Plastics, once considered a great benefit, have now been revealed to be a dangerous pollutant. But, as this report shows, profit still trumps all other considerations, and all but 22 out of 147 plastics companies are failing to meet their commitment to end the damage they are doing. The Congress could, of course, compel them to do it, but it is too corrupt to do anything meaningful in a positive way that fosters wellbeing.
Plastic beverage bottles packed in polyethylene wrap in a warehouse. Credit: iStock / Getty
In a new report, the nonprofit As You Sow has found that of 147 companies with recyclability targets, only 22 are on track to meet their goals. In total, the report reviewed 225 companies and their progress toward plastic-related goals, with about half of companies receiving an “F” score.
The 2024 Plastic Promises Scorecard has revealed a gap between the plastic waste reduction goals that companies set and the actual actions they are making toward meeting those goals. The report evaluated companies on a total score based on their ambitions and their actions toward goals related to six pillars: recyclability, reduction, recycled content, recovery, reusable and extended producer responsibility. Ambitions counted toward 30% of the total score, while the actual actions companies were taking made up 70% of the final score.
“Plastic Promises Scorecard uses a first-of-its-kind scoring system to evaluate not just what companies say they will do to act on the plastics crisis, but […]
The strategists in the MAGAt Republican Party as a result of research done by scientists funded by oligarchs learned that one of the best ways to manipulate people is to stimulate fear and resentment. It is the hallmark of this party, and it is getting increasingly bizarre. The latest weaponization of misinformation is, believe it or not, the lie about drinking raw milk. You would think that any person with an IQ higher than their waist size would understand why milk is pasteurized, and the risks of drinking raw milk. But apparently, in MAGAt world no such understanding exists. As with the anti-vaxxer movement that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, the same fear strategy is being used with these Republica lies about milk, and it is playing out, as this report describes, in the same way.
Glass of spilled milk Credit: Max Milne / Getty
Ever vigilant about stoking fears among their constituents regarding the threat of governmental overreach, Republican leaders, as a form of political strategy, frequently crow about all the things liberals allegedly want to take away from working Americans. The White House is coming for their guns, they say, or perhaps their gas stoves — or even pints of raw milk that have potentially been contaminated with bird flu.
In early December, Sonoma County, California, declared an agricultural disaster when two poultry farms had to kill their entire flocks to try to stop “highly pathogenic avian influenza” — or bird flu — from spreading. This particular strain of bird flu, H5N1, had first been reported in the United States in early 2022 and since then, tens of millions of turkey and chickens at commercial farms have since been killed to try to suppress the outbreak.
Today, Clarence Thomas wrote the Supreme Court majority decision for Garland v. Cargill. No surprise, the majority was made up of the corrupt christofascist cabal that now controls one of the three branches of the U.S. government. It is a decision that I predict is going to result in a significant increase in gun murders. It once again makes bump stocks, a device that turns an ordinary AR-15 into a machine gun, legal. I think you are going to see gangs, mentally ill individuals, and White nationalist terrorists using this device and the result will be increased death. Thomas’ commentary on the majority decision is so stupid and factually wrong that I find it hard to believe any judge, let alone a Supreme Court justice, could write something like this. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing for the the three women of the minority in her commentary makes this very clear. Anyone who know anything about guns knows what bump stocks are and what they do. So, I suspect there is another issue underneath Thomas’ commentary. Maybe it is about supporting the civil violence that I believe will occur if criminal Trump loses. As I said though one thing is sure, there are going to be more gun deaths.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Alex Wong / Getty / supremecourt.gov.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is calling bullshit on her conservative colleagues’ rationale for throwing out a 2018 ban on bump stocks, the device used to modify the gun used in the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting—the deadliest in modern U.S. history. The Trump administration reclassified guns with bump stocks as machine guns, thereby banning the device’s use under a 1934 law that heavily restricts access to machine guns.
In Sotomayor’s dissent in Garland v. Cargill, which Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan joined, she called out how her conservative colleagues had basically bent over backwards to redefine the legal definition of a “machine gun.” She noted that these linguistic gymnastics are particularly galling given how much conservative jurists claim to prize textualism—a theory that stresses adhering closely to the plain text of the law and to the ordinary meaning of words.
To drive the point home, Sotomayor came with receipts: She quoted past opinions where each […]
Jake Johnson, Staff Writer - truthout / Common Dreams
Stephan:
The Illness Profit System that passes for healthcare in the United States is running amuck financially. Ours is already the most expensive and yet the most inferior healthcare system in the developed world. Also, it is highly racist. It is blatantly obvious that we should convert to universal single-payer birthright healthcare, like the other democracies in the world, but the United States Congress is so corrupt that I don’t see anything happening. Biden is doing what he can, but it is Congress that controls this issue, and if the Republicans have the majority in either house nothing will change. Big pharma, and the corporations that control hospitals, and insurance corporations don’t want any change, and since political bribery is legal in this country, nothing is likely to happen.
A federal analysis released this week projects that U.S. healthcare spending is set to rise to $7.7 trillion by 2032 and account for nearly 20% of the nation’s economy, findings that single-payer advocates described as yet another indictment of the country’s for-profit system and further evidence of the need for Medicare for All.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Office of the Actuary said Wednesday that it expects national healthcare expenditures to outpace U.S. economic growth over roughly the next decade, “resulting in an increase in the health spending share of GDP from 17.3% in 2022 to 19.7% in 2032.”
The CMS analysis showed that U.S. healthcare spending grew at a rate of 7.5% last year, with overall expenditures reaching $4.8 trillion. CMS said it projects health spending will rise by 5.6% annually over the coming years, with overall spending reaching $7.7 trillion by 2032.
Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement Thursday that the coming surge in healthcare spending “has nothing to do with improving care and everything to do with price-gouging, monopolization, […]
Kathleen Culliton, Assistant Managing Editor - Raw Story
Stephan:
As the Republican Congress members yesterday knelt to kiss criminal Trump’s ass, I wonder if his diaper was on or not. It is amazing that they are so frightened about losing their own office and power that they are willing to tolerate anything this convicted felon does. Congress and the Supreme Court have joined forces to remake the United States into christofascist White supremacy male dominant minority rule. And you can see that a large percentage of Americans have no idea what this will mean. As I have said again and again, it all comes down to the vote in November and I am not sure American voters are up to the task of protecting their democracy.
President Donald Trump at his plane Credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr
Former President Donald Trump has funneled nearly $5 million from his presidential campaign coffers into his private businesses, according to a new financial analysis.
Trump — convicted last month of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election — has yet to donate a cent to his own campaign but his businesses have charged it $4.6 million, Forbes reported Wednesday.
The former president, worth an estimated $6.4 billion, has been collecting donations from MAGA supporters across the U.S. with increasingly threatening rhetoric that, on Wednesday, raised the specter of mass beheadings.
“Haul out the guillotine,” Trump declared in his campaign cash-grab. “It’s not just me they want gone, THEY’RE REALLY COMING AFTER YOU!”
Forbes analysis of Federal Election Commission records found $4.2 million funneled to Trump’s aviation company Tag Air.
Trump’s private jet — which he claims is better […]
