A Few Basic Tax Terms That ‘The Man’ Doesn’t Want You To Understand

February 16, 2012

Daily Finance

By Bruce Watson

Is the American tax code designed to be confusing?

Looking at the thing, it’s hard to escape that conclusion. To begin with, there’s its size: The full code is over 70,000 pages long — 22 times as long asRemembrance of Things Past, 62 times as long as the King James Bible, and 54 times as long as the complete works of William Shakespeare. Or, to put it another way, it’s about 175 times as long as its first edition, which was published in 1913.

Contained within its 3.7 million words are thousands of exemptions, definitions, deductions and loopholes, and teasing them out requires an estimated 7.6 billion hours of tax preparation per year. That’s more than 24 hours for every man, woman and child in the country. Even the head of the IRS hires an accountant to do his taxes.

Given all that, it’s hard to dismiss the notion that the tax code is deliberately designed to confuse the average taxpayer: Its byzantine structure supports an army of accountants and attorneys, computer programmers and bean counters who rake in an estimated $27.7 billion per year helping us prepare our taxes.

10 Things That Every American Should Know About The Federal Reserve

February 9, 2012

Natural News

By: Ethan A. Huff

What would happen if the Federal Reserve was shut down permanently? That is a question that CNBC asked recently, but unfortunately most Americans don’t really think about the Fed much. Most Americans are content with believing that the Federal Reserve is just another stuffy government agency that sets our interest rates and that is watching out for the best interests of the American people. But that is not the case at all. The truth is that the Federal Reserve is a private banking cartel that has been designed to systematically destroy the value of our currency, drain the wealth of the American public and enslave the federal government to perpetually expanding debt. During this election year, the economy is the number one issue that voters are concerned about. But instead of endlessly blaming both political parties, the truth is that most of the blame should be placed at the feet of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has more power over the performance of the U.S. economy than anyone else does. The Federal Reserve controls the money supply, the Federal Reserve sets the interest rates and the Federal Reserve hands out bailouts to the big banks that absolutely dwarf anything that Congress ever did. If the American people are ever going to learn what is really going on with our economy, then it is absolutely imperative that they get educated about the Federal Reserve.

The following are 10 things that every American should know about the Federal Reserve….

#1 The Federal Reserve System Is A Privately Owned Banking Cartel

The Federal Reserve is not a government agency.

The truth is that it is a privately owned central bank. It is owned by the banks that are members of the Federal Reserve system. We do not know how much of the system each bank owns, because that has never been disclosed to the American people.

The Federal Reserve openly admits that it is privately owned. When it was defending itself against a Bloomberg request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Reserve stated unequivocally in court that it was “not an agency” of the federal government and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Click here for the full report from

Top 15 Killers Of Americans

January 11. 2012

CNN

By Madison Park

The leading killers of Americans continue to be non-infectious diseases like heart disease, strokes and lung diseases.

But one of the perpetual causes of death fell off the top 15 list this year: Homicides.

“Most of the changes were positive,” said Sherry Murphy, a statistician at the National Center of Health Statistics and one of the authors of the annual mortality report. “Homicides fell from among the 15 leading causes for the first time since 1965.”

The rest of the common killers remained fairly consistent compared with 2009, according to the report released Wednesday. The death rate in the United States dropped slightly from 749.6 deaths per 100,000 in 2009 to 746.2 deaths per 100,000.

The life expectancy in the United States inched up a tiny bit from 78.6 years in 2009 to 78.7 years in 2010.

The leading causes of death in 2010 remained nearly the same as in 2009 – kidney diseases became the 8th leading cause of death –- it had been 9th in the previous year. It swapped spots with flu and pneumonia.

The 15th leading killer is pneumonitis due to solids and liquids, an illness more likely to strike the elderly. This is inflammation of the lungs due to inhaling substance inside the lung such as dust, mold or inhalants.

Click here for the full report from CNN.

Judge Allows American To Sue Rumsfeld Over Torture

August 4th, 2011

AP

By: Nedra Pickler

A judge is allowing an Army veteran who says he was imprisoned unjustly and tortured by the U.S. military in Iraq to sue former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld personally for damages.

The veteran’s identity is withheld in court filings, but he worked for an American contracting company as a translator for the Marines in the volatile Anbar province before being detained for nine months at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military facility near the Baghdad airport dedicated to holding “high-value” detainees.

The government says he was suspected of helping get classified information to the enemy and helping anti-coalition forces enter Iraq. But he was never charged with a crime and says he never broke the law.

Lawyers for the man, who is in his 50s, say he was preparing to come home to the United States on annual leave when he was abducted by the U.S. military and held without justification while his family knew nothing about his whereabouts or even whether he was still alive.

Court papers filed on his behalf say he was repeatedly abused, then suddenly released without explanation in August 2006. Two years later, he filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington arguing that Rumsfeld personally approved torturous interrogation techniques on a case-by-case basis and controlled his detention without access to courts in violation of his constitutional rights.

Chicago attorney Mike Kanovitz, who is representing the plaintiff, says it appears the military wanted to keep his client behind bars so he couldn’t tell anyone about an important contact he made with a leading sheik while helping collect intelligence in Iraq.

“The U.S. government wasn’t ready for the rest of the world to know about it, so they basically put him on ice,” Kanovitz said in a telephone interview. “If you’ve got unchecked power over the citizens, why not use it?”

The Obama administration has represented Rumsfeld through the Justice Department and argued that the former defense secretary cannot be sued personally for official conduct. The Justice Department also argued that a judge cannot review wartime decisions that are the constitutional responsibility of Congress and the president. And the department said the case could disclose sensitive information and distract from the war effort, and said the threat of liability would impede future military decisions.

But U.S. District Judge James Gwin rejected those arguments and said U.S. citizens are protected by the Constitution at home or abroad during wartime.

“The court finds no convincing reason that United States citizens in Iraq should or must lose previously declared substantive due process protections during prolonged detention in a conflict zone abroad,” Gwin wrote in a ruling issued Tuesday.

“The stakes in holding detainees at Camp Cropper may have been high, but one purpose of the constitutional limitations on interrogation techniques and conditions of confinement even domestically is to strike a balance between government objectives and individual rights even when the stakes are high,” the judge ruled.

In many other cases brought by foreign detainees, judges have dismissed torture claims made against U.S. officials for their personal involvement in decisions over prisoner treatment. But this is the second time a federal judge has allowed U.S. citizens to sue Rumsfeld personally.

U.S. District Judge Wayne R. Andersen in Illinois last year said two other Americans who worked in Iraq as contractors and were held at Camp Cropper, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, can pursue claims that they were tortured using Rumsfeld-approved methods after they alleged illegal activities by their company. Rumsfeld is appealing that ruling, which Gwin cited.

The Supreme Court sets a high bar for suing high-ranking officials, requiring that they be tied directly to a violation of constitutional rights and must have clearly understood their actions crossed that line.

The case before Gwin involves a man who went to Iraq in December 2004 to work with an American-owned defense contracting firm. He was assigned as an Arabic translator for Marines gathering intelligence in Anbar. He says he was the first American to open direct talks with Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, who became an important U.S. ally and later led a revolt of Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida before being killed by a bomb.

In November 2005, when he was to go on home leave, Navy Criminal Investigative Service agents questioned him about his work, refusing his requests for representation by his employer, the Marines or an attorney. The Justice Department says he was told he was suspected of helping provide classified information to the enemy and helping anti-coalition forces attempting to cross from Syria into Iraq.

He says he refused to answer questions because of concern about confidentiality, and the agents handcuffed and blindfolded him, kicked him in the back and threatened to shoot him if he tried to escape. He was then transferred to an unidentified location for three days before being flown to Camp Cropper.

For his first three months at Camp Cropper he says he was held incommunicado in solitary confinement with a hole in the ground for a toilet. He says he was then moved to cells holding terrorist suspects hostile to the United States who were told about his work for the military, leading to physical attacks by his cellmates that left him in constant fear for his life.

He claims guards tortured him by repeatedly choking him, exposing him to extreme cold and continuous artificial light, blindfolding and hooding him, waking him by banging on a door or slamming a window when he tried to sleep and blasting music into his cell at “intolerably loud volumes.”

He says he always denied any wrongdoing and truthfully answered questions but interrogators continued to threaten him. Both sides say a detainee status board in December 2005 determined he was a threat to the multinational forces in Iraq and authorized his continued detention, but he says he was not allowed to see most of the evidence against him. Documents the government filed with the court only say he is suspected of a crime, without providing details.

Click here for the full report from AP

Recession Cost Average American $7,300

July 12, 2011

Huffington Post

By Alexander Eichler

The recession that struck the U.S. in 2007 has cost consumers about $7,300 each in lost spending, according to a San Francisco Federal Reserve economist.

In a paper published Monday, Kevin Lansing, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, wrote that if personal consumption had continued on from December 2007 to the present day at the same rates that it occurred from 2000 to 2007, Americans would have each spent an extra $7,356 by now.

Taken over a period of 42 months, that’s about $175 in lost spending per month, Lansing writes.

However, it’s not necessarily true that personal consumption should have continued on at pre-2008 rates. That kind of spending was symptomatic of a bubble economy, Lansing notes in the paper, and “was bound to slow sooner or later.”

The climbing rates of consumption may not have been “economically desirable,” he writes, in part because Americans were saving so little and taking on so much debt. And much of that spending was made possible by “unsound lending practices,” which have since come under scrutiny.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Lansing said the pre-recession spending reflected an “artificial economy that was driven by debt.”

Click here for the full report from Huffington Post.

Are American Children To Be Used In Medical Experiments To Test Anthrax Vaccine?

May 25th, 2011

NaturalNews.com

By: Tara Green

The highly controversial and potentially lethal anthrax vaccine may be tested on US children if the federal government gets its way. Although adverse event reports related to the vaccine among adult test subjects have included hospitalization, disability and even death, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is exploring the possibility of testing the vaccine on children.

Nicole Lurie, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the DHHS, recently requested that the National Biodefense Science Board submit an evaluation of safety issues related to testing the anthrax vaccine on children. The DHHS frames the possible testing as an issue of biodefense preparedness. However, the possibility of pediatric testing of the vaccine both ignores the vaccine’s dangers, and raises the specter of class- and/or race-based selection of medical test subjects which has haunted US health agencies for over a century.

Even in the months in 2001 when letters containing anthrax were mailed to several congressional leaders, heightening national fears during the post-9/11 period, Bill First, a physician and then-Senate Majority Leader, urged caution in use of the anthrax vaccine. He told CNN: “There are very real and potentially serious side effects from the vaccine and anyone who elects to receive the vaccine needs to be made aware of that. I do not recommend widespread inoculation. There are too many side effects and if there is limited chance of exposure- the side effects would far outweigh any potential advantage.”

A 2007 report by the CDC, along with the Vaccine Healthcare Centers of the Department of Defense and the watchdog group Government Accountability estimated that “between 1 and 2 percent” of vaccinated military personnel, experienced “severe adverse events, which could result in disability or death.”

If a vaccine with this kind of reputation is to be tested on children, one has to wonder which children. It is fairly certain those young test subjects won’t be the offspring of high-ranking government officials or corporate vice presidents and CEOs.

The history of medical testing carries a taint of racism, classism and opportunism, as health officials select those with less education and fewer choices to be unwitting guinea pigs in medical experiments supposedly in the name of scientific advancement.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist or history professor to have heard of the notorious 40-year long Tuskegee experiments in which the US Public Health Service withheld syphilis treatment from infected black men to measure the effects of the disease.

In October of 2010, President Obama apologized to Guatemala for tests during the 1940s when the US Public Health Service used prostitutes deliberately infect 700 prisoners, soldiers and patients with emotional and mental problems with syphilis both through visits with prostitutes and pouring bacteria for the disease onto skin abrasions on the subjects’ bodies.

Vaccine testing has its own special place in the annals of this kind of integrity-free medical research. In the early 1960s, mentally disabled children at a residential state school in New York were deliberately infected with viral hepatitis so that they could be test subjects for the disease.

A 1978 CDC test for a hepatitis B vaccine which sought “promiscuous homosexual male” volunteers has some interesting connections to both HIV and the previously rare opportunistic diseases associated with the AIDS virus. As recently as 1990, the CDC and Kaiser Pharmaceuticals gave 1,500 black and Hispanic 6-month old infants an unlicensed measles vaccine without the approval and consent of their parents. (For more detail of these stories and other true-life medical experimentation horror stories, see http://www.naturalnews.com/022383.html).

Click here for the full report from Natural News

Official Suggested Letting U.S. Plane Be Shot Down To Provoke War

October 22nd, 2010

Huffington Post

By: Jason Linkins

In the publicity sheet that St. Martin’s Press has been sending out to spur interest in General Hugh Shelton’s new memoir, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, the last highlight is a doozy: “A high-ranking cabinet member suggests intentionally flying an American airplane on a low pass over Baghdad so as to guarantee it will be shot down, thus creating a natural excuse to reltaliate and go to war.”

Turns out the incident took place during the Clinton administration, and Shelton’s response to the suggestion…well, let’s just say it more than lives up to the title of the memoir.

Over at Salon’s War Room, Justin Elliott has the specifics.

Shelton sets the scene at a “small, weekly White House breakfast” that served as regular “informal” meetings that “encouraged brainstorming of potential options on a variety of issues.”

At one of my very first breakfasts, while Berger and Cohen were engaged in a sidebar discussion down at one end of the table and Tenet and Richardson were preoccupied in another, one of the Cabinet members present leaned over to me and said, “Hugh, I know I shouldn’t even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough — and slow enough — so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?”

The hair on the back of my neck bristled, my teeth clenched, and my fists tightened. I was so mad I was about to explode. I looked across the table, thinking about the pilot in the U-2 and responded, “Of course we can …” which prompted a big smile on the official’s face.

“You can?” was the excited reply.

“Why, of course we can,” I countered. “Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go.”

Go read the whole thing.

Readers aren’t told explicitly who had this particular brainstorm, but Shelton gives you some clues. The breakfasts, he says, were attended by NSA Sandy Berger, Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, CIA Director George Tenet, Vice President Chief of Staff Leon Firth, and U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson. If you eliminate Berger, Cohen, Tenet, and Richardson and look at the Cabinet members that remain, you’re sort of left where Elliott is: with Madeleine Albright.

Of course, as Jonathan Schwarz points out, this would hardly be the first or only time this sort of plan was discussed. Here’s a New York Times article from 2006 on the build up to the 2003 Bush-led invasion of Iraq:

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, [Bush] made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair’s top foreign policy adviser…

“The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours,” the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. “If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”

Click here for the full report from the Huffington Post

American Women Growing Richer

October 7th, 2010

The Telegraph

By: Alex Spillius

According to figures from the new United States census, in 2009 one in 18 women earned more than $100,000 (£63,000) per year, a rise of 14 per cent over two years. In the same period the number of men earning over that amount rose by just four per cent.

The census showed that there are now three women for every two men at undergraduate and postgraduate level, while a majority of law students are female and almost half of medical students.

“We’re finally bearing the fruit from women getting so much higher education,” said Robert Drago, head of research at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “It’s the result of women entering into professional managerial careers.”

Women’s advocacy groups however cautioned that a substantial wage differential still remains between men and women, while the “glass ceiling” that prevents women from reaching the highest echelons of companies of professions remains firmly in place.

The area with the highest average wage for women was Washington with £34,000. The capital’s educated labour force is dominated by lawyers, civil servants and academics, all fields with a strong female presence.

Click here for the full report from the Telegraph

10 Reason Why Obama Presidency Is Collapsing

August 13, 2010

Telegraph

By: Nile Gardener

The last few weeks have been a nightmare for President Obama, in a summer of discontent in the United States which has deeply unsettled the ruling liberal elites, so much so that even the Left has begun to turn against the White House. While the anti-establishment Tea Party movement has gained significant ground and is now a rising and powerful political force to be reckoned with, many of the president’s own supporters as well as independents are rapidly losing faith in Barack Obama, with open warfare breaking out between the White House and the left-wing of the Democratic Party. While conservatism in America grows stronger by the day, the forces of liberalism are growing increasingly weaker and divided.

Against this backdrop, the president’s approval ratings have been sliding dramatically all summer, with the latest Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll of US voters dropping to minus 22 points, the lowest point so far for Barack Obama since taking office. While just 24 per cent of American voters strongly approve of the president’s job performance, almost twice that number, 46 per cent, strongly disapprove. According to Rasmussen, 65 per cent of voters believe the United States is going down the wrong track, including 70 per cent of independents.

The RealClearPolitics average of polls now has President Obama at over 50 per cent disapproval, a remarkably high figure for a president just 18 months into his first term. Strikingly, the latest USA Today/Gallup survey has the President on just 41 per cent approval, with 53 per cent disapproving.

Related link: The Obama presidency increasingly resembles a modern-day Ancien Régime

There are an array of reasons behind the stunning decline and political fall of President Obama, chief among them fears over the current state of the US economy, with widespread concern over high levels of unemployment, the unstable housing market, and above all the towering budget deficit. Americans are increasingly rejecting President Obama’s big government solutions to America’s economic woes, which many fear will lead to the United States sharing the same fate as Greece.

Growing disillusionment with the Obama administration’s handling of the economy as well as health care and immigration has gone hand in hand with mounting unhappiness with the President’s aloof and imperial style of leadership, and a growing perception that he is out of touch with ordinary Americans, especially at a time of significant economic pain. Barack Obama’s striking absence of natural leadership ability (and blatant lack of experience) has played a big part in undermining his credibility with the US public, with his lacklustre handling of the Gulf oil spill coming under particularly intense fire.

On the national security and foreign policy front, President Obama has not fared any better. His leadership on the war in Afghanistan has been confused and at times lacking in conviction, and seemingly dictated by domestic political priorities rather than military and strategic goals. His overall foreign policy has been an appalling mess, with his flawed strategy of engagement of hostile regimes spectacularly backfiring. And as for the War on Terror, his administration has not even acknowledged it is fighting one.

Can it get any worse for President Obama? Undoubtedly yes. Here are 10 key reasons why the Obama presidency is in serious trouble, and why its prospects are unlikely to improve between now and the November mid-terms.

1. The Obama presidency is out of touch with the American people

In a previous post I noted how the Obama presidency increasingly resembles a modern-day Ancien Régime, extravagant, decaying and out of touch with ordinary Americans. The First Lady’s ill-conceived trip to Spain at a time of widespread economic hardship was symbolic of a White House that barely gives a second thought to public opinion on many issues, and frequently projects a distinctly elitist image. The “let them eat cake” approach didn’t play well over two centuries ago, and it won’t succeed today.

2. Most Americans don’t have confidence in the president’s leadership

This deficit of trust in Obama’s leadership is central to his decline. According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, “nearly six in ten voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country”, and two thirds “say they are disillusioned with or angry about the way the federal government is working.” The poll showed that a staggering 58 per cent of Americans say they do not have confidence in the president’s decision-making, with just 42 per cent saying they do.

3. Obama fails to inspire

In contrast to the soaring rhetoric of his 2004 Convention speech in Boston which succeeded in impressing millions of television viewers at the time, America is no longer inspired by Barack Obama’s flat, monotonous and often dull presidential speeches and statements delivered via teleprompter. From his extraordinarily uninspiring Afghanistan speech at West Point to his flat State of the Union address, President Obama has failed to touch the heart of America. Even Jimmy Carter was more moving.

4. The United States is drowning in debt

The Congressional Budget Office Long-Term Budget Outlook offers a frightening picture of the scale of America’s national debt. Under its alternative fiscal scenario, the CBO projects that US debt could rise to 87 percent of GDP by 2020, 109 percent by 2025, and 185 percent in 2035. While much of Europe, led by Britain and Germany, are aggressively cutting their deficits, the Obama administration is actively growing America’s debt, and has no plan in place to avert a looming Greek-style financial crisis.

5. Obama’s Big Government message is falling flat

The relentless emphasis on bailouts and stimulus spending has done little to spur economic growth or create jobs, but has greatly advanced the power of the federal government in America. This is not an approach that is proving popular with the American public, and even most European governments have long ditched this tax and spend approach to saving their own economies.

6. Obama’s support for socialised health care is a huge political mistake

In an extraordinary act of political Harakiri, President Obama leant his full support to the hugely controversial, unpopular and divisive health care reform bill, with a monstrous price tag of $940 billion, whose repeal is now supported by 55 per cent of likely US voters. As I wrote at the time of its passing, the legislation is “a great leap forward by the United States towards a European-style vision of universal health care, which will only lead to soaring costs, higher taxes, and a surge in red tape for small businesses. This reckless legislation dramatically expands the power of the state over the lives of individuals, and could not be further from the vision of America’s founding fathers.”

7. Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill has been weak-kneed and indecisive

While much of the spilled oil in the Gulf has now been thankfully cleared up, the political damage for the White House will be long-lasting. Instead of showing real leadership on the matter by acing decisively and drawing upon offers of international support, the Obama administration settled on a more convenient strategy of relentlessly bashing an Anglo-American company while largely sitting on its hands. Significantly, a poll of Louisiana voters gave George W. Bush higher marks for his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with 62 percent disapproving of Obama’s performance on the Gulf oil spill.

8. US foreign policy is an embarrassing mess under the Obama administration

It is hard to think of a single foreign policy success for the Obama administration, but there have been plenty of missteps which have weakened American global power as well as the standing of the United States. The surrender to Moscow on Third Site missile defence, the failure to aggressively stand up to Iran’s nuclear programme, the decision to side with ousted Marxists in Honduras, the slap in the face for Great Britain over the Falklands, have all contributed to the image of a US administration completely out of its depth in international affairs. The Obama administration’s high risk strategy of appeasing America’s enemies while kicking traditional US allies has only succeeded in weakening the United States while strengthening her adversaries.

9. President Obama is muddled and confused on national security

From the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the War on Terror, President Obama’s leadership has often been muddled and confused. On Afghanistan he rightly sent tens of thousands of additional troops to the battlefield. At the same time however he bizarrely announced a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces beginning in July 2011, handing the initiative to the Taliban. On Iraq he has announced an end to combat operations and the withdrawal of all but 50,000 troops despite a recent upsurge in terrorist violence and political instability, and without the Iraqi military and police ready to take over. In addition he has ditched the concept of a War on Terror, replacing it with an Overseas Contingency Operation, hardly the right message to send in the midst of a long-war against Al-Qaeda.

10. Obama doesn’t believe in American greatness

Barack Obama has made it clear that he doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism, and has made apologising for his country into an art form. In a speech to the United Nations last September he stated that “no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold.” It is difficult to see how a US president who holds these views and does not even accept America’s greatness in history can actually lead the world’s only superpower with force and conviction.

There is a distinctly Titanic-like feel to the Obama presidency and it’s not hard to see why. The most left-wing president in modern American history has tried to force a highly interventionist, government-driven agenda that runs counter to the principles of free enterprise, individual freedom, and limited government that have made the United States the greatest power in the world, and the freest nation on earth.

This, combined with weak leadership both at home and abroad against the backdrop of tremendous economic uncertainty in an increasingly dangerous world, has contributed to a spectacular political collapse for a president once thought to be invincible. America at its core remains a deeply conservative nation, which cherishes its traditions and founding principles. President Obama is increasingly out of step with the American people, by advancing policies that undermine the United States as a global power, while undercutting America’s deep-seated love for freedom.

Click Here For Full Report

US Food Crops Absorb Toxins From Treated Wastewater

August 13, 2010

Natural News

By: Ethan A. Huff

Several major reports have come out in recent years about the dangers of pharmaceutical drug residues being found in the nation’s water supplies. But a new study has shown that major American food crops like soybeans are also absorbing these chemicals, and others, from the treated wastewater that farmers are applying to them.

It is common practice for large-scale farm operations to dump billions of gallons of treated sewage and other recycled water on crops to help fertilize them. But this semi-treated water still contains chemical components from drugs, creams, lotions, shampoos and other consumer products, all of which end up in the soil.

A research team from the University of Toledo in Ohio decided to test whether or not major U.S. food crops were capable of absorbing these chemicals in real-life agricultural conditions, so they performed an experiment on soybeans, the second most-widely grown crop in the U.S.

After giving the plants water tainted with three pharmaceutical components and two antimicrobial compounds from personal care products, the team observed that one of the pharmaceutical drugs and both antimicrobial compounds concentrated heavily in the plants’ roots, eventually making their way into the stems and leaves. The other two chemicals absorbed somewhat, but not as much as the others.

“The first thing you have to consider with human exposure [to chemicals] through agriculture is whether it’s even possible,” explained Chad Kinney, an environmental chemist from Colorado State University in Pueblo. “That’s what was answered by this study.”

According to Chenxi Wu, the study lead, these chemicals could “accumulate through the food chain, and eventually end up in human consumers.”

Click Here For The Full Report

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