On Monday, Senators Graham (R-SC), Kerry (D-MA), and Lieberman (I-CT) will launch the bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs bill. I'm quite certain there will be something in it to dissatisfy everyone.
On the other hand, has Congress ever passed a significant bill that didn't dissatisfy everyone, particularly on the environment? We haven't had a major piece of clean air legislation for almost exactly two decades now. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (EPA history here), which ultimately passed by large margins, put in place a cap-and-trade system for acid rain pollution, but didn't end the grandfathering of old coal plants. And so they burn on.
And so my criteria for judging the bill focuses on whether it will create the conditions that will allow more desperate policy makers in the not-too-distant future to have a realistic chance of getting on the necessary path. My new book Straight Up includes one essay on the House's astonishing yet dissatisfying achievement in passing the Waxman-Markey bill. It explains that when we are that desperate, probably in the 2020s, we'll want to already have:
substantially dropped below the business-as-usual emissions path
started every major business planning for much deeper reductions
goosed the cleantech venture and financing community
put in place the entire framework for U.S. climate regulations
accelerated many tens of gigawatts of different types of low-carbon energy into the marketplace
put billions into developing advanced low-carbon technology
started building out the smart, green grid of the 21st century
trained and created millions of clean energy jobs
negotiated a working international climate regime
brought China into the process
Waxman-Markey, had it become the law of the land, would have achieved all of those vital goals. And that's why I strongly supported it, even though its 2020 target and use of offsets meant that it was, from a purely scientific perspective, unsatisfactory.
Golly, whatever happened to America's good ol', bold-and-brassy, can-do competitive drive?
To see a troubling sign for our nation's famed, free-enterprise frontier spirit, sneak a peek at the downward flight path of America's major airlines. These corporations have become no-can-do, anti-competition behemoths, whining that there are too many airlines, too many planes, too much competition.
"It's a jungle out there," wail top executives of the airlines. So, to enhance their "competitiveness," they are urging a rash of mergers that would consolidate the industry into fewer and even bigger corporations. Yes, in their alternate (and perverse) universe, airline CEOs say that the only way they can compete is to ... well, have less competition!
"The industry needs to evolve into a more rational structure," asserts a top official at American Airlines. "We have an industry that is too fragmented, with too many competitors and with different ideas of capacity, pricing and strategic activity."
Hmmm. Where have we heard that before? Oh yes, from Adam Smith, the 18th century Scottish economist who is considered a founding guru of the free enterprise system. The notion of "many competitors ... with different ideas of capacity, pricing and strategic activity" is precisely what Smith hailed as the proper model for free enterprise.
But the competitiveness that Smith celebrated as beneficial to society is what today's timorous airline leaders see as an irritating barrier that they simply can't hurdle. Better just to lower the competitive hurdle. As the former chairman of Continental Airlines put it: "I mean, do we really need 19 domestic airlines in the United States? I think three or four network airlines would still give you plenty of competition."
Plenty? What he and other executives mean by "a more rational structure" is one that allows a small club of gentlemen to divvy up the market, cut flights and raise ticket prices in unison — without being challenged by pesky rivals.
Soon, at least one more brand name is expected to join Northwest, Pan Am, TWA and others that have succumbed to consolidation. Both Continental and US Airways are presently in talks to merge with United Airlines. United's chief, Glenn Tilton, has long been a podium-pounding evangelist for the corporate gospel of shrinking the industry into a handful of more cooperative competitors. This is the route to consistent industry profits, he preaches.
Well, yeah! It's called a shared monopoly, and any goober in Guccis can make profits from that rigged deal. Of course, Tilton comes from the oil industry, where he led the merger of Texaco into Chevron, so he's partial to creating a tidier market for corporate fun and profit — consumers be damned.
Astonishingly, to press their case for consolidation, industry executives point to the example of the telecommunications giants, which went on a merger binge a decade ago. Excuse me, but consumer satisfaction with the arrogance and avarice of conglomerated and consolidated telecom providers ranks down around public approval ratings for Wall Street banksters.
Iceland's erupting volcano is forcing many to travel overland across Europe for the first time, but regular slow traveller Ed Gillespie argues that rail travel needn't be flying's poor relation
Another private jet whined overhead as I crossed the frozen lake into St Moritz. This was only a few weeks back, "pre-volcano", but as a second plume of silicate dust from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull crater keeps many European planes grounded, it already seems a long time ago.
I was in St Moritz after riding the famous Glacier Express railway across the top of the Alps from Zermatt, an eight-hour journey through scandalously spectacular scenery. During the trip I'd passed the valley in which Europe's biggest glacier, the monstrous Aletsch, edges it's way downhill. This 27bn-tonne river of ice is, like most glaciers, shrinking as a result of global warming.
I once went to the, perhaps excessive, length of circumnavigating the world without flying as part of my own personal exploration of the relationship between travel, carbon emissions and climate change. The retreat of Aletsch was a stark reminder of that journey and the motivations behind it.
Noam Chomsky is America's greatest intellectual. His massive body of work, which includes nearly 100 books, has for decades deflated and exposed the lies of the power elite and the myths they perpetrate. Chomsky has done this despite being blacklisted by the commercial media, turned into a pariah by the academy and, by his own admission, being a pedantic and at times slightly boring speaker. He combines moral autonomy with rigorous scholarship, a remarkable grasp of detail and a searing intellect. He curtly dismisses our two-party system as a mirage orchestrated by the corporate state, excoriates the liberal intelligentsia for being fops and courtiers and describes the drivel of the commercial media as a form of "brainwashing." And as our nation's most prescient critic of unregulated capitalism, globalization and the poison of empire, he enters his 81st year warning us that we have little time left to save our anemic democracy.
"It is very similar to late Weimar Germany," Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. "The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over."
"The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen," Chomsky went on. "Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says 'I have got an answer, we have an enemy'? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don't think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election."
"I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime," Chomsky added. "I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies."
"I listen to talk radio," Chomsky said. "I don't want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing."
As far as I can tell, just about the only person in the "main stream media" that actually does investigative reporting is Rachel Maddow. Bill Moyers has a weekly show, and his work does count, but it is not really a news show. I can understand why so many people don't understand what is really going on in America. It is because the politicians they elect are constantly lying to them, and the "reporters" just go onto the next question. For instance, the talk of "Death Panels" or McConnell's "Bailouts" are talking points, and outright lies. The story should be 99% the fact that that politicians, or has beens have to lie, or that they are lying, and 1% what the actual lie is. This way they score no points for lying and are trashed in the media for not telling the truth instead. Like it should be. The news should be "Top ten lies of the day".
Then you have people like Hannity telling his viewers that they found WMD's in Iraq, or Bill O'Riley saying no one on Fox ever said people that don't buy health insurance will go to prison. When the actual "news" is the lie it's not hard to understand why so many people haven't got a clue…
Research shows that marijuana may relieve symptoms of certain chronic illnesses.
It has been proven to treat nausea, vomiting, and lack of appetite, and it may also ease pain. Marijuana is illegal in the U.S., but certain states allow it to be used as medical treatment. Here's a state-by-state guide to medical marijuana use.
Image: The dark green represents states that allow medicinal marijuana. Light green represents states with marijuana-friendly laws or pending legislation. Alaska and Hawaii (not pictured) allow medicinal marijuana.
I can't say the thought ever occurred to me, but apparently enough people think it's a good idea to get high, film themselves and post the results to YouTube that psychologists at San Diego State University were able to use the crowd-created video archive to do one of the first studies of the drug's behavioral impacts.
Why study how people act when they're high on Salvia? Despite carrying a lot of the same cultural trappings as pot, Salvia is actually pretty unique, from a chemical standpoint. In fact, that was part of why it was legal in so much of the U.S. for so long—the chemical structure wasn't close enough to any already-outlawed drugs to be automatically covered as an analog under the same bans. Not surprisingly, Salvia's effects on the human brain are also very different, and science doesn't know much about those effects, says Mind Hacks' Vaughan Bell.
Pharmacologically, it is fascinating as it seems to have its major effect on kappa opioid receptors. These are not the same opioid receptors that drugs like heroin and morphine work on, so the effects are very different, but it is a completely different mechanism to virtually all other hallucinogenic drugs (only ibogaine is known to have a similar effect on the brain).
"[Don Lattin] has created a stimulating and thoroughly engrossing read." —Dennis McNally, author of A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead, and Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America
It is impossible to overstate the cultural significance of the four men described in Don Lattins The Harvard Psychedelic Club. Huston Smith, tirelessly working to promote cross-cultural religious and spiritual tolerance. Richard Alpert, a.k.a. Ram Dass, inspiring generations with his mantra, "be here now." Andrew Weil, undisputed leader of the holistic medicine revolution. And, of course, Timothy Leary, the charismatic, rebellious counter-culture icon and LSD guru. Journalist Don Lattin provides the funny, moving inside story of the Cambridge Quartet, who crossed paths with the infamous Harvard Psilocybin Project in the early 60s, and went on to pioneer the Mind/Body/Spirit movement that would popularize yoga, vegetarianism, and Eastern mysticism in the Western world.
The energy reform bill to be released next week will include $54 billion in government-backed loan guarantees for the nuclear industry, roughly a threefold increase, as well as regulatory reforms to ease legal and permit issues that slow new plant construction, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Tuesday.
The measure will put a price on carbon emissions through penalties tailored to specific economic sectors, which is "far more business friendly" than a nationwide emissions cap-and-trade system that was in the energy bill passed by the House, Graham, a co-sponsor of the legislation, told POLITICO in an interview for the video series "The Green Divide."
The bill would also expand offshore drilling and — for the first time — permit states to share revenue from it, offer tax breaks for big manufacturers to make their facilities more energy efficient and encourage development of more hybrid automobiles and trucks fueled by natural gas.
Finally, the proposal would remove the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate carbon, choking off an emerging debate between the White House and Congress.
A guide to some of the best -- and often little-known -- websites to help manage your finances
by Kathy M. Kristof
After spending the bulk of my career writing solely for newspapers, I stepped into the blogosphere a year ago and discovered a whole new world of financial advice.
The World Wide Web is host to hundreds of financial bloggers, who provide everything from solid counsel to something of a support group for the budget-challenged.
The advice you get in the blogosphere is different from what you see in the newspaper for a variety of reasons. It's sometimes profane and often directed toward a single topic -- including such things as student debt or frugal living. And the bulk of bloggers base their advice on personal experience, rather than straight reporting.
You've got to be careful too, because some bloggers make money by promoting products.
That said, much of it is wonderful, helpful, encouraging and uniquely well-suited to the just-graduated set, who are still trying to get a toehold on their financial lives.
If you haven't stepped into the Web's wonderful world of money blogs, here's a guide to some of the best -- and often largely unknown -- sites.
Jesse Michelson is a 22-year-old computer programmer from Utah who writes a blog called the Personal Finance Firewall ( www.pffirewall.com). Recently out of college and helping support his wife through graduate school, Michelson recently wrote one of the clearest explanations you could find anywhere about how to use the government's income-based repayment plan to pay your student loans.
Trent Hamm, at www.thesimpledollar.com, grew up certain that the only thing to do with money was to spend it on something that gave you immediate gratification -- such as a video game or a giant television.
This led to his economic ruin and subsequent revival as a born-again budgeter. His financial Armageddon became a cautionary tale for his blog, showing where he went wrong and what he'd do differently.
Brad Chaffee, www.enemyofdebt.com, aims to promote financial responsibility and, not surprisingly, the importance of paying off debt.
Among his more engaging posts is "How I Lost $60 in Three Seconds," which explains why you ought to have an emergency fund -- even when you're broke.
The consistently delightful blog at www.budgetsaresexy.com is written by twentysomething J. Money (his pen name), who recently wrote a funny post about the intricacies of real estate pricing.
The short version: He hopes some "spendthrift" will pay an exorbitant price for his neighbor's home, which could save home values in the whole neighborhood.
I've become a Facebook fan of the Frugal Dad (http://frugaldad.com) for words of wisdom, such as "If you need the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit to afford a home, you can't afford a home."
The $8,000 will be gone in a flash, he says. But the mortgage will last 30 years. Even better is his recent post explaining the mental process you ought to go through before buying more stuff.
The NORML Foundation will debut its second-ever digital ad Tuesday, April 20, on the CBS Super Screen in New York Citys Times Square. The animated billboard advertisement highlights the dramatic increase in New York Citys rate of marijuana possession arrests, which increased from fewer than 1,000 annually in 1992 to more than 46,000 in 2009.
As Matt Kelley wrote last week, and as any American with a pot prescription knows, marijuana laws in this country are far from cut and dry. Medical marijuana is legal in 14 states, but "legal" is defined differently from state to state, from county to county, and sometimes even from day to day. No matter what states say, marijuana is still illegal under federal law, and there is intense debate about whether state law can trump federal law in this case.
Case in point: Last year the University of Montana punished a disabled student for growing marijuana in his dorm room. Medical marijuana is legal in Montana, and the student had a state-issued card allowing him to grow pot for personal use, but the university insisted: no drugs on campus. Though they have not revised this policy, they have since allowed medical marijuana users to opt out of university housing. "We're not unsympathetic to the medical conditions of these people, but we don't have the authority to do anything about it," said David Aronofsky, UM chief legal counsel, told the Missoulian: "State medical marijuana laws can't override the federal laws."
Aronofsky's interpretation is debatable, of course; many legal scholars argue that state laws can override federal ones. In fact, though President Obama has literally laughed at the prospect of legalizing marijuana at the federal level, Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that his office will not bother states that choose to legalize the drug for medical purposes. (The DEA still slips up and raids dispensaries occasionally, but they've gotten better.) Though the legal debate over the supremacy of state law may never be resolved, this is as close as we can get in practice: as long as the relevant federal agencies agree not to contradict a given state law, that state law has more or less trumped federal law.
So where does that leave the University of Montana?
The International Cannabis and Hemp Expo, the first trade show of its kind in the U. S. to permit on-site pot smoking, reportedly grabbed an estimated 15,000 enthusiasts to Daly City over the weekend.
"We're exercising our rights as patients to peacefully gather", posted Bob Katzman, Chief Operating Officer, as he stood near the designated puffing area. "We're here to talk about changing some of the existing laws, but we're not here to break the law".
In addition, he uncovered that it took four years for the organizers to negotiate an approval with a venue that would officially allow marijuana consumption.
Dr. Daniel Susott posted that he hoped to sign-off on 1,600 people by the end of the weekend. He said a portion of the fees would be diverted for charity.
Adam Baer at the Sunset Junction Organic Medicine dispensary
There was a time when I despised the smell of marijuana; inconveniently, it coincided with my college years. So it would probably surprise those who knew me then as a violin-playing, straight-A student to discover that today, at 33, I cruise the streets of Los Angeles with a pot prescription. Then again, maybe it wouldn't. But it surprises me.
As the child of pianists who took trips to Carnegie Hall while others tripped out to The Doors, I always thought of marijuana as a "gateway drug", a bad weed that could only lead to suicide or, worse, failure in the arts. When I gave it more of a chance in my late twenties, it wasn't to boost "creativity". In fact, I don't even know if I like cannabis yet, given all of its strains and forms. Late last year, I simply began to experiment with it in search of relief for some vexing medical symptoms.
I was living in the right city at the right time, to be sure, but I lacked the positive – and extensive – marijuana history that so many of my peers enjoyed. In 1999, I took my first hit as a college junior from a pipe that belonged to my younger brother. At the time, I was feeling even more invincible than other young men: I had recently survived Hodgkin's disease and a stem-cell bone marrow transplant, following sub-lethal chemotherapy and a failed romance with an engineer. If I could endure such objective toxicity, I reasoned, something natural couldn't cause too much harm. I was right, but all I remember is coughing like an emphysema patient and obsessing about (imagined) cockroaches on my walls. A few years later, I tried pot again, while working in Manhattan as a music writer. But after a similarly bad experience at a Radiohead concert, with my undead pal the Maharishi, I ended the relationship.
Then my life changed dramatically: in 2005, after I moved to Los Angeles, I began to experience the onset of mysterious after-effects from my "cured" cancer, including peripheral nerve damage and a potentially malignant lesion in the base of my skull, something that few doctors could make sense of, much less treat.
Fortunately, California life proved to be therapeutic in itself: I found solace in the sylvan hills, the surf, the Pacific dolphins. My new crowd included more creative, fewer type-A people. And of course drugs were everywhere. The first day in my new apartment, I "lunched" at a neighbouring rocker's pad. In a scene like something out of Annie Hall, he offered me a dent out of a miniature Matterhorn of cocaine. Later that winter, I attended a Christmas party at the home of a wannabe-dancer-turned-television production assistant. Instead of the usual ornaments, her Christmas tree dangled bags of weed, joints and hash. "How'd she get all that stuff?" I asked a studio musician. "She goes to one of those, like, medical places. She's 'sick' with 'insomnia'."
At the Sunset Junction Organic Medicine dispensary
"Opposite world" is how my New York-based brother described my new dimension. He was on to something. Not only did everyone seem to survive in this city without a job, but the green crosses on storefronts with signs reading "Compassionate Care Collective" weren't advertising chemists. It was a new century, and these were a new breed of "legal" medical marijuana dispensaries – stores that sold medically approved weed in California even though the drug was proscribed under US federal law.
Klara Marosszeky has a vision for the future that involves revamping of the local farming industry to produce industrial hemp crops. Working with farmers, she has just harvested her first commercial crop of industrial hemp and is looking for innovators who want to utilize the product.
Industrial hemp has a low-THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol) content and produces the longest, strongest plant fibres in the world. It is used in many countries in the manufacture of plastics, fiberglass, fabrics, food and building materials.
"In the UK, a major car manufacturer, Lotus, is making whole cars out of hemp," Klara said. "Everything but the engine is hemp. Henry Ford would be grinning in his grave."
Klara currently teaches sustainability courses at TAFE and envisions hemp as the solution to many of the sustainability issues that are affecting Australia today. Not only is she trying to create a hemp industry in NSW and open the way to using hemp seed as a food product, but she is out to make housing materials affordable. After looking around for alternative products to replace our current dependence on timber, Klara spent years experimenting with hemp masonry as a building material, with very successful results. Two years ago, she was a finalist for the Northern Rivers Regional Development Board's innovation award for her hemp masonry.
"When I was first researching hemp, I found an article that said ancient hemp masonry from 750 AD was found in southern France," Klara said. "The use of hemp in building has been around for a very long time."
In 1999, after applying for a special license to grow hemp under the Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act, she began growing experimental trial crops in the Hunter Valley. She then conducted experiments with the hemp stems at the University of NSW, using both the whole and separated stems as building materials.
"I now work with the whole hemp stem," Klara said. "It's expensive to separate the inside fibre or 'hurd' from the stronger outside fibre or 'bast'."
One of her first building projects with hemp masonry was retro-fitting a wall on her own house at Corndale. The process involved building a wooden framework with spacings between, then laying wooden planks 60cm high on the inside and outside of the wall to shape the mix. This shape was then in-filled with a mixture of chopped-up hemp and a lime-based binder to create a concrete-like structure. Once the mix was dry, the planks were moved up and more mix was poured in, building the wall higher every day.
Hemp masonry is a more sustainable, organic material than concrete and 'breathes' much like a wooden structure. This means that allergy-causing moulds won't form on it, creating a healthy environment in which to live.
"Building with hemp masonry is an example of cradle to cradle technology," Klara said. "If you decide to change your house, you can break up the hemp masonry and re-combine it to build a new wall.
Legalize Industrial Hemp for American Jobs and Prosperity America is confronted today with a plethora of problems, many of which can be solved by ending a sixty-year-old policy rooted in racism and corporate greed. We are speaking, of course, of the industrial growing of hemp, also known as cannabis, for industrial purposes as well as medicinal and recreational uses. The medicinal uses of cannabis (in this form known as marijuana) are well-documented, from AIDS and cancer patients using the plant's effects to reduce nausea, to Mr. Joe Average on the street using it for muscle pain and even enjoyment. We will not deal with that in this leaflet. Rather instead we will focus on the industrial and consumer uses of cannabis.
Fiber When the U.S. was in its infancy in 1776, one plant was considered so important to national independence that it was required that a set amount of acreage be given to it. That crop? Was it wheat? No. Cotton? No. Corn? No. Tobacco? Certainly not. That crop was hemp. Even back then, humans knew the value of the long, strong fibers that this plant produces. In fact, these fibers are the strongest natural fibers known to mankind. They are perfect for ropes, cords and caulking. The United States Navy imports "manila" fiber from the Philippines. This "manila" fiber is nothing more than imported hemp fibers, grown on land which would be more appropiately used for growing food for Filipinos. Fibers which could be grown in the U.S., supporting U.S. farmers and U.S. workers to process it!
That is not all—the very best art and writing paper is made from hemp. The long fibers of the plant make it superior to wood in paper-making. That also means hemp paper-making requires less chemicals to produce. Indeed, the Constitution and Declaration of Independence both were originally drafted on hemp paper. These same long, strong fibers can be used to make clothes. Hemp clothes used to be coarse, but thanks to new processes for hemp it is now possible to make hemp shirts and pants as comfortable and absorbent as cotton, using less than 1% of the oil, fertilizers and pesticides to produce.
Food Hemp seeds provide an excellent source of protein and fats for humans. In fact, hemp has been eaten and used by humans to feed themselves and their livestock for at least 6000 years. The Hindu religion attributes hemp to the god Shiva. The oil of the hemp seed is very high in Omega-3 fatty acids, which are instrumental in healthy brain development and cholesterol control.
Fuel The hemp seed is useful for food and for making bio-diesel. Research in other countries has lead to breakthroughs in bio-diesel. Hemp seed oil is superior to all other forms of vegetable oils and it requires no solvents to be released from the hemp seed. The only other such vegetable oil is olive oil, the use of which is limited to waste stream reclamation due to its comparatively lower total global production limits. Hemp is also the most efficient means known to man to turn sunlight into biomass, which is critical to the production of ethanol and methanol for fuels. Given the uses in food, fiber and fuel alone, even if we ignored the medicinal properties of this plant, we have every reason to demand in this world where food is scarce, where fiber is needed for paper and clothes and where oil, our primary fuel is running out, to demand that American farmers be allowed to grow this useful product.
All evolving technology has a leading edge, even for social technology. For humankind's drug struggle, the "War on Drugs" is no longer that edge. It is now drug legalization and related policies. A call is building for all drug sales to come under government control to eliminate the market for drug dealers and to end the vast culture of criminality surrounding illegal drugs. Even Walter Cronkite is in the fray, saying in 2006, "...nothing will change until someone has the courage to stand up and say ... the war on drugs has failed." Efficacy and other like-minded organizations are at the beginning of that new courage, a courage to create a dramatic shift on how we take responsibility for illicit drugs.
There is much in this site that reveals how drug prohibition, A.K.A "War on drugs," is not effective and even destructive of our society. It damages race relations. It packs our prisons. It breeds police corruption and abuse. It drains funds best used for urban renewal and educational programs. Please read the Efficacy material at this site or explore the many links we provide. You may find yourself deeply impacted. For the founders, staff and supporters of Efficacy, our initial exposure to the dark side of our society has,
moved us to see the alarming extent to which criminality feeds off our current drug policy
moved us to help our nation get beyond our anxieties and fears
moved us to appreciate the drug problem as a natural struggle for a civilized world.
The New Journey
In the voice of one sheriff,
Controlling the drug supply is like holding water in a fist, it just leaks out and goes on to something else... Eventually, we will realize a fist won't work against what is fundamentally a spiritual problem.
In Humanity's quest to conquer drugs, the journey is not from drug war to peace, but from prohibition to courageous-action; from eradication policy to public-health policy. The need for a new direction in how we take responsibility for illicit drugs has already gained recognition in law enforcement (see related video) and the clergy (see related video). It's Efficacy's mission to expand such recognition with the goal of reducing the societal damage caused by drug-war policies, without worsening—at the very least—the actual abuse of drugs. It is a new approach — one no longer based on blind faith in the power of law but a new journey based on spiritual faith in the strength of a civilized society.
Latecomers to the marijuana-legalization movement may never have heard of Jack Herer, who died yesterday at age seventy. But veterans of the cause cite his 1985 book The Emperor Wears No Clothes as the manifesto that launched a campaign that continues to gather steam.
Herer died from complications related to a heart attack he suffered last September. That makes the interview he granted a few months earlier to Gregory Daurer, a longtime local activist and freelance writer (visit his website to learn more) who works as the office coordinator for marijuana attorney Warren Edson, one of his last.
Read it below -- and check out Daurer's observations about Herer in the wake of his passing.
Daurer's interview with Herer appeared in the May/June 2009 issue of Medical Marijuana News and Directory. It's not officially online, but Daurer kindly sent us PDFs of the article. Click on the links for page one, page two, page three, page four and page five to read the piece in its entirety. But to get a sense of Herer's passionate (and often profane) style, sample the concluding section:
What do you think has been the most significant thing that's happened sine you've started promoting hemp?
I thought change would happen 25 years ago, 30 years ago, 35 years ago. It's getting better, but it's not getting better fast enough. If I had to do it over again, I would make nothing illegal about hemp.
You live two years longer if you smoke it every day. And people who don't smoke anything and who don't drink anything live two years less than people who smoke cannabis every day. I don't make a mistake. I do all my homework.
What tips do you have for raising consciousness?
Get out everybody to vote. You have to vote. You have to vote the bastards out! If they don't vote for hemp, vote the fucking bastards out of office, right now! Like Bush. And Obama: I don't understand, either he doesn't know...
Jack, is there anything else that you want to add?
I believe that all forms of things have to be natural. 50 percent of chemicals in agriculture are used on cotton in the United States. What the fuck is that about?
Go natural. That's the Jack Herer theme?
The best thing in the world and it's against the law.
I'll tell ya, I'm getting mad at all the fucking silliness. Even the good guys -- Ron Paul and Barney Frank -- they're fucking chicken. I have to speak. Other people have to speak. They are good guys, but they just don't know. Everybody needs to write these guys. Hemp will save the world, and nothing else will.
Prove us wrong! Prove us wrong! Prove us wrong! And we hereby extend our $100,000 challenge to prove us wrong!
If all fossil fuels and their derivatives, as well as trees for paper and construction, were banned in order to save the planet, reverse the greenhouse effect and stop deforestation; then there is only one known annually renewable natural resource that is capable of providing the overall majority of the world's paper and textiles; meet all of the world's transportation, industrial and home energy needs, while simultaneously reducing pollution, rebuilding the soil and cleaning the atmosphere all at the same time... and that substance is the same one that has done it before... Cannabis/Hemp/Marijuana!
CANNABIS HEMP is the only known plant that can be grown from the Equator to the Arctic Circle and to the Antarctic Circle; from the mountains to the valleys, from the oceans to the plains, including arid lands and everywhere in between. CANNABIS HEMP is the healthiest plant for the ground out of the 3 1/2 million plants on Earth, because it has a root system that grows 10-12 inches in 30 days compared to one inch for rye or barley grass. The roots penetrate up to 16 feet deep and after harvest it leaves a root system that is mulched into the ground. It is the King Kong of King Kongs of all plant life.
All of my information about CANNABIS HEMP has been taken from Federal and State Department of Agriculture reports, articles from Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Pulp & Paper Magazine, Scientific American, entries from encyclopedias and pharmacoepias, and studies from all over the world during the last 200 years. This is all public information. The United States government is hiding the fact that 125 years ago, and even as far back as 4000 BC, 80 percent of our economy was based on the use of CANNABIS HEMP for paper, fiber and fuel. Ten to 20 percent of our economy was based on CANNABIS HEMP medicines, 125 years ago.
CANNABIS HEMP was part of our everyday life. Every farm had a hemp patch growing. This cover-up outrages me and it should outrage you, too. I have been studying about CANNABIS HEMP for over 30 years, and I can't believe how the U.S. government, in 90 seconds in Congress, could outlaw "MARIJUANA" in 1937, without the people realizing they were outlawing CANNABIS HEMP, the most perfect plant for the planet! They even got other countries to outlaw it, too, after the Second World War. From 1840 to 1940, 80 percent of all the world's hemp was grown in, and imported from, Russia.
With the technology of the decorticator, CANNABIS HEMP would have taken over the cotton market, as it is far superior to cotton. I will again reiterate a few of the facts about CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA, which you already know.
CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was the number ONE annually renewable natural resource for 80 percent of all paper, fiber and fuel. From 6000 years ago to 125 years ago, it was used for food, light, land and soil reclamation, and even 20 percent of all medicine. Everyone, from the educated to the uneducated, the farmer to the townsperson, the doctors and the scientists used hemp products and depended on them until about 125 years ago.
Seventy-five to 90 percent of all paper used from at least 100 AD to 1883 was made of CANNABIS HEMP. Books, including Bibles, money and newspapers all over the world have been mainly printed on CANNABIS HEMP for as long as these things have existed in human history. They were printed on hemp exclusively!
Seventy to 90 percent of all rope, twine, cordage and ship sails, 125 years ago, were made out of CANNABIS HEMP fiber, until it was replaced by petrochemical fibers in 1937 and 1938. By comparison, CANNABIS HEMP is four times softer than cotton, four times warmer, four times more water absorbent, has three times the strength of cotton, is many times more durable and doesn't use pesticides like cotton, and is flame retardant. Fifty percent of all pesticides are used on cotton, and cotton uses only one percent of the farmland.
Of all the 3 1/2 million plants on Earth, no other plant source can compare with the nutritional value of CANNABIS HEMP seeds. It is the only plant on Earth that has essential amino acids, essential fatty acids and protein and essential oils combined. It is the healthiest plant for human consumption.
Prior to the 1800s, HEMPSEED oil was the number ONE source for lighting oil throughout the world. As late as 1937, even paints and varnishes were 80 percent HEMPSEED oil. CANNABIS HEMP is non-toxic and has been used to make high-grade diesel fuel, oil, aircraft and precision oil and even the number ONE vegetable oil. HEMP is the best sustainable source of plant pulp for biomass fuel to make charcoal, gas, methanol, gasoline and electricity in a natural way.
As a medicine, the use of MARIJUANA goes back 6000 years. It has been found to be healthy and effective in the treatment of chronic pain, cancer, strokes, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, sickle cell anemia, AIDS wasting and many other illnesses, including simple nausea, appetite stimulant and anxiety. On September 6, 1988, the Drug Enforcement Administration's Chief Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young, ruled: "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man," and asked the Drug Enforcement Agency to reschedule it. The DEA refused, keeping it as a Schedule I drug, which they say "has no known medical use" ? from 1937 to 2002! Nobody has ever died from marijuana in 6000 years... unless they were shot by a cop!
Hiding behind the complexities of our financial system, banks and other institutions are being accused of fraud and deception, with Goldman Sachs just the latest in the spotlight. This has become the most pressing election issue of all
Goldman Sachs was in the spotlight last November when demonstrators protested outside its Washington offices against executive bonuses. Photograph: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The global financial crisis, it is now clear, was caused not just by the bankers' colossal mismanagement. No, it was due also to the new financial complexity offering up the opportunity for widespread, systemic fraud. Friday's announcement that the world's most famous investment bank, Goldman Sachs, is to face civil charges for fraud brought by the American regulator is but the latest of a series of investigations that have been launched, arrests made and charges made against financial institutions around the world. Big Finance in the 21st century turns out to have been Big Fraud. Yet Britain, centre of the world financial system, has not yet levelled charges against any bank; all that we've seen is the allegation of a high-level insider dealing ring which, embarrassingly, involves a banker advising the government. We have to live with the fiction that our banks and bankers are whiter than white, and any attempt to investigate them and their institutions will lead to a mass exodus to the mountains of Switzerland. The politicians of the Labour and Tory party alike are Bambis amid the wolves.
Just consider the roll call beyond Goldman Sachs. In Ireland Sean FitzPatrick, the ex-chair of the Anglo Irish bank was arrested last month and questioned over alleged fraud. In Iceland last week a dossier assembled by its parliament on the Icelandic banks – huge lenders in Britain – was handed to its public prosecution service. A court-appointed examiner found that collapsed investment bank Lehman knowingly manipulated its balance sheet to make it look stronger than it was – accounts originally audited by the British firm Ernst and Young and given the legal green light by the British firm Linklaters. In Switzerland UBS has been defending itself from the US's Inland Revenue Service for allegedly running 17,000 offshore accounts to evade tax. Be sure there are more revelations to come – except in saintly Britain.
Beneath the complexity, the charges are all rooted in the same phenomenon – deception. Somebody, somewhere, was knowingly fooled by banks and bankers – sometimes governments over tax, sometimes regulators and investors over the probity of balance sheets and profits and sometimes, as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says in Goldman's case, by creating a scheme to enrich one favoured investor at the expense of others – including, via RBS, the British taxpayer. Along the way there is a long list of so-called "entrepreneurs" and "innovators" who were offered loans that should never have been made. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's CEO, remarked only semi-ironically that his bank was doing God's work. He must wake up every day bitterly regretting the words ever emerged from his mouth.
General Electric filed more than 7,000 income tax returns in hundreds of global jurisdictions last year, but when push came to shove, the company owed the U.S. government a whopping bill of $0.
How'd it pull off that trick? By losing lots of money.
GE had plenty of earnings last year -- just not in the United States. For tax purposes, the company's U.S. operations lost $408 million, while its international businesses netted a $10.8 billion profit.
That left GE (GE, Fortune 500) with no U.S. profit left for Uncle Sam to tax. Corporations typically face a 35% federal income tax on their earnings. Thanks to its deductions and adjustments, GE reported an actual U.S. federal income tax rate of negative 10.5%. It got to add a "tax benefit" of $1.1 billion back into its reported earnings.
"This is the first time in at least decades that GE has reported negative U.S. pretax income and it reflects the worst economy since the Great Depression," Anne Eisele, GE's director of financial communications, said via e-mail.
But what about the $10.8 billion profit overseas? GE is "indefinitely" deferring income tax payments on those profits, Eisele said.
Rolling Stone magazine, the US bible of 1960s counterculture and music that went on to launch some big names in journalism, is to charge for its website. With a new site on Monday, the fortnightly publication, founded in 1967 by Jann Wenner, will become one of the best-known magazines to place a "pay wall" around its content, in an attempt to make money from the web. The move is sure to be closely watched by media industry observers who are divided between those who believe that charging for content is the only way to sustain expensive, high-quality journalism and those who fear that asking readers to pay for online content will drive them straight into the arms of free rivals. The Times will start charging for access to its website in June.
Under the plans, the magazine's home page, with celebrity news, photographs, blogs, concert footage music previews, and behind the scenes videos from photo shoots, will remain mostly free. But readers wanting full access to the magazine's latest issue, as well as its entire archive and 43-year's worth of its famous covers, will have to pay $3.95 (£2.56) for a monthly pass or $29.99 (£19.47). Online subscribers in the US only will automatically get a free print subscription.
"We're taking control of our digital destiny," Mr. Schwartz told the Associated Press. "This is not, let's rush to the Web because print isn't strong. This is our brand's ability to tap into a new medium," he added.
The last week has seen a lot of analysis of the Tea Party Movement. It's a Republican rump, according to the NYT, and a national majority, according to Pat Caddell. My view is that it's so amorphous that you can slice it any which way. A minority of Americans seem enraged by the Obama administration in ways that are hard to explain. But many Americans also retain a healthy distrust of government and debt (even though they keep voting for lower taxes and more spending). They have a real point. Over the last decade, it is surely evident that big government has come back with a vengeance. And one has to grasp that part of the tea-party anger is pent up from the Bush years. Most of the rational tea-partiers accept that the GOP has been as bad - if not worse - than the Democrats on spending, borrowing and the size and scope of government in recent years. They repressed this anger during the Bush years out of partisan loyalty. Now, they're taking it all out on the newbie. It's both fair and also unfair.
It's fair because Obama is a liberal who believes government can and should help the poor and disadvantaged and has proven it by providing access to insurance for the working poor. But it's unfair because Obama's fiscal and governing record is massively distorted by the impact of the bank meltdown, the steep revenue-killing recession, and the stimulus. Until its last months, the Bush administration could claim no such excuses for its awful debt-management. The big Bush jumps in discretionary spending, the big leap in entitlements under the unfunded Medicare D program, the long nation-building wars put off-budget, and the huge claims for executive power dominant in the first term: all these are far more damning to my mind than Obama's pragmatism in grappling with an economic collapse or even the healthcare reform, which at least formally claims to reduce the deficit and pay for itself (unlike Bush's Medicare-D). Even the protests at the manner in which the health reform was passed are disingenuous. The Medicare-D process - involving holding the vote open for hours and brutal arm-twisting on the floor of the House - was far, far more cynical and brutal.
And this is why, despite my own deep suspicion of big government, I remain unmoved by the tea-partiers. Their partisanship and cultural hostility to Obama are far more intense, it seems to me, than their genuine proposals to reduce spending and taxation. And this is largely because they have no genuine proposals to reduce spending and taxation. They seem very protective of Medicare and Social Security - and their older age bracket underlines this. They also seem primed for maximal neo-imperial reach, backing the nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, favoring war against Iran, etc. Only Ron Paul, peace be upon him, extends his big government critique to the military-industrial-ideological complex.
So they are truly not serious in policy terms, and it behooves the small government right to grapple with this honestly. They both support lower taxation and yet bemoan the fact that so many Americans do not pay any income tax. They want to cut spending on trivial matters while enabling the entitlement and defense behemoths to go on gobbling up Americans' wealth. And that lack of seriousness is complemented by a near-fanatical cultural alienation from the modern world.
In my book, Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs: From Toad Slime to Ecstasy, Freddy Berthoff described his mescaline trip at a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young concert in the summer of 1970 when he was 15. "Earlier that spring," he wrote, "the helmeted, rifle-toting National Guard came up over the rise during a peace-in-Vietnam rally at Kent State University. And opened fire on the crowd. I always suspected it was a contrived event, as if someone deep in the executive branch had said, 'We've got to teach those commie punks a lesson.'" Actually, President Nixon had called antiwar protesters "bums" two days before the shootings. While Freddy was peaking on mescaline, CSNY sang a new song about the massacre:
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming We're finally on our own This summer I hear the drumming Four dead in O-hi-o…
Plus nine wounded. Sixty-seven shots – dum-dum bullets that exploded upon impact -- had been fired in 13 seconds. This incident on May 4, 1970 resulted in the first general student strike in U.S. history, encompassing over 400 campuses.
Arthur Krause, father of one of the dead students, Allison, got a call from John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, who said, "There will be a complete investigation." Krause responded, "Are you sure about that?" And the reply: "Mr. Krause, I promise you, there will be no whitewash."
But NBC News correspondent James Polk discovered a memo marked "Eyes Only" from Ehrlichman to Attorney General John Mitchell ordering that there be no federal grand jury investigation of the killings, because Nixon adamantly opposed such action.
Polk reported that, "In 1973, under a new Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, the Justice Department reversed itself and did send the Kent State case to a federal grand jury. When that was announced, Richardson said to an aide he got a call from the White House. He was told that Richard Nixon was so upset, they had to scrape the president off the walls with a spatula."
Last year, Allison Krause's younger sister, Laurel, was relaxing on the front deck of her home in California when she saw the County Sheriff's Deputy coming toward her, followed by nearly two dozen men. "Then, before my eyes," she recalls, "the officers morphed into a platoon of Ohio National Guardsmen marching onto my land. They were here because I was cultivating medical marijuana. I realized the persecution I was living through was similar to what many Americans and global citizens experience daily. This harassment even had parallels to Allison's experience before she was murdered."
What if you knew her And found her dead on the ground How can you run when you know?
Now, 40 years later, Laurel, her mother and other Kent State activists have been organizing the "2010 Kent State Truth Tribunal" scheduled for May 1-4 on the campus where the slaughter of unarmed demonstrators originally occurred. The invitation to participate in sharing their personal narratives has been extended to 1970 protesters, witnesses, National Guardsmen, Ohio and federal government officials, university administrators and educators, local residents, families of the victims. The purpose is to uncover the truth.
Laurel was 0nly 15 when the Kent State shootings took place. "Like any 15-year-old, my coping mechanisms were undeveloped at best. Every evening, I remember spending hours in my bedroom practicing calligraphy to Neil Young's 'After the Goldrush,' artistically copying phrases of his music, smoking marijuana to calm and numb my pain." When she was arrested for legally growing marijuana, "They cuffed me and read my rights as I sobbed hysterically. This was the first time I flashed back and revisited the utter shock, raw devastation and feeling of total loss since Allison died. I believed they were going to shoot and kill me, just like Allison. How ironic, I thought. The medicine that kept me safe from experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder now led me to relive that horrible experience as the cops marched onto my property."
She began to see the interconnectedness of those events. The dehumanization of Allison was the logical, ultimate extension of the dehumanization of Laurel. Legally, two felonies were reduced to misdemeanors, and she was sentenced to 25 hours of community service. But a therapist, one of Allison's friends from Kent State, suggested to Laurel that the best way to deal with the pain of PTSD was to make something good come out of the remembrance, the suffering and the pain. "That's when I decided to transform the arrest into something good for me," she says, "good for all. It was my only choice, the only solution to cure this memorable, generational, personal angst. My mantra became, 'This is the best thing that ever happened to me.' And it has been." That's why she's fighting so hard for the truth to burst through cement like blades of grass.
James Richard Sauder, 55, of San Antonio, Texas, was arrested after allegedly scaling the fence of the H-8 missile silo southwest of Parshall to conduct a peaceful protest against nuclear weapons. He was initially charged with criminal trespass, a Class C felony, and spent the night in the Mountrail County jail in Stanley.
Special Agent E.K. Wilson of the FBI said Sauder has been charged with one count of federal criminal trespass and was taken into federal custody Friday afternoon. Wilson said a criminal complaint filed Friday morning was pending, but would not speculate on any additional charges.
Dressed in a green plaid, button-up shirt and khakis, under which ankle shackles could be seen, Sauder made his initial court appearance Friday afternoon at the U.S. District Courthouse in Minot in front of Magistrate Judge Charles S. Miller Jr. via videoconference.
Throughout the 45-minute hearing, Sauder repeatedly interrupted Miller by raising issues of jurisdiction, intent and his right to trial by jury, all of which were rebuffed until the appropriate hearing.
Sauder was appointed a public defender and was placed in the custody of the Attorney General until a detention hearing is held on Monday. He'll remain in custody until then in the Ward County Jail. No trial date has been set.
Researchers Lambast Health Insurance Companies; Not All Convinced Investment Is Irresponsible
By TODD NEALE
Companies providing life and health insurance owned $1.9 billion worth of stock in the fast-food industry Jack in the Box, McDonald's, Burger King, Yum! Brands(KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and others), and Wendy's/Arby's - as of June 11, 2009, researchers reported online in the American Journal of Public Health.
The investments were in the five largest fast-food corporations -- Jack in the Box, McDonald's, Burger King, Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and others), and Wendy's/Arby's, according to J. Wesley Boyd of Harvard Medical Schooland Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusettsand colleagues.
"The insurance industry, ostensibly, appears to be concerned about people's health and well-being," Boyd said.
But, he said, "If the insurance industry is willing to invest in products known to be harmful and/or kill people then, prima facie, this is not an industry that actually cares about health and well-being."
Although Boyd acknowledged that fast food can be consumed responsibly, he said the aggregate evidence points toward a negative effect on public health.
"We argue that insurers ought to be held to a higher standard of corporate responsibility," he and his co-authors wrote in their paper.
All of the study authors are members -- and two are co-founders -- of Physicians for a National Health Program, a nonprofit organization advocating for universal, single-payer national health insurance.
"PNHP opposes for-profit control, and especially corporate control, of the health system and favors democratic control, public administration, and single-payer financing," the organization's mission statement reads.
Boyd said that the passage of healthcare reform makes the issue of owning stock in fast-food companies especially important.
"The health insurance industry is going to have a much bigger stake in providing healthcare, and what we're doing in our paper is reminding people that [the industry's] primary interests are in earning money and generating profit, not in insuring people's health," he said.
If you were mad at all about Bush's violations of civil liberties when he was president, this will get you fuming:
In a rare legal action against a government employee accused of leaking secrets, a grand jury has indicted a former senior National Security Agency official on charges of providing classified information to a newspaper reporter in hundreds of e-mail messages in 2006 and 2007.
The official, Thomas A. Drake, 52, was also accused of obstructing justice by shredding documents, deleting computer records and lying to investigators who were looking into the reporter's sources.
"Our national security demands that the sort of conduct alleged here -- violating the government's trust by illegally retaining and disclosing classified information -- be prosecuted and prosecuted vigorously," Lanny A. Breuer, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division, said in a statement.
This is not just a single instance of outrage. It is a microcosm of the Obama presidency, the political success of corporate America, and the failure of its opposition.
So the Obama Administration successfully indicted an important recent whistleblower, a man who revealed a lot about the secret (and very, very possibly unconstitutional, not to mention immoral) wiretapping programs at the NSA. This takes it one step further than the Bush Administration ever took the cat and mouse game they played with whistleblowers, since this is the first one who has actually been prosecuted.
The global cannabis community mourns the loss of the great Jack Herer.
The one and only Jack Herer will be missed forever.
(SALEM, Ore.) - The sad news has been confirmed. Jack Herer, author of Emperor Wears No Clothes and renowned around the world for hemp activism, has died at 11:17 a.m. today, in Eugene, Oregon.
Jack Herer suffered a heart attack last September just after speaking on stage at the Portland HempStalk festival. The last seven months have proven to be a huge challenge to the man, with several health issues making his recovery complicated.
Jack Herer's health has been poor lately, this last week there have been reports of the severity, and an outpouring of prayers on his behalf.
"It's shocking news, even after these last seven, trying months," said Paul Stanford, THCF Executive Director.
"Jack Herer has been a good friend and associate of mine for over 30 years. I was there when he had the heart attack at our Hempstalk festival and I know he wouldn't appreciate the quality of life he's endured these last months. Still he will be greatly missed. I honor his memory."
"No other single person has done more to educate people all across the world about industrial hemp and marijuana as Jack Herer. His book is translated into a dozen different languages, it's a bestseller in Germany," added Stanford.
"The Hempstalk stage will forever be the Jack Herer Memorial stage. And, a Memorial is planned to be built where he fell that day," Stanford said.
"His legacy will continue to inspire and encourage for generations to come."
Drug and chemical giant Bayer AG has admitted that there is no way to stop the uncontrolled spread of its genetically modified crops.
"Even the best practices can't guarantee perfection," said Mark Ferguson, the company's defense lawyer in a recent trial.
Two Missouri farmers sued Bayer for contaminating their crop with modified genes from an experimental strain of rice engineered to be resistant to the company's Liberty-brand herbicide. The contamination occurred in 2006, during an open field test of the new rice, which was not approved for human consumption. According to the plaintiffs' lawyer, Don Downing, genetic material from the unapproved rice contaminated more than 30 percent of all rice cropland in the United States.
"Bayer was supposed to be careful," Downing said. "Bayer was not careful and that rice did escape into our commercial rice supplies."
The plaintiffs alleged that in addition to contaminating their fields, Bayer further harmed them financially by undermining their export market. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the widespread rice contamination, important export markets were closed to U.S. producers. A report from Greenpeace International estimates the financial damage of the contamination at between $741 million and $1.3 billion.
As far as I can tell, just about the only person in the "main stream media" that actually does investigative reporting is Rachel Maddow. Bill Moyers has a weekly show, and his work does count, but it is not really a news show. I can understand why so many people don't understand what is really going on in America. It is because the politicians they elect are constantly lying to them, and the "reporters" just go onto the next question. For instance, the talk of "Death Panels" or McConnell's "Bailouts" are talking points, and outright lies. The story should be 99% the fact that that politicians, or has beens have to lie, or that they are lying, and 1% what the actual lie is. This way they score no points for lying and are trashed in the media for not telling the truth instead. Like it should be. The news should be "Top ten lies of the day".
As Matt Kelley 
The International Cannabis and Hemp Expo, the first trade show of its kind in the U. S. to permit on-site pot smoking, reportedly grabbed an estimated 15,000 enthusiasts to Daly City over the weekend.
Klara Marosszeky has a vision for the future that involves revamping of the local farming industry to produce industrial hemp crops. Working with farmers, she has just harvested her first commercial crop of industrial hemp and is looking for innovators who want to utilize the product.
Legalize Industrial Hemp for American Jobs and Prosperity
That is not all—the very best art and writing paper is made from hemp. The long fibers of the plant make it superior to wood in paper-making. That also means hemp paper-making requires less chemicals to produce. Indeed, the Constitution and Declaration of Independence both were originally drafted on hemp paper. These same long, strong fibers can be used to make clothes. Hemp clothes used to be coarse, but thanks to new processes for hemp it is now possible to make hemp shirts and pants as comfortable and absorbent as cotton, using less than 1% of the oil, fertilizers and pesticides to produce.
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The investments were in the five largest fast-food corporations -- Jack in the Box, McDonald's, Burger King, Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and others), and Wendy's/Arby's, according to J. Wesley Boyd of 
