Tell the FDA: No BPA in food packaging!

On March 31st, the FDA will decide whether or not to continue allowing bisphenol A (BPA) to be used in food packaging.

While the toxic chemical was recently banned in California from being used in baby bottles and sippy cups, thanks to the lobbying of the American Chemistry Council and other chemical manufacturers BPA continues to be allowed in food and beverage packaging, including the lining in much canned food and soup.

The FDA has the power to finally put a stop to BPA in our food. It needs to stand up to industry pressure and protect us from this dangerous chemical.

Please join me in urging the FDA to ban BPA in food packaging.

Wonder why marijuana isn't legal = look to the lobbyists...

John Lovell is a lobbyist who makes a lot of money from making sure you can’t smoke a joint. That’s his job. He’s a lobbyist for the police unions in Sacramento, and he is a driving force behind grabbing Federal dollars to shut down the California marijuana industry. 

At some point in the distant past, the war on drugs might have been popular. But not anymore — the polling is clear, but beyond that, the last three Presidents have used illegal drugs. So why do we still put hundreds of thousands of people in steel cages for pot-related offenses? Well, there are many reasons, but one of them is, of course, money in politics. Corruption. 

In 2010, California considered Prop 19, a measure to legalize marijuana and tax it as alcohol. The proposition gained more votes than Meg Whitman, the former eBay executive and Republican gubernatorial nominee that year, but failed to pass. Opponents of the initiative ran ads, organized rallies, and spread conspiracy theories about billionaire George Soros to confuse voters.

Lovell managed the opposition campaign against Prop 19.  The Republic Report reviewed lobbying contracts during the Prop 19 fight, and found that Lovell’s firm was paid over $386,350 from a wide array of police unions, including the California Police Chiefs Association.

Shortly after President Obama’s stimulus program passed, Lovell went to work channeling the taxpayer money for California into drug war programs. According to documents Republic Report obtained from the Police Chiefs Association, Lovell helped local departments apply for drug war money from the Federal government. 

There is big money in marijuana prohibition. Lovell represented a police union in a bid to steer some $2.2 million dollars into a “Marijuana Suppression Program.” In 2009 and 2010, California police unions sought a $7,537,389 chunk of Federal money for police to conduct a “Campaign Against Marijuana Planting” program.

The anti-marijuana money went directly into the paychecks of many officers. For example, police departments in Shasta, Siskiyou, and Tehama Counties formed a “North California Eradication Team” to receive $550,000 in grants that helped pay for overtime, a new officer, and flight operations:

• The total amount awarded was $550,000, to be split between Shasta, Siskiyou and Tehama counties, which make up the Northern California Marijuana Eradication Team (NorCal-MET). Broken down in the agenda worksheet, the sheriff’s office is expecting to spend $20,000 on flight operations, $94,895 for the full-time deputy’s salary and benefits, $16,788 for the administration assistant salary and benefits and $29,983 to cover up to 666.29 hours of overtime.

The Federal anti-marijuana honeypot might have dried up if Prop 19 had passed. Legalizing marijuana would have generated billions in tax revenue for the state of California, while also reducing victimless crime prosecutions. But for lobbyists like Lovell, legalization was a direct assault on hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential fees for helping to solicit taxpayer money for his clients.

Police unions also contributed about $100,500 to a campaign account used to coordinate opposition to Prop 19. Of the $386,350 in fees paid by police unions to Lovell through 2009 and 2010, status update reports reviewed by Republic Report reveal that Lovell worked on a number of issues, from advocacy against Prop 19 to channeling grants and monitoring legislation.

Of course, police unions aren’t the only interest group with a stake in maintaining broken drug laws. The beer industry, alcohol corporations, and prison guard unions also contributed money to help Lovell stop Prop 19. Howard Wooldridge, a retired police officer who now helps push for legalization as a citizen advocate, told Republic Report that drug company lobbyists also fight to keep marijuana illegal because they view pot as a low-cost form of competition.

growth!!!!

Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada -- the states that were most hurt in the real estate collapse over the past five years -- are now leading the U.S. labor market expansion.

Copper Imports

Imports of copper by China last month were the second- highest on record, the data showed, after the weeklong holiday slowed customs clearance in January. 

Net crude oil imports increased to a record to meet rising demand as farmers prepare for the planting season and the government adds to emergency stockpiles. The average price of February’s crude imports was $112.39 a barrel, up from $92.28 in the same month last year, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Wen, in his state-of-the-nation work report to lawmakers at the National People’s Congress this week, said the government will “carry out timely and appropriate anticipatory adjustments and fine-tuning” of fiscal and monetary policies.

‘Powerful Recovery’

“The powerful recovery in earnings thus far has allowed market averages to rise without pushing the P/E higher,” David Joy, the Boston-based chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial Inc., said in a Feb. 21 e-mail. His firm oversees $600 billion. “Many investors are either not convinced that this price rally and earnings recovery are for real, or they simply do not care, having been burned too badly in the downturn.”
U.S. gross domestic product expanded an average 2.4 percent a quarter in the 2 1/2 years since the recession ended in 2009, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The world’s largest economy hasn’t had a smaller post-recession recovery rate since at least the 1940s, the data show. In the 2003 bull market, GDP rose 2.7 percent on average, before the S&P 500 surged 102 percent. For the 1982 rally, the rate was 5.7 percent. Equities more than tripled in that cycle.

Shocking but True!!! USA 1.6 million children are homeless....

The number of homeless children is at an all time high in the United States. One in 45 children, totaling 1.6 million, is currently homeless, according to a 2011 study by the National Center on Family Homelessness. California is ranked the fifth highest state in the nation for its percentage of homeless children. An increasing number of children are dependent on poverty-stricken single moms.

Police Brutality American Style =Oakland

A march to take over a vacant building by members of the Occupy movement in Oakland, Calif., turned into a violent confrontation with the police on Saturday, leaving three officers injured and about 200 people arrested. 

The clashes began just before 3 p.m. when protesters marched toward the vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, the police said, and began to tear down construction barricades. Officers ordered the crowd to disperse,” the Oakland police said in a press release. 

Officers responded with smoke, tear gas and beanbag projectiles. 

Most of the arrests occurred in the evening, when large groups of people were corralled in front of the Downtown Oakland Y.M.C.A. on Broadway. At one point, one group of protesters broke into the City Hall building. 

On a livestream broadcast on the Web site oakfosho.com, dozens of protesters could be seen sitting cross-legged in darkness on the street in front of the Y.M.C.A. Their hands appeared to be bound behind them, while police officers stood watch. Occasionally the protesters sang or cheered. 

The events were part of a demonstration dubbed “Move-in Day,” a plan by protesters to move into the vacant convention center and use it as a commune-like command center, according to the Web site occupyoaklandmoveinday.org. 

“We were going to set up a community center,” said Benjamin Phillips, 32, a member of the Occupy Oakland media team. “It would be a place where we could house people, feed people, do all the things that we have been doing.” 

After a series of violent episodes, including a clash in which a Marine veteran of Iraq suffered a fractured skull when struck by a projectile in a confrontation with the police, Ms. Quan relented and permitted the protesters to return to the plaza. But two weeks later, in response to fears of renewed violence, she ordered the plaza cleared again. 

Mr. Phillips, who said he is a veteran of the United States Air Force, spoke Saturday night from his home on Grand Avenue where he had stopped to rinse tear-gas residue from his contact lenses. He described the scene in front of the Y.M.C.A. as “terrifying.” 

“This is disgusting, because this is not the way that America is supposed to work,” he said. “You’re supposed to be able to have something like freedom to assemble and air your grievances,” he said. 

“It’s bizarre,” he said of the police reaction. “It’s not something you expect to see in the United States, and we’ve seen it over and over in Oakland.”

USA 80 Mayors Support Same-Sex Marriage.......

Mayors of about 80 U.S. cities from New York to Los Angeles to Houston are backing a campaign to remove legal barriers to same-sex marriage nationwide.

Meanwhile, Salt Lake City, Utah is voted gayest city in the USA!!!

CA Low Carbon Fuel Standard Blocked; why does the EU recognize Canadian Tar Sands and Heavy Oil as pollution but US Courts can't = big oil owns judges?

California appealed a ruling by a federal judge who blocked the state’s low-carbon fuel standard after finding that it discriminates against out-of-state corn ethanol and crude oil and violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The judge’s decision and a related court order blocks the state from enforcing rules discouraging refiners such as Chevron Corp. (CVX) and Tesoro Corp. (TSO) from processing types of crude that release more carbon when produced and transported into the state, such as output from Canada’s oil sands.


“We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision,” the California Air Resources Board said in an e-mailed statement. “The low-carbon fuel standard is an evenhanded standard that encourages the use of cleaner low-carbon fuels by regulating fuel-providers in California. It does not discriminate against any fuels on the basis of geography.”


The board is asking a federal appeals court in San Francisco to reverse the judge’s ruling and his order blocking the rules from being enforced until a lawsuit challenging them is resolved. The rules were to be enforced starting Jan. 1.


U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill in Fresno, California, on Dec. 29 sided with farming and oil-industry groups that argued California’s method of assigning a higher so- called carbon intensity score to ethanol produced in the Midwest, which is otherwise chemically and physically identical to that produced in California, discriminates against interstate commerce.


The lower court case is Rocky Mountain Farmers Union v. Goldstene, 09-2234, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California (Fresno).

WE THE PEOPLE condemn the US Supreme Court's disastrous ruling in Citizens United v FEC

Resolutions calling for a constitutional amendment have been passed in New York City, Oakland, California and Duluth, Minnesota. The California State Legislature introduced a similar resolution that, if passed, would call for an amendment to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. And the Supreme Court of Montana issued a stinging opinion upholding a state ban on corporate contributions and criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous ruling.


People from coast to coast — and more than 40 national and statewide organizations including Greenpeace, 350.org, People For the American Way, Move to Amend, California Church IMPACT, and others — will take action demanding a constitutional amendment to end corporate dominance over elections and restore our democracy to We the People.


Regardless of what form your action takes, you’ll be part of a movement that has been gaining momentum at a remarkable pace, from the grassroots to Congress.


Now it’s time to step out into the national spotlight and make it clear that the American people strongly and overwhelmingly oppose the auctioning of our democracy.

Meat grown in a lab v a farm = would you like to know before you bite that burger?

Yesterday, a ballot initiative that would require the labeling of all genetically engineered (GE) foods sold in California was submitted to the Attorney General’s office. The initiative has the support from a coalition of consumer groups and organic food companies – this coalition is expected to grow as the campaign unfolds in the coming months.

The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act is an initiative intended to be on the California ballot in November 2012, pending securing enough signatures to qualify it for the ballot. The Act would simply require that food sold in
retail outlets be labeled if it is genetically engineered, or if it contains genetically
engineered ingredients.


“Genetic engineering adds completely new elements into our food. Because the FDA has failed to require labeling of GMO food, this initiative closes a critical loophole in food labeling law. It will allow Californians to choose what they buy and eat and will allow health professionals to track any potential adverse health impacts of these foods.” said Andy Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. “Genetically engineering food can cause unintended consequences and because there have been no long term studies, we are unsure of how GMOs may affect our health.”

Center for Food Safety (CFS) believes that consumers have a right to know what’s in the food we eat and feed our children, including whether food is genetically engineered. We all should be able to make informed choices, and have the ability to choose whether to buy genetically engineered food or not.

Stay tuned to CFS’s websites for more information on this issue in the coming weeks!

Should Politicians Vote Party Line or “Think” and Vote Reasonably…

Some of us want to pay taxes, allow gay marriages, preserve the separation of church/mosque/synagogue/temple & state, avoid costly wars and figure out a way off of oil. No matter how much others might not want these things there will always be fiscal conservatives who are social liberals.

Mr. Brown has told friends he was unprepared for the extent, in his view, to which Republicans have not made sufficient efforts to accommodate him on critical issues, like putting on the ballot measures to extend taxes to avoid budget cuts.

In one case, Mr. Brown told a friend, he said he felt like “we weren’t even on the same playing field” in negotiating face to face with a Republican lawmaker who would not accept his assertion that most money in the California education budget did not go to administrative costs. Mr. Brown said he finally just stood up and left the meeting.

Again and again, he said, he has found that approaches that once worked — inviting Republicans to dinner rather than attacking them, offering measured concessions on issues like pension cutbacks and spending, trying to rally public support for what he described as balanced proposals — were no longer effective.

“He is aghast,” said Jodie Evans, a longtime associate who had recently had dinner with Mr. Brown in Oakland. “He reports on some of the conversations, like he couldn’t believe the narrowness or lack of comprehending by public officials.

At 73, Mr. Brown is certainly indefatigable and remains exceedingly optimistic, as was clear during a cheerful 45-minute interview in his office last week. He said he would propose another budget next year that again offered the Legislature a choice between raising taxes or imposing more cuts, in the belief that at some point, voter backlash to reductions would push some Republicans to act on taxes.

“I mean, how much less school do you want?” he said.

Even though Democrats outnumber Republicans in the Legislature, state law requires a two-thirds vote on tax bills.

“The Republicans are far less engaged and independent than they were 30 years ago,” Mr. Brown said. “The Republicans then were very independent. Everything was not a party-line vote.”

We did get a balanced budget on time. We didn’t get the tax extensions but we got massive cuts that won praise on Wall Street.”

Invented in California and brought to you in Europe!

The first electric car battery swapping station in Europe opened here last month, the initial site in a network of 24/7 fully automated drive-through stations. There, the lithium-ion battery packs, which weigh about 600 pounds, will be removed from specially designed cars and replaced with a fully charged pack. The swap takes five minutes.
Is this plan — a solution that could make E.V’s practical for long trips — some sort of utopian E.V. fantasy? I thought so until I experienced the process myself.

I was in the second car to do a battery swap after the ribbon was cut on June 28. Passengers in the first car included Lykke Friis, Denmark’s minister of climate and energy, and Johnny Hansen, chief executive of Better Place Denmark, the local branch of the Silicon Valley company. It is building the swap stations and related businesses in Australia, China, Denmark, Israel (where the world’s first swap station is) and eventually, the United States.

Better Place has 19 more battery swap stations in the works for Denmark. “By the first of April, we will cover the whole country,” Mr. Hansen said, referring to 2012, with stations no more than 40 miles apart.

At this point, only Renault is making cars designed for quick battery swaps. The company stretched the gasoline-powered version of its Fluence, a Corolla-like sedan, by five inches to accommodate the suitcase-size 24-kilowatt-hour battery pack. The resulting Fluence Z.E., for zero emissions, goes into full production later this year, available in either swappable or fixed-battery versions.

My 20-minute drive in the Fluence Z.E. from the Better Place offices in Copenhagen to the swap station in the suburb of Gladsaxe, was pleasingly uneventful. The swap station adjoins a filling station, where a gallon of gasoline was priced at the equivalent of $9.15 and diesel was $8.40.

The battery swap was also uneventful. Swipe a membership card at the entrance and the garage door to the battery-change track, similar to a carwash tunnel, opens. Pull forward and the robot takes over — the driver simply shifts into neutral and lets go.

As the car is guided forward, it’s lifted a few inches. Inside the car, you hear buzzes and hums and feel vibrations, but there’s no view of what is happening below. About a minute into the experience, the dashboard message indicates empty battery — meaning it’s gone — after which there’s no air-conditioning, although music and other functions continue. During most of Denmark’s year, the brief lack of climate control would not be a problem, but during my trip, on a hot summer day, the sealed cabin quickly became steamy.

That small discomfort did not mar the significance of the occasion: four and a half minutes after entering the station, the car had a fresh battery. The sedan was lowered and we pulled out of the tunnel ready to drive another 100 miles or so, according to Renault’s range estimate. The Better Place robot worked.

Better Place subscribers purchase their cars, but not the expensive battery packs. For a fixed fee of about $350 a month, they will lease access to the batteries, swap stations and charge points.

Renault says it intends to produce more than 100,000 Fluence Z.E. sedans through 2015, although availability in Denmark will be limited. Another battery-swappable model from Renault, the Zoe Z.E. — a smaller hatchback more suited to Danish tastes — is expected next year. But it could be a number of years before other carmakers produce models that work with the Better Place stations.

The economics are challenging. Each station costs “a couple of million Euros” — about $3 million — to build, Mr. Hansen said. That is a big investment for stations that might barely be used in the next couple of years.

The Better Place business model is a top-down, central-office approach to electric car charging infrastructure. Whether that plan will work may be uncertain, but its Danish swap station does deliver as promised.

When E.V.’s finally arrive here, Denmark could be one of a few places in the world to have eliminated limited driving range and insufficient charging spots as potential obstacles to the adoption of electric cars.

Oh Governor Brown how about that offshore wind power?

Based on a 5 MW wind turbine on a 264 foot tower with wind speed cutoff of 15.66 mph at water depths up to 660 feet, 112% of California's electricity needs could be provided with offshore wind energy alone!!!

A significant amount of offshore wind energy potential does exist in California, with 330 TWh developable annually in all waters. The vast majority (86%) of California’s offshore wind resource exists in deep waters (160-660 feet). And guess what? The feedstock is always priced the same = zero.

What is mindboggling is that instead of California having enabling legislation; we have a study going on. That would be government speak for let’s put it off to a committee or better yet the next administration!!!

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory atmospheric scientists are working with a Norwegian company (SWAY) to possibly leverage that wind as a valuable energy source.

LLNL has signed a memorandum of understanding with SWAY, a renewable energy company that has developed floating towers for wind turbines located in deep water. Though California has not yet approved offshore wind turbines, SWAY will launch a 1/5 scale prototype of the technology off the coast of Norway during June 10 to demonstrate how the system could work in the Pacific Ocean.

Towers for offshore wind turbines typically sit 0-30 meters deep in the water and are anchored to the ocean floor. Based on technology that was originally used for deep-sea oil drilling, SWAY has developed a system to generate more offshore power by locating turbine towers deeper in the ocean – at depths from 60-400 meters. The turbines would sit on top of the floating, tethered tower.

"California has an abundance of deep water wind resources, so this is an opportunity for the state," said Nalu Kaahaaina, LLNL's Low-Carbon Energy Program leader. "This technology is clean, reliable and even more consistent than traditional onshore wind turbines."

Power generation from offshore wind turbines is significantly higher than onshore wind turbines.

"We have offshore wind resources in California and the wind is blowing all the time," said Roger Aines, LLNL's Carbon Fuel Cycle Program leader. "If SWAY has success in Norway, the technology could be useful in California."

Now my wonder as to why the study since Siemens and Vestas are the leaders in offshore wind.

Siemens and Vestas are the leading turbine suppliers for offshore wind power. Dong Energy, Vattenfall and E.on are the leading offshore operators. There are about 4 GW of offshore wind power capacity operational, mainly in Northern Europe. According to BTM Consult, more than 16 GW of additional capacity will be installed before the end of 2014 and the United Kingdom and Germany will become the two leading markets. Offshore wind power capacity is expected to reach a total of 75 GW worldwide by 2020, with significant contributions from China and the United States.

Offshore turbines require different types of bases for stability, according to the depth of water. To date a number of different solutions exist:

• A monopile (single column) base, six meters in diameter, is used in waters up to 100 feet deep.

• Gravity Base Structures, for use at exposed sites in water 65- 264 feet deep.

• Tripod piled structures, in water 65-264 feet deep.

• Tripod suction caisson structures, in water 65-264 feet deep.

• Conventional steel jacket structures, as used in the oil and gas industry, in water 65-264 feet deep.

• Floating wind turbines are being developed for deeper water.

Some of those old oil platforms on California’s coast might go to new use?

Offshore wind energy costs of under 6 cents per kWh. Capital costs are around 30-50% higher than onshore, due to larger machine size, subsea cable for tie-in (up to 25 miles offshore) and the costs of transporting and installing at sea. This is partially offset by higher energy yields – with capacity factors at 45%. If the wind systems are mass-produced, their capital costs will drop, which will reduce the cost of electricity to 3 or 4-cents per kilowatt hour (kWh).

Pretty cool!!!