Taxpayers Making Federal Workers Rich

Do you remember the days when getting elected to Congress or choosing to work for the government was referred to as “public service”?

The idea was that you would be making a sacrifice for the greater good of the country. Well, those days are long gone.

Click here to see 12 infuriating facts

Today, getting elected to Congress or working for the federal government is a good way to get rich.

Median household income in the United States fell from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009, and yet the personal wealth of members of Congress and the salaries of federal workers (especially at the higher levels) continue to explode. A lot of corrupt politicians and federal fat cats are raking in stunning amounts of cash, and we are the ones paying the bill. There is certainly nothing wrong with making a lot of money, but does it seem right that so many of our “public servants” are getting filthy rich while so many of the rest of us are barely getting by?

Posted below are 12 facts that will blow your mind. Most Americans have no idea just how obscenely wealthy many members of Congress are, and most Americans are totally clueless about how cushy some of these U.S. government jobs are. If there is one place in America where the good times are still rolling (other than Wall Street), it would have to be Washington D.C.

Members of Congress and employees of the government are supposed to work for us. We are the ones who pay their salaries. But today, they are the ones “living the dream” while most of the rest of us scramble just to survive from month to month….

Click here for the full report from the Business Insider

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Monsanto to Fight Lawsuit By Organic Farmer Whose Land Was Ruined by GMOs

Australian organic farmer Steve Marsh recently had his organic certification status pulled by the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture, Australia (NASAA) because his organic wheat field was contaminated by a nearby genetically-modified (GM) canola field. And after Marsh threatened to sue the GM farmer for the incident — which has cost Marsh his entire business, by the way — Monsanto, the owner of the GM canola, came out and said it would legally back the GM farmer “in any way [it] could.”

A previous NaturalNews report on the issue explains that GM canola materials blew from a nearby GM field about a mile away and contaminated over 540 acres of Marsh’s organic wheat fields. As a result, Marsh’s fields can no longer be considered organic due to very high standards in the Australian organic industry that hold a “zero tolerance” policy concerning contamination with foreign genetic material.

But rather than work towards prosecuting both the GM farmer and Monsanto for the environmental damage they caused, West Australia Minister for Agriculture and Food, Terry Redman, is instead going after the organic industry, urging it to modify its contamination standards to accommodate Monsanto. Redman has declared that perfect purity is “unrealistic” and that a maximum contamination threshold needs to be established for GM contamination of organics.

But neither Marsh nor the organic industry is taking the toxic bait. Despite efforts by Redman to persuade Marsh to influence the NASAA to compromise its high standards, Marsh has indicated that he plans to sue the farmer for ruining his business, following the release a pending government investigation of the matter. And Monsanto, of course, has promised to help defend the GM farmer in the event of a lawsuit.

Click here for the full report from Natural News

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The Naked Truth About Scanners

On the day after Christmas, readers of The Washington Post were given a real treat: pictures of naked men.

The men in the pictures were fully clothed, but they were naked nonetheless, because the pictures came from airport full-body scanners.

The machines provided graphic pictures of the male anatomy. True, they were no more graphic than Michelangelo

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White House Lets McDonalds to Avoid Health Care Reform

A report in Wednesday’s New York Times that the Obama administration has been issuing waivers to allow many businesses to evade the provisions of the new health care reform law is arousing widespread debate.

“As Obama administration officials put into place the first major wave of changes under the health care legislation,” the Times explains, “they have tried to defuse stiffening resistance — from companies like McDonald

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Abbott Labs Pulls Obesity Drug Over Heart Risk


The obesity drug Meridia has been withdrawn from the U.S. market because of an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, federal health officials said Friday.

Pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories voluntarily agreed to pull the drug after a U.S. Food and Drug Administration review of data that showed a 16 percent increased risk for heart attack, stroke and death among people taking Meridia (sibutramine), compared with those taking a placebo.

Earlier Friday, Health Canada, the nation’s health department, said Abbott would voluntarily pull the drug from the market there.

“FDA requested this withdrawal after concluding that the continued availability of this product is not justified since patients taking the drug are at an increased risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke,” Dr. John Jenkins, director of the Office of New Drugs in FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said during an afternoon news conference.

Besides finding an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, the review trial, called the Sibutramine Cardiovascular Outcomes Trial (SCOUT), found only a small difference in weight loss among those taking the drug and those receiving a placebo, agency officials said.

“Physicians are advised to stop prescribing Meridia to their patients, pharmacists are advised to stop dispensing Meridia, and patients are advised to stop taking this drug and dispose of any remaining product,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins advised those taking Meridia, which is a stimulant, to discuss with their doctor other ways to lose weight.

Currently, about 100,000 people in the United States take Meridia, Dr. Gerald Dal Pan, director of FDA’s Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology, noted at the news briefing.

In a news release, Abbott said the company “believes sibutramine has a positive risk/benefit profile in the approved patient population, but will comply with the FDA’s request.”

The FDA approved Meridia in November 1997 for weight loss and maintenance of weight loss in obese people, and in overweight people with other risks for heart disease.

The agency’s approval was based on studies showing that about twice as many people taking Meridia lost at least 5 percent of their body weight compared with people taking a placebo who used diet and exercise alone to lose weight, Jenkins said.

Jenkins said that, when the drug was approved, the FDA did have safety concerns because Meridia was known to increase both blood pressure and heart rate. However, the FDA believed at the time that the benefit of losing weight outweighed the risk of increased blood pressure and heart rate, he said.

The European Medicines Agency required Abbott to undertake the post-approval SCOUT trial, and in January that agency banned all anti-obesity drugs containing sibutramine.

In a related moved Friday, the FDA also warned consumers about another weight-loss drug, Slimming Beauty Bitter Orange Slimming Capsules, which contains the same active ingredient as Meridia — sibutramine.

The capsules can cause the same cardiovascular problems as Meridia, the FDA said. Slimming Beauty is sold over the Internet by Beautiful Health Inc.

Click here to read the full report from Health Day.

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Monsanto and DuPont Compete Over Genetically Modified Crops

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has now approved the first crop genetically modified for increased consumer appeal, promising to spark a new battle between biotech rivals DuPont and Monsanto over control of the genetically modified (GM) soybean market.

The approved crop is a soybean engineered to be especially high in oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat. The high-oleic soy had been pending deregulation since 2006, and is now cleared for commercial use. The company still intends to carry out further commercial testing before introducing the crop to the global market in 2012.

Also pending approval are two new GM soy varieties engineered by Monsanto, one to produce higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids and one to produce oils with a longer shelf life. These latter oils are intended as a low-cost replacement for hydrogenated oils (trans fats), which are being widely phased out due to their proven contribution to heart disease and death.

The U.S. food industry currently purchases six billion pounds of soy oil each year, nearly all of it hydrogenated. Monsanto is hoping that the new GM variety will be appealing to farmers hoping to stem widespread profit loss due to the move away from trans fats.

With 90 percent of the U.S. soybean crop already coming from GM seeds, the approval of the new varieties is likely to touch off a major turf war between DuPont and Monsanto, with both companies trying to grab as large a share as possible of the lucrative market.

The new soy crops stand to become the first commercialized biotech crops engineered for a quality other than pest or herbicide resistance. They were all engineered by silencing the activity of genes in their fatty acid pathways, in contrast to the more widespread method of inserting new DNA from bacterial genes.

The approval of a GM crop engineered for nutritional purposes is expected to usher in a new wave of such products. Whether U.S. consumers are comfortable enough with biotechnology to willingly purchase such products remains to be seen.

Click here for the full report from Natural News

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The Fight Against GMO

The fight against genetic modification (GM) seems like a never-ending, uphill battle. But Lord Melchett, former director of Greenpeace and current policy director at the Soil Association, says that, despite what the biotechnology giants would have you believe, most nations of the world are rejecting GMs and thus preventing their takeover of the planet.

“[M]any people in Europe may be unaware of the extent of the resistance to GM in places like India and China, because they swallow the GM industry line that it is supported all across the world,” he was cited as saying in The Independent. “I have to say that where we are now with GM leaves me feeling very optimistic.”

A quick visit to the website of GM-giant Monsanto, for instance, indicates that what Melchett says is true. Fancy, deceptive marketing and design tactics would have you believe that the world is lovingly embracing the alleged wonders of GM crops, but this is hardly the case. In fact, the only reason GMs even have any foothold at all is because, in some countries, they have been deceitfully approved beneath the radar of the general public.

But as the general public has begun to learn more about GMs — and the fact that they are dishonestly hidden and unlabeled in the U.S. food supply — things are beginning to change. In recent years, several new GM crops have been defeated due to public opposition.

“America is where we’re told GM is a huge success…but it’s simply not true,” said Melchett at the recent Sustainable Planet forum in Lyon, France. “If anybody tells you this, ask them, where is GM wheat? Monsanto had it ready to go but it was stopped by American farmers. Ask them, where is the GM version of alfalfa, the fourth most commonly grown crop in the world? American farmers went to court to stop it being commercialized.”

Continued efforts are needed to stop GM crops from gaining any further ground, and with enough dedication, the outspoken public may even help reverse the tide.

Click here for the full report from Natural News

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ObamaCare Lies Starting To Surface

President Barack Obama told voters repeatedly during the health care debate that the overhaul legislation would bring down fast-rising health care costs and save them money. Now, he’s hemming and hawing on that.

So far, the law he signed earlier this year hasn’t had the desired effect. An analysis from Medicare’s Office of the Actuary this week said that the nation’s health care tab will go up

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NC Police Want Names Of Prescription Med Users

Sheriffs in North Carolina want access to state computer records identifying anyone with prescriptions for powerful painkillers and other controlled substances.

The state sheriff’s association pushed the idea Tuesday, saying the move would help them make drug arrests and curb a growing problem of prescription drug abuse. But patient advocates say opening up people’s medicine cabinets to law enforcement would deal a devastating blow to privacy rights.

Allowing sheriffs’ offices and other law enforcement officials to use the state’s computerized list would vastly widen the circle of people with access to information on prescriptions written for millions of people. As it stands now, doctors and pharmacists are the main users.

Nearly 30 percent of state residents received at least one prescription for a controlled substance, anything from Ambien to OxyContin, in the first six months of this year, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. Nearly 2.5 million people filled prescriptions in that time for more than 375 million doses. The database has about 53.5 million prescriptions in it.

Sheriffs made their pitch Tuesday to a legislative health care committee looking for ways to confront prescription drug abuse. Local sheriffs said that more people in their counties die of accidental overdoses than from homicides.

For years, sheriffs have been trying to convince legislators that the state’s prescription records should be open to them.

“We can better go after those who are abusing the system,” said Lee County Sheriff Tracy L. Carter.

Others say opening up patients’ medicine cabinets to law enforcement is a terrible idea.

“I am very concerned about the potential privacy issues for people with pain,” said Candy Pitcher of Cary, who volunteers for the nonprofit American Pain Foundation. “I don’t feel that I should have to sign away my privacy rights just because I take an opioid under doctor’s care.” Pitcher is receiving treatment for a broken back.

The ACLU opposed a bill in 2007 that would have opened the list to law enforcement officials, said ACLU lobbyist Sarah Preston. The organization would likely object to the new proposal.

“What really did concern us is the privacy aspect,” she said. Opening the record to more users could deter someone from getting necessary medicine because of the fear that others would find out, she said, “particularly in small towns where everybody knows everybody.”

The state started collecting the information in 2007 to help doctors identify patients who go from doctor to doctor looking for prescription drugs they may not need, and to keep pharmacists from supplying patients with too many pills. But only about 20 percent of the state’s doctors have registered to use the information, and only 10 percent of the pharmacies are registered.

Many chain pharmacies aren’t connected to the Internet, said Andy Ellen, a lobbyist for the N.C. Retail Merchants Association. Pharmacy computers work on closed systems so they won’t be vulnerable to viruses that could slow or crash their networks. Pharmacies are trying to figure out a way around that obstacle to the controlled-substance prescriptions list, he said.

Bettie Blanchard, a woman from Dare County whose adult son is recovering from addiction to prescription drugs, said doctors should be required to consult the list when prescribing controlled substances.

She also wants doctors to get more education on prescribing narcotics. Doctors should be required to tell patients that the medicine they are being prescribed can be addictive, she said.

William Bronson, who works in a drug control unit at DHHS, presented what could be a compromise to the sheriffs’ request – allowing local drug investigators to request information related to ongoing investigations, but not let them go in to the computer records themselves.

Eddie Caldwell, lobbyist for the N.C. Sheriff’s Association, said the level of access to the data is up for discussion.

“There’s a middle ground where the sheriffs and their personnel working on these drug abuse cases get the information they need in a way that protects the privacy of that information,” he said. “No one wants every officer in the state to be able to log on and look it up.”

Click here to read the full report from The News Observer

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FDA Censoring Nutritional Science

Concerned about breast cancer? There are three nutrients that virtually eliminate your risk of the disease, even if you carry “breast cancer genes.” Wondering how to cure arthritis? A combination of four different nutrients virtually eliminates arthritis symptoms. Afraid of diabetes? Five different nutrients, all available right now, can help prevent diabetes for mere pennies a day.

And that’s just the beginning…

Nutritional cures exist for nearly every major disease, but the FDA doesn’t want you to know about them. So it has censored truthful, scientifically-proven information about these substances in order to keep you ignorant about nutritional cures.

When one U.S. company offering cherry concentrates began linking to government-funded studies that concluded cherries reduce the symptoms of arthritis, they received a threatening letter from the FDA, demanding they remove the links from their website or face “criminal prosecution.”

Similarly, the FDA went on the attack to censor the truth about walnuts, claiming that “walnuts are unapproved drugs” when they are accompanied by truthful, scientific descriptions about their benefits for heart health.

Diamond Foods, a distributor of walnuts, posted a collection of peer-reviewed scientific evidence on its website that described the health benefits of walnuts. In return, here’s part of the utterly illogical set of demands Diamond Foods received from the FDA which claim that “walnuts are drugs”…

“Based on our review, we have concluded that your walnut products are in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act) and the applicable regulations in Title 21, Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR). …Based on claims made on your firm’s website, we have determined that your walnut products are promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs because these products are intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease. …Because of these intended uses, your walnut products are drugs within the meaning of section 201 (g)(1)(B) of the Act [21 U.S.C. 321(g)(B)]. Your walnut products are also new drugs under section 201(p) of the Act [21 U.S.C. 321(p)] because they are not generally recognized as safe and effective for the above referenced conditions. Therefore, under section 505(a) of the Act [21 U.S.C. 355(a)], they may not be legally marketed with the above claims in the United States without an approved new drug application.”

In other words, telling the truth about walnuts turns you into a criminal according to the FDA. And if you tell the scientifically-validated truth about how walnuts can help reduce high cholesterol, that act magically transforms your walnuts into unapproved drugs.

And much the same is true when you’re talking about green tea or pomegranates or superfoods. If you dare discuss the health benefits of any food or natural substance while you are selling such items, you will be branded a criminal by the FDA, threatened with criminal prosecution and potentially have your company raided by the FDA along with armed law enforcement agents with guns drawn.

Only junk foods are good for you

At the same time the FDA is attacking health foods, it openly allows ridiculous health claims on processed dead junk foods. Frito-Lay potato chips, for example, are allowed to carry claims that they are “heart healthy.”

So while genuinely health foods like walnuts and pomegranates cannot make health claims, processed dead foods like potato chips may openly carry FDA-approved health claims!

Are you following this yet? Real food is bad for you. But junk food is good for you. That’s what the FDA wants you to believe.

The FDA, you see, doesn’t want you to learn the truth about healthy foods. This agency wants you to remain as ignorant as possible about the scientifically-validated health benefits of natural foods, supplements and superfoods while allowing you to be inundated with false and misleading health claims on processed dead junk foods like potato chips.

And can you guess the point of all this? It’s fairly obvious, isn’t it? The point is to keep Americans in a never-ending state of chronic degenerative disease that will result in a windfall of profits for the drug companies the FDA actually serves.

This is why natural food producers aren’t allowed to even link to scientific articles about their foods. The FDA, you see, is in the business of censoring nutritional science.

Can’t tell the truth about green tea, either

On August 30, 2010, the FDA sent warning letters to manufacturers of green tea beverages, warning them about making health claims about green tea. One such beverage made by Canada Dry carried a claim that the drink is “enhanced with 200 mg of antioxidants from green tea and vitamin C.”

In its threatening warning letter, the FDA insisted that green tea and vitamin C “are not nutrients with recognized antioxidant activity.”

Huh? Vitamin C isn’t an antioxidant? That’s funny, because outside the halls of the FDA offices, vitamin C has antioxidant activity and properties. The laws of chemistry, apparently, are suspended within the FDA’s jurisdiction. All the universal laws of physics cease to exist when the FDA is in charge, and they are instead replaced with the FDA’s distorted opinions of what those laws should actually be. Antioxidants don’t exist. Vitamins are inert substances. Foods contain no medicine. Only pharmaceuticals have biological effects within the human body. These are the far-fetched laws of the universe according to the FDA.

In its never-ending march on nutritional science, the FDA also went after Lipton teas, whose website linked to four scientific studies concluding that green tea has a cholesterol-lowering effect. The FDA warned the Lipton company to remove the links, claiming that they were “misleading” and were effectively making claims that Lipton tea could treat a “disease.”

But what if green tea really can help prevent a disease and the FDA just doesn’t want you to know about it? That’s actually the case with many plant-based nutrients that have powerful protective effects against disease. But according to the FDA’s official position, there is no such thing as a food, nutrient or supplement that can prevent or treat any disease.

Vitamin C doesn’t prevent scurvy. Vitamin D doesn’t prevent rickets. Vitamin B3 doesn’t prevent pellagra, according to the FDA. Vitamins are biologically useless substances unless they’re patented by drug companies in which case they are magically transformed into “therapeutic chemicals” that may be sold to patients at monopoly prices.

The FDA actually believes that fresh, unprocessed foods have no health benefits whatsoever. That’s why no health claims are allowed on such things. But dead processed foods like breakfast cereals can prevent disease, according to the FDA. That’s why the agency has allowed such products to carry a multitude of health claims.

It’s all part of the FDA’s censorship of science about nutrients, foods and supplements. Rather than promoting real scientific knowledge, the FDA is censoring the science to keep the public as ignorant as possible.

In this way, the FDA is an enemy of nutritional literacy because it aims to keep people in the dark about the health benefits of foods, supplements and nutrients.

And because nutritional literacy is crucial to the long-term survival of America, the FDA, through its campaign of enforced nutritional illiteracy, is effectively an enemy of America. The agency has already accomplished incalculable harm to America’s population and her economy. And the FDA is just getting warmed up! Now it wants to “step up its enforcement” of so-called “false” food labeling. This is just a cover story to clamp down on truthful health claims the FDA wants to censor.

It is through scientific censorship policies like those practiced at the FDA that America may fall to ignorance, disease and medical bankruptcy. The FDA is actually accelerating America’s downfall by isolating people from the nutritional knowledge that could prevent disease, reduce health care costs and save billions of dollars in unnecessary medical costs.

For example, can you imagine the cost savings alone if we as a nation could prevent just one percent of all cancers? According to the National Institutes of Health, cancer costs the USA $228.1 billion in 2008. That’s nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars.

Now imagine the savings if we could find a miracle nutrient that could reduce all cancers by three-quarters? That would save America $171 billion per year (not to mention saving human lives at the same time).

And here’s the good news: Such a nutrient already exists! It’s cheap, safe and readily available. But the American Cancer Society won’t talk about it, the FDA won’t approve it and your doctor almost certainly won’t recommend it.

How to end the FDA’s reign of ignorance and censorship of nutritional science

First off, I highly recommend reading Jonathan Emord’s outstanding book on this subject entitled Global Censorship of Health Information.

This is a hugely important book on the subject from one of the industry’s intellectual giants: attorney Jonathan Emord.

Secondly, if you’re in the USA, support the Free Speech about Science Act, a new effort to end FDA censorship over truthful, scientifically-validated health claims for vitamins, foods and nutritional supplements.

Finally, recognize that we are beginning to defeat the FDA in court. In particular, the Alliance for Natural Health recently emerged victorious against the FDA in court over the agency’s effort to censor truthful information about how selenium can reduce your risk of cancer.

Now we need more companies to stand up to FDA tyranny and take this rogue agency to court in order to stop its campaign of censorship and oppression against the natural products industry.

Just to be clear about what is a valid health claim

Just to be clear, in no way am I advocating that natural products companies should be able to just think up whatever health claims they want and emblazon their product packages with such things. We need to insist that health claims be “scientifically validated.”

For example, if a cherry company could cite five studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals that conclude cherries can help ease the symptoms of arthritis, then it should be perfectly acceptable for that company to place corresponding claims on its packaging: “Cherries have been shown to reduce the symptoms of arthritis.” (With an appropriate citation on its website that points to the qualifying scientific studies.)

Almost everyone who believes in common sense would agree that this is a sensible approach to allowing health claims on foods and supplements. Yet the FDA’s position is that foods and supplements are not allowed to carry any health claims — even if such claims are scientifically validated and true!

The FDA absurdly insists that no food, no herb, no vitamin and no supplement can possibly have any biological effect on the human body… and if it does, then that magically transforms it into a “drug” requiring $400 million in testing and clinical trials before it can be approved by the FDA. And even then, it would only be available by prescription.

Do you see the catch-22 here? It’s sort of like the old “floating witch” test in the witch hunt days: If you float, you’re a witch and you get burned at the stake. If you sink, you die but you are declared innocent.

The FDA pulls the same thing with nutritional supplements: If it doesn’t work, then it’s inert and will be tolerated. But if it actually works, then it’s now a “drug” and will be outlawed as an “unapproved drug.”

I’m not making this up. This is precisely how the FDA operates at present.

It’s a logic trap that I believe has been specifically designed to discredit the entire nutritional supplements industry while promoting the “benefits” of pharmaceuticals — most of which we now know were falsified through pure scientific fraud, by the way.

Click here to read the full report from Natural News

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