Category Archives: Profiteering

The VA Is Paying for a Top Official’s Cross-Country… — ProPublica

Selnick is a prominent critic of the VA’s government-run health system. In between his time in government, he has worked for Concerned Veterans for America, a political group funded by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch that has advocated for expanding private care for veterans. In 2016, Selnick signed onto a report that called the VA “seriously broken” with “no efficient path to repair it” and proposed shifting all veterans to the private sector.

Source: The VA Is Paying for a Top Official’s Cross-Country… — ProPublica

What the pesticides in our urine tell us about organic food | Kendra Klein and Anna Lappé | Opinion | The Guardian

Of the 14 chemicals tested, every single member of every family had detectable levels. After switching to an organic diet, these levels dropped dramatically. Levels across all pesticides dropped by more than half on average. Detectable levels for the pesticide malathion, a probable human carcinogen according to the World Health Organization, decreased a dramatic 95% . Malathion was just one of the pesticides found in this study that are part of a group called organophosphates, which have long concerned public health experts because of their impact on children’s developing brains. Created as nerve agents in World War II, organophosphates have been linked to increased rates of autism, learning disabilities, and reduced IQ in children. The organophosphate chlorpyrifos, found in all of the family members, is so worrisome to public health that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) planned to ban it in 2017 – a proposal dropped by the Trump administration. In the wake of inaction from the administration, Hawaii passed the first state level chlorpyrifos ban in 2018; and Representative Nydia Velázquez introduced a federal bill to ban it.

Source: What the pesticides in our urine tell us about organic food | Kendra Klein and Anna Lappé | Opinion | The Guardian

The Predators of Instagram | Dame Magazine

In one case from February, a popular model and photographer named Jess Linnet posted an account of her negative experience with a photographer along with the experiences of a dozen or so others whom she had spoken to. Within less than an hour, Instagram suspended her account without offering any explanation, leaving the photographer’s account untouched. Jess wrote multiple impassioned emails that explained the difficulty of being a female artist on Instagram and eventually Instagram reinstated her profile. Missing, however, were the accusations against the photographer.

Source: The Predators of Instagram | Dame Magazine

Top Leader at Interior Dept. Pushes a Policy Favoring His Former Client – The New York Times

As a lobbyist and lawyer, David Bernhardt fought for years on behalf of a group of California farmers to weaken Endangered Species Act protections for a finger-size fish, the delta smelt, to gain access to irrigation water. As a top official since 2017 at the Interior Department, Mr. Bernhardt has been finishing the job: He is working to strip away the rules the farmers had hired him to oppose.

Plummeting insect numbers ‘threaten collapse of nature’ | Environment | The Guardian

“The main cause of the decline is agricultural intensification,” Sánchez-Bayo said. “That means the elimination of all trees and shrubs that normally surround the fields, so there are plain, bare fields that are treated with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.” He said the demise of insects appears to have started at the dawn of the 20th century, accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s and reached “alarming proportions” over the last two decades. Advertisement He thinks new classes of insecticides introduced in the last 20 years, including neonicotinoids and fipronil, have been particularly damaging as they are used routinely and persist in the environment: “They sterilise the soil, killing all the grubs.” This has effects even in nature reserves nearby; the 75% insect losses recorded in Germany were in protected areas.

Source: Plummeting insect numbers ‘threaten collapse of nature’ | Environment | The Guardian

Will Chinese company’s stake in Reddit normalise censorship? | Emily Bell | Media | The Guardian

The creation of concentration camps for a million Uighurs in Xinjiang has not been enough to persuade any of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs receiving funds from Chinese companies to refuse the cash. Neither is it apparently enough of a deterrent to stop the US companies investing in China to stop their plans to enter the market. Trade tensions between the US and China revolve entirely around tariffs and not around human rights. Most troubling of all, against a background of demonstrably tightening censorship, internment camps and an extension of totalitarianism, the narrative of western companies is that their presence in China, and the presence of Chinese money in western companies, is helping ease those restrictions. All the evidence says this is not true.

Source: Will Chinese company’s stake in Reddit normalise censorship? | Emily Bell | Media | The Guardian

Much Has Been Confirmed in Dossier at Heart of Donald Trump Scandal – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Cohen and three other Trump emissaries met with people in Prague, including a man named Oleg Solodukhin. The meeting allegedly had to do with paying off Romanian hackers who, under the direction of the Kremlin, had been working to undermine the Clinton campaign. Cohen and Solodukhin reportedly discussed how they could funnel the money to the hackers and how the cooperation between Trump and Putin’s people could be covered up. Steele wrote that Trump’s people and the Russians agreed at the meeting that the Romanian hackers should go into hiding and “other operatives should head for a bolt-hole in Plovdiv, Bulgaria where they should ‘lay low.'” What a story! — that is, if it’s true. Trump’s lawyer allegedly conspired with the Kremlin. If this can be proved, it would amount to treason, but so far there is no concrete proof. Late last year, the U.S. newspaper publishing group McClatchy reported that one of Cohen’s mobile phones had logged on to a cell phone tower near Prague at the time in question. The journalists referred to four anonymous sources. But Cohen has repeatedly stated that he has never been to Prague or anywhere else in the Czech Republic. Oleg Solodukhin, the allege

Source: Much Has Been Confirmed in Dossier at Heart of Donald Trump Scandal – SPIEGEL ONLINE

How Facebook’s Tiny China Sales Floor Helps Generate Big Ad Money – The New York Times – money before morals is Facebook’s mantra

The desire by Chinese companies and other entities to get in front of people internationally has unexpectedly turned China into one of Facebook’s largest sources of advertising revenue, even though the social network itself is not available in the country. Charles Shen, chief executive of Meet Social, said his company anticipated doing $1 billion to $2 billion in ad sales on Facebook and Instagram this year. Each day, he added, Meet Social’s software puts up about 20,000 Chinese ads on Facebook.

Food Politics by Marion Nestle » Mind-boggle of the week: USDA buys pork from Brazilian JBS with USA bailout funds

Mind-boggle of the week: USDA buys pork from JBS  The Washington Post reports that the USDA has committed about $5 million of bailout funds to buy 1.8 million pounds of pork products from the Brazilian meatpacker, JBS. The bailout funds were supposed to help U.S. commodity producers who lost sales because of the tariff disputes with China. JBS is the biggest meat seller in the U.S. It employs 73,000 people here. Maybe the USDA thought it was an American company? Globalization in action…

Source: Food Politics by Marion Nestle » Mind-boggle of the week: USDA buys pork from JBS