Monday, September 29th, 2014
Stephan: The uber rich Theocratic Right are in it for the long haul, and they have learned that while they can't buy every election, they can buy many of them. A little here, a little there, and pretty soon they can control the whole even more than they do today. The lethargy and passivity of American voters, as well as their ignorance are the things they rely on.
Excerpted from 'Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust” by Darrell M. West (Brookings Institution Press, September 2014). Reprinted with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
David Koch, Sheldon Adelson (Credit: AP/Evan Agostini/Scott Roth/photo montage by Salon)
The answer to the question of whether rich people can buy elections is ‘Sometimes, but not always.” President Obama won reelection despite the massive amounts spent to defeat him by conservative business leaders. He beat back their spending by having a weak opponent who was seen by voters as pro-rich and out of touch. Mitt Romney lacked the personal skills to connect with voters and persuade them that he cared about the middle class.
Clearly, then, money is not the only thing that decides election campaigns. Public opinion, media coverage, campaign strategies, and policy positions matter as well. During a time of rising campaign costs and limited public engagement in the political process, money sets the agenda, affects how the campaign develops, and shapes how particular people and policy problems get defined. It takes skilled candidates, considerable media coverage, and strong organizational efforts to offset the power of great wealth.
There are no guarantees that future Democratic […]
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Monday, September 29th, 2014
LAURENCE LEWIS, - Daily Kos
Stephan: Endless war is ever so profitable. It's true it ruins the lives of millions of poor and middle class families but that's a good investment as well. Taking care of them will also be incredibly profitable. You make money both ways, and what else matters.
Click through to see the startling charts.
attribution: Ian Bremmer via Daily Kos
The new U.S. war in the Middle East has only begun and already there are clear winners:
Support for Islamic State increased after U.S. airstrikes began in Iraq and the militant group may take more hostages to try to force concessions from Washington, the FBI director told Congress on Wednesday.
Islamic State is “committed to instilling fear and attracting recruits” and to drawing public attention, as shown through its use of social media and in videos it released of the beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, said FBI Director James Comey.
“ISIL’s widespread use of social media and growing online support intensified following the commencement of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq,” Comey, using an acronym for the group, said in prepared testimony for a congressional hearing on threats to the U.S. homeland.
Because the U.S. is doing exactly what the terrorists want:
There are many reasons the U.S. shouldn’t go to war with the Islamic State – and the best one may be because that is exactly […]
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Monday, September 29th, 2014
ALANNA MITCHELL, - Environmental Health News
Stephan: Rachel Carson had an enormous effect on my thinking, and my subsequent choices, and perhaps it was the same with you. I am very heartened that her impulse in favor of Gaia's network of life lives on in a new generation of scientists.
Kasia Majewski
SASKATOON, SASKATCHEWAN, CANADA — Christy Morrissey is driving her white pickup truck along the endless prairie highway, windows open, listening for birds. She points to the scatter of ponds glinting in the landscape, nestled among fields of canola that stretch as far as the eye can see.
Formed by retreating glaciers 12,000 years ago and fed each spring by melted snow, these tiny potholes are the lifeblood of the prairies, the kidneys that drain impurities and the cradle that replenishes life.
But when Morrissey looks at these ponds, she sees something few others do. An ecotoxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan, she knows that nearly every pond is laced with neonicotinoids, the world’s most widely used insecticides, deadly to insects at a minute dose of a few parts per trillion.
Like biologist Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring warned about the devastating effects of DDT, Morrissey is mounting a scientific quest to figure out if these new pesticides are harming living things they’re not intended to kill, including birds. She is part of a […]
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Monday, September 29th, 2014
CHRISTINA SARICH, - Nation of Change
Stephan: Here is some excellent news about agriculture. I am particularly fond of freshly picked organic summer corn -- we have had four really good meals of it this year -- so very glad to read this story.
Via Nation of Change
Here’s some of the best news all year for non-GMO supporters. Frank Kutka is working to save our heirloom corn from cross-breeding with genetically modified corn. He’s been diligently at work for over 15 years now developing what he calls ‘Organic Ready” corn varieties that have the ability to block cross-pollination, thus eliminating Monsanto’s prevalently grown GMO corn from infesting organic farmer’s crops.
Kutka says:
‘We need corn that organic farmers can grow without fear of GMO contamination,” says Kutka, who is in the fourth year of a five-year breeding project funded by the Organic Farming Research Foundation.”
Needless to say, Kutka, like all farmers growing organic crops, faces an enormous challenge. U.S. farmers currently plant millions of acres of GMO corn, among other GMO crops. Around 93% of the year’s corn crop was genetically modified.
While this makes Monsanto happy, it leaves those looking for non-contaminated, heirloom, organic, non-GMO corn a little miffed, to say the least. These millions of acres of corn can also easily contaminate other crops […]
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Sunday, September 28th, 2014
PATRICK CALDWELL, - Mother Jones
Stephan: Almost all states run on Red values do poorly. The Theocratic Right's concept of governance is that bad. But no state has gone through a reversal quite like Kansas, It is a true cautionary tale of what happens when conservative Republicans run the show.
Illustration by Roberto Parada via Mother Jones
One Wednesday afternoon in mid-August, Govs. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Chris Christie of New Jersey stopped for a photo op-and $54 worth of pork ribs and sausages-at Oklahoma Joe’s, a gas station barbecue joint on the outer fringe of Kansas City. Along with hickory smoke and diesel fumes, there was a mild aroma of desperation in the air. Brownback’s approval ratings hovered in the mid-30s, and one recent poll had his Democratic opponent, state House Minority Leader Paul Davis, beating him by 10 points. Now Christie, the chair of the Republican Governors Association, had parachuted in to lend some star power as Brownback made a fundraising swing through the wealthy suburbs outside of Kansas City. A day earlier, the RGA had announced a $600,000 ad buy in support of Brownback. “We believe in Sam,” Christie assured the scrum of reporters who’d accompanied the governors to Oklahoma Joe’s.
That the RGA had been forced to mobilize reinforcements in Kansas spoke to just how […]
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