VOTER SUPPRESSION BILLS FAST-TRACKED IN TALLAHASSEE

VOTER SUPPRESSION BILLS FAST-TRACKED IN TALLAHASSEE
by Kindra Muntz, President
Sarasota Alliance for Fair Elections (SAFE)

Citizens groups from all over the state rallied yesterday in opposition to two voter suppression bills being fast-tracked through the Florida legislature.

Voter Suppression – for all the details click here.

Keep your calls going to legislators all over the state to VOTE NO on SB 956 and House companion bill PCB-EDCA 09-08.

Be sure to call House Speaker Larry Cretul  850-488-1450 and Senate President Jeff Atwater 850-487-5100 to stop the bills from going to the floor of the House and Senate, which could happen as early as Tuesday, April 21st in the House and Wednesday, April 22nd in the Senate.

Call your Representative and Senator to VOTE NO on the bills if they get to the floor.

FIND YOUR REPRESENTATIVE AND SENATOR HERE:

List of House of Representatives

http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Representatives/representatives.aspx?SessionId=61

List of Senators
http://www.flsenate.gov/Legislators/index.cfm?Tab=legislators&CFID=129871154&CFTOKEN=38926163

Call Representative Dorothy Hukill at 850-488-6653, the presenter of the bill in the House, to withdraw her sponsorship.
Call Senator J.D. Alexander at 850-487-5044 and Senator Alex Diaz de la Portilla at 850-487-5109 to withdraw their sponsorship of the Senate bill.

Then call Governor Charlie Crist at 850-488-4441 to VETO the bill, no matter how it is amended, if it gets to his desk.

These bills are bad for voters, bad for election integrity, and bad for democracy.

 

Sections of Tennessee’s Emory River Contaminated by Billion-Gallon Toxic Sludge Spill!

A coal ash waste dumping pond in Tennessee ruptured this past December, unleashing toxic substances known to cause cancer, birth defects and other health problems in animals and humans.

Despite this horrendous accident and the ecological threat posed by coal ash waste, the EPA is not doing anything to regulate it! Take action >>

As a result of the spill, 1 billion gallons of sludge containing the heavy metals arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium were leaked into the Emory River. What’s more, there are more than 1,300 dump sites similar to the one that failed in Tennessee, putting innumerable areas in danger!

It is the EPA’s job to regulate chemicals and protect human health by safeguarding the natural environment. Urge the EPA to regulate coal ash waste that threatens water supplies and human health >>

Coal ash waste isn’t just detrimental to people. It is also responsible for diminishing populations of birds and frogs near dumping areas. The remaining animals are at risk of developmental problems, like tadpoles without teeth and fish with deformed spines.

Thank you for speaking up on behalf of ecosystems that lay in the shadow of unregulated coal plants!

 

Chilling? You Betcha!

By Dana Milbank CLEARWATER, Fla. — “Okay, so Florida, you know that you’re going to have to hang onto your hats,” Sarah Palin told a rally of a few thousand here this morning, “because from now until Election Day it may get kind of rough.”

You betcha. And the person dishing out the roughest stuff at the moment is Sarah Palin.

“I was reading my copy of the New York Times the other day,” she said.

“Booooo!” replied the crowd.

“I knew you guys would react that way, okay,” she continued. “So I was reading the New York Times and I was really interested to read about Barack’s friends from Chicago.”

It was time to revive the allegation, made over the weekend, that Obama “pals around” with terrorists, in this case Bill Ayers, late of the Weather Underground. Many independent observers say Palin’s allegations are a stretch; Obama served on a Chicago charitable board with Ayers, now an education professor, and has condemned his past activities.

“Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” Palin said.

“Boooo!” said the crowd.

“And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'” she continued.

“Boooo!” the crowd repeated.

“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.

Palin went on to say that “Obama held one of the first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers’s living room, and they’ve worked together on various projects in Chicago.” Here, Palin began to connect the dots. “These are the same guys who think that patriotism is paying higher taxes — remember that’s what Joe Biden had said. “And” — she paused and sighed — “I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America, as the greatest force for good in the world. I’m afraid this is someone who sees America as ‘imperfect enough’ to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country.”

What’s chilling is this republican campaign stirs up hate and racism and incites violence, nay, murder: and then does not condemn the behavior of their constituents.

I am embarrassed and frightened for Florida, for the republicans and for America.  I can see why the world thinks badly of us at this point.

Go to the polls and vote for America, Vote Obama.

 

Public outcry brings proposed change to the rules for the slaughter of food.

Public outcry brings proposed change to the rules for the slaughter of food.  Lets hope this new rule is approved.

See our previous articles on this issue here:

Clinton and 2007 Food Safety Plan

Warning, You WILL think about this next time you eat Beef!

How safe is our food supply? Things you need to know!

Will our table food be any safer now?

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) today [27 Aug 2008]  announced a proposed rule to amend the Federal meat inspection regulations to initiate a complete ban on the slaughter of cattle that become non-ambulatory after initial inspection by Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) inspection program personnel.

This proposed rule follows the 20 May 2008 announcement by secretary of agriculture Ed Schafer to remove the provision that states that the FSIS inspection program will determine the disposition of cattle that become non-ambulatory and disabled after they have passed ante-mortem before slaughter inspection on a case-by-case basis. Under the proposed rule, all cattle that are non-ambulatory and disabled at any time prior to slaughter, including those that become non-ambulatory disabled after passing ante-mortem inspection, will be condemned and properly disposed of.

“To maintain consumer confidence in the food supply, eliminate further misunderstanding of the rule and, ultimately, to make a positive impact on the humane handling of cattle, I believe it is sound policy to simplify this matter by initiating a complete ban on the slaughter of downer cattle,” said agriculture secretary Ed Schafer.

On 13 Jul 2007, FSIS published the final rule, “Prohibition of the Use of Specified Risk Materials for Human Food and Requirements for the Disposition of Non-Ambulatory Disabled Cattle; Prohibition of the Use of Certain Stunning Devices Used To Immobilize Cattle During Slaughter,” (SRM final rule). The SRM final rule allowed a case-by-case re-inspection of cattle to address the rare situations where an animal that is deemed by FSIS as fit for human food at ante-mortem inspection subsequently suffers an acute injury.

Under the proposed rule, cattle that become non-ambulatory disabled from an acute injury after ante-mortem inspection will no longer be eligible to proceed to slaughter as “US Suspects.” Instead, FSIS inspectors will tag these cattle as “US condemned” and prohibit these animals from proceeding to slaughter. Establishments will be required to notify FSIS personnel when cattle become disabled after passing ante-mortem inspection.

Of the nearly 34 million cattle that were slaughtered in 2007, less than 1000 cattle that were re-inspected were actually approved by the veterinarian for slaughter. This represents less than 0.003 per cent of cattle slaughtered annually.

Comments on this proposed rule must be received on or before 29 Sep 2008. Comments can be sent to Docket Clerk, US Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service, Room 2534 South Agriculture Building, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250; emailed to <fsis.regulationscomments@fsis.usda.gov>, or submitted through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <http://www.regulations.gov>. All submissions received by mail or electronic mail must reference the Food Safety and Inspection Service and include the docket number FSIS-2008-0022.

For further technical information on the proposed rule, contact Dr Daniel Engeljohn, Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Policy and Program Development, at (202) 205 0495 or by fax at (202) 720 2025.

Source: US Department of Agriculture [edited]
<http://www.regulations.gov>

 

Anthrax Attack: Revelations of 2001

Source: The New York Times [edited]

8-12-08 On Wednesday [6 Aug 2008], the United States Justice Department revealed its evidence that Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, on his own, committed the worst act of bio-terrorism in the country’s history. This 18-year veteran scientist of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., is accused of killing 5 people and sickening 17 others in the fall of 2001. Dr. Ivins died on 29 Jul 2008 of an apparent suicide without a chance to give his side of the story.

After reading the affidavits and listening to the Justice Department briefing, I was both disheartened and perplexed by the lack of physical evidence supporting a conviction Dr. Ivins was a friend and colleague of mine for nearly 16 years. We worked together at Fort Detrick. He was a senior scientist, and I was, first, a bench scientist and, from 1999 to 2003, the chief of the bacteriology division.

The Justice Department has presented different types of evidence to support its argument that Dr. Ivins was the person who mailed anthrax to Tom Brokaw, Tom Daschle and others in September and October of 2001. Much of this evidence is outside the realm of science: Dr. Ivins’s alleged fixation with a sorority; strange comments in excerpts from his e-mail messages; a connection to a Greendale school that might or might not explain the fictitious return address on anthrax mailings. I will not address these points beyond noting that they are highly circumstantial. As a scientist, however, I feel compelled to comment on what should have been the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s strongest link between Dr. Ivins and the terrible crime: deadly anthrax spores. In the summary of its findings, the FBI states that investigators used 4 different genetic techniques to match the anthrax-laced attack letters to a unique DNA footprint of a single anthrax spore preparation in one flask that had been in Dr. Ivins’s custody….read more of this revealing story and why questions remain

 

So, when did you hear about this, and is anything going to be done about it?

Seymour Hersh recently reported that Vice President Dick Cheney and his staffers once discussed having Navy SEALs dress up as Iranian sailors and then attack American ships. Behold the massive press coverage.

EXCLUSIVE: To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them

Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.

In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.

During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

Hersh argued that one of the things the Bush administration learned during the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz was that, “if you get the right incident, the American public will support” it.

“Look, is it high school? Yeah,” Hersh said. “Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We’re playing, you know, who’s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.”

 

Gasoline prices: despite rising prices and growing demand, refineries are again cutting back their capacity-building plans.

Gasoline prices

What impacts U.S. consumers and voters most directly is the price of gasoline and diesel fuel, not only because of what they pay at the pump but also because higher fuel costs raise the price of many consumer goods. Fuel price hikes can be a major drag on the whole economy.

Gas prices are most politically relevant because they are a sharp pain that voters will be feeling this summer and fall, before they vote. All three candidates (and even President Bush) seem to “get” this. But the summer holiday for the 18.4-cent federal excise tax on gasoline proposed by Clinton and McCain will not, in the view of the experts and the media, do much more than slightly numb the voters before their wallets are amputated. [For stories, here’s one from NPR; one from the New York Times, and one from Newsweek.]

With Democrats and Republicans both split on the gas tax holiday, the chances of it passing a narrowly-divided Congress in an election year seem close to nil. The biggest danger, from all three candidates’ perspective, is that the public may conclude that they have proposed nothing serious or substantial to address gas prices. During the time since McCain proposed the gas-tax holiday, the price of gasoline has actually risen more than the 18.4 cents worth of tax relief it would offer, according to the Energy Information Administration.

That it will do nothing to solve the problem is a given that even McCain admits. The danger to candidates is that it will do nothing to get them elected. If Congress passed a tax holiday and the price of gas stayed flat (because of a rise in the underlying commodity price) or went up, the tactic could boomerang.

The price of gasoline at the end of April 2008, averaged over the whole U.S., was about $3.60 — up about $0.63 from a year earlier. Even worse was the price of diesel, $4.17 — up $1.36 from a year earlier.

As for crude oil prices, experts estimate that the cost of crude oil accounts for anywhere from 46 percent of the retail price of refined gasoline to 72 percent. Obviously, the numbers are fuzzy. The looseness of the linkage between wholesale oil and retail gasoline prices raises questions. Journalists might well ask whether oil companies, refiners, distributors, and retailers are taking advantage of the situation. But they rarely do ask.

While crude prices are a factor, most experts would agree that tightly limited U.S. refinery capacity is also a big factor in pushing domestic gasoline prices higher.

Less easy to answer: why is refinery capacity limited and what can be done about it?

Environmentalists and consumer advocates tend to argue that companies are colluding and dragging their feet on purpose — since high gas and diesel prices help profits. Companies blame government regulations.

There are grounds for skepticism. Utility and gas transmission companies first blamed the California “energy crisis” of 2001 on clean air and market regulation, too. Few news media questioned this explanation. But it turned out to be totally untrue, and a cover for billions of dollars worth illegal market manipulation by companies like Enron.

The Nieman Watchdog has previously raised the question of whether there may be manipulation or collusion in the U.S. gasoline market. [Click here and here.]

Some numbers: In 1981, there were 324 refineries with a total capacity of 18.6 million barrels per day, according to the EIA. As of 2007, there were 149, with a capacity of 17.4 bpd.

It is no secret that the industry deliberately shut refineries to improve profits in recent decades. Industry says it is now building new capacity at existing plants – but despite rising prices and growing demand, refineries are again cutting back their capacity-building plans.

Joseph A. Davis has been writing about the environment, energy, and natural resources for 30 years. READ THE WHOLE DOWN AND DIRTY HERE.

 

Virus kills Chile’s salmon and indicts its fish farming methods

Source: The New York Times [edited]
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/world/americas/27salmon.html>

Virus kills Chile’s salmon and indicts its fish farming methods

Looking out over the low green mountains jutting through miles of
placid waterways here [Puerto Montt] in southern Chile, it is hard to
imagine that anything could be amiss. But beneath the rows of neatly
laid netting around the fish farms just off the shore, the salmon are dying.A virus called infectious salmon anemia, or ISA, is killing millions
of salmon destined for export to Japan, Europe, and the United
States. The spreading plague has sent shivers through Chile’s
3rd-largest export industry, which has left local people embittered
by laying off more than 1000 workers.

It has also opened the companies to fresh charges from biologists and
environmentalists who say that the breeding of salmon in crowded
underwater pens is contaminating once-pristine waters and producing
potentially unhealthy fish.

Some say the industry is raising its fish in ways that court
disaster, and producers are coming under new pressure to change their
methods to preserve southern Chile’s cobalt blue waters for tourists
and other marine life.

“All these problems are related to an underlying lack of sanitary
controls,” said Dr Felipe C Cabello, a professor in the Department of
Microbiology and Immunology at New York Medical College in Valhalla
that has studied Chile’s fishing industry. “Parasitic infections,
viral infections, fungal infections are all disseminated when the
fish are stressed and the centers are too close together.”

Industry executives acknowledge some of the problems, but they reject
the notion that their practices are unsafe for consumers. American
officials also say the new virus is not harmful to humans.

But the latest outbreak has occurred after a rash of nonviral
illnesses in recent years that the companies acknowledge have led
them to use high levels of antibiotics. Researchers say the practice
is widespread in the Chilean industry, which is a mix of
international and Chilean producers. Some of those antibiotics, they
say, are prohibited for use on animals in the United States.

Many of those salmon still end up in American grocery stores, where
about 29 percent of Chilean exports are destined. While fish from
China have come under special scrutiny in recent months, in Chile
regulators have yet to form a registry that even tracks the use of
the drugs, researchers said.

The article highlights the growing disparity between the need for
food, the need for industries to grow and produce for their country’s
needs, as well as for export. It also highlights the growing
disparity between what is considered harmful. Perhaps there is not
enough information to know if ISA is harmful to humans. However, it
has been determined by the US FDA as well as by the European Union
that the antibiotics used to combat diseases in captive raised fish
has, in many cases, been banned.

 

Merck & Co. and Schering-Plough Corp. are telling physicians to ignore research

Merck, Schering Call on Doctors to Boost Vytorin Use (Update1)

By Michelle Fay Cortez and Shannon Pettypiece

March 27 (Bloomberg) — Merck & Co. and Schering-Plough Corp. are telling physicians to ignore research showing their jointly marketed cholesterol-drug Vytorin failed to halt progression of artery disease. It’s unlikely they will listen.

Preliminary findings of the study, called Enhance and released in January, drove Vytorin prescriptions down 18 percent and slashed $49 billion from the drugmakers’ market value. In an effort to retain the pill’s $2.8 billion in annual sales, Merck and Schering-Plough are doing the unprecedented: discrediting research they funded and helped design.

The trial, intended to show Vytorin can reduce artery clogging, was created to help the drug compete against Pfizer Inc.’s Lipitor for a share of the $35 billion worldwide cholesterol market. The failure of Vytorin to outperform an older drug means doctors have little reason to use it. The final report, to be presented Sunday at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Chicago, won’t help, researchers say.

“The study results aren’t going to influence practice much,” said Randy Thomas, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “The question we’re asking is does it lower heart attack risk. We won’t know that from Enhance.”

Sekar Kathiresan, director of preventive cardiology at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, says research may eventually show that Vytorin and Zetia, one of the two medicines that make up Vytorin, will prevent heart attacks, strokes and death. Until studies prove that, he plans to rely on older so- called statins like Lipitor and simvastatin, a generic version of Merck’s Zocor, the other component in Vytorin

Again, statements like these show that big Pharma does not care as long as they make the bucks!

 

Clinton and 2007 Food Safety Plan

The record recall Sunday of 143 MILLION POUNDS of beef has caught the attention of the media…finally. Some of that beef cannot be found and the reason suspected is that it was fed to our children in the public schools. Mind you some of this beef comes from what is called “downed” cattle. (cattle that lost the ability to walk were slaughtered and introduced into the food chain without being examined for chronic illness by an inspector) Some people have commented “so what, cows are food what does it matter?”. But it is very important to keep downed cattle out of the human food chain. The animals have weaker immune systems, could have a serious illness , and sometimes wallow in feces, raising the risk of contamination with serious diseases for humans. Mad cow ring any bells for you folks? Twelve of the 15 cases of mad cow disease in North America were linked to downed animals. Downed animals are also three times more likely to carry E. coli, and according to one analysis presented at the American Meat Institute conference, 14% of downed cows carried salmonella.

In January, the Humane Society of the United States accused Westland/Hallmark of abusing “downed” cattle. The Humane Society released video that showed workers kicking cows, jabbing them near their eyes, ramming them with a forklift and shooting high-pressure water up their noses in an effort to force them to their feet for slaughter. Watch video of cows being abused »

About 37 million pounds of the recalled meat went to school lunch programs and other federal nutrition programs since October 2006, said Ron Vogel of the USDA‘s Food and Nutrition Service.

It should be everyone’s concern that our food supply be very safe! We need more inspectors and we need the existing laws to be inforced!

Hillary Clinton is a cosponsor of the 2007 Safe Food Act. Barack Obama and McCain are not. The Senate and House versions of the 2007 Safe Food Act, is bill that would among many things increase the number of inspectors, increase the frequency for inspections, provide the funding for same, and consolidate food safety responsibilities among organizations (FDA, USDA, etc.).

Although Obama has said he would support food safety and has now released a statement on that, it is pretty much the same thing that Hillary Clinton cosponsored in the 2007 SFA. Good, at least the Dems are on the same page.

2/18/2008

Hillary Clinton Unveils Food Safety Plan

Following the largest beef recall in our nation’s history, Hillary Clinton highlighted a series of food safety proposals she would pursue as President. This recall is not an isolated case – it is yet another troubling reminder that our food supply is at risk. Each year, tens of millions of Americans contract food-borne illnesses every year; hundreds of thousands are hospitalized; and thousands die. And the risks are only growing. Last year alone, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) oversaw 21 recalls related to E. coli in meat, compared with just eight in 2006. One of those recalls involved more than 20 million pounds of ground beef that caused nearly 100 illnesses in the United States and Canada. In addition, yesterday’s recall by Hallmark/Westland is the second-largest supplier to the U.S. School Lunch program and a substantial supplier to other federal food and nutrition initiatives.

Hillary believes that American families should not have to worry about the safety of food on their dinner tables or in their children’s school lunches. That is why she has proposed common-sense – and long-overdue – food safety reforms, building on her work in the Senate. As President, she will: