Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure’s on to allow them in the skies over the United States.
The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act.
The big five of Big Oil might want to mull over a bit of advice that baseball great Ted Williams once offered to rookies: “If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much.”
Apparently, the chieftains of BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell thought that a bit of gruff, CEO bluster would be just the thing to brush back public anger over the industry’s all-star avarice and arrogance. Bad thinking.
Last week, the head of these multibillion-dollar behemoths, pumped up on narcissism, strode into a U.S. Senate hearing room and took wild swings at a bill titled: Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes.
SILVER SPRING, Md., May 9, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ – CoMeD – On Friday, May 6, 2011, in Tallahassee, Florida, a Republican State Senator filed an amendment to regulate vaccines containing mercury in Florida. The amendment would have made it illegal to buy, sell, manufacture, deliver, import, administer or distribute any vaccine that contained more than 0.3 micrograms of organic or inorganic mercury per milliliter for children younger than age 7 or pregnant women. Despite support for this vaccine safety measure, the amendment was voted down.
For years the natural gas drilling industry has decried the lack of data that could prove—or disprove—that drilling can cause drinking water contamination. Only baseline data, they said, could show without a doubt that water was clean before drilling began.
The absence of baseline data was one of the most serious criticisms leveled at a group of Duke researchers last week when they published the first peer-reviewed study linking drilling to methane contamination in water supplies.
That study—which found that methane concentrations in drinking water increased dramatically with proximity to gas wells—contained “no baseline information whatsoever,” wrote Chris Tucker, a spokesman for the industry group Energy in Depth, in a statement debunking the study.
Forty years ago, wealthy Americans financed the U.S. government mainly through their tax payments. Today wealthy Americans finance the government mainly by lending it money. While foreigners own most of our national debt, over 40 percent is owned by Americans — mostly the very wealthy.
This great switch by the super rich — from paying the government taxes to lending the government money — has gone almost unnoticed. But it’s critical for understanding the budget predicament we’re now in. And for getting out of it.
Over that four decades, tax rates on the very rich have plummeted. Between the end of World War II and 1980, the top tax bracket remained over 70 percent — and even after deductions and credits was well over 50 percent. Now it’s 36 percent. As recently as the late 1980s, the capital gains rate was 35 percent. Now it’s 15 percent.
EXTRACT: Monsanto’s efforts to cultivate new lines of consumer-focused produce do not involve direct manipulation of genetic code.
There’s an economic incentive at work here, as well. Monsanto said it generally takes around 10 years and $100 million to make a genetically modified seed.
Advanced cross-breeding techniques [without GM] can shorten that process to five or eight years, Stark [a vice president at Monsanto] said.
“It’s significantly cheaper and with a different regulatory requirement, and let’s face it, a different public perception,” Stark said.
NOTE: This may seem a surprising admission from a vice president at Monsanto but this is not the first time Monsanto has let the cat out of the bag.
Over a decade ago, after talking to key people in Monsanto, Farmers Weekly reported: “Biotechnology rather than genetic modification is the key to improving wheat varieties, says Monsanto.”
Jared Koch, Founder of Clean Plates, graduated from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition with certification by Columbia University, Teachers College in 2005 and graduated from the Global Institute for Alternative Medicine in 2004. He is a health coach, nutritional consultant, and certified yoga instructor with expertise in meditation, and he speaks frequently on the topic of nutrition and has spoken at such organizations as Google, Sony, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, MTV, and Time Warner.
Jared graduated from the University of Michigan where he completed a pre-medical program while majoring in economics. With an entrepreneurial spirit, he delayed enrollment in Albert Einstein Medical School to launch an entertainment company with his brother. The company grossed $10 million in annual sales within ten years. Despite corporate success, Jared still felt a strong need to attend to the wellness of others. Upon selling his stake in the entertainment business, he began ten years of wellness study with the likes of Dr. Andrew Weil, Deepak Chopra, raw food guru David Wolfe, and Walter Willett, Chair of Harvard’s Department of Nutrition
Jared believes in offering individuals and groups that are committed to living a more conscious, healthier lifestyle the education, inspiration, resources, and support to be able to do so.
W.W. Linguine with Spinach, Cherry Tomatoes and Feta Cheese
Podcast Powered By Podbean Download this episode (right click and save) REPEAT PROGRAM: 02/23/11 Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB) | Embed
Podcast Powered By Podbean Download this episode (right click and save) The Organic Consumers Association with Ronnie Cummins Ronnie Cummins is founder and Director of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), a non-profit, U.S. based network of 850,000 consumers, dedicated to safeguarding organic standards and promoting a healthy, just, and sustainable system …
Podcast Powered By Podbean Download this episode (right click and save) Tornadoes, flooding, and fires, Oh My! With the death tolls rising from more record-breaking weather events, one can’t help but wonder if Americans watching CNN, listening to the radio and reading the news are indeed, finally, connecting the dots between what …
