What Government Does for You

When government works effectively, it becomes an invisible part of everyday life and people start to take it for granted.

  October 17, 2012

“Government, keep your hands off my Medicare!”

Commentators and comedians alike had fun with the cognitive dissonance represented by the statement above, found on more than one hand-scrawled sign at Tea Party rallies. But while opposition to government is more at home on the political right, ignorance about the role of government is a bipartisan malady.

 Liberals may shake their heads at the “ignorance” of the Right, but we’ve seen focus groups in San Francisco comprised of liberal Democrats argue about whether or not the Bay Area Rapid Transit system is public transportation. Years of research and polling have shown that there is a broad lack of understanding about the role of government in our everyday lives. Many Americans are unaware of just what’s public and what’s private. Why is that?    READ MORE

Mitt Romney's Heartless Advice to a Woman Whose Pregnancy Might Have Killed Her

Mormon women remember Romney's advice when he was a church leader, and there wasn't much 'moderate' about it.

October 17, 2012

The summer of 1983 was blistering hot in New England. A record heat wave saw temperatures soar toward the 100-degree mark from June well into September. July had been the hottest month ever recorded at Boston's Logan Airport.

The region's beloved Boston Red Sox, full of hope and promise early in spring and claiming first place in the American League East as late as June 1, apparently melted in the heat, losing game after game and tumbling to last place by mid-July, where they were to remain the rest of the season.

It was also during the sweltering summer of 1983 that the family of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made its celebrated escape from the oppressive New England heat for the cooler climes of Beach O'Pines, Ontario, where the Romney family owns a beachfront cottage in a gated community on the shores of Lake Huron. Prior to departure, Mitt Romney placed the family dog—an Irish setter named Seamus—into a dog carrier and lashed it to the roof of the family's Chevy station wagon for the 12-hour drive into Canada.

The infamous dog ride (dubbed the "Seamus incident") was to become a full-blown issue in the 2012 presidential primaries, as Romney's chief Republican opponent, Rick Santorum, invoked the incident to attack Romney's "character."    READ MORE

Change For Trayvon: A New Website

Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton have started a new website, Change For Trayvon, that is dedicated to reviewing the Stand Your Ground laws. The Mission Statement: The purpose of Change for Trayvon is to give his family a voice in the political process. Your support will help engage the discussion across the country regarding stand-your-ground laws and the need to revise them so that there is required judicial or prosecutorial review before decisions are made. We need your help to change the laws which keep parents like ourselves from finding peace. -Tracy Martin 30,000 mothers and fathers lost their children to gun violence. The Change for Trayvon movement will shine the light on stand-your-ground laws across the nation. These laws allow individuals to shoot first and ask questions later. For more information email us at: info@changefortrayvon.com READ MORE

CPAC Set to Host White Nationalist Leader

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Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 2/8/2012 3:00 pm 

 

Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, along with several Republican senators and congressmen, are set to appear at the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference, but the GOP brass aren’t the only ones set to be at CPAC. As we’ve previously reported, CPAC will play host to anti-gay groups such as the Family Research Council, the birther leader of WorldNetDaily, and the Apartheid-nostalgic Youth for Western Civilization.

But that isn’t all.

Following speeches from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Rep. Michele Bachmann, CPAC is hosting the panel “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity” with Peter Brimelow, the founder and head of VDARE.com.

VDARE is a White Nationalist website, run by Brimelow, which frequently publishes the works of anti-Semitic and racist writers and is named after Virginia Dare, who is believed to be the first child of English parents born in the Americas. Brimelow, an immigrant from Great Britain, expresses his fear of the loss of America’s white majority, blames non-white immigrants for social and economic problems and urges the Republican Party to give up on minority voters and focus on winning the white vote. He also said that a New York City subway is the same as an Immigration and Naturalization Service waiting room, “an underworld that is not just teeming but also almost entirely colored.”     READ MORE

This Changes Everything - Obama's Martian Gayness

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Rumors of President Obama's secret gay Martian past emanate from a top-secret government space teleportation program. (07:37)

State Ballot Measures: 11 Hot Topics in 2012's Other Electoral FrontlineState Ballot Measures: 11 Hot Topics in 2012's Other Electoral FrontlineState Ballot Measures: 11 Hot Topics in 2012's Other Electoral Frontline

From raising taxes and legalizing pot to reviving labor rights, voters in 37 states will be busy.

October 4, 2012

There’s more at stake in the November election than who will sit in the White House next year. Voters in 37 states with ballot initiatives and legislative referenda will vote on 174 different proposals that range from overturning anti-union laws passed by Republican legislatures, to tax measures to fund education, to legalizing marijuana for medical or recreational use, to upholding gay marriage, to ending the death penalty and labeling food with genetically modified ingredients.

Those are just some of the topics that will come before voters this fall, with 50 of them drafted by interest groups on the political left and right that filed qualifying petitions. Here's a rundown on the hottest topics on the state political frontlines.  READ MORE

Genetically modified crops' results raise concern

2012-04-30, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)

Biotechnology's promise to feed the world did not anticipate "Trojan corn," "super weeds" and the disappearance of monarch butterflies. 

In the Midwest and South - blanketed by more than 170 million acres of genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton - an experiment begun in 1996 with approval of the first commercial genetically modified organisms is producing questionable results. 

Those results include vast increases in herbicide use that have created impervious weeds now infesting millions of acres of cropland, while decimating other plants, such as milkweeds that sustain the monarch butterflies. More than a million people have signed a petition to the Food and Drug Administration to require labeling of genetically engineered food. The stakes on labeling such foods are huge.  

The crops are so widespread that an estimated 70 percent of U.S. processed foods contain engineered genes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved more than 80 genetically engineered crops while denying none. 

Genetically engineered crops ... have spawned an infestation of "super weeds" now covering at least 13 million acres in 26 states. The crops led to a 400-million-pound net increase in herbicide applications. Dave Mortensen, a weed ecologist at Pennsylvania State University, said the number of "super weed" species grew from one in 1996 ... to 22 today. 

Last month, scientists definitively tied heavy use of glyphosate to an 81 percent decline in the monarch butterfly population. It turns out that the herbicide has obliterated the milkweeds on Midwest corn farms where the monarchs lay their eggs after migrating from Mexico. Iowa State University ecologist John Pleasants, one of the study's authors, said the catastrophic decline in monarchs is a consequence of the genetically engineered crops that no one foresaw. READ MORE

Note: Multiple reliable sources have shown that you may be eating genetically modified food daily which scientific experiments have repeatedly demonstrated can cause sickness and even death in lab animals.

Genetically Modified FoodsGM Foods: Harmful or Helpful?