MindMover
MindMover's JournalRepublican Party Lie #2
Lie: We want to work with the president to move this country forward.
Truth:
Republican Party Lie #1
Republican statement: Mitch says Keystone will create stunning number of jobs.
Truth: Keystone pipeline only creates 35 permanent jobs
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/feb/10/van-jones/cnns-van-jones-says-keystone-pipeline-only-creates/
Maui Defies Monsanto, Passes Ban on GMO Farming
A Maui County ballot initiative to temporarily ban genetically engineered crops narrowly passed Tuesday following one of the most heavily financed political campaigns in state history.
The controversial measure pulled ahead late Tuesday, passing 50 percent to 48 percent — a difference of just 1,077 votes. It was a stunning turnaround after the measure was initially losing by 19 percent when the first results rolled in.
The county’s first-ever ballot initiative targeting global agriculture companies Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences attracted nearly $8 million from opponents, making it the most expensive campaign in Hawaii’s history.
http://www.civilbeat.com/2014/11/1000-votes-maui-gmo-farming-ban-squeaks-by/
Slavery Redux
The quintessential ingredient in the stew that makes up a thriving housing market has been evaporating in America. And a recent phenomenon has taken over: private equity firms, REITs, and other Wall-Street funded institutional investors have plowed the nearly free money the Fed has graciously made available to them since 2008 into tens of thousands of vacant single-family homes to rent them out. And an apartment building boom has offered alternatives too.
Since the Fed has done its handiwork, institutional investors have driven up home prices and pushed them out of reach for many first-time buyers, and these potential first-time buyers are now renting homes from investors instead. Given the high home prices, in many cases it may be a better deal. And apartments are often centrally located, rather than in some distant suburb, cutting transportation time and expenses, and allowing people to live where the urban excitement is. Millennials have figured it out too, as America is gradually converting to a country of renters.
So in its inexorable manner, homeownership has continued to slide in the third quarter, according to the Commerce Department. Seasonally adjusted, the rate dropped to 64.3% from 64.7 in the prior quarter. It was the lowest rate since Q4 1994 (not seasonally adjusted, the rate dropped to 64.4%, the lowest since Q1 1995).
The American Dream Going Bust – in One Chart
http://wolfstreet.com/2014/10/29/the-american-dream-gone-bust/
Another Leaked TPP Chapter Shows What a Disaster it Will be!
President Barack Obama has been working hard to wrap up the negotiations of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). What is curious about these negotiations is that they are all held in secret. Up until recently, congress wasn’t even allowed to read the draft text of the TPP, only corporate lobbyists. What we know about the TPP is because of leaked chapters. We know that although the TPP is a so called “free trade” agreement, only 5 chapters of the 29 have to actually do with trade. Now, the updated IP chapter has just been released.
As mentioned before, out of the 29 chapters of the TPP, only 5 have to do with trade. This newly released chapter detailed how the TPP would affect Intellectual property rights. This includes cancer treatments between the U.S. and 11 other countries. Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program spoke about the leaked chapter. “The leak shows our government demanding rules that would lead to preventable suffering and death in Pacific Rim countries, while eliminating opportunities to ease financial hardship on American families and our health programs at home.”
President Obama wants and needs Fast Track to pass the TPP. The TPP is being pushed by multinational corporations. They want all of the negotiations to be done behind closed doors. Why the lack of transparency? Even members of Congress have been allowed to see them only under very strict conditions. They were required to submit a request to see specific chapters of the current draft, and after seeing the text they cannot tell anyone what they have read, not even their staff.
http://economyincrisis.org/content/another-leaked-tpp-chapter-shows-what-a-disaster-it-will-be
App Lets You Peek Inside 80,000 Foods At Your Grocery Store
LOOKING BEYOND A NUTRITION LABEL, FOOD SCORES RATES YOUR GRUB BASED UPON ITS PESTICIDES, ANTIBIOTICS, AND PROCESSING.
Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. The package contains just a few ingredients. Milled corn. Sugar. Malt flavor. Salt. And BHT “for freshness.”
Seems innocuous enough. But is it? Entering the product into Food Scores, a new iPhone and web app by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG), only rates Kellogg’s Corn Flakes as a 5 on a scale of 10 (10 being the worst). I see this in a dashboard of meters that break down food into three parts: nutrition (the standard calories, fat, and protein stuff); ingredients (including undisclosed pesticides, contaminants, or antibiotics); and processing (how far has that product come from its source whole foods).
Food Scores has some concerns about those Corn Flakes.
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3037854/infographic-of-the-day/app-lets-you-peek-inside-80000-foods-at-your-grocery-store
Schieffer: Politics the Only Product That Gets Worse as it Gets More Expensive
Face the Nation host Bob Scieffer bemoaned the rising price tag of American elections Sunday morning, especially the 2014 midterms, which at $4 billion will be the most expensive midterms in history while producing what will likely be historically low turnout and potentially little shift in actual power.
“Can you name a commodity or a product that gets worse and worse, that produces less and less of what it is supposed to produce, yet gets more expensive?” Schieffer asked. “Maybe you can name one but the only thing i can think of is American politics.”
Because centrism, Schieffer added that he’s “not blaming it on Republicans or Democrats,” he’s “blaming it on Republicans and Democrats who have turned what used to be an amateur sport in to a professional business, where the jobs that volunteers used to do for free have been outsourced to professionals.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/schieffer-politics-the-only-product-that-gets-worse-as-it-gets-more-expensive/
What a terrible truth ...the higher the cost and the worse it gets.
Cable News Ignores Dire New Report On Climate Change, Features Rant From Unhinged Climate Denier
On Sunday, the Weather Channel’s co-founder took his confounding message on the falsity of climate change to CNN, where he said he left Brian Stelter, the host of Reliable Sources, “wondering what had hit him.”
John Coleman, who co-founded the Weather Channel in the 1980s before being forced out a year after it went to air, has splashed across headlines this past week for his climate denying antics. It started when Coleman — who does not have a meteorology degree, let alone a climatology degree — wrote an open letter to UCLA’s Hammer Museum expressing his disapproval on a climate change presentation hosted there. In the letter he states, “there is no significant man-made global warming at this time, there has been none in the past and there is no reason to fear any in the future.”
Coleman does not back up these claims, but in the ensuing week he has added significantly to them. In an email posted online, Coleman gave a synopsis of his appearance on Reliable Sources, which was filmed on Friday:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/11/02/3587561/climate-denying-weather-channel-co-founder-goes-on-cnn-is-clearly-wrong-on-all-points/
We cannot afford to ignore this problem ...
Planet headed toward ‘irreversible’ climate damage, UN warns
The globe is heading toward “severe, pervasive, and irreversible” climate change impacts if left “unchecked,” according to a new United Nations report.
In its most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken, the U.N.’s synthesis report released Sunday, finds that the evidence behind human influence on climate change is overwhelming and undeniable, as greenhouse gas emissions are the “highest in history.”
The report, which over 800 scientists from 80 countries wrote, additionally drawing from 3,000 contributing authors and experts, argues that emissions must fall to a net zero by the end of the century, and that the window of opportunity to address the threat is shrinking.
“The report expresses with greater certainty than in previous assessments the fact that emissions of greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic drivers have been the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20th century,” according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which adopted the report on Saturday evening before releasing it on Sunday.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/222565-planet-headed-toward-irreversible-climate-damage-un-warns
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/222571-kerry-un-climate-report-another-canary-in-the-coal-mine
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/02/rapid-carbon-emission-cuts-severe-impact-climate-change-ipcc-report
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/pessimistic-un-climate-change-report-also-offers-an-out/382262/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/11/02/360932486/u-n-end-greenhouse-emissions-by-2100-or-risk-irreversible-damage?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=science&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2849
http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/the-world-just-got-its-final-warning-on-climate-change--ekIujj-zPx
Bill McKibben -- http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/02/ipcc-climate-change-carbon-emissions-underestimates-situation-fossil-fuels
Forty-Two Plutocrats Have Funded More Than a Third of All Super PAC Spending
With just four days to go until the 2014 midterms, here’s our final weekly roundup of news about this year’s money race.
Do you know where your polling place is, and what documents you’ll need to cast a ballot? If you have any questions, the nonpartisan League of Women Voters has answers at vote411.org. And if you encounter any problems at the polls, call the Election Protection hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) or visit their website.
Big Money: According to the Wesleyan Media Project, ad spending on congressional races has passed the $1 billion mark. Around 40 percent of it is dark money, with undisclosed donors. If you include spending on ads for ballot initiatives, judges and races for state offices, almost three million spots have aired during this election cycle at a cost of $1.67 billion.
The Times, They Are a Changin’: At Vox, Mark Schmitt, director of New America Foundation’s program on political reform, looks at three ways the 2014 midterms could permanently “transform money in politics.”
Republicans Still Dominate the Dark Money Game: Democratic-leaning donors like Tom Steyer have invested heavily in the 2014 race, but the Sunlight Foundation’s Peter Olsen-Phillips reports that when it comes to dark money, Republican-aligned groups have outspent their Democratic counterparts by around three-and-a-half to one.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/31/dark-money/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/10/28/top-super-pac-donors-of-the-midterms-steyer-bloomber-singer-mercer/18060219/
http://www.propublica.org/article/secret-donors-behind-some-super-pacs-funneling-millions-into-midterms?utm_campaign=sprout&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=1414785193
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/09/02/how-mccutcheon-has-already-changed-campaign-finance-in-1-chart/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colbert_Super_PAC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code
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