Posts Tagged ‘Government’
Bill Maher on Vaccination: A Conversation Worth Having
Bill Maher writes on his blog:
While America is still in the grips of swine flu mania, let me use this opportunity to clear up a few things about my beliefs concerning the flu shot, vaccines, and health in general. I do this because there is obviously a lot of curiosity about this subject of vaccines — it comes up in every interview I do these days, and I’ve been finding that people, including doctors, are privately expressing a skepticism that is still not very prevalent in public. I feel like I’ve become a confessor for people who want someone to be raising questions about vaccines.
But I don’t want the job. I agree with my critics who say there are far more qualified people than me — its just that mainstream media rarely interviews doctors and scientists who present an alternative point of view…
Pervasive Plastics: Why the U.S. Needs New and Tighter Controls
John Wargo writes on Yale Environment 360:
Since 1950, plastics have quickly and quietly entered the lives and bodies of most people and ecosystems on the planet. In the United States alone, more than 100 billion pounds of resins are formed each year into food and beverage packaging, electronics, building products, furnishings, vehicles, toys, and medical devices. In 2007, the average American purchased more than 220 pounds of plastic, creating nearly $400 billion in sales.
It is now impossible to avoid exposure to plastics. They surround and pervade our homes, bodies, foods, and water supplies, from the plastic diapers and polyester pajamas worn by our children to the cars we drive and the frying pans in which we cook our food.
The ubiquitous nature of plastics is a significant factor in an unexpected…
The Real Deficit Hawks: Where’s the Outrage Over the Defense Budget?
David Sirota writes on Salon:
Let’s say you’re a congressperson or “tea party” leader looking to champion deficit reduction — a cause 38 percent of Americans tell pollsters they support. And let’s say you’re deciding whether to back two pieces of imminent legislation.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the first bill’s spending provisions cost $100 billion annually and its tax and budget-cutting provisions recoup $111 billion annually, thus reducing total federal expenditures by $11 billion each year. The second bill proposes $636 billion in annual spending and recoups nothing. Over 10 years, the first bill would spend $1 trillion and recover $1.11 trillion — a fantastic return on taxpayer investment. Meanwhile, the second bill puts us on a path to spend $6.3 trillion in the same time.
Save $110 billion, or…
Afghanistan and the “Other” Vietnam War
From Truthout:
When discussing the Vietnam War or comparing it to America’s other conflicts, such as the current one in Afghanistan, the “other” Vietnam War is rarely mentioned. This is very unfortunate, because it might be just the correct path to pursue in seeking a peaceful solution.
And much like President Barack Obama, who inherited the hostilities in Afghanistan, then-President Johnson inherited the Vietnam War. As the war dragged on, some personal aides claimed Johnson was never more ecstatic over Vietnam than when pledging to send billions of dollars to help toward construction and agricultural projects and the economic growth of Southeast Asia and the Mekong River region.
[Read more at Truthout]
First U.S. Marijuana Cafe Opens in Portland
From Reuters:
The United States’ first marijuana cafe opened on Friday, posing an early test of the Obama administration’s move to relax policing of medical use of the drug.The Cannabis Cafe in Portland, Oregon, is the first to give certified medical marijuana users a place to get hold of the drug and smoke it — as long as they are out of public view — despite a federal ban.
“This club represents personal freedom, finally, for our members,” said Madeline Martinez, Oregon’s executive director of NORML, a group pushing for marijuana legalization.
“Our plans go beyond serving food and marijuana,” said Martinez. “We hope to have classes, seminars, even a Cannabis Community College, based here to help people learn about growing and other uses for cannabis.”
The cafe — in a two-story building which…
Feds Charge $522K for FOIA Request
From Wired:
The Treasury Department wants more than $500,000 to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request, a fee an attorney on the case suggested Tuesday might be one of the largest bills of its kind.
“I have not seen one that has been larger,” said Noah Wood, a Missouri attorney suing the government to comply with his nearly four-year-old FOIA request.
The Treasury Department, Wood said, is “downright telling us where we can stick it.”
Wood wants the government to produce documents he hopes show where are perhaps millions of dollars of once-frozen assets of a former Libyan-backed company in the United States, which Wood says owes his law firm legal fees. To that end, he is suing the government (.pdf) to comply with the FOIA request and to reduce the bill.
Still, the…
Judge Bans South Carolina Christian License Plate
From BBC News:
A US judge has ordered South Carolina not to issue a vehicle number plate with a Christian image and slogan.
The state legislature had approved a licence plate with a cross in front of a stained glass window and the words “I Believe” written along the top.
District Judge Cameron Currie said that the plate violated the First Amendment, which enshrines the separation of church and state.
A similar bid by a group in Florida last year did not pass state lawmakers.
‘Unconstitutional’
The case was brought by Americans United, which backs the separation of church and state, on behalf of several individuals and Hindu and American-Arab groups.
[Read more at BBC News]
U.S. Justice Dept. Asked for IndyMedia’s Visitor Lists
Kevin Bankston writes on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s website:
Can the U.S. government secretly subpoena the IP address of every visitor to a political website? No, but that didn’t stop it from trying.
In a report released today, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston tells the story of a bogus federal subpoena issued to independent news site Indymedia.us, and how the site fought back with EFF’s help. Declan McCullagh at CBSNews.com also has the story.
The report describes how, earlier this year, U.S. attorneys issued a federal grand jury subpoena to Indymedia.us administrator Kristina Clair demanding “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us” for a particular date, potentially identifying every person who visited any news story on the Indymedia site. As the report explains, this overbroad demand for internet records not only violated federal…
237 Millionaires in U.S. Congress
Brian Montopoli writes in CBS News’ Political Hotsheet:
Even in tough times, it’s good to be a lawmaker: According to a report released by the Center for Responsive Politics, there are 237 millionaires serving in Congress, according to 2008 figures.
That’s a slight decline from the previous year, when there were 239 millionaires in the House and Senate. But it still reflects the fact that the average lawmaker is far wealthier than his or her typical constituent. While about one percent of Americans are millionaires, 44 percent of those serving in Congress can claim as much.
“The biggest takeaway from all of this is that even thought the collective wealth of members of congress appears to have declined, members of Congress are still so much more wealthy than the average American — and…
Massive Defense Spending Leads to Job Loss
From Truthout:
There is a major national ad campaign, funded by the oil industry and other usual suspects, to convince the public that measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and slow global warming will result in massive job loss. This ad campaign warns of slower growth and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, possibly even millions of jobs, if some variation of the current proposals being debated by Congress get passed into law.
In fact, standard economic models do show that measures designed to reduce GHG by raising energy prices will lead to some cost in terms of slower economic growth. And slower economic growth implies fewer jobs, although the impact will almost certainly be less than indicated in these scare stories.
[Read more at Truthout]
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2014 or Bust: The Pentagon’s Building Boom in Afghanistan Indicates a Long War Ahead
From Truthout:
In recent weeks, President Obama has been contemplating the future of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. He has also been touting the effects of his policies at home, reporting that this year’s Recovery Act not only saved jobs, but also was “the largest investment in infrastructure since [President Dwight] Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s.” At the same time, another much less publicized U.S.-taxpayer-funded infrastructure boom has been underway. This one in Afghanistan.
While Washington has put modest funding into civilian projects in Afghanistan this year — ranging from small-scale power plants to “public latrines” to a meat market — the real construction boom is military in nature. The Pentagon has been funneling stimulus-sized sums of money to defense contractors to markedly boost its military infrastructure in that country.
In fiscal…
Wall Street Bonuses to Rise 40 Percent
Douglas A. McIntyre writes in MSN Money:
There has been plenty of evidence that firms like Goldman Sachs have had such huge profits that their bonus payouts may be at all-time highs.
The federal government has systematically begun to control bank pay packages. The Treasury “pay czar” is effectively controlling compensation at companies which still owe TARP money. The Fed is pressuring other large financial firms to tie pay to risk.
None of those efforts seems to be working well, because bankers are ignoring the signals from Washington.
A new compensation survey described in the Wall Street Journal predicts that Wall Street incentive pay will rise 40% this year. For those in the fixed-income part of the industry, the increase could be closer to 60%.
Data about pay packages will be available, in some cases, as…
Goldman Sachs and Citigroup Received Swine Flu Vaccine First
KAREN MATTHEWS writes on the AP via Google News:
Some of New York’s biggest companies, including Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, received doses of swine flu vaccine for at-risk employees, drawing criticism that the hard-to-find vaccine is going first to the privileged.
Hospitals, universities and the Federal Reserve Bank also got doses of the vaccine for employees who need it the most, such as pregnant women or chronically ill workers, according to the city’s health department.
In order to receive the vaccine, companies had to have their own medical staff. Distributing large doses of the vaccine to such businesses is “a great avenue for vaccinating people at risk,” said Jessica Scaperotti, spokeswoman for the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
But critics said Wall Street firms should not have access to…
