By Melissa Phy / For the Love of Food
Sometimes, you just need a change. So you cut your hair (and subsequently cry about it), or dye it; you take a short road trip; you try out your hand at feng shui (the couch looks great in that corner, by the way); etc.
Well, I needed a change. It took me a while to think about what I wanted and then *pesto!* — it came to me.
Normally, pesto is made with fresh basil leaves, toasted pine nuts, garlic and olive oil. But change was in the air. [Read more…]
By Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams
A group of U.S. farmers is not giving up its fight against biotech giant Monsanto
In the latest step of a two and a half year legal battle, plaintiffs in Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA) et al v. Monsanto asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thrusday to hear their case challenging the patents on Monsanto’s genetically engineered seed.
The battle began in March 2011 when the farmers and seed companies brought a preemptive lawsuit against Monsanto to protect themselves from what they saw as unfair patent enforcement by Monsanto, whom they see as a “patent bully,” should the corporation’s genetically engineered seed contaminate the farmers’ crops. [Read more…]
By Jenesse Miller/California League of Conservation Voters
Today and for the last 60 years, oil and gas companies frack California without public notice. They inject acid into the ground, and they hide their “frack jobs.” They pump secret chemicals underground. They won’t tell, and they don’t have to tell – not even if you live next door. And it’s about to get even worse.
Demand to know the truth about fracking in California. Tell your Assemblymember to support SB 4, the environmental bill that forces Big Oil to answer to the public.
Right now in California there are no regulations, no oversight, and no consequences for the oil and gas industry that got us where we are today: fracked by hydraulics, pumped full of acid, and completely in the dark. It was recently revealed that oil companies have even been“quietly” fracking offshore in state and federal waters. [Read more…]
By Judi Curry
Labor Day means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. In my case, at the age of seven, the first time I knew about “Labor Day” was on September 2nd, 1946, because that was the day my mother went into labor with my sister, Andy. (Andrea Jane.) The house was a flutter and my own governess was going to take care of my sister, leaving me for the first time in my life.
I was going to be “a big girl” now, and I no longer needed to have Nanny Parsons monitor my every move. All of that was fine with me, except for one small thing – I did not know that my mother was pregnant. I do not want to say that she kept it a secret from me – but it was not talked about in my presence. [Read more…]
By Andy Cohen
The American healthcare system since World War II is based on employer supplied health insurance. It happened almost by accident, as tight wage controls prevented employers from offering prospective workers higher wages, so they got creative and offered benefits such as health insurance instead. It has since become the bedrock of our system, and remains that way today. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 55.1 percent of Americans received health coverage through an employer; among those aged 18-64 who were employed, 68 percent received health insurance from an employer.
Employer provided insurance is the cornerstone of our healthcare system, but now many employers are not happy about it. The cost is too prohibitive, they say. Having to provide health insurance to their employees hurts their ability to be competitive in the global marketplace. Manufacturing jobs have been off shored, in part, because of the rising cost of health care. [Read more…]
By Doug Porter
I expect there will plenty of news shortly on the ongoing mediation taking place between Mayor Bob Filner and his various adversaries. Rather than write something that will be out of date soon after it’s published, I’m publishing a short roundup of other news today. I’ll publish additional stories when there is something new to report.
Organizations from around the country are making final preparations for an August 24th rally in Washington DC marking the 50th anniversary of the March for Jobs and Freedom. The 1963 march was an event that immortalized the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who gave his “I Have a Dream’ speech to the quarter million people assembled on the national mall. This was the day the civil rights movement drove home just how serious African Americans and like-minded people were about securing a just society.
As was the case five decades ago, organized labor is playing a significant role. [Read more…]
By Tracy Fernandez Rysavy / Other Words
Sharron Camaratta bites her lips. She never thought of this as a major problem until 2007. That’s when she read that certain brands of lipsticks contain lead, a substance that can cause brain and nervous system damage.
So she stopped wearing the problematic brands — which a 2007 test by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics identified as including L’Oreal, CoverGirl, and Dior — until a year or two ago. Lulled into a sense of safety, she once again started making lipstick purchases based on personal preference and little else.
But that changed when Camaratta discovered a May 2013 study by the University of California, Berkeley, in which researchers found lead in lipstick. Again. [Read more…]
By Andy Cohen
There is an awful lot of misinformation being disseminated to the public about “Obamacare,” officially known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, mostly (exclusively?) by Republicans. It’s a shame, too, because although the law, passed in 2010, is not perfect, it’s far better than what we had before.
Employers too are getting into the act: Many “small businesses” (defined as those with fewer than 50 full time employees) are complaining that they will be forced to cut their employees hours to below 30 hours per week in order to avoid having to pay for health insurance for their workers. John Schnatter, CEO of Papa John’s Pizza, said last year that because Obamacare would increase the company’s costs—by a whopping 14 cents per pizza—franchisees might have to start cutting back on their employees’ hours.
Although there are some uncertainties with the law, most of the complaints are pure nonsense. Raising the price of a pizza by 14 cents is not exactly an undue burden that is going to drive consumers away, and Schnatter’s insistence that he’s going to have to drastically reduce his workforce over 14 cents is beyond ridiculous. This is not a business argument; it’s a political one. [Read more…]
By Doug Porter
The future is now for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It’s survived a Supreme Court challenge, forty attempts at repeal or de-funding in the House of Representatives and another twenty or so in the US Senate.
Although the plan signed by the President in March, 2010 is essentially the same as health care reforms advocated by conservatives for many years, the fact that the word Obama is associated with this legislation (either that or because he’s black) has made the ACA a third rail for the GOP.
The Tea Party’s Freedom Works, the Heritage Foundation’s advocacy arm, the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity and a slew of other groups are mounting a furious effort to kill the implementation of the bill.
Now the cherry on top of this toxic propaganda sundae has appeared: the return of the Death Panel. And nobody deserves the role of soda jerk in this circus parlor more than Sarah Palin. [Read more…]
It’s not all that often that President Barack Obama has truly gotten angry at his Republican counterparts. It’s been well-deserved on so many occasions, yet Obama seems to believe that civility and decency can somehow still get through to the GOP. In a press conference on Friday, Obama demonstrated some refreshing gusto, scolding the GOP for making “the idea of preventing [millions of Americans] from getting health care their holy grail.”
“Their number one priority, the one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don’t have health care,” Obama said. [Read more…]
Sunday August 11 is a big day for bicyclists and a particularly big day for bicyclists in the Mid-City communities. Four years in the planning, “CicloSDias will be the city of San Diego’s first open street event” according to Sam Ollinger. Sam is the Executive Director and Board President of BikeSD. Sam goes on to say:
With this first event, San Diego will join the ranks of 90 other cities around the U.S. in an attempt to showcase an apparently wary San Diego that no disaster will befall our fine city if she opens her street to people and closes it off to multi-ton motor vehicles for a few hours on a Sunday.
This idea to introduce the city’s residents to the notion of reclaiming the public commons and experiencing it without fear of bodily harm that may come in the form of an automobile barreling toward them at high speed…
by John Lawrence
From coast to coast, we saw a variety of record-breaking weather in July 2013. Several cities recorded one of their hottest Julys on record. A heat wave that lasted a week in middle July helped propel Hartford, Conn., Bridgeport, Conn., and Providence R.I. to their hottest July and calendar month on record. In the west Salt Lake City, Utah, Reno, Nev., Elko, Nev., Medford, Ore., Roseburg, Ore. and Bend, Ore. all saw their hottest July and calendar month in history.
Although July is typically the driest month of the year in the Pacific Northwest, it was exceptionally dry in July 2013.
Seattle, Olympia, Wash., Portland, Ore., Eugene, Ore. and Salem, Ore. were among the slew of locations in western Washington and western Oregon that recorded no measurable rainfall in July 2013. Only four other Julys since 1890 have had no rain in Portland (downtown). For Seattle, it was the first time in more than 50 years with no measurable rain in July. [Read more…]
