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How Regulation came to be: 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act

According to an AP article that appeared in our local daily this morning, one of the tools the federal government may use in going after Stewart Parnell and other management of the Peanut Corporation of America is the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. Ironically, the 1938 law has its roots in an incident of corporate hubris and disregard for public safety not unlike the present salmonella-tainted peanut butter case.
"A spoonful of sugar," Julie Andrews sang in her role as Mary Poppins, "Helps the medicine go down." In the middle of the Great Depression, the S. E. Massengill Company found something much better than sugar. Or so they thought. The disaster unfolds on the flip.MOREblockquote>

Chicken in America: A Lesson In Irony (And Bad Taste).

There are a lot of reasons why chicken today has no taste, but the main one is because someone seems to have decided that chicken must be cheap. And for chicken to be cheap, each chicken must be cheap to raise, which is to say quick and easily-managed. Thus, for starters, you need to get rid of genetic diversity, which is what occurred in the 1950’s with the wide-scale commercial production of chickens. In a recently-published study by William Muir of Purdue University, it was found that more than 50% of the diversity of ancestral breeds has been lost. See Native birds might restock poultry industry's genetic stock, Add to this the fact of commercial chickens being fed a diet of "super-grow" chicken feed, which is typically 70% corn, 20% soy, and 10% other ingredients such as vitamins and minerals, and you have the perfect recipes for chickens that grow quickly but taste like nothing.
It need not be this way, however. And in France, it is not. There, chickens that have earned the designation "Label Rouge" are guaranteed to taste not just better than commercially-raised chickens, but to actually taste like chicken. The label started in the early sixties when French chicken farmers banded together in cooperatives to protect the traditional methods of raising chickens on small farms. To be entitled to the coveted red-sticker that is the Label Rouge, farmers must comply with a long list of strict requirements, including the raising of only slow-growing breeds suited for living outdoors, which is what the chickens do, roaming in the open air for their relatively long lives. For a longer discussion of Label Rouge and Chickens, and other quality-labels prevalent in the European Union, please see Sticker Shock, by Barry James MORE

Green Energy and the Stimulus - the details

The American Recovery and Investment Act contains $61.9 billion in energy-related public spending and industry building tax credits and bond provisions estimated at $20 billion over a ten year period (in reduced tax revenues).
So lets take a look at that $61.9 billion
1. R&D total : $8.2 billion
$8.2 billion has been set aside for research into renewable energy and improving energy efficiency. This will be administered by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
Of this research funding, $800 million is to be spent on biofuel research, $400 million on geothermal projects, and $50 million on the integration of the grid with information technology. I assume this last provision is related to the "smart grid".
$3.4 billion of the R&D total is fossil fuels related including clean coal (what a waste) ... $1 billion for fossil energy R&D programs, $1.52 billion for carbon capture, $800 million for Clean Coal, and $70 million for geologic carbon sequestration.MORE

Meet the Stans: Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan lies on the Eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, with Iran to its southwest, Afghanistan to its southeast, and Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to its north. The country is dominated by the massive, flat Kara Kum desert, which takes up over 80% of the country. The Kopat Dag mountain chain runs along the south of the country, forming the border with Iran and home to the capital city, Ashgabat (whose name, supposedly, means "city of love"). The other major mountain range is the Kugitangtau chain in the southeast, which contains the country's highest elevation, 10,290 ft, at Mt. Ayrybaba. In total land area, the country is slightly larger than California.
According to the CIA world factbook, most (85%) of the population are ethnic Turkmens. Their language, Turkmen, is similar to Turkish (I've read there is a degree of mutual intelligibility, but knowing neither language I can't say for certain). The country also possesses small minorities of Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Russians. Most Russians are Orthodox Christian, and the other inhabitants are mainly Sunni Muslim. The total population is slightly over five million.MORE

Steelworkers, Hip-Hoppers and Tree-Huggers Get It On at 'Green Jobs 2009'!

When you walk into a large and stately Washington, DC hotel lobby and find it teeming with thousands of smiling, buzzing people-half in labor union jackets and ball caps, the other half dressed in 30-something hip-hop causal-you know some special is happening.

This was the lively, energized scene for three cold wintry days this Feb 4-6 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, as nearly 3000 activists and organizers gathered for the "Good Jobs, Green Jobs" National Conference. The gathering was convened by more than 100 organizations, representing every major trade union and every major environmental group in the country, among others.

It's called the "blue-green alliance," the core of which is the United Steel Workers and the Sierra Club, which jointly launched the "Green Jobs" movement nationally at a conference in Pittsburgh, PA a year ago. The turnout this year is triple in size and highly energized by both the victory of President Barack Obama and the looming onset of an economic crisis unmatched in scope since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In addition to the steelworkers, the building trades were well represented, and the green groups spanned a wide range of concerns, for toxics to alternative energy to climate change. Also notable was the participation of a contingent of "high road" corporations rooted in the growing "green economy." Gamesa, a major Spanish firm specializing in wind turbines, and Piper Jaffray, a large paper company focused on recycled paper products, are two examples.

But a critical new dimension was added by Green For All, an organization rooted among inner city youth, and headed up by Van Jones. Jones is the author of "The Green Collar Economy" and an inspirational voice for a rising generation of multinational, multicultural insurgent youth.MORE

Going EV #13: Everything you ever wanted to know about the Aptera electric car (almost!)

How to obtain Medical/Prescription assistance in this financial crisis

Food Democracy Now: 10 Ideas for a Sustainable Future

Unschooling Instead of High Schooling

Solar vs Coal, Land Area Comparison.


Behind The Great Firewall

Historic firsts in labor history

Big business using civil rights imagery to fight EFCA/UPDATR

United Healthcare Workers Holding Our Ground

The Myth of Data Mining