There Is Arsenic In Your Rice: Here Is How It Got There - Twilight Greenway

According to new research by the Consumers Union, which took over 200 samples of both organic and conventionally grown rice and rice products, nearly all the samples contained some level of arsenic, and a great deal of them contained enough to cause alarm.

Arsenic, especially the inorganic form often found in rice, is a known carcinogen linked to several types of cancer, and believed to interfere with fetal development.  Rice absorbs arsenic from soil or water much more effectively than most plants. That’s in part because it is one of the only major crops grown in water-flooded conditions, which allow arsenic to be more easily taken up by its roots and stored in the grains.

The study illustrates what a long shadow industrial farming practices can cast over the entire food system — and the way some chemicals can cycle through our food and water, for literally generations.  For decades, farmers used lead-arsenate insecticides to control pests. As the name implies, these were extra dangerous because of their lead content and they were banned in the 1980s, but much of the arsenic that was left behind still remains in the soil.

The Consumers Union released a chart designed to help consumers limit their exposure to rice, with exact serving recommendations for both adults and children. Rice cereal, which federal surveys indicate many small children eat multiple times a day, is of special concern.

The full article is available here

The 47 Percent Meme: Mitt Romney, The Fox News Candidate - Eric Boehlert

Obama, according to the fevered rhetoric of the far-right, wants to radically extend the reach of the government in an effort to extract voter loyalty. Therefore, Obama voters must be lazy victims who rely on the government for sustenance from birth to death. Mitt Romney's repetition of this same insulting allegation belies his kowtowing to Fox News and other right-wing talkers.

"He'd rather you be a slave and be economically dependent upon him," is how Fox favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL) put it.  (No unemployment recipient has ever voted Republican?)  The Atlantic mapped out where Romney's 47% of no-income-tax-paying voters live, and it turns out "those people are disproportionately in red states -- that is, states that tend to vote Republican."

In Romney's case, the Republican's long-standing caricature of the lazy welfare recipient gets dramatically expanded to include tens of millions of Americans who vote Democratic and who apparently worship big government and disdain hard work.  Writing off nearly half the electorate as selfish dependents who refuse to take responsibilities for their own lives isn't usually how White House candidates frame their campaigns.  This is the kind of fringe, conspiratorial rhetoric that campaigns usually leave to the periphery. And for good reason (see Sarah Palin, 2008).

But in today's Republican Party, Mitt Romney must bow at the feet of Fox News.  Apparently, that means echoing the dark, incoherent attacks that the talk channel conjures up.

The full article is available here

Bob Dylan: Tempest (A-): A.V. Club

Now 71, Dylan sounds positively skeletal on Tempest, his voice stretched almost past the point of sounding like a voice at all. It suits him. And it suits the material here: sparer, spookier songs than those found on recent albums, tracks filled with fatalistic lyrics that find hope only in companionship, and even then, sometimes only the illusion of hope.

The notion of coming full circle serves as a recurring theme here, via both the lyrics and rootsiness of the music. It isn’t a new theme. Dylan has played the part of a man who’s traveled the world and come back with a message and a warning since “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

But now weary wisdom has taken the place of apocalyptic urgency. He sounds like he’s come to understand that even the direst warnings usually go unheeded, leaving those who survive to sing about it. “It’s soon after midnight and my day has just begun,” Dylan sings on “Soon After Midnight,” sounding surprised to still be around, much less awake. If he has any final statements, he’s saving them. There’s too much work to be done.

Fox Omits The Facts To Politicize 9-11 Moment Of Silence and Smear Obama - Kevin Zeiber

Fox ignored history and President Obama's own words to attack the president for not including the word God in a proclamation commemorating the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. 

Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson claimed that Obama has "called for a moment of silence, but has not called for the word God. So some people are asking, why is God being left out again?" Later, her colleague Steve Doocy said: "On this most somber of days, get this. Does the President of the United States call on people to pray for those lives lost? No."

Fox was referring to a presidential proclamation declaring September 11, 2012, to be Patriots Day.  The reality is that President Obama followed the example of President George W. Bush who did not include the word God in his 2006, 2007, and 2008 Patriot Day proclamations. 

Furthermore, Obama called on "God's grace" and asked people to pray for the lives lost in a separate official proclamation declaring the days between September 7 and September 9 as national days of prayer and remembrance in commemoration of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The full article is available here

We Have a Long Way to Go - Elaina Ramsey

Jonathan Kozol has dedicated his life to working with low-income children in inner cities. As one of the leading advocates for public education reform and the author of three prize-winning books about his time with children in the South Bronx, Kozol is a steadfast champion of children subjected to poverty. Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America serves as his culminating work about his captivating journey, with them, of friendship, triumph, and loss.

Regarding standardized exams, what impact did the testing policies of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have on these children?
The schools they went to began “obsessive testing,” or teaching to the test.  Teachers were forced to make children read out of these abysmally boring phonics readers, reading systems produced by corporations which were allegedly aligned with state exams.  These kids were the first product of what I would call the test-and-terror regimen which has since overtaken our public education system in this country.

The New York Times recently reported that wealthy neighborhoods in Manhattan are raising about $1 million a year through their PTAs to supplement public education funds. How do you feel about this practice?
What we’re ending up with in wealthy neighborhoods are hybrid public/private schools. So long as this goes on, there will never be an honest meritocracy in the United States. What we have right now is what I would call a purchasable hereditary meritocracy. That isn’t the way to educate citizens in a democracy. Charity is a blessed thing; I’d never turn it down. But charity is not, and will never be, a substitute for systematic justice.

What lessons can we learn from the children in your book?
To me, the lesson is that the public school in neighborhoods of poverty ought to have the same terrific resources, well-respected and well-rewarded, emotionally well-protected teachers that can see the magic in the child’s eyes and have the time to educate. A child shouldn’t have to dazzle the world with her amusing personality to get a wonderful education in an alleged democracy.

That’s why I keep on struggling to defend good teachers against the tendency to treat them with abuse and disrespect. This is why I will continue to do everything in my power to get rid of the obsessive testing, this notion that the only things that matter are the things you can measure. And that’s also why I will continue struggling against the invasion of corporate interests into the public sector.

The full article is available here

Corporate Power on Full Display at Party Conventions - Laura Bonham

The most disturbing similarity between the two is direct corporate sponsorship, and the more obscure soft corporate funding through their respective host committees. While the GOP Convention website proudly boasts their corporate sponsors on their homepage, the Democrats have also accepted corporate funding while trying to maintain the sheen of grassroots funding.

We cannot ignore the connections that wealthy patrons and their corporations have on our political process and who gets elected in this country. By virtue of their wealth, titans of industry have always had more voice in our elections than the average individual. Their influence has led to the election of politicians who support their corporate worldview.

For over a decade, proponents of small “d” democracy have been working to limit the power of corporations. Following the Citizens United decision, they came together to form the Move to Amend Coalition. Recognizing that corporations can and have benefited society in many ways, have an important role in a vibrant economy, and are entitled to privileges to protect themselves, Move to Amend is calling for a Constitutional amendment which clearly states that corporations are not people, are not entitled to unalienable human rights, that money is not speech and can be regulated in campaigns.

The full article is available here

The Politics of Poverty - Jimmy Dorrell

In my mind, the poor are the ones being hijacked in all of this.

If educated congressmen, presidential candidates, governors, and even local representatives can be as nasty and polarized as they have publicly shown, there is little reason to honestly discuss an issue, since the potential for alienation and misrepresentation is at an all-time high.

No one seems to be listening, having crystallized their presuppositions with a crafty skill of spinning any topic into their agenda. Ironically, our children are watching adult leaders model behavior we wouldn’t let them get away with.

In my mind, the poor are the ones being hijacked in all of this. Wealthy politicians from both major parties certainly are not arguing or creating policy from the viewpoint of Jesus. Thinly veiled religious statements have become part of the shallowness of American politics. It seems “Under God” doesn’t mean, “I submit to the teachings of God to love my enemies, serve others, and model the sacrificial lifestyle of God in the Flesh.” We have wrapped the Bible in a flag and replaced faith with “civil religion” which ultimately becomes anti-Christian.

Will Christian Americans ever stand up for the poor and marginalized? I doubt it. It is not from cynicism that I make that statement. It’s just that I believe that most politics and religion today are driven by wealth and selfishness.

And amidst all these social dilemmas in our nation and State, there is little room for substantive discussion and compromise, only blame, anger, and creating anecdotal myths that seek to validate our stances, with very little accomplished in the end.

The full article is available here