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Celebrate America by avoiding our national embarrassment: Hot dogs

by FreyaWop772 Posted on July 3, 2016

Don’t be a wiener

Celebrate America by avoiding our national embarrassment: Hot dogs

By on Jul 3, 2016Share

Independence Day has historically been a time to remember our forbears, to consider the spectacular achievements this country has made, and to shove approximately 155 million hot dogs down our collective throats. But, this year, I’m begging you: Say no to the weenie, the worst meat of them all.

To be clear, we’re talking about the intestine-colored, colon-shaped sticks of blended gristle that shine in the sun and slide out of the package like a wet worm, not the visually appealing pet of the same name. This is a perfect day to remember that mass-produced processed meats — besides being grotesque amalgams of unwanted animal chunks — are products of an unsustainable and harmful industry.

First things first: What’s in a hot dog? The backyard BBQ staple can contain pretty much any type of meat, but are mainly comprised of pork, chicken, and beef. Specifically, they’re made up of “trimmings”, a word vaguely defined by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization to encompass “lower-grade muscle trimmings, fatty tissues, head meat, animal feet, animal skin, blood, liver, and other edible slaughter by-products.”

But meat is only the half of what’s in a hot dog. Here’s what the ingredient list for Oscar Meyer’s “Classic Weiner” looks like:

INGREDIENTS: MECHANICALLY SEPARATED CHICKEN, MECHANICALLY SEPARATED TURKEY, WATER, PORK, CORN SYRUP, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, SALT, SODIUM PHOSPHATES, SODIUM DIACETATE, SODIUM BENZOATE, SODIUM ASCORBATE, FLAVOR, SODIUM NITRITE.

Some of other ingredients frequently added to hot dogs include: meat “extenders”, or non-meat substances containing protein, phosphates, bread crumbs, rusk, and boiled rice.

After the bits of meat cast-offs are ground into a flesh-colored paste, these additives are blended in and the mixture is piped into grillable portions. And voila! What was once a humble salad of pig head and cow foot is now an inscrutable, tubular frankenstein.

Looks aside, hot dogs simply aren’t that good for you. According to the American Cancer Society, “high consumption of processed meats like hot dogs [is] associated with increased risk of colon cancer.” One 2013 study found that participants who ate more than 20 grams of processed meats a day (about half a hot dog), were more likely to die of heart attack or stroke. And earlier this year, the World Health Organization announced that eating processed meats is directly linked with cancer, with a similar risk to cigarettes and asbestos.

Most of the 9 billion hot dogs Americans purchase each year are produced in massive factory farms. In the U.S., about 97 percent of pork — some 65 million pigs — are reared and slaughtered in factory farms. While strides have been made to improve sanitation and animal welfare at these farms in recent years, the industry is known for cramped conditions, overuse of antibiotics, and inhumane conditions. Not to mention factory farming’s contribution to climate change: According to the FAO, animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions — more than all the emissions from transportation.

So this Fourth of July, take a moment to consider the hot dog — that coral-colored pipette of entrails — and maybe think twice. And if none of this convinces you, well, I leave you with this gif of hot dogs being made:

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NAFTA and China Aren’t Responsible for Our Steel Woes

by vernongrier9 Posted on June 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump stood in front of a pile of scrap metal yesterday in Pittsburgh and blasted both NAFTA and the accession of China into the World Trade Organization. He was positively poetic about how his trade policies would affect the steel industry:

A Trump Administration will also ensure that we start using American steel for American infrastructure.

Just like the American steel from Pennsylvania that built the Empire State building.

It will be American steel that will fortify America’s crumbling bridges.

It will be American steel that sends our skyscrapers soaring into the sky.

It will be American steel that rebuilds our inner cities.

There’s no question that the American steel industry has suffered over the past three decades, thanks to cheap steel imports from other countries. But this began in the 1980s and had almost nothing to do with either NAFTA or China. Take a look:

Do you see a sudden slump in US steel production after NAFTA passed? Or after China entered the WTO? Nope. Other countries simply produced steel more cheaply than we did. It started with Japan and South Korea in the ’80s and later migrated to other countries not because of trade agreements, but because Japan and South Korea got too expensive. And it’s not as if no one noticed this was happening. Ronald Reagan tried tariffs on steel and they didn’t work. George H.W. Bush tried tariffs again. They didn’t work. George W. Bush tried tariffs a third time. No dice.

For all his bluster, when it came time for Trump to lay out his plan to “bring back our jobs,” it was surprisingly lame. It was seven points long but basically amounted to withdrawing from the TPP and getting tough on trade cheaters. This would accomplish next to nothing. TPP’s effect is small to begin with, and we’re already pretty aggressive about going after trade violations.

The bottom line is simple: If we want access to markets overseas, we have to give them access to our markets. Donald Trump can claim he wants to bring back the jobs we’ve lost to overseas competition, but he’d have to back that up by essentially promising to withdraw completely from NAFTA and the WTO—and then promising to build a huge tariff wall around the entire country. He’s not willing to do that because even he knows it would trash the US economy. So instead he blusters and proposes a toothless plan. Sad.

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NAFTA and China Aren’t Responsible for Our Steel Woes

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Why Veganism is the Future

by ForrestWalter Posted on June 14, 2016

Earlier this year scientists celebrated one of the biggest discoveries in physics within the last century. They were elated to discover the first evidence of gravitational waves, which pretty much proved Albert Einsteins last prediction in his theory of relativity was correct. Going down in history as one of the brightest minds to ever have lived and decades later having your work reaffirmed may just be the beginning of his brilliance, however.

There is another prediction Einstein made during his lifeone whose evidence mounts more and more each day: Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. There has yet to be another movement that significantly addressesand even reversesas many of the major health and environmental concerns out there as the vegan movement.


One study that made its rounds earlier this year explored an idealized shift toward plant-based eating and predicted that between 6 and 10 percent of the planets mortality rates and 29 to 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions could be cut if the world went primarily vegan. Luckily, if we consider some recent trends, it seems we are already headed in this direction.

Animal Welfare

When it comes to animal suffering, eating meat, dairy and egg products are the biggest culprits worldwide, hands down. It might feel nice to exercise our outrage about dog and cat abuse we see in the news, but when 70,000,000,000 (yes, thats billion) land animals are slaughtered globally each yearbecause our diet demands itour outrage is severely misplaced.

Mercy for Animals, an animal rights non-profit organization, is known for its undercover investigations exposing the public to what goes on behind carefully concealed slaughterhouse doors. Because of their hard work people have seen the horrors of both business-as-usual practices and horrendous abuse by workers at big names such as Perdue, Tyson, Butterball, Seaboard Foods, Maple Lodge Farms and countless others.

And the public is not liking what its seeing. The power of the documentary has shown how businesses can have the wind knocked out of their sails from customers taking a glance at whats behind the curtain. The explosive momentum of Blackfish and SeaWorlds journey from scoffing denial to announcing its end to orca breeding programs is enough to see how an informed public can create real change. Ringing Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circuses are also feeling the heat from activists and have decided to retire the elephants who have lived in abuse as entertainers (yet, some of the majestic creatures will face a future in cancer research experimentation, so we still have work to do).

The Environment

With climate change becoming harder and harder to denyeven though a few still cling desperately to their snowballs and lack of critical thinkingthe impact of animal agriculture on the planets fate can also no longer be overlooked. One report from earlier this year revealed that some of the top meat and poultry producers, including Tyson and Perdue, have a much larger pollution footprint than Exxon Mobil. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that livestock and their byproducts create 51 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Even if those numbers are too big to fully comprehend, seeing what animal agriculture is doing to our planet with our own eyes can change hearts and minds in an instant.

Our Health

There are tiny awakenings blossoming into bigger and more impactful movements in the health and medical fields, as well. This year the first plant-based medical center opened up in Washington, D.C. and other medical programs are offering residents training to help patients treat chronic health conditions with plant-based eating.

As much as it pained bacon-loving Americans to hear it, processed meat was rightfully demonized as contributing to rising cancer rates by the World Health Organization this yearadding to the knowledge we already have about its relation to heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome and other chronic conditions. And just this month the American Osteopathic Association released a study of 1.5 million people revealing how meat-eating raises mortality rates across the board.

The Future

So, with all this knowledge about the overwhelming impact of animal product production, how much are we really changing? The word vegan has become a household name in recent years as restaurants add it to their menus, grocery stores carry more veg-friendly alternatives and web surfers Google the term more and more.

In fact, vegan meat sales, specifically, are expected to skyrocket over the next few years. The growing success of companies such as Hampton Creek and Beyond Meat (and the anxiety-laden attacks by companies afraid of losing customers) illustrate a shift toward more conscious consumerism. Other countries have also experienced a dramatic shift toward plant-based fare. Germanys vegetarian options have increased 600 percent in the last four years and one-third of Canadians now admit to eating less meat.

A Chatham House survey even found that people are open to the idea of taxing meat to combat its harmful effects on the environment and our health! In a world where mens magazine GQ named a veggie burger its best burger of the year the industries who depend on consumers buying animal products are shaking in their boots. The proliferation of ag-gag laws all over the U.S. show how insecure these industries are feeling. Not only will they advocate the criminalization of recording what goes on behind their closed doors, but industries are also releasing advice on How to Avoid Hiring an Animal Rights Activist. Seriously.

Consumers are already demanding more humane animal products, mostly by looking for labels such as cage-free, pasture-raised, grass-fed, etc. Walmart joined the ranks of Costco, Wendys, Starbucks, Dennys, andMcDonaldsby announcing its eventual switch to cage-free eggs, showing how these humane demands are reaching the mainstream.

What the public will realize in time is what the industry deems humane is far from what we may envision as causing no harm. All of these trends indicate one thing: a shift toward compassion. Rather, it is a shift back toward compassion. As we grow up we are taught that empathy is sweet and admirable if it is through a childs eyes, but weak through an adults.

By choosing foods and products that defy the status quo of violence and destruction we are casting a vote for kindness and conservation. We are reconnecting with the innate sense that all living things deserve a happy life. We are reminded to share with others, to not be mean to others, to clean up after ourselvesthe basic lessons we learn in the most early stages of our lives. Veganism is a return to these ethics. And veganism is most certainly the future.

Photo credits: Thinkstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Why Veganism is the Future

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New Documents Will Be Released on Former Trump Associate With Mob Ties

by IreneG2298 Posted on May 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, the Associated Press prevailed in its legal fight to persuade a New York federal judge to unseal hundreds of documents allegedly pertaining to the criminal past of a business associate of Republican presidential contender Donald Trump. The documents, which could be made public as soon as Thursday, may shed light on one of the more colorful—and allegedly mobbed-up—individuals Trump has done business with during his long career in real estate.

The case involves a man named Felix Sater, a Russian immigrant who worked for a real estate development firm in New York called Bayrock Group, which had an office in the Trump Tower in Midtown. Bayrock was involved in helping develop some of Trump’s properties in New York, Florida, and elsewhere, including Trump SoHo in New York City. In 2011, Trump settled a lawsuit by investors in Trump SoHo after they discovered, thanks to the New York Times, that Sater had a long criminal past. In 1993, Sater was sent to prison after slicing open a man’s face with a glass during a bar fight. More significant, he was later implicated in a $40 million “pump and dump” stock swindle that involved alleged Russian criminals and American mobsters. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering, apparently in exchange for his assistance as a government informant in a mob prosecution.

As part of the deal, Sater’s own criminal record was kept under wraps for years—until another group of investors sued Bayrock, alleging they had been defrauded. Among the acts of chicanery, they claimed, was the fact that the firm was hiding Sater’s criminal past. The investors and their lawyer put many of the documents regarding Sater’s criminal history into the public realm in the lawsuit. That disclosure prompted a flurry of other litigation and court action against the investors’ lawyers and caused the documents to be sealed on the grounds that their disclosure could put Sater, and future potential informants, at risk or compromise ongoing criminal investigations. Those are the documents the AP has been trying to dislodge from the court.

Some of the documents, many of which have already been leaked, appear pretty innocuous, including a 2000 press release from the Justice Department touting Sater’s racketeering plea deal. It’s unlikely that many of the records soon to be released directly involve Trump, as most were sealed in attempt to protect Sater from retribution for his informant work.

The likely GOP presidential nominee distanced himself from Sater in 2007, after the New York Times reported the details of his criminal history. However, three years later, Trump gave the man an office and business cards, describing him as a “senior advisor” to Trump’s organization, according to the Times. Sater worked for Trump for about six months, the paper reported, drumming up deals for his organization.

Even if the documents don’t reveal more about Trump’s relationship with Sater, they should illuminate plenty about one of the “best people” Trump says he likes to surround himself with in the course of his business dealings—and highlight one of the more unsavory episodes of Trump’s business career.

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New Documents Will Be Released on Former Trump Associate With Mob Ties

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Drought is a life-or-death situation for low-lying islands

by LeilaniSandberg Posted on May 7, 2016

Drought is a life-or-death situation for low-lying islands

By on May 7, 2016

Cross-posted from

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From the vantage point of a boat bobbing on the deep blue waters of Majuro Lagoon, the encircling shores of the Pacific coral atoll are normally verdant with tropical vegetation. But on a recent sailing excursion with friends, Angela Saunders was struck by how brown and withered the island looked.

“The vibrant color of all the trees was gone,” Saunders, a Majuro-based program manager with the International Organization for Migration, wrote in an email. “It was like someone put dampers on the world.”

Majuro, capital of the Marshall Islands, is an atoll in the Pacific Ocean with a land area of about four square miles. It is home to about 30,000 people.

Christopher Michel

It is a scene that is playing out across the hundreds of low-lying islands and atolls scattered across a vast swath of the western Pacific Ocean broadly known as Micronesia. One of the strongest El Niños on record has curtailed the rains that are the lifeblood of most of the region’s communities and ushered in an extreme drought that has left inhabitants in a precarious situation.

Wells have become brackish or run dry; the rain barrels that perch on the corners of houses have little or no rainwater left in them. Water rationing is limited to a couple of hours a day in some of the worst-hit communities, while expensive reverse-osmosis machines have been shipped out to the most far-flung atolls to make the seawater drinkable. Staple foods like breadfruit and bananas have shriveled on the trees, inedible.

Worries over acute food and water shortages, as well as the spread of disease, have prompted several of the affected island nations to issue disaster declarations in order to receive assistance from the United States and other countries.

“Drought in the U.S. is kind of an inconvenience … but out here it’s a life-or-death kind of situation,” Chip Guard, a meteorologist with the main regional U.S. National Weather Service office in Guam, said.

While El Niño is waning, it will be weeks or months before the rains gradually return to normal levels. Even then, it will take time for crops, rain catchments, and groundwater levels to recover, continuing the strain on locals well into the summer.

“Every day longer the drought lasts, the more you hear about it,” Saunders said. “In the store, on the streets.”

El Niño effects

El Niño tends to dry out the islands of Micronesia because it shifts the main area of storm activity in the tropical Pacific eastward and away from the region, following the commensurate eastward displacement of the pool of warm waters that fuel those storms.

The western- and northern-most islands tend to fall into drought first, following the gradual eastward migration of the rains, and stay in drought longer. Palau, the westernmost island chain in the region, to the southeast of the Philippines, was the first to enter into drought conditions last year. As of an April 28 update from the National Weather Service, it was in an exceptional drought, the highest level. Koror, its most populous state, had its driest October through March on record, as did Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, and Yap State, in the Federated States of Micronesia.

While some places have had spotty showers that have provided sporadic, temporary relief, others have fared worse. In February, Richard Heim, a meteorologist with the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information, rattled off the rainfall record for Wotje, a hard-hit atoll to the north of Majuro: “Zero, zero, zero, trace, zero, zero … They are getting nothing,” he said.

Although the relationship between El Niño and drought in these islands is well known — which helps governments and aid agencies to forecast and prepare in advance — it is unclear how global warming might alter the El Niño phenomenon in the future.

The effects of climate change are of acute concern to island residents, as rising sea levels already eat away at what little land they have and threaten water supplies as overwashing waves that can make groundwater brackish become more common.

While rainfall is overall expected to increase across Micronesia as the planet warms, according to a 2014 report by an Australian-led project looking at climate change projections in the region, that increase is somewhat uncertain. And it is the variability of rainfall, not average rains, that is the main driver of drought there, Sugata Narsey, one of the coauthors of that report and a climate researcher at Monash University, said.

The main source of variability there is El Niño, he said. Some research has suggested that warming could mean more frequent extreme El Niño events, but the link isn’t yet conclusive.

When drought does occur in the future, it is possible it could last longer because evaporation will also increase with warming, Michael Grose, a climate researcher with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, said. This is one of the ways climate change exacerbated the current drought in California.

Surrounded by water, but none to drink

It is a cruel irony that, though surrounded by the vast expanse of the largest ocean on the planet, the islands and atolls of Micronesia can run out of drinkable water.

Except for some of the larger islands in the region, such as Guam, most don’t have reservoirs to keep water supplies steady and on hand for lean times. (And even those that do have them are seeing well below-normal levels.)

The region of the Pacific Ocean known as Micronesia.

Wikimedia Commons

Instead, most of the region relies on the near-daily rains of the tropics to maintain the groundwater supplies that feed wells and are caught by the green, high-density plastic rain catchments attached to many homes. But a certain minimum threshold of rain — usually about four to eight inches a month — is needed to maintain viable water supplies. Below that level, drought can set in, and quickly.

“The atolls especially are very susceptible to drought,” Guard said, because they are too low-lying to have significant underground aquifers.

For those islands that do have wells, the water inside can quickly become brackish during a drought. As freshwater is extracted, the seawater below it creeps upward, Heim said. One day the well water is drinkable, the next it turns salty. That leaves a tight window for relief agencies to bring water or reverse-osmosis machines to distant atolls a full day’s boat ride from the main islands. These outlying atolls also often lack internet and cellular service, making quick communication a challenge.

“Really a struggle”

When visiting the outer atolls of the Marshall Islands, Saunders, of the IOM, said that as soon as you walk off the plane, “you notice the heat more. There is less shade to sit under and you can really imagine how hard life is for those most affected” by the drought.

The Marshall Islands have been hit particularly hard because virtually all of the nation’s land is low-lying. Of those islands that do have wells, many were too salty to use by early March. Many rain catchments had also run dry by that point.

Dried vegetation on Majuro.Karl Fellenius/University of Hawaii Sea Grant at the College of the Marshall Islands

“Not everyone’s water is totally out, but some are, and everyone is conserving,” Saunders said.

On Majuro, there are 19 water distribution points and a reverse-osmosis machine that generates 25 gallons of potable water a minute and runs 24 hours a day at the College of the Marshall Islands. Island residents have access to tap water for only four hours a week, according to the Marshall Islands Journal. On the outer islands, 32 reverse-osmosis units have been deployed.

“This means that people have to walk to these spots to get water, or if they can, take a car or a pushcart to carry water,” Saunders said.

Each nation has limited resources and it is “really a struggle to respond,” Guard said, which is why aid from the United States and agencies like the Red Cross is critical. The Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau have all declared states of emergency or disaster to enable that aid, and last week, President Obama declared a state of disaster for the Marshall Islands, allowing for FEMA support. The IOM has helped provide reverse-osmosis units, collapsible jerry cans, and soap to residents.

As ground and surface water have dried up, so have key food crops. Staple food sources like taro, breadfruit, banana, and coconut “are for the most part no longer edible,” Guard said in an email. This makes food security a critical issue, especially for outlying islands.

The spread of social diseases like conjunctivitis has also been a concern, as people conserve what little water they have for drinking and cooking at the expense of hygiene. Advisories have also been put out in some locations to boil water in order to prevent the spread of gastro-intestinal illnesses.

Such precautions will likely remain in place for several weeks or months to come, because while El Niño is petering out, rains are expected to stay below normal through the late spring and early summer. But gradually, El Niño’s grip will weaken, and the rains will slowly return from south to north, east to west, reversing their disappearance of several months ago.

But even when the rains do return, it will take time for catchments, groundwater and crops to recover. And that return is not without its own problems — the mosquitoes that spread diseases like dengue fever and Zika virus tend to be more widespread after a major drought, Guard said.

These hardships are something that the people of the region are accustomed to, though, and they have pulled through similarly deep droughts in the recent past.

“The Marshallese are extremely resilient people — that is how they have survived for thousands of years on these small islands,” Saunders said. “They cope, they manage, but it is not easy.”

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Cops Raid the Former Offices of FIFA’s Brand-New President

by ErnestiRosenber Posted on April 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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Global soccer may be embroiled in yet another corruption crisis after Swiss police raided the offices of UEFA, the sport’s European governing body, on Wednesday. The raid came days after Gianni Infantino, UEFA’s former chief and the newly installed president of FIFA, appeared in the massive Panama Papers leak, which exposed the complex offshore banking arrangements of some of the world’s most powerful people.

According to the Guardian, those documents show that Infantino co-signed a UEFA broadcast rights deal in 2006 with two Argentinian businessmen, Hugo and Marino Jinkis, who are now under indictment as part of the United States’ global soccer corruption investigation. The men immediately resold the rights to Ecuador’s TV station Teleamazonas at a steep markup, and the documents potentially tie Infantino to both that deal and other illicit acts by the Jinkis’.

Infantino was UEFA’s director of legal services at the time, and he said in a statement yesterday that the contract was awarded properly and that he had no direct dealings with either of the two men or their company. “There is no indication whatsoever for any wrongdoings from neither UEFA nor myself in this matter,” he said.

Infantino was only elected FIFA president in February, following months of scandal during which the US and Swiss authorities arrested a string of FIFA officials and the organization banned its former president, Sepp Blatter, from any soccer-related activities for six years.

At the time, Infantino promised to turn the page on FIFA’s corruption problems and implement badly needed reforms. “We will restore the image of FIFA and the respect of FIFA, and everyone in the world will applaud us,” he said after his election.

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Cops Raid the Former Offices of FIFA’s Brand-New President

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India floats ambitious goal: 100 percent electric cars

by CandelaTonkin Posted on March 29, 2016

India floats ambitious goal: 100 percent electric cars

By on 29 Mar 2016commentsShare

India has a grandiose vision for its 1.2 billion people to drive only electric vehicles by 2030. And that’s not even the most ambitious part — the government thinks it can do it without spending a dime.

“We are trying to make this program self-financing,” Power Minister Piyush Goyal said at a youth conference this week, according to The Times of India. “We don’t need one rupee of support from the government. We don’t need one rupee of investment from the people of India.”

Goyal noted that a small working group of politicians will meet in early April to hammer out the details of the goal, which could include a program to incentivize buying electric cars by making them zero-down investments. Later on, the money the car owners would have spent on gas could go to paying off the price of the vehicle, according to Goyal.

As far as number of cars owned per household, India ranks low on the list, with just 6 percent of households reporting they own a car. But that number is expected to grow exponentially as the economy expands.

It’s not the first time India has announced sweeping sustainability plans under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sometimes to mixed results. Last October, the world’s third biggest greenhouse gas polluter announced its new climate plan, promising to obtain 40 percent of its electricity from renewable sources (primarily solar) by 2030. But earlier this year, the World Trade Organization ruled that provisions of Modi’s solar plan shut out international companies, particularly the U.S., from India’s burgeoning solar market. Most recently, the country levied a 4 percent “green” tax on new passenger vehicle sales, part of an effort to fight air pollution and traffic congestion.

India has no time to waste to tackle its pollution problem as its capital, New Delhi, already has worse air quality than Beijing.

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100 Women All Over the Country Just Shared Their Abortion Stories

by NeilMcgehee Posted on January 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, 100 women of all ages from around the country participated in a six-hour livestream to tell personal abortion stories and provide a voice for women advocating reproductive rights. The live stream was hosted by the 1 in 3 campaign, a movement aimed at reducing the stigma around abortion. The organization’s name comes from the fact that 1 in 3 women have had or will have an abortion at some point in their lives.

Former Texas Sen. Wendy Davis and Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards were among the women of all different backgrounds and ethnicities who spoke about the difficulty of making the decision, their access to care, and their feelings about their choice.

This is the second time 1 in 3 has hosted such an event. But Tuesday’s live stream comes at a time when reproductive rights activists have been under fire in continued attacks against Planned Parenthood and its centers around the country following the release of deceptively edited and widely discredited videos that appeared to depict the organization selling fetal tissue—a practice that is illegal.

The live stream also focused on Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, an important abortion case that will be decided by the Supreme Court this year. For more on the monumental case, check out our explainer here.

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100 Women All Over the Country Just Shared Their Abortion Stories

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Rubio Slams Obama on Guns—But He Once Backed "Reasonable Restrictions" on Firearms

by CornellSmalls48 Posted on January 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) slammed President Barack Obama’s new executive actions aimed at enhancing gun safety—but the GOP candidate was attacking an approach to guns that he once supported as a candidate in Florida, when he endorsed “reasonable restrictions” on firearms.

After Obama announced the series of new gun-control steps, Rubio exclaimed, “Barack Obama is obsessed with undermining the Second Amendment…Now this executive order is just one more way to make it harder for law-abiding people to buy weapons or to be able to protect their families.” And in a campaign ad, Rubio went further in assailing the president: “His plan after the attack in San Bernardino: take away our guns.”

Obama’s new measures would not take away guns; the most prominent executive action is aimed at limiting the number of gun sales that occur without background checks by requiring more gun sellers to register as dealers and vet their customers. And background checks is a policy that Rubio has supported in the past.

When Rubio first ran for the Florida state House in 2000, he told the Miami Herald that he supported “reasonable restrictions” on guns, including background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases. Ten years later, this comment was used against Rubio during his Senate primary campaign against then-Republican Charlie Crist. The Crist camp, pointing to Rubio’s 2010 statement, accused him of supporting gun limits. Rubio’s spokesman dismissed the significance of Rubio’s earlier statement, saying, “It’s basically a restatement of his support for the current law.”

During his eight years in the Florida legislature, Rubio backed much of the National Rifle Association’s agenda. He co-sponsored the state’s Stand Your Ground law, which became the subject of a nationwide debate following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. And, as a senator, Rubio recently received an A rating from the NRA. But Rubio has a few times wavered from the NRA’s hardline. In the Florida legislature, he drew the organization’s ire when he took a tepid approach to supporting a bill allowing Floridians to bring firearms to work if they leave them in their cars. (He ultimately voted for the measure). And after the Sandy Hook shooting in December 2012, he flirted with supporting measures to prevent convicted felons and the mentally ill from obtaining firearms—actions the NRA opposed. He voted against the background-check bill that ultimately came to the Senate floor the following spring.

As a presidential candidate, Rubio has positioned himself as an ardent champion of gun rights and does not talk about the need to preserve or enhance “reasonable restrictions” on guns. His campaign website states that “new gun laws will do nothing to deter criminals from obtaining firearms.” Asked whether he still supports “reasonable restrictions,” Rubio’s campaign did not respond.

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Rubio Slams Obama on Guns—But He Once Backed "Reasonable Restrictions" on Firearms

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Flint Kids Have So Much Lead in Their Blood That the Mayor Declared a State of Emergency. Thanks GOP.

by TeresaBirtles Posted on December 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Children in Flint, Michigan, have such high levels of lead in their blood that Mayor Karen Weaver declared a state of emergency on Monday, calling the situation a “manmade disaster.” The origins of the escalating situation in Flint go back to 2011, when Republican Gov. Rick Snyder appointed an emergency financial manager to balance Flint’s budget—largely by cutting costs on basic public services. Here’s what you need to know:


America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead


Is There Lead In Your House?


An Interview With Pioneering Toxicologist Howard Mielke


How Dangerous Is the Lead in Bullets?


Does Lead Paint Produce More Crime Too?


How Your Water Company May Be Poisoning Your Kids

More MoJo coverage of the dangers of lead.

What’s going on?

In April of 2014, Flint switched its water source from Detroit to the Flint River in an effort to save money. The decision, made by emergency manager Darnell Earley, was met with skepticism: Residents complained that the water was smelly and cloudy. Water tests have since shown high levels of lead, copper, and other bacteria, including E. coli. (GM started hauling in water to its remaining Flint plant last year after noticing that the Flint water was corroding engines.)

According to the Hurley Medical Center study below, the proportion of kids under five with elevated levels of lead in their blood has doubled since the switch to Flint River water, to roughly four percent. In some areas, that number has leapt up to more than six percent. “This damage to children is irreversible and can cause effects to a child’s IQ, which will result in learning disabilities and the need for special education and mental health services and an increase in the juvenile justice system,” wrote Weaver in the state of emergency declaration. In October, the city transitioned back to the Detroit water system, though lead levels still remain higher than the federal action level.

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Pediatric Lead Exposure Flint Water (PDF)

Pediatric Lead Exposure Flint Water (Text)

Why are the lead levels so high in Flint?

Flint, the birthplace of General Motors and once a prosperous city, has been in a state of decline for decades. The population has halved since its peak in the 1960’s and 70’s; by 2013, the city had lost roughly three quarters of its property tax base and suffered from a 16 percent unemployment rate. The problem has been met with austerity: Under a controversial law passed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who has been criticized for close ties with the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the state can now appoint emergency managers with the ability to override local policies and make sweeping decisions in the name of “fiscal responsibility”—a policy that stripped half of the state’s black residents of their voting rights.

Flint emergency manager Darnell Earley implemented steep budget cuts, including last year’s decision to save money by changing the city’s water source. In March, Earley nixed a city council vote to “do all things necessary” to switch back to the Detroit system in March, calling the decision “incomprehensible.” He stepped down the next month. The series of events has led to litigation: In November, Flint residents filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the contaminated water caused them to experience myriad health conditions, including skin lesions, hair loss, depression, vision loss, and memory loss. The same month, the ACLU and Natural Resources Defense Council sued the city, governor, and public officials, claiming that public officials have known for years that drinking Flint River water could result in contamination problems. Michael Steinberg, legal director for the ACLU of Michigan, said, “In their short-sighted effort to save a buck, the leaders who were supposed to be protecting Flints’s citizens instead left them exposed to dangerously high levels of lead contamination.”

How are residents getting by?

Those who can afford it are buying bottled water, but Flint is one of the poorest cities in the nation—41 percent of residents live in poverty. Many still use city water for bathing and cooking.

What are the effects of lead poisoning?

It’s easy to diagnose someone with high lead levels—it simply takes the prick of a finger and a blood test. The symptoms manifest slowly, often years later. According to the World Health Organization, “Lead affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioural changes such as shortening of attention span and increased antisocial behaviour, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anaemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioural effects of lead are believed to be irreversible.”

What are state officials doing?

A pipeline connecting Flint and other central Michigan counties with Lake Huron is in the works and scheduled to be completed by late 2016. In the meantime, according to a recent Washington Post article, the state has offered more than $10 million to pay for the temporary switch back to the Detroit water system, in addition to covering the costs of water testing and water filters.

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Flint Kids Have So Much Lead in Their Blood That the Mayor Declared a State of Emergency. Thanks GOP.

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