Helena Norberg-Hodge reminds us that "Unlike a Globalized Food System, Local Food Won’t Destroy the Environment." Think of all the things we wouldn't be doing if we grew all our food locally -- things like seed extinction, monoculture farming, antibiotic abuse, factory farm pollution, high-fructose corn syrup subsidies, and crops genetically modified to better withstand resist proprietary pesticides, to name just a few. It's enough to make you think that the only thing Big Food does "efficiently" is delivery money into executive bank accounts.
"N.J. Attorney General to Cops: Stop Working With ICE" is a misleading headline, because ICE can, you know, get a warrant and thus earn the cooperation from police that such warrants mandate. Of course that subtlety seems lost on the ICE deputy director who squeals about "public safety" and issues ominous warnings that ICE will just have to arrest more people, which will "inevitably" result in "collateral arrests." What's preventing ICE from just getting warrants again? I sure hope it's not the Bush Mobb-era notion that warrants are "quaint."
When you hear that our government takes upwards of 10 years to process workers' claims for nuclear contamination compensation largely because nuclear labs don't necessarily document problems the way they're supposed to, you may feel compelled to ask: is this what folks mean when they demand small government? Because this is what we get when we demand small government, and no use telling me you just know some of these claims are BS -- if you had a comp claim that you knew other people were telling their friends "must be" BS, how would you feel? (Note well, also, that Tha Bush Mobb dragged its feet on giving these workers justice wherever they could.)
While our government's Office of Special Counsel tells federal workers they'd best not talk about resisting or impeaching our President while they're on the clock -- and the worst I'll say about that is that maybe the OSC takes their interpretation a bit too far -- that very same OSC found that half a dozen Administration officials, including our deputy press secretary, violated the Hatch Act, but let them all off with warnings. Who thinks OSC will be similarly-restrained with rank-and-file federal workers talking about impeaching our President? Not me -- this Administration, like so many others, thinks law and order is for "little people" like us.
Goldman Sachs analysts ask, in re gene therapy treatments, "Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" That's very unfortunate wording right there, but if a treatment obliterates a sector of the health care economy, that doesn't mean it's evil; surely no one would wish to have leprosy or smallpox back as part of a perverse "job-creation program" because they once kept doctors and caregivers busy. (Oh, and Gilead's sales of their miracle Hep C drug could also be falling because now more people know how expensive it is and how noxious a corporation Gilead is.)
Finally, House Democrats forge ahead with their Leviathan of a voting rights/campaign finance reform/anti-corruption bill. And now that they've apparently purged attempts to simply repeal Supreme Court decisions without actually amending our Constitution, now I'm wondering if H.R. 1's pack-everything-in-one-bill might actually be the right approach. Any Republican who votes against it can be portrayed in campaign ads as "anti-voting rights" or "anti-campaign finance reform" or "pro-corruption." I mean, we're still relying on Democrats to run those ads, but at least they'll put Republicans on the spot. (Of course, when Republicans whine that we're trying to do too much at once, we can respond, paraphrasing William Lloyd Garrison, that you don't pull a baby out of a fire gradually.)
UPDATE. I really should have checked the date on that Goldman-Sachs article referenced in the fifth paragraph above -- not only is it from April, but I wrote about it then (and rather less generously than I did above, I think). I still think the insight contained therein is worth keeping.
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