FDA Does Enforce, Doesn't Enforce

The FDA can't decide if it should enforce or not enforce it's own rules. One one hand, the FDA set up a sting operation to bust Amish farmers who have customers who voluntarily buy their unpasteurized milk.

A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.
The product in question: unpasteurized milk.

On the other hand, the FDA has refused to enforce it's own regulation about using low doses of antibiotics on livestock to allow the livestock to more readily be raised in unsanitary environments. While this practice has long been criticized for reducing the effectiveness of the antibiotics on humans, the practice has been ignored by the FDA for years.

In 2001, the Union of Concerned Scientists estimated that greater than 70% of the antibiotics used in the US are given to food animals (for example, chickens, pigs and cattle) in the absence of disease

The AMA also spoke out in 2001:

In an effort to slow the development of resistance, the American Medical Assn. (AMA) went on record last week in opposition to non-therapeutic uses of antibiotics in agriculture, particularly for those antibiotics also used to treat human illnesses.

The NRDC sued the FDA:

NRDC and our allies filed a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration to finally end the use of antibiotics in animal feed—a practice that’s contributing to the rise in drug-resistant superbugs and endangering the health of our families.

Roughly 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to healthy farm animals to promote faster growth and compensate for unsanitary conditions. These cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys receive doses too low to actually treat disease, but high enough to allow bacteria resistant to antibiotic treatment to survive and thrive.

Those bacteria don’t stay on the farm. They spread to humans and can lead to superbugs that are difficult or impossible to cure. ...

It is clear the FDA attacks threats to mega-corporate farming, even if the threat is a small Amish farm. At the same time, the FDA refuses to enforce regulations against the mega-corporate farms. Is the FDA for the people or for the corporations?

Inflation Arrives

Inflation continues. Consumers may want to stock up on non-perishables before prices go higher. Coffee drinkers, stock up now.

Costco says inflation is here:
"Inflation is clearly back ..."
"He listed examples of items that are up, including dog food (3.5 percent), detergents (10 percent), water (10 percent), plastic plates and cups (8 to 9 percent) and trash bags (4 percent)."


Fourth price hike in a year, this time 11% higher:
"... coffee maker J M Smucker Co (SJM.N) raised prices for key
brands including flagship Folgers by an average of 11 percent
on Tuesday, its fourth and biggest hike in a year."

Starbucks says "it will raise the prices for bagged coffee sold at its U.S stores by 17% ..."
From the same article, "Over the past 12 months, coffee contract prices for Arabica beans are up 99% on the IntercontinentalExchange."

Police State Thugs

A person in Philadelphia was peacefully exercising his rights while shopping, when a police state thug approached and threatened him. After being threatened with bodily injury, cursed at, and unlawfully detained, he was released. Later he was charged by the police state District Attorney.

Philadelphia police and the District Attorney are conspiring as a gang of police state thugs. "To say he has to give up that right in order to stop being persecuted by the state, well, that doesn't sound like the America we want to live in."

John Stossel has more details here.

Obama Supports Tepco Stock Price

It has been reported in the Japanese press that Obama has urged Japanese officials to support the stock price of the failed nuclear plant operator Tepco.

The steep drop in Tepco's stock price has already dealt a blow to investment funds in the United States. Nearly 20 percent of its stock is held by non-Japanese investors. This has reportedly led the Obama administration to urge the Kan government to take steps to prevent a further decline in Tepco stock.

Are there any more doubts about the sell-out of Obama in favor of corporatism?

States of Illiterate

The symbol of America's manufacturing power, The Motor City, continues to slide down an economic and intellectual hill. Will this end in a complete transformation and rebirth, or will it be a drawn-out decade of decline?
Fortunately for the connected hipsters, there's an app for that! Maybe not.

Nearly Half Of Detroiters Can't Read

Roughly half of all the people who live in Detroit are illiterate. They can't read the back of a cereal box. They can't read a weather report. They can't read at all.

Goldman Sachs Criminal Charges

Matt Taibbi wrote another great article on criminal actions in the finance industry, this time fingering Goldman Sachs for criminal charges. Will the Justice Department take action? If not, will the people take action?

Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.

Meltdown in Fukushima Japan

It has been admitted that a nuclear reactor in Japan hahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifs melted down after "full exposure" and there are "multiple holes" in the bottom of the containment vessel.

Is the any mainstream media in the USA covering this issue, or have Americans returned to their regularly scheduled TV programming and consumption of radioactive produce, milke, and meat?

Wall Street Journal Shills For New World Order

This week the Wall Street Journal was caught changing http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif(and softening) a commentary from a newly elected politician from Finland. See the before and after Wall Street Journal manipulation here.

For this weekend, the Wall Street Journal has a front page picture and link to a New World Order article about a book by New World Order architect Henry Kissinger.

Looting Continues

A couple big banks reported perfect trading quarters,http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif with no losing days. If the banks can win every day, who is losing every day? This is a racket in which the big banks consistently fleece the people:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), the second- largest U.S. bank by assets, joined Bank of America Corp. (BAC) in reporting a perfect trading period in the first quarter.

EPA Slows Radiation Testing

While the Japanese nuclear radiation releases are antihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcipated to continue for at least another three months, and while the EPA continues to find elevated radiation levels in food and water in the USA, the EPA has discontinued frequent radiation monitoring:

"Results from one drinking water and two precipitation samples detected low levels of radioactive material consistent with estimated releases from the damaged nuclear reactors."

"EPA has returned to the routine RadNet sampling and analysis process for precipitation, drinking water and milk."
"In accordance with normal RadNet protocol, EPA will be analyzing milk and drinking water samples on a quarterly basis and precipitation samples as part of a monthly composite. The next round of milk and drinking water sampling will take place in approximately three months."


The EPA's mission:

The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment.

EPA's purpose is to ensure that:
all Americans are protected from significant risks to human health and the environment where they live, learn and work; ...

Why has the EPA stopped monitoring for the continuing radiation risks? This looks like a way to avoid collecting data about harmful pollutants in food and water.

End The Bloody War

Portugal decriminalized drug possession ten years ago. Portugal now treats drug use as a medical rehabilitation issue and has found good results.

Mexico's President is advocating similar drug decriminalization.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox believes the current strategies employed against Mexico's drug cartels are not working and he is advocating a different approach.

Speaking passionately about the issue, Fox said he has a team of experts tracking drug-related violence in Mexico. He is concerned the government crackdown and cartel violence that has left about 34,000 dead in the past 4 years is also affecting trade, investment, and tourism.

America's prison and law enforcement cartels will not accept decriminalization because it would threaten their easy money gravy train.

Eric Holder Should Resign

Attorney General http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifEhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifric Holder's testimony on the ATF's illegal "Project Gun Runner". The ATF put more than 1800 guns into the hands of Mexico's gangs. Where are the criminal indictments for these rogue government agents?



In 1993, the ATF staged a needless raid in Texas in order to justify their budget appropriations. Americans were murdered by the ATF in Texas and now the ATF is running guns into Mexico.

Monsanto Self-Regulates

Regulatory capture is when industry effectively control government regulators. The effect is to protect big companies while setting up barriers to entry for small companies. Protecting consumers is forgotten.

The USDA is admitting regulatory capture by allowing Monsanto to regulate itself:

The USDA is responsible for assessing environmental impacts of new GMO crops. The agency has been lax about this, to say the least. In 2005, the USDA gave Monsanto the go-ahead to unleash its sugar beets before preparing an Environmental Impact Statement. This decision eventually triggered a judge to rule that Monsanto sugar beet seedlings should be ripped from the ground.

Because the USDA is so bad at doing its job on time, the agency decided to see if anyone else was prepared to do its safety testing work instead. And so it looks like the USDA will at least temporarily hand over environmental impact reporting responsibilities to the biotech companies behind GMO crops. The pilot program will allow these companies to conduct their own environmental assessments of crops or outsource the work to contractors.

Government Drug Running, Part 2

In no surprise to anyone who has been awake the past ten years, those with special security to avoid screening have been accused of running drugs. Those drug runners include baggage handlers and the same TSA that gropes children while pretending to provide security.

Note the words "employee access to bypass security":

Complaints filed in federal court in Detroit — where nine defendants were ordered held behind bars until at least Friday — describe intricate drug-smuggling rings that used crude tactics, an exotic locale and employee access to bypass security and transport hundreds of pounds of illegal drugs to Detroit's streets.

Why do we have employees who can evade security? Is the security theater being exposed for the sham it is?

Read the full article here.

Government Drug Running

High-level Mexican drug runner claims he was working for USA:

A high-level player with one of the most notorious narco-trafficking organizations in Mexico, the Sinaloa “cartel,” claims that he has been working with the U.S. government for years, according to pleadings filed recently in federal court in Chicago.

Interesting items from the article:

... it is necessary to revisit the mysterious crash of a Gulfstream II corporate jet on Sept. 24, 2007, in Mexico’s Yucatan region. Onboard that jet was an estimated four tons of cocaine, which appears to have been loaded onto the jet in Colombia.
The Gulfstream II sported a tail number, N987SA, linked by European investigators to past CIA rendition operations.

Damy’s case also is tied intricately to another U.S. govermment legal action against banking giant Wachovia (now a subsidiary of Wells Fargo), which was implicated in the Damy money-laundering operation. The Sinaloa organization operative allegedly used the bank as part of his scheme.
Wachovia inked a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice in March 2010 in exchange for paying a monetary penalty of some $160 million and providing a promise of cooperation with the U.S. government.

In the early 1990s, the CIA ran a spook mission (the Guillen Episode referred to by Levine) allegedly designed to infiltrate Colombian narco-trafficking groups. The operation resulted in at least a ton of cocaine — some estimates put the figure much higher — entering the United States unchecked. The head of the DEA at the time, Robert Bonner, incensed at the CIA’s actions, which were carried out over DEA’s objections, went on national TV and essentially accused the CIA of engaging in drug trafficking.