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Category Archives: ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture
Don’t Be Fooled
Republicans Try to Force Even More Budget Cuts
The government will shut down in 20 days – just nine congressional work days — unless Congress passes a bill to keep funding it. And while most of the media focus has been on the GOP’s unceasing effort to defund, delay, and undermine Obamacare, Speaker Boehner (R-OH) is plotting another, more hidden plan to lock in damaging and unnecessary austerity for the rest of the year and possibly into 2014.
Boehner has promised that to avoid a government shutdown, he will ask the House to pass a “clean” short-term budget resolution, simply extending current spending levels while a longer-term deal is worked out. That may sound reasonable, but hidden behind Boehner’s deceptive claims are some pretty dirty truths.
First of all, current spending levels are already painfully and unnecessarily low, but Boehner’s plan would go even further and lock in another round of deep cuts to domestic spending.
But it doesn’t stop there. Boehner’s plan actually increases defense spending by $20 BILLION compared to the sequester, while leaving spending on non-defense discretionary programs at unacceptably low levels.
You don’t have to take our word for it. Here’s Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) crowing about the cuts they are trying to force on Democrats and the president:
“In signing a CR at sequester levels,” Cantor wrote, “the president would be endorsing a level of spending that wipes away all the increases he and congressional Democrats made while they were in charge and returns us to a pre-2008 level of discretionary spending.”
Wait, there’s more! On top of all of this, House Republican leaders have devised a convoluted scheme to try and trick rank-and-file Republicans into not shutting down the government over Obamacare while still being able to somehow claim they defunded the law. This “smoke and mirrors” plan is already being derided by the Tea Party and recent polling found that just 6 percent of voters think delaying and defunding Obamacare is the right path forward.
(This final scheme comes on top of a separate GOP demand issued today that Democrats either agree to delay Obamacare for a year or Republicans will refuse to increase the debt ceiling, thus creating a world economic calamity.)
BOTTOM LINE: Republicans have scheduled just 9 days of work in September and aren’t even planning on being here the week before funding for the government runs out. Passing a partisan spending plan with only GOP votes is just another waste of time that makes it more likely that the government will shut down because of GOP intransigence, demands for damaging austerity, or both.
For a detailed brief from the Center for American Progress on how all of this adds up — or doesn’t — click HERE.
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UCS
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It’s no secret—the American diet of unhealthy, processed foods is killing us. More than 725,000 Americans die from heart disease and stroke each year. We can shrink this number through healthy eating, but we need our government working for—not against—us. Our new report, The $11 Trillion Reward, shows just how damaging current U.S. food policy is—favoring cheap, processed foods over fresh fruits and veggies—and what we can do to improve it. Check out the report, share it on Facebook and Twitter, and read on for more important updates! —Karla
| This Just In | |
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WATCH: The real cost of junk food If Americans ate just one more serving of fruits or vegetables a day, we could prevent 30,000 deaths each year. The benefits of healthy eating are clear, yet our government spends billions subsidizing processed foods like chips and soda that undermine our health, while fruits and vegetables get very little support. Watch our new video to see just how damaging current U.S. policy is—and what you can do to change it. MORE |
| Ask a Scientist | |
 Jeffrey O’Hara Agricultural Economist |
“What is UCS doing to encourage American farmers to grow more vegetables and fruit that would be healthier for our diets given that so many of them are dependent on government subsidies to grow commodity crops like corn and soybeans?”—Lanni Isenberg, Newton, MA It is not an accident that the U.S. agricultural landscape looks the way it does. Farm policy plays a critical role in influencing which crops are grown. Today, excessive subsidies are directed to “commodity” crops such as corn and soybeans that are used as animal feed and ingredients in processed junk foods. At the same time, as I describe below, federal farm policy restricts fruit and vegetable production. To make matters worse, significant obstacles exist in some communities for those wishing to use nutrition assistance benefits to buy healthy food at local markets. MORE
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| Science in Action | |
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DEADLINE: Act now for a healthier Farm Bill There are just days left to win support for healthy food and sustainable agriculture in the Farm Bill, which sets U.S. food policy for the next five years. Despite the importance of this legislation, Congress is locked in ideological battles that threaten to derail chances to pass this legislation before the current law expires at the end of the month. If this happens, programs that support healthy food and sustainable agriculture will suffer the most. If you’ve already contacted your elected officials, now is the time to contact them again. Tell Congress: The time is NOW to pass a Farm Bill that puts healthy food and farms first! |
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“What’s the Difference Between CFS and Fibromyalgia?”
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Digging into our Roots!
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Searching for Your Roots
This event is full. However, please join us via webcast at nmaahc.si.edu/Events/SearchingforYourRoots.
 Henry Louis Gates Jr. Photo by Jeffrey Dunn |
Thursday, September 12, 2013 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM
We share a basic drive to discover our own personal stories that explain who we are — and where we come from. In the 2012 PBS series, Finding Your Roots, Henry Louis Gates Jr. explored “the DNA of American culture.” Gates enlisted his own corps of discovery — leading genealogists, geneticists, and ancestry genetic testing companies — to uncover the ancestry of celebrities in each episode. This very team has been busy tracing the genetic histories of tonight’s guests, the Smithsonian’s own Lonnie Bunch, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Washington Week’s Gwen Ifill. Gates will reveal their ancestral backgrounds, discovered through historical records and genomic data, live on stage. Ifill and Bunch will explore the results and comment on what they’ve learned.
 Lonnie Bunch |
 Gwen Ifill |
After the ancestral reveal, the program continues with a discussion on the promise and limitations of genomic research and ancestral inference genetic testing. Panelists include:
Aravinda Chakravarti, professor, McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University;
Charmaine Royal, faculty, Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, and associate research professor, Department of African and African American Studies, Duke University;
Joanna Mountain, senior director of research, 23andMe.
The panel moderator is Vence Bonham, associate investigator, National Human Genome Research Institute. A question-and-answer session with the audience follows.
Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.
For more information, email NMAAHCPROGRAMS@si.edu.
For more information, email NMAAHCPROGRAMS@si.edu.
| Presented in partnership with the National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Museum of Natural History, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. |
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