Bernie's angsts or the foolishness of a snowflake. Tired of being nudged by self important nannies?

“I Don’t Know Who ‘I’ Am”: Bernie Sanders’ Brutally Honest Mayoral Memos

In the mid-1980s, the Democratic presidential candidate was a mess—and so was his house.

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Sometime in the mid-1980s, about halfway through his eight-year tenure as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Bernie Sanders flipped to a fresh page in a yellow legal pad and poured out his crippling sense of doubt. 

“What can be done?” he scrawled.

“What is hard to see through is the total”—he scratched out “total” and tried again—“almost total degree of powerlessness which presently exists. We can make almost nothing happen.”

“It seemed to me this morning that planning and decision-making were two of the biggest weaknesses that I have.”

Sanders laid out a series of frustrations. He was fighting with the state over where the city dumped trash; there was a labor dispute at the fire department; the police department was in turmoil. The revolution in city government he had promised as a candidate in 1981 had become mired in the mundane.

continue

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/05/bernie-sanders-brutally-honest-mayoral-memos/

In the name of egalitarianism everyone must fit into their specific boxes.

Here we have if not fake news certainly myopic news. Conflating tobacco with all smoking gives the result the editors want. With the legalization of marijuana it counters the notion that smoking is dealing. 

Is the decline of cigarette smoking related to the increase in other drug use?

Smoking is at a record low in the U.S., but the benefits aren't shared equally

Liberals spend all their time working on ways to limit your freedoms: California Wants to Ban Kids’ Meals Offering Children Juice, Chocolate Milk

California Wants to Ban Kids’ Meals Offering Children Juice, Chocolate Milk

Justin Sullivan / Getty

25 Jun 2018Newport Beach, CA91

California’s Democrat-controlled legislature could pass a bill that would ban restaurants from offering kids’ meals that include fruit juice or chocolate milk.

The “Children’s Meals” (SB-1192) bill passed the California State Senate in May by a vote of 32 to 7, passed out of the Assembly Health Committee with a bipartisan vote of 8 to 0, and is now headed for a floor vote. If Gov. Jerry Brown signs the legislation into law, California will be pioneering another major regulatory expansion.

The bill amends the “California Retail Food Code” to empower “Environmental Health Officers” to require that restaurants that sell children’s meals at a set price must restrict the “default beverage” to: a) water, sparkling water, or flavored water, with no added natural or artificial sweeteners; b) unflavored milk; or c) a nondairy milk alternative that contains no more than 130 calories per container or serving.

Restaurants would not be prohibited from selling, and customers would be not be prohibited from buying, an alternative drink to the regulated “default beverages.” But restaurants would be banned from advertising an alternative with any kids’ meal.

Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) declared at a committee hearing on June 19 that the State of California has a duty to combat obesity and diabetes by limiting how much soda Californians drink. McCarty raised a jar containing what he claimed was 9.5 teaspoons of sugar to illustrate the added sweetener in a 12 ounce can of soda, according to the Calmatters website.

Democrats led by Bill Monning (D-Carmel) failed four times between 2010 and 2014 to slap a statewide “soda tax” on all sweetened fruit juices, teas, sports drinks, and soda — ostensibly to generate $2 billion in “revenue.”

Despite years of lobbying pushback against the “soda tax,” the American Beverage Association and major grocery chains have not been actively opposing the “Children’s Meals” bill. The only organized criticism has come from libertarians, who complain the bill is another effort to empower government to interfere in what should be parental decisions.

The California Restaurant Association has not taken a position on the bill, but has endorsed the American Beverage Association guidelines that advocate for elementary schools to offer only water, milk ,and 100 percent juice for school lunches and snacks.

McDonald’s discontinued advertising sodas with Happy Meals in 2013, and removed chocolate milk as a default beverage option in February of this year. The only Happy Meal default beverages currently available are plain low-fat milk, or an apple juice-based drink that only has half the sugar content of 100-percent pure apple juice.

Bloomberg-Backed Soda Tax Group Cited for Lobbying Violations

Dark money group made 'material misstatements' on disclosure

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg / Getty ImagesBY: Elizabeth Harrington

July 30, 2018 5:00 am

A group backed by liberal billionaire Michael Bloomberg to promote Philadelphia's soda tax has been cited for lobbying violations.

Philadelphians for a Fair Future, a nonprofit organization that received roughly $1.5 million from the former New York City mayor who tried to ban Big Gulps, was cited for making "material misstatements" and failing to disclose its lobbyists.

The Philadelphia Board of Ethics announcedlast week the group reached a settlement to pay $8,000 for the violations.

"This agreement resolves violations of the City's Lobbying Law by Philadelphians for a Fair Future for making material misstatements and omissions in a registration and expense report submitted to the Board," the city government said. "The agreement also resolves violations by several lobbyists and lobbying firms for failing to register with the Board."

Philadelphians for a Fair Future was credited as the "dark money" force behind the soda tax by Philadelphia Magazine after the tax passed in 2016.

The group is an ally of Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney, who pushed the 1.5-cent per-ounce tax on sugary drinks that has made soda more expensive than beer. A Tax Foundation study released last year found the tax had fallen short of revenue projections, cost jobs, and forced some Philadelphians to drive outside the city to buy groceries.

Philadelphians for a Fair Future spent $2.2 million on lobbying for the soda tax before its passage. Several consulting groups and individuals who were paid by the group to lobby for the tax were not disclosed, in violation of the city's lobbying law. Specifically, the group paid Peak Strategic Solutions, Bellevue Strategies, Bellevue Communications Group, and Andrew Dalzell.

Last week, Kenney said it was the "army of unpaid lobbyists" that made the soda tax a reality, after the tax was upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The group also did not disclose its work with Rodney Muhammad, who is the president of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP and was a big backer of the soda tax. Muhammad was also not registered as a lobbyist.

Kenney raised eyebrows when he hired Muhammad as a consultant, paying him $25,000 following his support of the soda tax, but under the name "Rodney Carpenter."

Philadelphians for a Fair Future said it is "committed to transparency" in response to the ethics violations.

"We have been in discussions with the Board of Ethics for nearly a year concerning the issues addressed in the settlement," the group said in a statement. "From its inception in 2016, PFF has been committed to transparency in its operations, which is why we consistently disclosed the identity of all our donors as well as the amounts donated to this effort."

"At no time was PFF or its consultants engaged in any effort to hide or obscure its objectives or its strategies for achieving them," the group added. "In our discussions with the city's Ethics Board, we were informed that PFF and its consultants failed to register as lobbyists for our work in 2016. This omission was inadvertent, and we have corrected it."

Though the tax survived a court challenge in the state, it remains controversial. Bloomberg's efforts to push soda taxes have failed elsewhere, including $1.5 million for a measure in Santa Fe, N.M., that was soundly rejected by voters, and $5 million to advocate for a soda tax in Chicago, which lasted just four months.

Cook County repealed the tax, which had added a $1.28 tax for a gallon of zero-calorie iced tea.

But spreading HIV is not

California City Threatens Waiters With Jail For Serving Straws 

UN health agency aims to wipe out trans fats worldwide...freedoms lost!

UN health agency aims to wipe out trans fats worldwide

MIKE STOBBE

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Associated Press•May 14, 2018NEW YORK (AP) — The World Health Organization has released a plan to help countries wipe out trans fats from the global food supply in the next five years.

The United Nations agency has in the past pushed to exterminate infectious diseases, but now it's aiming to erase a hazard linked to chronic illness.

In a statement Monday, the U.N. health agency said eliminating trans fats is critical to preventing deaths worldwide. WHO estimates that eating trans fats — commonly found in baked and processed foods — leads to the deaths of more than 500,000 people from heart disease every year.

"It's a crisis level, and it's major front in our fight now," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference in Geneva on Monday.

Officials think it can be done in five years because the work is well underway in many countries. Denmark did it 15 years ago, and since then the United States and more than 40 other higher-income countries have been working on getting the heart-clogging additives out of their food supplies.

The WHO is now pushing middle- and lower-income countries to pick up the fight, said Dr. Francesco Branca, director of the WHO's Department of Nutrition for Health and Development.

Artificial trans fats are unhealthy substances that are created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil to make it solid, like in the creation of margarine or shortening. Health experts say they can be replaced with canola oil or other products. There are also naturally occurring trans fats in some meats and dairy products.

The WHO recommends that no more than 1 percent of a person's calories come from trans fats.

"Trans fats are a harmful compound that can be removed easily without major cost and without any impact on the quality of the foods," Branca said.

Countries will likely have to use regulation or legislation to get food makers to make the switch, experts said.

At the WHO news conference Monday, a representative from a leading food industry trade group said companies are working to reduce trans fats in their products.

"We call on food producers in our sector to take prompt action and we stand ready to support effective measures to work toward the elimination of industrially produced trans fats and ensure a level playing field in this area," said Rocco Rinaldi, secretary-general of the International Food and Beverage Alliance.

Dr. Tom Frieden, a former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who worked with WHO officials on the call to action, called its move unprecedented.

"The world is now setting its sights on today's leading killers — particularly heart disease, which kills more people than any other cause in almost every country," said Frieden, president of Resolve to Save Lives, a New-York-based project of an organization called Vital Strategies.

In the U.S., the first trans fatty food to hit the market was Crisco shortening, which went on sale in 1911. Trans fatty foods became increasingly popular beginning in the 1950s, partly because experts at the time thought they were healthier than cooking with butter or lard.

Food makers liked artificial trans fats because they prolonged product shelf life. They used them in doughnuts, cookies and deep-fried foods.

But studies gradually revealed that trans fats wreck cholesterol levels in the blood and drive up the risk of heart disease. Health advocates say trans fats are the most harmful fat in the food supply.

In the U.S., New York City in 2006 banned restaurants from serving food with trans fats. The same year the FDA required manufacturers to list trans fat content information on food labels.

Many manufacturers cut back, and studies showed trans fat levels in the blood of middle-aged U.S. adults fell by nearly 60 percent by the end of the decade.

In 2015, the FDA took steps to finish the job of eliminating trans fats, calling for manufacturers to stop selling trans fatty foods by June 18, 2018 — a deadline that arrives next month. FDA officials have not said how much progress has been made or how they will enforce their rule against food makers that don't comply.

"The removal of trans fats from the food supply as an additive counts as one of the major public health victories of the last decade," said Laura MacCleery, policy director for the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The snowflakes world of entitlements and aversion to doing the hard things.

Woman bashes Mike Rowe’s ‘work ethic scholarship.’ Rowe’s response couldn’t be more perfect.

Apr 8, 2018 7:13 pm

Woman bashes Mike Rowe's scholarship, which requires a work ethic pledge. He hits back with perfect response. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GettyImages) 

Chris EnloeWEEKEND EDITOR

Mike Rowe is awarding more than a half million dollars in scholarship money this year to students earning degrees in skilled trades. But there’s just one caveat: lazy, self-entitled students need not apply.

Rowe asks all applicants to sign his “S.W.E.A.T” pledge, which stands for “Skill & Work Ethic Aren’t Taboo.”

But one mother whose son was applying for Rowe’s scholarship took issue with the pledge and wrote on the TV hosts’ Facebook page bashing it. Rowe’s response couldn’t have been more perfect.

What did the woman say?

Karyn Segal, whose son aspires to be a welder, told Rowe she was appalled when her son showed her the “sweat pledge” requirement.

“Where did you come up with this nonsense? There are so many things wrong with this document I don’t even know where to begin!! Suffice it to say, we will not be applying!!!” she wrote.

How did Rowe respond?

With eloquence and grace, as he always does.

He began his lengthy response by explaining Segal isn’t the first parent to take issue with the pledge.

“Over the years, it’s been my sad duty to inform lots of angry parents that this particular pile of free money might not be for them, or for their children,” Rowe wrote.

Rowe wished her son success in his career, then dropped a reality check, writing:

But to be clear, I have absolutely no interest in paying for his training if doesn’t share my opinions on the importance of hard ethic, a positive attitude, delayed gratification, and personal responsibility. Sorry — I made a promise to the people who contribute to this fund, and I can’t bend the rules. Fortunately, lots of scholarship funds will hand out money with no strings attached, and if you poke around, I’m sure you’ll find one that’s more in line with your worldview. 

Rowe goes on to explain in the next five paragraphs the purpose behind the pledge and why he believes those 10 qualities are important for young Americans to embody. At the end, Rowe noted that he posted the same letter last year, but is reposting it because he’s getting similar complaints this year.

The business of global warming is studies like this Microwaves are as damaging to the environment as cars

Microwaves are as damaging to the environment as cars

By The Sun

January 17, 2018 | 9:56pm

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Getty Images/iStockphoto

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY:

Microwaves are as damaging to the environment as cars and users must be taught how to cook more efficiently, scientists say.

The ovens are responsible for 7.7 million tons of the ­carbon dioxide pumped out from the EU each year — the equivalent of 6.8 million cars.

Researchers say they are fueling global warming with consumers overcooking food to blame.

Microwaves account for the largest percentage of sales of all types of oven in the EU, with numbers set to reach 135 million by 2020.

But scientists at the University of Manchester — the first to assess the environmental impact — say efforts to cut energy consumption should focus on manufacturers offering better education on microwave use.

Study leader Dr. Alejandro Gallego-Schmid said: “You can see the fumes being pumped out of the exhaust of your vehicle but the pollution generated by your microwave is more distant.”

His team suggests consumers should be taught how to heat food on the correct power for the ­correct length of time.

Simon Bullock, from Friends of the Earth, added: “This report highlights the urgent need for microwaves and other household appliances to be used as efficiently as possible.”

Scientists call for lowering drunk driving threshold...how many deaths occur between .05 and .08?

Scientists call for lowering drunk driving threshold

By Associated Press

January 18, 2018 | 1:28am | Updated 

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Shutterstock

WASHINGTON — Most women would need to draw the line at two drinks, and men at two or three if states follow a blueprint by a prestigious scientific panel for eliminating the “entirely preventable” 10,000 alcohol-impaired driving deaths in the United States each year.

The U.S. government-commissioned report by a panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine made multiple recommendations, including significantly lowering drunken driving thresholds. It calls for lowering the blood-alcohol concentration threshold from 0.08 to 0.05. All states have 0.08 thresholds. A Utah law passed last year that lowers the state’s threshold to 0.05 doesn’t go into effect until Dec. 30.

The amount of alcohol required to reach 0.05 would depend on several factors, including the person’s size and whether the person has recently eaten. The report cites studies indicating most women over 120 pounds would reach 0.05 after two drinks. Men weighing up to about 160 pounds would likely reach the lower threshold at two, and those over 180 pounds at three.

The panel, in its 489-page report, also recommended that states significantly increase alcohol taxes and make alcohol less conveniently available, including reducing the hours and days alcohol is sold in stores, bars and restaurants. Research suggests a doubling of alcohol taxes could lead to an 11 percent reduction in traffic crash deaths, the report said.

It also calls for cracking down on sales to people under 21 or who are already intoxicated to discourage binge drinking, and putting limits on alcohol marketing while funding anti-alcohol campaigns similar to those against smoking.

All the proposals are likely to draw fierce opposition from the alcohol and restaurant industries. The American Beverage Institute took out full-page newspaper ads opposing Utah’s new law that featured a fake mugshot under a large headline reading, “Utah: Come for vacation, leave on probation.”

The recommendation in the academies’ report for lowering the blood-alcohol threshold would “do nothing to deter” repeat offenders and drivers with high blood-alcohol levels, who represent the “vast majority” of alcohol-impaired driving deaths, the Distilled Spirits Council said in a statement. The council said it also doesn’t support the report’s recommendations for “tax increases and advertising bans, which will have little or no impact on traffic safety.”

The report points out that “alcohol-impaired driving remains the deadliest and costliest danger on U.S. roads,” accounting for 28 percent of traffic deaths. Each day, 29 people in the U.S. die in alcohol-related crashes and many more are injured. Forty percent of those killed are people other than the drunken driver.

Rural areas are disproportionately affected. In 2015, 48 percent of drunken driving fatalities occurred in rural areas.

The report says many strategies have been effective to prevent drunken driving, but “a coordinated multilevel approach across multiple sectors will be required to accelerate change.”

“The problem isn’t intractable,” the report said.

From the early 1980s to the early 2000s, there was significant progress as the result of an increase in the drinking age to 21, decreases in the blood-alcohol threshold, and other measures, the report said. But since then, progress has stagnated and recently has begun to reverse.

Action to address drunken driving can’t wait for the advent of self-driving cars immune to the lures of a cold beer or a fine wine — it will take too long for autonomous vehicles to replace all the human-driven machines on the road, said the panel’s chairman, Steven Teutsch, a senior fellow for health policy and economics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

“In the meantime, we have 10,000 people a year dying and we ought to do something about it,” he said.

The report cites studies that show the United States lags behind other high-income countries in preventing drunken driving fatalities. More than 100 countries have adopted the lower 0.05 threshold. In Europe, the share of traffic deaths attributable to drunken driving was reduced by more than half within 10 years after the standard was dropped, the National Transportation Safety Board said in 2013. The safety board has also recommended the 0.05 threshold.

Alcoholic beverages have changed significantly over the past 25 years. “They are more affordable, of far greater variety, and more widely advertised and promoted than in earlier periods,” the report said. The lack of consistency in serving sizes and the combination of alcohol with caffeine and energy drinks make it harder for drinkers to estimate their level of impairment.

The report was commissioned by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which asked the academies to determine which strategies for reducing drunken driving have been proven effective.

How offensive can the we know better then you anti smoking fascists get... Here's a contender.

Family Offended After Stranger Addresses Mourners At Quincy Funeral

March 28, 2017 6:19 PM By David Robichaud

Filed Under: David Robichaud, Quincy

video here

QUINCY (CBS) – A Quincy family was stunned when a stranger suddenly got up at their mother’s funeral and started making comments which they feel were racially insensitive to the Asian community.

On March 18th, Adrian Wong delivered the eulogy to his mother who passed away from lung cancer.

“She was not a smoker. Not exposed to secondhand smoke. Never worked with chemicals. She was simply unlucky,” he told a room full of mourners.

Adrian was supposed to be the only speaker, but when he finished, a man named David Small, who the family didn’t know, got up, uninvited, and started addressing mourners.

David Small speaks at funeral for Carol Tan Wong (Image from YouTube)

Small speculated that it was “smoke in Asian churches” that led to Carol Tan Wong’s death.

“I’m not affected by this but I see that the smoke in the church in the Asian churches is so prevalent that I gag when I go inside,” Small said, adding when a funeral director asked him to step aside, “I hope what I’ve told you about the smoke in the church is not taken in offense. I mean it’s your culture.”

The Wong family was offended and posted a video of Small’s comments on YouTube.

Adrian Wong demanded an apology from Small because he believed the comments to be a broad misperception about the Asian community.

“I find it very offensive and I think the community should as well. We thought it was wildly inappropriate to use a broad comment about the entire community,” Wong told WBZ-TV’s David Robichaud. “I think he owes an apology not just to me, but to the entire community.”

Small, a private investigator in Quincy, told WBZ-TV he was invited to the funeral by his girlfriend who he says is Asian.

He described himself as “outspoken” and admitted that the funeral home wasn’t the appropriate place to make his comments. Small said he was trying to make the point that in his opinion there’s a “high rate of smoking in the Asian community, and Asians burn incense in their churches, which is a health risk.”

Small says he sends a heartfelt apology to the Wong family.

Where the Left always winds up...In a totalitarian gulag. The campus has descended into a thought control reeducation camp.

Hundreds of campuses encourage students to turn in fellow students for offensive speech

By ADAM STEINBAUGH • 2/21/17 7:00 PM

Universities are the cradle of free speech, where ideologies and ideas clash, where academics and activists can agree, disagree, or be disagreeable. This is particularly true in the United States, where the First Amendment zealously guards against government surveillance and intrusion into free speech.

Yet at hundreds of campuses across the country, administrators encourage students to report one another, or their professors, for speech protected by the First Amendment, or even mere political disagreements. The so-called "Bias Response Teams" reviewing these (often anonymous) reports typically include police officers, student conduct administrators and public relations staff who scrutinize the speech of activists and academics.

This sounds like the stuff of Orwell, although even he might have found the name "Bias Response Team" to be over-the-top.

Over the past year, I surveyed more than 230 such reporting systems for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and asked dozens of schools for records about their Bias Response Teams. What I found is detailed in a new report describing how universities broadly define "bias" to include virtually any speech, protected or not, that subjectively offends anyone. On many campuses, administrators are called upon to referee whether speech is polite.

The threat to expressive rights isn't confined to speech from the Left or the Right. Bias reporting systems are being used to report all kinds of speech.

At Appalachian State University, students reported on one another for chalked messages that were pro-Trump as well as chalked messages calling Trump a "RACIST." The former were reported by students as "hate speech," the latter "politically biased slander" that was "unlawful."

While students at Ohio State University reported each other for comparing Hillary Clinton to Hitler, students at Texas Tech were whispering to administrators that the Black Student Union's tweets in support of the Black Lives Matter movement offended them. Meanwhile, the University of Oregon saw it fit to dictate "community expectations" to students who had the audacity to complain about oppression.

Yes, complaining about oppression may bring the Bias Response Team to your dorm room to explain why your views were insufficiently polite, decent, and non-controversial.

These are just a few of the examples we've published so far, and over the next several weeks we plan on publishing more on our website.

What happens when the Bias Response Team is alerted to subversive or offensive speech? Some teams have demonstrated an awareness that a public university cannot (and should not) act to chill protected speech, focusing their efforts instead on supporting students who encounter offensive speech. But others, such as the University of California, San Diego, call upon their lawyers to find "creative" ways to censor offensive speech: in that case, a student newspaper satirizing "safe spaces." (The university is now being sued for these "creative" efforts.)

Many Bias Response Teams respond with what they characterize as an "educational" response. This might sound like a faculty member visiting a student who was reported for racist speech and discussing the Civil Rights movement. But it's not. Rather, it's often an administrator, not an educator, summoning a student or faculty member to a meeting, reprimanding them, and "educating" them about how their words upset someone.

That was the case at the University of Northern Colorado, where an adjunct professor encouraged students to confront views with which they disagreed. When a student sparred with the professor over transgender rights, a debate raging both in the media media and legislative and judicial chambers, the professor was summoned to meet with an administrator, who warned the professor that discussing such issues might result in lengthy investigations.

How will students be able to defend their rights in the legislature or the courts if debating them in the classroom is to be discouraged?

Students face serious instances of harassment, true threats, and other conduct that is not protected by the First Amendment. Yet in asking students to report any and all offensive speech, universities risk undermining their commitment to free discourse and debate.