Mike LaChance – When you think of Oregon, you probably think of the left wing riots that have been happening in Portland for months.
It’s easy to forget that it’s a big state and not everyone who lives there is a left wing radical.
Some people there are sick of it, and are trying to make parts of the state leave for Idaho.
It’s happening in five counties.
The Washington Times reports: Continue reading
Update – No evidence of leaks had been found during a survey by a remote vehicle and divers, the Oregon DEQ said.
Mark Furman – “As of midday Friday, responders had identified 18 drums so far, both intact and rusted out, using a remotely operated vehicle. One drum has the “2,4-D or 2,4,5-T” label and appears to be intact. There’s no evidence of any leaking drums at this time,” according to DEQ.
In an update posted Friday, DEQ said:
Divers are now working at around 90-120 feet, doing detailed assessments of the drums. Their top priority is doing visual and tactile assessment on drums that appear to be intact. Continue reading
Carolanne Wright – In an era where big money is tossed around by biotech and pesticide behemoths like Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, DuPont and others to defeat laws restricting GMOs, it’s heartening to see grassroots anti-GMO efforts making headway. The latest example involves an American federal court ruling upholding a Jackson County, Oregon ban on genetically engineered crops.
In 2014, residents of Jackson County voted by a two-to-one margin to ban the growing of genetically modified crops within their district. In the Nation article, “Beating Monsanto in the Food Fight: Oregon Counties Vote to Ban GMO Crops,” we’re given a glimpse into why the ballot measure was such an overwhelming success:
“The voters here have many generations of fruit and vegetable growing, so they’re among the most educated voters. The opposition spent a million dollars and couldn’t convince the people,” explained Chuck Burr , the president of the Southern Oregon Seed Growers Association, which describes the region’s fertile valleys as “the perfect seed growing environment.”
But it wasn’t easy. Supporters of the bill where up against the Titans of biotech, who poured substantial resources into defeating the legislation by flooding media outlets with campaigns claiming if the bill was passed, farmers would be burdened and the county budget would be consumed by enforcement costs. Of particular note is the fact that 95% of the money allotted to crush the legislation came from outside the county. As reported by the The Nation: Continue reading
No doubt that only a mentally ill person could carry out a savage attack like the ones perpetrated in Newtown, Aurora and Oregon. The question is how does a person become mentally ill enough to kill. There is no doubt that prescription drugs are the main triggers of side effects which make people act violently to a point where they seek to murder children, men and women.
But the relation between pharmaceutical products and violent outbursts have found little place in the main stream media. How could it? Pharmaceutical corporations contribute millions of dollars a year to news networks and broadcast television. Rightfully blaming pharmaceuticals for many examples of violent behavior would be equivalent to killing the golden goose.
What it is becoming more common in the media is the idea that anyone who experiences anger or frustration could be mentally ill and since that is a sign of a potential threat to society, because of the recent examples where angry men shot innocent people, everyone needs to be examined for mental health as a preventive measure.
The problem is that most of the diagnoses issued by psychologists and psychiatrists are based on a set of very abstract and ambiguous terms — not science — contained in the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of psychiatry; generally known as the DSM-IV.
The ambiguity of DSM-IV allows for all kinds of mental problems to be found on anyone who allegedly suffers from depression, anger, ADD, ADHD and a whole list of fabricated mental illnesses. People who question authority, for example, are diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. The symptoms are: often losing temper, often arguing with adults, often deliberately annoys people, often experiences anger and resentment and so on.
As the 2012 election nears, a report published by the non-partisan Pew Center on the States asserted that nearly two million deceased Americans are still registered to vote, while one in every eight voter registrations contains significant errors. More than 2.7 million Americans have active registrations in more than one state, and approximately 12 million contain address inaccuracies, likely preventing them from receiving voting-related mail; further, more than 50 million eligible U.S. citizens are unregistered.
The Pew study, which was released Tuesday, also shows that the United States spends more on voter registration while producing worse results than many other countries such as Canada. In fact, the authors note, “Canada, which uses modern technology to register people as well as data-matching techniques common in the private sector, spends less than 35 cents per voter to process registrations, and 93 percent of its eligible population is registered.” Contrarily, a 2008 Pew study administered in Oregon indicated that taxpayers were paying more than $4 per voter to keep lists up to date, and other states have generated similar numbers.
“Voter registration is the gateway to participating in our democracy [sic], but these antiquated, paper-based systems are plagued with errors and inefficiencies,” alleged David Becker, Pew’s Director of Election Initiatives. “These problems waste taxpayer dollars, undermine voter confidence and fuel partisan disputes over the integrity of our elections.”
“We have a ramshackle registration system in the U.S.,” echoed Lawrence Norden, Deputy Director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program at New York University. “It’s a mess. It’s expensive. There isn’t central control over the process.” Norden and his colleagues have been advocating modernization of the voter registration system, but they also caution against states rushing to discard voters from the rolls. “This is something that has to be done very carefully,” he warned.