Peru declares environmental state of emergency in northern part of Amazon rainforest
In declaring the state of emergency, Peru’s environment ministry said tests in February and March found high levels of barium, lead, chrome and petroleum-related compounds at different points in the Pastaza valley.
Pluspetrol, the biggest oil and natural gas producer in Peru, has operated the oil fields since 2001. It took over from Occidental Petroleum, which began drilling in 1971, and, according to the government, had not cleaned up contamination either.
Several multimillion dollar fines have been levied against Pluspetrol in recent years. The company has appealed against all of the fines in the Peruvian courts…
Note, though that “The Peruvian government plans to auction a further 29 new oil and gas concessions this year.”
(via silas216)
"…how could anyone claim that President Bush “kept us safe,” when the worst terrorist attack in America’s history took place nearly nine months after Bush became president? Moreover, how could anyone claim that Bush “kept us safe,” when Bush’s own intelligence services produced a National Intelligence Estimate in 2006, which concluded that America’s invasion of Iraq had actually made the world a more dangerous place, due to the proliferation of terrorists and terrorism that it precipitated?"
American Militarism: Part Two (Charles Krauthammer)
(via novelcombinationofwords)
"If gun culture is going to be the foundation for the kind of gun politics we have (which will brook no regulation at all, even when that regulation is designed to safeguard the lives and limbs of gun owners themselves); if the politics are the result of the culture (and it’s the kind of culture that says it’s okay to give a five-year-old a gun)…well then, I’m sorry—we need to talk about this culture."
Chris Hayes (via msnbc)
(via seriouslyamerica)
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Among the more serious arguments against liberalizing immigration is that it can be costly to taxpayers. Low-skilled immigrants in particular consume more government services than they pay in taxes, increasing the burden of government for native-born Americans. Organizations such as the Center for Immigration Studies, the Heritage Foundation, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform have produced reports claiming that immigration costs taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year, with the heaviest costs borne by state and local taxpayers. No less a classical liberal than Milton Freidman mused that open immigration is incompatible with a welfare state. Responding to a question at a libertarian conference in 1999, Friedman rejected the idea of opening the U.S. border to all immigrants, declaring that “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state” (Free Students 2008).
Contrary to those concerns, immigration to the United States does not pose a long-term burden on U.S. taxpayers. The typical immigrant and his or her descendants pay more in taxes than they consume in government services in terms of net present value. Lowskilled immigrants do impose a net cost on government, in particular on the state and local level, but those costs are often exaggerated by critics of immigration and are offset by broader benefits to the overall economy. And with all due respect to Milton Freidman, practical steps can be taken to allow nations such as the United States to reap the benefits of a more open immigration system while maintaining certain welfare programs for citizens.
”
"Daniel T. Griswold, Cato Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Winter 2012
(Source: letterstomycountry)
"The most significant differences between those who smoked marijuana and those who never or no longer did was that current smokers’ insulin levels were reduced by 16 percent and their insulin resistance (a condition in which the body has trouble absorbing glucose from the bloodstream) was reduced by 17 percent."
The Atlantic’s Lindsay Abrams, reporting on the results of a recent study on the health effects of marijuana. In addition, regular pot smokers were skinnier than those who abstained, “even after adjusting for factors like age, sex, tobacco and alcohol use, and physical activity levels,” and had higher levels of HDL (“good cholesterol”). source (via shortformblog)
So, obviously I’m a huge fan of this, and not just because pot is great. In the United States, it is borderline impossible to do scientific research or testing on marijuana because it is a Schedule 1 drug. That means it’s considered one of the most dangerous substances and it has no possible medical benefits. (For reference, cocaine, opium and amphetamines are Schedule 2, and ketamine is Schedule 3 - in other words, they’re considered “less bad” than pot, and there are fewer federal requirements about studying them.)
Most people who study marijuana do it like this researcher: they test people who will admit to using pot presently or in the past. Findings like this are preliminary, but it opens up a lot of questions about how cannabis affects the human body. We need to study it more. We need to be getting lab subjects high with different amounts of THC and seeing how it affects them in real time. There is so much potential for good here.
More evidence that pot can be beneficial means more people trying to study it, which means more pressure to remove cannabis from Schedule 1, which means we can do more research and maybe find cures/preventions AND fewer people will be getting mandatory life sentences for it.
PREDICTION: Monsanto will patent a THC strain in the next decade.
(via stfuconservatives)
(Source: shortformblog, via stfuconservatives)
North Carolina Clergy Jailed While Praying for ’21st Century George Wallace’ Governor - COLORLINES
sinidentidades:
A “pray-in” in front of the North Carolina state Senate building ended with a group of 17 people — elderly ministers, college students and civil rights advocates — being handcuffed and jailed yesterday.
In the first of a series of planned nonviolent actions, Rev. William Barber, the North Carolina NAACP state conference president, led prayers and songs to protest a round of Republican-backed bills that would limit Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, reduce state funding of unemployment benefits by $700 million, and cut preschool access for mostly poor and working-class children. Barber’s group was also seeking national attention to legislation that, if passed, would make voting more burdensome for college-age, elderly, undocumented and previously incarcerated people.
Barber told reporters, before getting jailed, that “rightwing extremists in the state legislature and the governor’s office are acting as if they want to go down in history as the George Wallaces of 21st century by standing in the door of progress.”
The voter bills would impose a strict photo ID law, cut early voting, strip away voting rights for the formerly incarcerated and cause college students’ parents to pay a $2,500 tax if their kids vote at a different precinct than their home residence.
Barber called the voting restrictions unconstitutional and described them as “poll taxes”—a reference to Reconstruction-era fees specifically designed to prevent impoverished, recently emancipated black people from exercising their constitutional right to vote.
The proposed voter ID bill has already cleared the state House and will come to a vote in the state Senate soon. College students across the state began staging protests last week .
“The extreme ideology coming from the North Carolina legislature, with its attacks on the poor and working people, is alarming enough,” said Penda Hair, co-director of the civil rights organization Advancement Project. “Even more shameful is that the lawmakers who have taken control of the House and Senate are now trying to rig the rules, and disenfranchise certain voters, in order to remain in power far after this legislative session.”
These arrests came on the same day that President Obama nominated Charlotte mayor and North Carolina rising political star Anthony Foxx for Secretary of Department of Transportation. Also today, a Brookings study found that last year African-American voters turned out at a higher rate than white voters in November.
(Source: sinidentidades)
shortformblog:
An affair to remember: A dating site that specializes in orchestrating extramarital affairs has chosen the notoriously infidelitous Mark Sanford as its poster boy, spending $6,000 to erect this billboard in South Carolina, where the former governor is trying to convince people to forget his 2009 affair (and subsequent dereliction of duty) and elect him to the state’s open congressional seat. In an interview with Politico, the founder of the website suggested, without a shred of believability, that he actually wants Sanford to win the election. (Photo credit: AshleyMadison.com) source
(Source: shortformblog)
In a new campaign, Reporters Without Borders shows world leaders flipping you off.
All the leaders depicted are of the nondemocratic sort that some might label dictators—the kind who might restrict the freedom that journalists enjoy in other parts of the world with the kind of gleeful “f*ck you” depicted here.
(via silas216)
Many Servers Still Only Make $2.13 An Hour
…Thankfully, there seems to be some help on the way. Back in February, President Obama unveiled a plan to raise all minimum wages, both tipped and non-tipped, to $9 an hour. A bit more drastic, and therefore a bit more of a Hail Mary pass in the Republican-controlled House, is a bill put forth by Rep. George Miller from California and Sen. Tom Harkin from Iowa that attempts to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers to the actual minimum wage, “first moving it to $3 and then to 70 percent of the full wage through annual 95-cent increases.” Ultimately, the federal minimum wage would be raised to $10.10 by 2015.
Read more here.
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
