Author Archives: gammak

What the NRA’s Millions Do—And Don’t—Buy

by gammak Posted on May 1, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In the days leading up to last month’s crucial votes on the most significant gun control legislation to come before the Senate in nearly two decades, polls showed that about 90 percent of Americans supported background checks for all gun purchases. But when the clerk called the roll, the centerpiece amendment—requiring background checks for firearm sales at gun shows, through classified ads and on the Internet—got just 54 yeas, six votes short of the 60 vote super-majority required.

Just four months after Adam Lanza killed 26 people at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and President Obama promised tougher gun laws, the vote proved to be the latest in a long-running string of victories for gun rights activists, the firearms industry, and particularly the National Rifle Association, the nation’s pre-eminent gun lobby.

The power of the gun lobby is rooted in multiple factors, among them the pure passion and single-mindedness of many gun owners, the NRA’s demonstrated ability to motivate its most fervent members to swarm their elected representatives, and the lobby’s ability to get out the vote on election day. But there’s little doubt that money, the political power it represents, and the fear of that power and money, which the NRA deftly exploits, have a lot to do with the group’s ability to repeatedly control the national debate about guns. Whether that fear is justified is an intriguing question—but it clearly exists. That has, perhaps, never been clearer than it was last month on Capitol Hill.


NRA’s School Security Plan Cites Phony Shooting


This Collection of NRA Ads Reveals Its Descent Into Crazy


Investigators Discover NRA Materials in Newtown Killer’s House


The NRA Myth of Gun-Free Zones


Gunmakers and the NRA Bet Big on Silencers. What Could Go Wrong?


EXCLUSIVE: Unmasking the NRA’s Inner Circle


Meet the NRA’s Board of Directors


The NRA Myth of Arming the Good Guys


How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread a Radical Gun Law Nationwide

See our full special report on gun laws and the rise of mass shootings in America.

Big money, big gaps

For starters, the dollars and cents disparities are nothing short of staggering. The NRA and its allies in the firearms industries, along with the even more militant Gun Owners of America, have together poured nearly $81 million into House, Senate and presidential races since the 2000 election cycle, according to federal disclosures and a Center for Responsive Politics analysis done for the Center for Public Integrity.

The bulk of the cash—more than $46 million—has come in the form of independent expenditures made since court decisions in 2010 (especially the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision) essentially redefined electoral politics. Those decisions allowed individuals, corporations, associations and unions to make unlimited “independent” expenditures aimed at electing or defeating candidates in federal elections, so long as the expenditures were not “coordinated” with a candidate’s actual campaign.

Continue Reading »

Original source:  

What the NRA’s Millions Do—And Don’t—Buy

Posted in alo, Citizen, FF, GE, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What the NRA’s Millions Do—And Don’t—Buy

Here’s Why the NRA Won and Gabby Giffords and Mike Bloomberg Lost

by gammak Posted on April 18, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

More MoJo coverage of the Senate’s failed background check bill.


Here’s Why the NRA Won and Gabby Giffords and Mike Bloomberg Lost


“Shame On You!”: Senate Rejects Gun Background Check Compromise


Meet the 45 Senators Who Blocked Background Checks


Why Did These 4 Democrats Vote No on Gun Background Checks?


Have You Seen Mitch McConnell’s Facebook Page?


10 Reasons the Background Check Bill Means Victory for the NRA


Map: Most Americans Support Background Checks for All Gun Buyers

Also read our special report on gun laws and the rise of mass shootings.

On NBC’s Meet the Press last month, National Rifle Association honcho Wayne LaPierre, the face of the American gun lobby, delivered this message to New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg: “He’s going to find out that this is a country of the people, by the people, and for the people, and he can’t spend enough of his $27 billion to try to impose his will on the American public. He can’t buy America.” The day before, Bloomberg had announced that he would spend $12 million of his own money on an ad blitz pressing members of Congress to pass new legislation expanding background checks for gun purchases. LaPierre went on national television to tell the mayor that all those millions wouldn’t make the difference in the fight in Congress over new gun laws.

Guess what? LaPierre was right.

The Manchin-Toomey background check legislation that died in the Senate on Wednesday had everything going for it. Bipartisan sponsorship by two centrist senators. The support of 90 percent of Americans. President Obama’s full-throated backing. The momentum for reform created by tragedy and sympathetic advocates with gripping stories—ex-Rep. Gabby Giffords, the Newtown families. All the pieces were there.

Yet it failed. The bill won a 54-vote majority but fell short of the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to pass new laws, a high hurdle that progressives decry as undemocratic. But the main reason it failed—and this is the key point for gun-control advocates—is because the NRA has unrivaled political power, the kind of influence and muscle that Bloomberg, the Brady Campaign, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Organizing for Action, Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly, and the rest of the gun-control lobby can only dream of.

Continue Reading »

Source:  

Here’s Why the NRA Won and Gabby Giffords and Mike Bloomberg Lost

Posted in FF, GE, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s Why the NRA Won and Gabby Giffords and Mike Bloomberg Lost

Nearly Four Years After Dr. Tiller’s Murder, Wichita Has An Abortion Clinic Again

by gammak Posted on April 3, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

For the first time in nearly four years, women in Wichita have access to an abortion clinic. South Wind Women’s Center plans to open its doors this week, and will provide abortions in the city for the first time since an anti-abortion extremist murdered Dr. George Tiller in May 2009.

The clinic, run by former Tiller spokeswoman Julie Burkhart, will provide abortions up to the 14th week, along with gynecological services like pap smears, breast exams, birth control prescriptions, and prenatal care. I talked to Burkhart in February about reopening the clinic:

Mother Jones: Wichita has been the subject of so much attention from both anti- and pro-choice activists. What is the significance of reopening the clinic?
Julie Burkhart: First and foremost, we want to make sure that women who need to see us, want to come see us, are able to access care. We’re looking at a few thousand women who now have to travel outside the area each year. Secondly, what it says is that no matter where you live in the United States of America, women will have access to reproductive health care. This community has just been so embroiled in the abortion…I hate to say the abortion “debate,” but just the turmoil. Some people would say, “Just leave it alone and let it go.” However, we can’t really have true freedom in this country until everyone can access that right.
Why, just because we live in Kansas, in the middle of the country, should women be faced with more hardship? Why should it just be women on the coast where the laws are typically more liberal that have access to abortion care? I hope that’s what people get out of this—that no matter where you are as a woman, you’re entitled to that right.

Read the full interview here.

Read the article: 

Nearly Four Years After Dr. Tiller’s Murder, Wichita Has An Abortion Clinic Again

Posted in alo, FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Nearly Four Years After Dr. Tiller’s Murder, Wichita Has An Abortion Clinic Again

Fukushima meltdown appears to have sickened American infants

by gammak Posted on April 1, 2013

Fukushima meltdown appears to have sickened American infants

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Fallout from that Fukushima meltdown thing a couple years back? It’s not just the Japanese who are suffering, though their plight is obviously the worst.

Radioactive isotopes blasted from the failed reactors may have given kids born in Hawaii and along the American West Coast health disorders which, if left untreated, can lead to permanent mental and physical handicaps.

Children born in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington between one week and 16 weeks after the meltdowns began in March 2011 were 28 percent more likely to suffer from congenital hypothyroidism than were kids born in those states during the same period one year earlier, a new study shows. In the rest of the U.S. during that period in 2011, where radioactive fallout was less severe, the risks actually decreased slightly compared with the year before.

Substantial quantities of the radioisotope iodine-131 were produced by the meltdowns, then wafted over the Pacific Ocean and fell over Hawaii, the American West Coast, and other Pacific countries in rain and snow, reaching levels hundreds of times greater than those considered safe.

After entering our bodies, radioactive iodine gathers in our thyroids. Thyroids are glands that release hormones that control how we grow. In babies, including those not yet born, such radiation can stunt the development of body and brain. The condition is known as congenital hypothyroidism. It is treatable when detected early.

“Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all areas of the U.S., and was especially large in some, mostly in the western part of the nation,” wrote researchers with the Radiation and Public Health Project in their peer-reviewed paper published in Open Journal of Pediatrics.

The links between iodine radioisotope exposure and juvenile hypothyroidism were established after the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown. The authors of this new paper suspect that the spike in Pacific Coast cases in 2011 was linked to the Fukushima accident, but they warn that further analysis is needed “to better understand any association between iodine exposure from Fukushima-Dai-ichi and congenital hypothyroidism risk.”

Their findings may be only a tip of an epidemiological iceberg.

“Congenital hypothyroidism can be used as one measure to assess any potential changes in U.S. fetal and infant health status after Fukushima because official data was available relatively promptly,” the researchers wrote. “However, health departments will soon have available for other 2010 and 2011 indicators of fetal/infant health, including fetal deaths, premature births, low weight births, neonatal deaths, infant deaths, and birth defects.”

So stay tuned. Two years and one month after the meltdown, we’re only just beginning to understand how the nuclear catastrophe affected the health of people living around the vast Pacific Ocean.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

Read more:

Climate & Energy

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Link – 

Fukushima meltdown appears to have sickened American infants

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Fukushima meltdown appears to have sickened American infants

Tracing $1 Bills Across the United States Is a Surprisingly Useful Hobby

by gammak Posted on March 25, 2013

Image: Prince Roy

In 1998, Hank Eskin started a website called WheresGeorge.com, dedicated to tracking dollar bills across the United States. Members of this club are called Georgers. They stamp dollar bills with their website, then search for and track those bills as they travel across the United States.

At NPR, Stan Alcorn caught up with some of these trackers. He writes:

[T]ypical Georgers log in religiously to enter their dollars’ serial numbers and ZIP codes before they stamp and spend them. If one gets entered a second time, the Georger gets an email. That’s called a “hit.”

Robert Rothenberg was sitting at the table in Kabooz’s when he got a hit in New Jersey. He gets a lot of hits, since he’s entered nearly 100,000 bills into the website’s database.

“I have a hit streak going since July of 2010, every day since then. I’m trying to get to 1,000 days, which will be the end of the month,” Rothenberg says.

Now, what started as a quirky hobby has turned into a national bill hunt that’s useful for all sorts of people—like physicists. Dirk Brockmann, a physicist at Northwestern University, writes at his website about meeting a cabinet maker in Vermont who tipped him off to the site:

After the conference I decided to visit Dennis Derryberry, an old friend from college who lives within driving distance to Montreal in the green mountains of Vermont, where he works as a cabinet maker. After a few hours on the highway Dennis and his family welcomed me to their beautiful house in the woods. During this visit Dennis, one of the most witty individuals I have ever met, asked me one evening on his porch while we were having a beer, “So Dirk, what are you working on?” – “I’m interested in the patterns that underly human travel,” I replied, and told him about my efforts to better understand human mobility and our goal of developing more quantitative models for the spread of epidemics. “It’s just amazingly difficult to compile all this data,” I explained. Dennis paused a while and then inquired, “Do you know this website www.wheresgeorge.com?”

From there, Brockmann has used the bills to study how networks move move and change, infectious diseases and all sorts of other things. Eskin, for one, is surprised at both the popularity and the usefulness of his little project. And when Georgers get together, it still feels like a small club. Here’s NPR again:

At Kabooz’s Bar and Grill at New York’s Penn Station, Jennifer Fishinger is covering her table in stacks of ones. There are 500 $1 bills laid out.

At the next table over, David Henry has his stacks of cash in plastic bags. They’re paper-clipped $1 bills in groups of 10.

If only everyone else’s little hobbies could do the same amount for science.

More from Smithsonian.com:

To Save Money, Ask for Pretty, New Dollar Bills
On the Money

Link to article: 

Tracing $1 Bills Across the United States Is a Surprisingly Useful Hobby

Posted in FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tracing $1 Bills Across the United States Is a Surprisingly Useful Hobby

How do they find horse meat in hamburger?

by gammak Posted on March 5, 2013

green4us

Continue reading here:

How do they find horse meat in hamburger?

Posted in eco-friendly, GE, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How do they find horse meat in hamburger?