret out which members of Congress are lavished with all-expenses-paid trips around the world after the House has quietly stripped away the requirement that such privately sponsored travel be included on lawmakers’ annual financial-disclosure forms.

The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal. National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings.

“This is such an obvious effort to avoid accountability,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “There’s no legitimate reason. There’s no good reason for it.”

Free trips paid for by private groups must still be reported separately to the House’s Office of the Clerk and disclosed there. But they will now be absent from the chief document that reporters, watchdogs, and members of the public have used for decades to scrutinize lawmakers’ finances.

“The more you can hide, the less accountable you can be,” Sloan said […]

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Aiming to avoid a humanitarian crisis, Kiribati recently purchased land in Fiji – about 1,200 miles away – where its residents would be relocated in the event that sea-level rise drowns the Pacific island nation and displaces its population of just over 100,000 people.

With the steady creep of the Pacific along its shores, Kiribati, a collection of small atolls, already faces food and water shortages, as seawater contaminates limited supplies of groundwater for the people who live there. Some suspect that their island will be underwater within the next three decades, as sea levels rise about half an inch each year.

That might not sound like much, but the atolls that make up the country sit just a few feet above sea level, and that rise increases the risk of flooding from storms and sea swells.

Kiribati’s government purchased the land from the Church of England for $8.77 million in late May, Inter Press news agency reported. The news is being more widely reported this week.

The strip of land is about 8 square miles in area and heavily forested, according to The Guardian. It’s not clear when the people of Kiribati might begin their migration.

“We would hope not to put everyone […]

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Two studies published in the past six months reveal a disturbing finding: glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup® appear to suppress the growth of beneficial gut bacteria, leading to the overgrowth of extremely pathogenic bacteria.

Late last year, in an article titled Roundup Herbicide Linked to Overgrowth of Deadly Bacteria, we reported on new research indicating that glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup® may be contributing to the overgrowth of harmful bacteria, both in GM-produced food and our own bodies. By suppressing the growth of beneficial bacteria and encouraging the growth of pathogenic ones, including deadly botulism-associated Clostridum botulinum, GM agriculture may be contributing to the alarming increase, wordwide, in infectious diseases that are resistant to conventional antibiotics, such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which the CDC’s director recently termed a ‘nightmare bacteria.’
GMO Herbicides May Lead To The Overgrowth of Harmful Bacteria, Including Deadly Clostridum Botulinum

Now a new study published in the journal Anaerobe titled, “Glyphosate suppresses the antagonistic effect of Enterococcus spp. On Clostridum botulinum,” confirms this herbicide’s ability to adversely affect gut bacteria populations (i.e. generate dysbios).[i] In an attempt to explain why Clostridum botulinum associated diseases in cattle have increased during the last […]

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