Hemp Could Save Our Nation

This is a must read diary from DailyKos…

Hemp is the hidden key to legalizing marijuana.

Here’s an excerpt…

Hemp is the far bigger economic issue hiding behind legal marijuana.

If the upcoming pot legalization ballot in California were decided by hemp farmers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, it would be no contest.  For purely economic reasons, if you told the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that the nation they were founding would someday make hemp illegal, they would have laughed you out of the room.

If California legalizes pot, it will save the state millions in avoided legal and imprisonment costs, while raising it millions in taxes.

But if it then legalizes hemp, it will open up to a multi-billion-dollar crop that has been a staple of human agriculture for thousands of years, and that could save the farms of thousands of American families.

In order to understand the full impact of hemp on our economy, read the complete diary at this link.  Imagine all the trees that would be saved if we switched from wood to hemp for making paper.

The Declaration of Independence is written on hemp paper.

The Plastic Garbage Patch

Are we slowly eliminating the human race with plastic?

Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, Ph.D., an expert on marine debris, agrees. “If you could fast-forward 10,000 years and do an archaeological dig…you’d find a little line of plastic,” he told The Seattle Times last April. “What happened to those people? Well, they ate their own plastic and disrupted their genetic structure and weren’t able to reproduce. They didn’t last very long because they killed themselves.”

Plastic Oceans:  This article explains how we are destroying the oceans with nasty plastic and is on the “must read” list.

Not only are submitting our food chain to plastic, we consume toxic plastic when we microwave in plastic containers and/or eat from plastic containers.

When shopping, take along cloth shopping bags and when asked by the clerk, “Paper or plastic?” just say “No” and give them the cloth bags to use instead.

Coming to Your Neighborhood

Hydraulic fracturing for natural gas destroys our air and our drinking water. Cheney’s bad environmental decisions which supported the profits of Halliburton over the health of Americans lives on. Soon, there will be gas wells all over the publicly owned lands in Pennsylvania. The damage created to the environment by these wells will destroy vegetation and wild life. There are many hunters in Pennsylvania and they will find that there will be less areas where they can hunt because the gas companies will take over the land and the hunters will be restricted from entering what was once prime hunting grounds.

Pennsylvania – And There Is More To Come

Our State Government wants to allow more of this contamination.

I’m just getting started.

Joe Sestak for US Senate

Pennsylvania for Change endorses Joe Sestak for US Senate representing the people of Pennsylvania.

http://joesestak.com/welcome/Home/Home.html

Joe is a supporter of gender equality.

Joe Sestak believes in building better lives and futures for working families – particularly America’s women. Today, women earn only 77 cents for every dollar that men earn and 12 percent of women are their family’s main wage earner. To ensure the opportunity for a more secure future for women and their families, Joe believes we need to ensure that women are not only provided fair wages, but also benefits that are based on their performance; equal rights to challenge unfair practices, secure health and safety – including the right to choose – and skill training in fields that are underrepresented by women; and secure retirements and pensions that guarantee their independence and economic security in the coming years.

He also supports a public option health care plan.  When Joe Sestak retired from the Navy, he was offered many positions working for the military complex and he turned down these high paying jobs to run for Congress because he believes that it is his turn to give back to the American people.

Visit Joe’s website and read more about his position on issues, volunteer and/or contribute to his campaign.  During the 2010 primary, help get out the vote for Joe.

Just a slap on the wrist

(This is a re-post from last August.)

For decades, Monsanto had been polluting a creek in the town of Anniston, Alabama.

“On the west side of Anniston, the poor side of Anniston, the people ate dirt. They called it “Alabama clay” and cooked it for extra flavor. They also grew berries in their gardens, raised hogs in their back yards, caught bass in the murky streams where their children swam and played and were baptized. They didn’t know their dirt and yards and bass and kids — along with the acrid air they breathed — were all contaminated with chemicals. They didn’t know they lived in one of the most polluted patches of America.”

“Today, parts of Anniston are so contaminated that residents have been told not to grow vegetables in the soil, kick up dirt, eat food, chew gum or smoke cigarettes while working in their yards. ‘Our children have to play in the streets, on the sidewalks, because they can’t play in the grass because it’s contaminated,’ says resident David Baker. ‘We have to wear masks if we cut our grass. Where else in the United States of America are people doing that?'”

“In my judgment, there’s no question this is the most contaminated site in the U.S.,” says Dr. David Carpenter, a professor of environmental health at the State University of New York in Albany. [10].

(source Wikipedia)

Besides dumping PCBs into the streams, Monsanto has also dumped mercury and lead down the Company’s sewer drains which eventually made its way to the sewage treatment plant.

In 2002, a jury found Monsanto guilty of polluting for decades in the Anniston area. This opened up the opportunity for further lawsuits.

Monsanto was found negligent because back in 1966, Monsanto managers discovered that fish turned belly within 10 seconds, spurting blood from their mouths and shedding their skin as if they were dropped in boiling water. Instead of reporting this information, Monsanto decided to keep it secret and the residents of Anniston continued to fish and swim in this toxic soup which was once a pristine stream. Monsanto hid decades of pollution.

As posted in Mindfully.org, (if you have the time, read the entire article)

They also know that for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents — many emblazoned with warnings such as “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy” — show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.

Monsanto has been dumping PCBs for over 40 years and creating “super fund” sites and we, the taxpayers, are stuck with the clean-up bill.

How long have we known about the toxicity of PCBs?

In early 1967, a group of Swedish scientists demonstrated publicly that PCBs were a threat to the global environment. The Swedes identified traces of PCBs throughout the food chain: in fish, birds, pine needles, even their children’s hair. They proved that PCBs are persistent — which, as one lawyer drawled in court last spring, “is nothing but a fancy word for ‘won’t go away.’ ” But Monsanto’s primary response was to prepare for a media war.

Monsanto has no scruples and continues to provide products that are risky to our health.

Additional reading:

http://www.greenleft.org.au/1997/292/15855

Ballad of the Brooklyn Parrots

These are smart parrots that broke loose from a shipping crate in 1968.  They wanted freedom   🙂   and now they have forever homes in Brooklyn.

Is It The Season of Consumption or Distribution?

Once again, it is time to re-visit the Story of Stuff.

Take a look at how “stuff” moves throughout our system in a linear manner.  Click here.

The Toxic Waste Dump

I received this email from United Sludge-free Alliance regarding an environmental issue. This is a major problem in Pennsylvania and I’m sure that it is showing up in other parts of the country.

Greeting All and some exciting news!

As we look at the issues of sewage sludge being used as
fertilizer on farm fields and sold to the public at garden
centers, an unsettling body of evidence points to the real
dangers that we are being exposed to. Every pathogen,
poison, and hazardous substance becomes condensed into the
sludge, which is then applied to the very soil and water
that sustains us. Berks county is the second most sludge in
PA – with Lancaster and York leading and following. With the
EPA’s support, this practice has grown to substantial use.
Sludge is not fertilizer – its toxic waste transfer. The
sludge issue is not a farm or environmental issue – it is a
health and food safety issue.

We have the opportunity to bring some excellent speakers
with first hand experience about the dangers of sludge to
Berks County. Murray McBride, of Cornell Waste Management
Institute, has agreed to speak about the incredible studies
that Cornell has done that find that sludge is indeed
hazardous to our health. Andy McElmurray, a farmer from
Augusta, Georgia has also agreed to speak to our community.
Andy’s story is eye-opening in the fact that, after years of
assured safety of sludge, his farm became so toxic he is
unable to grow crops. All his cows died. The lack of full
disclosure by the sludge companies is a lesson that Mr.
McElmurry and his neighbor Bill Boyce have agreed to share.
And after many years in court, a federal judge agreed that
sludge is, “a toxic substance” and awarded Mr. McElmurry
settlement money.

Here’s where you come in – do you have frequent flyer miles
in either Continental or Delta Airlines that you could
donate to fly Andy McElmurry and his neighbor Bill Boyce to
our area for the conference? Please contact me Pennsylvania for Change immediately if you can help. Email: paforchange@gmail.com

We shall plan to move forward with our quest of the truth
about sludge and how it effects the health and safety of our
food, water, land and personal bodies. This is a huge
project and everyone’s involvement will be instrumental in
changing the policies that promote poisoning our very lives.

Contact Pennsylvania for Change (paforchange@gmail.com) and I will forward your information to the spokesperson for United Sludge-Free Alliance.

If you really must know more, check out this site… http://www.ejnet.org/sludge/

From: http://www.leleva.org

ByToni

on October 11, 2006 9:25 AM |

NewsTarget.com
Originally published October 10 2006

(NewsTarget) According to research by Chad Kinney, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Eastern Washington University, fertilizer made from sewage sludge may be adding pharmaceuticals, flame retardants and other chemicals to the land.

Kinney’s research showed that no less than nine different biosolid products were produced by municipal wastewater treatment plants in seven different states — Washington, Arizona, Wisconsin, Kansas, Colorado, Texas and Iowa. These biosolid products were analyzed for 87 different organic wastewater contaminants, which represents a cross section of medicinal, industrial and household compounds.

These compounds are able to enter wastewater treatment plants and may be discharged without being completely metabolized or degraded — causing them to show up in the sludge that is then processed into certain garden and yard fertilizers. In fact, 55 of the contaminants were detected in at least one biosolid product sold as lawn and garden enhancements, and 25 compounds were found in every single one of the samples.

Kinney went on to say that “No matter what biosolid we looked at, there were some of these compounds in it.” His research was published in online edition of the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Kinney, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the United States Geological Survey (USGS), has the support of the USGS’s Toxic Substance Hydrology Program as well, who supports his research.

Government regulators and health officials say there is no immediate risk to public health; however, the study’s authors called for more research on the long-term impact on the environment. Thomas Burke — a professor of public health policy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore — believes that Kinney’s research is a sobering reminder for the Environmental Protection Agency, which has promoted biosolids for decades because they contain the same nutrients found in fertilizers.

Economic Patriotism – UPDATE

This is Richard Trumba speaking to the United Steelworkers Union.  Here’s an American that supports “Economic Patriotism”.

Transcript:

You see brothers and sisters, there’s not a single good reason for any worker — especially any union member — to vote against Barack Obama.

There’s only one really bad reason to vote against him: because he’s not white.

And I want to talk about that because I saw that for myself during the Pennsylvania primary.

I went back home to vote in Nemacolin and I ran into a woman I’d known for years. She was active in Democratic politics when I was still in grade school.

We got to talking and I asked if she’d made up her mind who she was supporting and she said: ‘Oh absolutely, I’m voting for Hillary, there’s no way I’d ever vote for Obama.’

Well, why’s that? ‘Because he’s a Muslim.’

I told her, ‘That’s not true — he’s as much a Christian as you and me, so what if he’s muslim.’

Then she shook her head and said, ‘He won’t wear an American flag pin.’

I don’t have one on and neither do you.

But, ‘C’mon, he wears one plenty of times. He just says it takes more than wearing a flag pin to be patriotic.’

‘Well, I just don’t trust him.’

Why is that?

Her voice dropped just a bit: ‘Because he’s black.’

I said, ‘Look around. Nemacolin’s a dying town. There’re no jobs here. Kids are moving away because there’s no future here. And here’s a man, Barack Obama, who’s going to fight for people like us and you won’t vote for him because of the color of his skin.’

Brothers and sisters, we can’t tap dance around the fact that there are a lot of folks out there just like that woman.

A lot of them are good union people; they just can’t get past this idea that there’s something wrong with voting for a black man. Well, those of us who know better can’t afford to look the other way.

I’m not one for quoting dead philosophers, but back in the 1700s, Edmund Burke said: ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.’ Well, there’s no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism — and it’s something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge.

It’s our special responsibility because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.

We’ve seen how companies set worker against worker — how they throw whites a few extra crumbs off the table ndsh and how we all end up losing.

But we’ve seen something else, too. We’ve seen that when we cross that color line and stand together no one can keep us down.

That’s why the CIO was created. That’s why industrial unions were the first to stand up against lynching and segregation. People need to know that it was the Steel Workers Organizing Committee — this union — that was founded on the principal of organizing all workers without regard to race. That’s why the labor movement — imperfect as we are — is the most integrated institution in American life.

I don’t think we should be out there pointing fingers in peoples’ faces and calling them racist; instead we need to educate them that if they care about holding on to their jobs, their health care, their pensions, and their homes — if they care about creating good jobs with clean energy, child care, pay equity for women workers — there’s only going to be one candidate on the ballot this fall who’s on their side… only one candidate who’s going to stand up for their families… only one candidate who’s earned their votes… and his name is Barack Obama!

And come November we are going to elect him president.

And after he’s elected we are going to hit the ground running so that, years from now, we’re going to be able to tell our grandchildren that 2008 was the year this country finally turned its back on men like George Bush and Dick Cheney and John McCain

We’re going to be able to say that 2008 was the year we started ending the war in Iraq so we could use that money to create new jobs building wind generators, solar collectors, clean coal technology and retrofitting millions of buildings all across this country

We’re going to be able to look back and say that 2008 was the year the tide began to turn against the Rush Limbaughs, the Bill O’Reillys, the Ann Coulters and the right wing hate machine

(Thanks to plytpus at DailyKos)

UPDATE:

Erica Jong provides the details of ECONOMIC TREASON (economic treason are my words, not hers).