This whole episode screams "Why can't we have reasonable discussions about racial issues???" at me.
The answer is twofold: First, Andrew Breitbart is a dirty, lying SOB who thrives on waving his malodorous lies around on Fox News and the Internet. Second, the White House or USDA, depending upon which story you read, believed him.
Here's the story in short bites:
Shirley Sherrod was an employee of the USDA; specifically, the USDA Georgia director of rural development. In a speech to the Georgia chapter of the NAACP, she tells a story that appears to indicate she prefers to put black folks ahead of white folks.
Breitbart edits the video, puts it up, and the world goes mad. Sherrod is fired resigns, after being told pressure is coming from the White House to fire her.
Sherrod was speaking to a Georgia chapter of the NAACP. In the speech, according to Breitbart's characterization, Sherrod is explaining how she refused to help a white farmer as much as she could have because she preferred to help black people. Breitbart:
We are in possession of a video from in which Shirley Sherrod, USDA Georgia director of rural development, speaks at the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Georgia. In her meandering speech to what appears to be an all-black audience, this federally appointed executive bureaucrat lays out in stark detail that her federal duties are managed through the prism of race and class distinctions.
The speech wasn't to an all-black audience (though the specter of black people revealing their contempt for whitey in closed-door meetings of fellow black people seems to drive a lot of conservatives into a paranoid frenzy), as the mayor of Douglas, Ga., was among the white attendees. And the story Sherrod told was about her work 24 years ago for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, not "her federal duties." So, that's a lie. Andrew Breitbart is lying in this paragraph. Just for the record. Andrew Breitbart lies.
If the White House or the USDA had bothered to actually look for facts, they might have discovered that Sherrod had ultimately befriended that white farmer she talked about, and helped the family save their farm.
The story Sherrod told was one of redemption, not prejudice. But Breitbart twisted it around into a story that never existed and the White House/USDA took the bait.
As the President so often says, "You're entitled to your opinions, but not your own facts." It might have been good for the folks in the White House to actually think about that before reacting to a lying liar scum like Andrew Breitbart.
Safe food isn't a controversial issue, right? President Obama supports the food safety bill -- even the Republicans support it. So why hasn't it passed? The holdup seems to be that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) says she'll offer an amendment banning bisphenol-A, the nasty little chemical and known endocrine disruptor found in virtually all food and beverage containers -- which upsets the companies who make the stuff. The container industry is a huge one, and banning the substance so widely used could have major economic effects at a time when we're barely holding on. Hopefully they'll come up with an effective compromise with Feinstein:
A year after House Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly approved legislation to improve food safety, public health advocates are growing frustrated that the Senate has yet to take up the bill.
A coalition of food safety groups tried to turn up the pressure last week on Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), running newspaper ads in the lawmakers' two states featuring constituents who fell seriously ill from food poisoning. The ads urged Reid and McConnell to move the bill to the Senate floor and pass it.
"Time is short -- there are not a lot of legislative days on the calendar and we're seeing [food] recalls every week," said Erik Olson with the food and consumer product safety programs at Pew Health Group. "There is obviously a lot of interest in making sure folks know this bill has broad public support and that there is really no reason not to move this. It would show that Washington can get something done."
[...] The bill, which would be the first major change to food safety laws in 70 years, is designed to give the Food and Drug Administration vast new regulatory authority over food production. It places greater responsibility on manufacturers and farmers to produce food free from contamination -- a departure from the country's reactive tradition, which has relied on government inspectors to catch tainted food after the fact.
The legislation follows a wave of food-borne illnesses over the past four years, involving products as varied as spinach and cookie dough, which has shaken consumer confidence and made the issue a priority for many lawmakers and the White House. Food illnesses affect one in four Americans and kill 5,000 each year, according to government statistics. Tainted food has cost the food industry billions of dollars in recalls, lost sales and legal expenses.
The measure also would give the FDA authority to order a recall if it suspects contamination -- authority it does not currently have. It would allow the FDA to quarantine a geographic area, blocking the distribution of suspect food to the rest of the country. And the agency would gain access to records at farms and food production facilities.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Nearly 40 million Americans received food stamps -- the latest in an ever-higher string of record enrollment that dates from December 2008 and the U.S. recession, according to a government update.
Food stamps are the primary federal anti-hunger program, helping poor people buy food. Enrollment is highest during times of economic distress. The jobless rate was 9.9 percent, the government said on Friday.
The Agriculture Department said 39.68 million people, or 1 in 8 Americans, were enrolled for food stamps during February, an increase of 260,000 from January. USDA updated its figures on Wednesday.
"This is the highest share of the U.S. population on SNAP/food stamps," said the anti-hunger group Food Research and Action Center, using the new name for food stamps, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). "Research suggests that one in three eligible people are not receiving ... benefits."
Enrollment has set a record each month since reaching 31.78 million in December 2008. USDA estimates enrollment will average 40.5 million people this fiscal year, which ends Sept 30, at a cost of up to $59 billion. For fiscal 2011, average enrollment is forecast for 43.3 million people.
Emptywheel has crunched the numbers on the Baucus plan, and has come up with how much money it will leave families if they actually have to use the insurance for any significant health care problems. Here are her numbers for a family of four earning 300% of the poverty levels or $66,150.
So that makes the House Tax: $10,000 + 6,615 = 16,615 or 25% of income (as opposed to 31%).
The difference between the House plan and the Baucus plan is $4,025. Total expenses are $55,7607, or The remainder for all other expenses is $11,240 or 17% of income.
It's not a meaningless difference, $4,025 a year is $335 a month. But it's not huge, either. (Note: see update at bottom of post.)
After decades of steady progress, the safety of the nation’s food supply has not improved over the past three years, the government reported Thursday. And, it said, in the case of salmonella, the dangerous bacteria recently found in peanuts and pistachios, infections may be creeping upward.
The report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, demonstrates that the nation’s food safety system, created when most foods were grown, prepared and consumed locally, needs a thorough overhaul to regulate an increasingly global food industry, top government health officials said Thursday.
“The system needs to be modernized to address the challenges and changes of the globalization of the food supply and rapid distribution chains,” said Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration. “F.D.A. needs to do more inspections.” Dr. Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the agency’s food center, agreed. “As supply chains get longer and longer,” Dr. Sundlof said, “there’s more opportunity to introduce contaminants that have a public health effect.”
The report is likely to deepen tensions between the F.D.A. and the Department of Agriculture, which have long been rivals in overseeing food safety. An Agriculture Department campaign begun in 2006 to reduce salmonella contamination of meat and poultry has been successful, the report noted. But Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the C.D.C.’s division of foodborne diseases, suggested that whatever progress the department had made in improving overall food safety might have been lost by the F.D.A.
Urban sustainability is one of the quickest-growing grassroots movements in the nation. In my Philadelphia neighborhood, I can eat in dozens of local restaurants who only buy from local food producers and suppliers. (Buy Fresh, Buy Local is a popular local bumper sticker.) I buy produce from an urban farm that was constructed on a reclaimed brownfield site (the stuff is grown hydroponically, so no nasty toxins from the soil - and no GMO seed! I get my garden seedlings from the same place. Homegrown is best!) And let's not forget: the sooner you get the produce once it's removed from the soil, the more nutrients it has.
Plus, local food just tastes better. Try chopping up a juicy, fresh tomato and sauteing it in olive oil with salt, pepper, cinnamon and a pinch of sugar. Serve over pasta and you'll have something with which no jar sauce can compare. Yum!
Old People's News: US residents in military brigs. Your governmnet says 'it's war.'
Gristmill: The USDA cravenly stops measuring the poisons used in US farming. Meanwhile, Germany has banned chemicals linked to honeybee devastation.
Corrente: Hillary's RFK/assassination gaffe inspired more of the molehills to mountains
reaction we've come to expect from the press - and many blogs. This seem appropriate.
The Opinion Mill's Sunday Bookchat: For Memorial Day -- a book about America's finest hour, and a gauge of how badly America's moral standing has been soiled by the Bush administration. The man who prosecuted Charles Manson would like to do the same for King George II. And a new book argues that the problem with conservative foreign policy isn' the "foreign policy" part -- it's the "conservative" part.
More than half of Yellowstone National Park's bison herd has died since last fall, forcing the government to suspend its annual slaughter program.
Bison's natural habitat is at high elevations, but they move lower when grass for grazing becomes scarce.
More than 700 of the iconic animals starved or otherwise died on the mountainsides during an unusually harsh winter, and more than 1,600 were shot by hunters or sent to slaughterhouses in a disease-control effort, according to National Park Service figures.
As a result, the park estimates its bison herd has dropped from 4,700 in November to about 2,300 today, prompting the government to halt the culling program early.
"There has never been a slaughter like this of the bison since the 1800s in this country, and it's disgusting," said Mike Mease of the Buffalo Field Campaign, a group seeking to stop the slaughter program for good.
Government officials say the slaughter prevents the spread of the disease brucellosis from the Yellowstone bison to cattle on land near the park. Brucellosis can cause miscarriages, infertility and reduced milk production in domestic cattle. [..]
The USDA acknowledges that bison-to-cattle transmission is difficult to document, but it says investigations indicate that bison were the likely source of infections in cattle herds in Wyoming and North Dakota.
But critics call the culling an overreaction. There is no documented case of the disease passing from bison to cattle, they said.
While most Americans were planning for the annual ritual of overconsumption known as Thanksgiving, the good folks at the Heritage Foundation, America's leading architects of conservative thought for at least three decades, were doing their part to add to the holiday cheer. According to a November 13 Heritage article, well-off revelers could stuff their faces unhampered by guilt about the less fortunate, because there are no longer any hungry people in the United States.
You have to hand it to Heritage for always being first out of the gate to exploit the latest event or finding to advance its aims-this is the same think tank that issued a comprehensive strategy, two weeks after Katrina hit shore, for using the hurricane as an excuse to slash federal social programs. This time, its thinkers found inspiration in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's annual report on Household Food Security in the United States, which is as close as the federal government comes to providing statistics on hunger among the nation's poor. The latest report states that 11 percent of Americans were "food insecure" for some part of 2006, and 4 percent-11.1 million people-experienced "very low food security."[..]
But the Heritage folks are looking beyond semantic tweaks: Far from having too little to eat, they argue, poor people are eating too much. By the time the USDA report went public, Heritage had readied its own salvo, titled "Hunger Hysteria: Examining Food Security and Obesity in America." In recent years, the U.S. media and public have become increasingly obsessed with the "obesity epidemic." And what better way to attack the idea of deprivation among the poor than to note that they are getting fatter? Rightly or not, people still associate obesity with the sins of gluttony and sloth, which jives nicely with the concept that welfare recipients are lazy people who would rather feed at the public trough than get an honest job.
Must. Resist. Impulse. To. Bang. Head. Against. Keyboard. I've been doing some reading on scientific study of happiness (i.e., how psychology and brain physiology determines our emotional reactions) and I truly believe that the empathy portion of the brain stem must be damaged or missing on conservatives. That's the only way that I can see how they can ignore the facts in front of them to come up with such a condescending and hateful hypothesis like that.
But it appears that the Heritage Foundation feels they are entitled to their own facts, much like the unintentionally hilarious Conservapedia. According to this BloggingHeads segment, Heritage is planning on starting their own version of Crooks&Liars, documenting examples of "liberal" media bias and when conservatives are shown in an unfairly bad light.
Hate to break it to you, fellas, but you put yourselves in a bad light all on your own.
The Gavel: A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has repeatedly altered scientific field reports to minimize protections for imperiled species and disclosed confidential information to private groups seeking to affect policy decisions.
