Paul Buchheit - Five Preposterous, Persistent Conservative Myths

With the mainstream media in the hands of the mostly conservative wealthy, it's difficult for average Americans to learn the truth about critical issues. The following five conservative claims are examples of mythical beliefs that fall apart in the presence of inconvenient facts:

1. Entitlements are the Problem

Beyond the fact that we're 'entitled' to Social Security and Medicare because we pay for them, these two government-run programs have been largely self-sustaining while supporting the needs of millions of Americans.

Medicare is much less costly than private health care. Social Security, which functions with a surplus, would not be in danger of a long-term shortfall if the richest 10% (those making over the $106,800 cutoff) paid their full share.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/02-0

War On Women Taking Its Toll On The GOP

A new poll of battleground states out yesterday underscores the political consequences of the GOP’s all-out war on women and their health care.

The poll’s key findings:

• Among all registered voters, the president leads Mitt Romney 51 percent to 42 percent after trailing Romney by 2 points in the same poll last month.
• Among women under 50, the president leads Romney by a more than 2:1 margin. Romney’s support among this group of women has dropped 14 points in the last month and is down to just 30 percent, while the president’s support has ticked by an even larger margin.

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=148196

Jill Richardson - Forget the Farm Bill: Where We Should Set Our Sights This Year For Real Change

I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but I don't care about the 2012 farm bill. Here's why.

The sustainable food and agriculture movement has a lot of momentum and a lot of opportunities right now, but only limited resources in terms of lobbying power. The movement has a large amount of people who care, but a relatively small amount of money compared to entrenched agriculture interests. It has a few strategically placed sympathetic appointees and elected representatives in the government. But, unfortunately, Dennis Kucinich alone cannot pass the vastly revamped farm bill we need.

But outside of Washington, the ranks of those who care about localizing our food supply and making agriculture more sustainable are growing every day. After all, delicious food is a powerful recruiting tool. The sustainable food movement is not powerless. Not nearly. But the movement can make far more progress if it focuses its energy on more winnable issues. Focusing on the farm bill for the whole of 2012 will use up endless resources and result in relatively little gain.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/154718/forget_the_farm_bill%3A_where_we_should_set_our_sights_this_year_for_real_change

A new report by UHRP- Living on the Margins: The Chinese State’s Demolition of Uyghur Communities

A new 89-page report by the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) documents the Chinese state’s top-down destruction of Uyghur communities in Kashgar and throughout East Turkestan, in a targeted and highly politicized push that Chinese officials have accelerated in the wake of turbulent unrest in the region in 2009. Living on the Margins: The Chinese State’s Demolition of Uyghur Communities reveals how the destruction of Uyghur neighborhoods has resulted in the loss of both physical structures, including Uyghur homes, shops and religious sites, and patterns of traditional Uyghur life that cannot be replicated in the new, heavily-monitored Chinese-style apartment blocks where many have been forcibly relocated.

This report does not discount the importance of providing modern structural amenities to Uyghurs. However, it asserts a failure on the part of Chinese authorities to engage in meaningful consultation with Uyghurs regarding how they wish to transform their own communities. The report details the international and domestic legal instruments to which the Chinese government is bound that are designed to protect residents from forcible eviction from their homes and ensure that indigenous populations, such as the Uyghurs, have the right to develop according to their own principles.   

Read More:

http://uyghuramerican.org/article/new-report-uhrp-living-margins-chinese-state%E2%80%99s-demolition-uyghur-communities.html

Mark Karlin - Scalia Believes Innocent People Can Be Executed, So He's Not Going to Care About People Dying From Not Having Health Insurance

In 2000, most legal pundits said that Bush v. Gore would never make it the Supreme Court, because voting was a states' right issue. Boy, were they wrong.

In fact, many legal analysts and scholars prognosticate about Supreme Court behavior as if it were of a single mind looking at the Constitution and the law in a serious, scholarly way.

But that perspective of considering the law conscientiously in terms of precedent and the nation's founding legal document forgets one thing: four of the Supreme Court justices are total partisan hacks. Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts are activist right wing judges who decide many major cases for political reasons first - and then find twisted legal justifications for their decisions. Kennedy usually joins with them in major 5-4 decisions that have political impact.

Scalia appears to be the major enforcer of political allegiance to the Federalist Society and the Koch brothers. The man is so dangerously ideological that he even declared, in a dissenting opinion, that there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent an innocent person from being executed. He argued that, "this Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is actually innocent."

Read More:

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13417

Anthony Gucciardi - Stealth GMOs Rapidly Consuming Global Food Supply

Obviously there is no room for GMOs in truly healthy food products, which is why it is truly vital that you understand the nature of GMOs and how they are oftentimes hidden in commercial food products. It may very well shock you to know just how prevalent GMOs are within the food supply. It’s truly amazing that modified products continue to go unlabeled despite being linked to organ damage — among a barrage of other conditions — in a prominent review of 19 studies.

In fact, nearly 93-95% of US soybeans are genetically modified in order to resist powerful weed-killers that were found to be killing the actual soybeans as well as the weeds. Following current trends, genetically modified food products will makeup the majority of the future food supply if a change is not made. For now, that change has been shot down by the FDA — the very organization tasked to defend public health. Just recently, the agency deleted around 1 million signatures from the GMO labeling campaign ‘Just Label It.’

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/stealth-gmos-rapidly-consuming-global-food-supply-1333373288

Neev M. Arnell - The truth about fracking and how it is harming our environment

Oil and gas companies are engaged in fracking, a gas drilling process hailed as an economy booster, job creator and greener energy source. However, fracking has propelled hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous, carcinogenic and radioactive chemicals into gas wells in 13 states, according to the new House and Energy Commerce Committee report covered in the New York Times (http://nyti.ms/lDzSYo).

The drilling method, also called hydraulic fracturing, uses a fluid consisting of water, sand and chemicals injected under high pressure to release oil and gas from cracks in shale rock 5,000 to 8,000 feet underground. The practice has been mired in controversy with claims that it is destroying the environment while some lawmakers work hand in hand with energy industry lobbyists.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/032358_fracking_gas_drilling.html

Mitchell J. Rabin - Is the natural gas industry fracking itself?

The number of social, political and economic problems we're facing today are nothing short of daunting. With the momentum of privatization of otherwise public works, and even subordinating elected officials to the whim of corporate profiteers as in Benton Harbor, MI, gives some indication of how powerful the corporatization of these United States of America is. On last week's front cover, Time Magazine pictured the Constitution with its ends being frayed with the query "Does it Matter?"

One is thrown to ask, what is becoming of the American Psyche? Has this robust nation been subterfuged by the torpedoes of reality TV and the myopia of texting? Are fast food, micro-waved cooking and the fast-paced, cell phone, SUV culture with nary a care in the world grinding to a half, coming home to roost empty-handed? Thoughtful individuals who really care about our country and its values are giving all of this a lot of thought. And so interestingly, is one of the most hyped and fast-paced, money-at-any-expense industries in our nation: the natural gas industry.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/032893_natural_gas_fracking.html

Jonathan Benson - Is natural gas 'fracking' responsible for the recent earthquake swarms in strange locations?

The natural gas industry and its advocates claim that hydraulic fracturing, the modern technique for extracting natural gas, also known as "fracking," is beneficial to the interests of American energy independence.

However, a simple report recently issued by KARK 4 News in Little Rock, Ark., suggests that fracking operations, which involve pumping large amounts of water and chemicals deep underground, may be responsible for triggering the mysterious earthquakes that have been striking in unusual locations across the nation in recent months.

One of at least 14 US states where fracking operations are currently active, Arkansas is not exactly the most seismically active region in the US. Though the state sits near the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ), a fault that is considered to have the highest earthquake risk outside the West Coast, the area typically only experiences a few small shakes in an average month, with larger ones occurring on an even more sporadic basis.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/033677_fracking_earthquakes.html

Tara Green - EPA finally acknowledges fracking dangers

The Environmental Protection Agency on December 7 released its first report linking fracking to water contamination. The report identified fracking as the source of poisons, including the carcinogen benzene, in the groundwater of a central Wyoming community.

 Something in the water

Pavillion, Wyoming is a small community of 174 people located on the Wind River Indian Reservation. The town sits in the middle of the state's huge gas patch which companies such as Encana Oil & Gas, Noble Energy and ConocoPhillips have turned into drilling fields. Since the mid-90s, more than 200 gas wells have been drilled near the small town. Approximately ten years ago, members of the rural community also observed new illnesses in local livestock. Around the same time, they also noticed their well water had a strange smell and taste, "like a cross between something dead and diesel fuel" as one resident describes it.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/034401_EPA_fracking_well_water.html