It is called regulations.

April 12, 2017

By Cari Nierenberg

New York residents (click here) have benefited from rules that ban trans fat in restaurants: Rates of heart attack and stroke have dropped in New York counties where such bans have been enacted, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that starting three years after the effort to restrict the use of trans fats in eating establishments was introduced, the New York counties with these restrictions experienced a 6.2 percent reduction in hospital admissions for heart attacks and strokes, compared with New York counties without similar restrictions. 

This translates to 43 fewer heart attacks and strokes per 100,000 adult residents (ages 25 and older) in the New York counties with trans fat restrictions, according to the study published online today (April 12) in the journal JAMA Cardiology. [9 Disgusting Things That the FDA Allows in Your Food]...

I betcha the Snack Food Association and the Fast Food Industry are happy today. The future of the FDA under Trump is in a precarious state. Trump announced the plans to cut many employees from the federal government. It will slow the government and with agencies like the FDA it will increase a backlog that will cause hardship among Americans.

We live in a world where discovery that improves quality of life occurs at a rapid pace with well funded research. The Trump administration will return the USA to the dark ages of ignorance.

June 16, 2015
By Jen Christensen

...In 2007, New York City (click here) adopted a regulation that banned trans fat from restaurants, but some restaurants were already ahead of the legal changes.

Companies like McDonald's had stopped cooking their french fries in trans fat more than a decade ago. Their online menus say all their fried food is free of trans fat. Chick-fil-A removed all artificial trans fat from its menu in 2008.

Before it became a popular ingredient in processed and fast foods, trans fat was introduced into the American diet as early as 1911 in the form of shortening or hydrogenated vegetable oil, used for cooking and making pies.

Partially hydrogenated oil is formed when hydrogen is added to liquid oils to make solid fats, like shortening and margarine. It also increases the shelf life of food and enhances flavors.

American dietary guidelines recommended Americans keep their trans fat consumption "as low as possible."

Dr. Steven Nissen, the chair of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, praised the FDA for its "bold courage" and said it "deserves a lot of credit" for taking this "enormously important" move....

During the "W" years the USA added enormous numbers of private contractors for the security industry. After 911, "W" helped his lagging economics by throwing large amounts of money into a huge security industry. Trump doesn't want to end private industry attached to the federal government, he wants to shut down the federal government and throw everything into the private sector.

April 11, 2017
By John Fritze

...Asked specifically (click here) about the impact on Montgomery and Prince George's counties, home to the highest concentration of federal workers in the state, OMB director Mick Mulvaney said the administration would not be dissuaded by what he described as the concern of "special interest" groups....

The attack on federal employees involves race as well.

June 13, 2011
By Ed O'Keefe

The federal government employs (click here) a higher percentage of minorities when compared with the national workforce but is still employing a smaller percentage of Hispanics, according to a new government study.

The percentage of women in federal offices also dropped slightly year-to-year, according to the annual report on equal opportunity recruitment published Friday by the Office of Personnel Management.

In 2010, the percentage of minority federal workers grew 5 percent in 2010 to 647,588 employees, an increase of about 31,100 workers from the previous year. Minorities represent 33.8 percent of the federal workforce; just under 18 percent are black, 8 percent are Hispanic, 5.6 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, 1.8 percent American Indian/Alaska Native and less than 1 percent are classified as “Non-Hispanic/Multiracial.”

Whites make up 66.2 percent of federal workers, the report said....

The employees that have been employed by the federal government and nearing retirement should be given an incentive by the federal government to move on. The private sector does it and the federal government should do exactly the same thing.

I don't know what kind of fiscal numbers Trump is looking at, but, simply throwing federal workers out on the street without a consideration to their length and dedication to service is cruel. The draw down of the number of employees needs to be systematically and without disrespect to minority employees. 

The world of the "Hippie" has come of age.

By Michelle Rindels, Megan Messerly and Riley Snyder

After voters authorized recreational marijuana in November, (click here) Nevada lawmakers are discussing a raft of legislation to fill in the details of the new environment.

Here are some key themes running through 23 marijuana-related bills this session, and how they overlap with one another:

Marijuana taxation policy and ways to spend new revenue: SB181, SB302, SB341, SB379, AB463, SB487, SB508.

Easing or eliminating punishments for marijuana use: SB228, AB259, SB329, AB345, SB351, SB374, SB378, SB396, AB422.

Ensuring safe use of marijuana: AB135, SB166, SB277, SB329, SB344, SB378.

Reorganizing the regulatory environment around medical and recreational marijuana: SB302, SB329, SB375, AB422.

Marijuana research and economic development: SB236, SB329, SB341, SB396, SB416....                 

OMG, they are real.

April 12, 2017

By Kaila Hale-Stern

Hey, remember back (click here) in the halcyon days when Mitt Romney seemed like a bad Republican contender for President and he blundered by suggesting he had “binders full of women” candidates to hire? Remember when the Republican Presidential candidate got laughed at for trying too hard to hire women instead of publicly bragging about assaulting women, then winning the election?

I remember too. It seems so much like a dream. Anyway, it appears that Mittens wasn’t exaggerating. The binders were real, and The Boston Globe has them.

Per The Washington Post, reporters at The Boston Globe are in possession of Romney’s binders, which exist in the actual world and not merely in the land of make believe, as we suspected at the time. Need a refresher on that happened in 2012, when America was a more innocent place and Donald Trump simply a many-times-bankrupt businessman and celebrity judge on his own reality show?...

There is absolutely no reason to give up NATO and the safety of Ukraine in order to achieve a working relationship with Russia in the Middle East. President Obama already established that relationship. It should be continued. Introducing American troops to Syria is not required.

Nothing has changed with Russia and Trump. I am waiting for the installation of ExxonMobil to replace Gazprom as the Russian national petroleum company.

Dropping bombs on Syria was a campaign promise and "I am better than Obama." The 59 Tomahawk missiles were Trump politics with his constituency.

I think Eric Trump and not the press secretary says it all. Trump accuses Russia of a cover-up regarding chemical weapons in Syria, the cover-up is not just a method of Russia. This 'stage' Trump has set is one of the Master and not the Apprentice.

April 11, 2017
By Peter Baker

Washington — A week ago, (click here) President Trump was accused of being a tool for the Russians, an unwitting agent of influence, so full of admiration that he defended President Vladimir V. Putin against critics who called him a killer.

Now, Mr. Trump is in a diplomatic clash with Mr. Putin’s Russia, his administration accusing Moscow of trying to cover up a Syrian chemical weapons attack on civilians and his secretary of state delivering us-or-them ultimatums.

Even in a presidency marked by unpredictability, the head-spinning shift from coziness to confrontation has left Washington and other capitals with a case of geopolitical whiplash. The prospects of improving Russian-American relations were already slim given the atmosphere of suspicion stemming from Kremlin meddling in last year’s election, but the détente once envisioned by Mr. Trump has instead deteriorated into the latest cold war.

For Mr. Trump’s camp, the abrupt turnaround simply proved how false the conspiracy narrative was from the start. “If there was anything that Syria did, it was to validate the fact that there is no Russia tie,” said Eric Trump, the president’s son....

Trump acted autonomously and impatiently, no differently than "W" did with the UN regarding Iraq. It was important to his personal political aspirations and that of his cabal.

When Republicans buy into hate and financial ambition one can be sure there is an ego linked to decision making.

April 7, 2017
By Conor Friedersdorf

...If the United States (click here) is to increase our use of military force in Syria, we should follow the Constitution and seek the proper authorization from Congress. President Trump should make his case in front of the American people and allow their elected representatives to debate the benefits and risks of further Middle East intervention to our national security interests....

...“If Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution means anything, it means that the president must obtain congressional approval before taking us to war against a sovereign nation that has not attacked the U.S. or its allies and is not threatening to attack the U.S. or its allies,” declared National Review’s David French, who served in the Judge Advocate General's Corps during the Iraq War....

There is a huge difference between Syria and Iraq and that is the ability to commit genocide of small unique communities of ethnics. The USA Tomahawk missiles can wipe out genetics off the Earth forever. There is no way to know if Assad has already committed such genocide with his barrel bombs and yet validated gas strikes with all the death and destruction that has occurred. But, Assad has a redeeming fact, he is an ethnic minority and wants to protect those people more than life itself.

I might add, it is that uniqueness about al-Assad and his family's leadership that Vladimir Putin likes. Putin is in a very different place than the USA generals that struggle to come up with a real strategy for Syria and the Middle East for that matter. Russia likes stable states and in that exists Bashar al-Assad.

We saw such an ethnic community with the Yazidis and Obama's intervention to save them. I might add, this rescue occurred after a man in the USA fought to get the attention of President Obama to address the extreme danger the Yazidis community faced. There was NO USA general or strategist that called those dire circumstances to President Obama.

The Shia Crescent has always been classified as a terrorist group here and a terrorist group there because to identify the 'entire' of the Shia Crescent as a sovereign unto itself completely dispells USA policy. Basically, the USA has not got an idea of what they are doing when they engage in war in the Middle East. It has the "W"rong model for the Middle East. WWIII is the only expertise and the only excuse for killing at random in the Middle East for the USA.

Putin is the answer to the violence in Syria. Unfortunately that is true. Advocating for him to take a strategy to the UN Security Council that creates a power sharing government while ending the civil war is the best place for the USA. We need to advocate the end of Daesh and coordinate with Russia in the Middle East to succeed.

Sorry that doesn't fit the politics of Neocons. Too bad.