Copy, Paste, Legislate
April 5th, 2019Via: USA Today:
Each year, state lawmakers across the U.S. introduce thousands of bills dreamed up and written by corporations, industry groups and think tanks.
Disguised as the work of lawmakers, these so-called “model” bills get copied in one state Capitol after another, quietly advancing the agenda of the people who write them.
A two-year investigation by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic? and the Center for Public Integrity reveals for the first time the extent to which special interests have infiltrated state legislatures using model legislation.
USA TODAY and the Republic found at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into law.
Natural News Banned by All Major Social Media Platforms
April 4th, 2019Via: Natural News:
The evil tech giants are engaged in economic sabotage against independent media. Part of the impetus for this is the radical left-wing political slant of the tech companies, but it’s also about silencing natural health voices and protecting the profit interests of the evil, corrupt pharmaceutical industry.
Google, for example, has become the propaganda ministry for Big Pharma’s lies about medications and vaccines. Use Google to search for “MMR vaccine,” and you get nothing but CDC propaganda, Big Pharma lies and dishonest websites and blogs that rave about the safety and efficacy of MMR vaccines. Google has systematically suppressed all websites that dare talk about vaccine ingredients, vaccine side effects, vaccine propaganda, CDC quack science or corruption and fraud throughout the vaccine industry.
Research Credit: Pookie
Vaccines: Gateway Drugs by Design
April 4th, 2019Via: Children’s Health Defense:
We live in a world where pharma-backed, government sanctioned, medical mandates in the form of liability-free vaccines with known serious potential adverse effects are forced repeatedly in greater numbers (70 doses of 16 vaccines by age 18) onto our most vulnerable and voiceless populations—with a disastrous outcome of life-altering iatrogenic illnesses, artificially induced in our children and youth. The main vaccine producing companies, the “BIG 4”, Merck, GSK, Pfizer, Sanofi, who make all our children’s vaccines, list the very illnesses now seen in epidemic numbers in our children, in their own vaccine inserts, as potential adverse effects.
Amazon Wants to Launch Thousands of Satellites for Broadband Internet Service
April 4th, 2019Via: CNBC:
Amazon is planning to build a network of more than 3,000 satellites federal filings reveal, in an ambitious attempt to provide global internet access.
Known as Project Kuiper, the move represents the latest space ambition from Jeff Bezos. Amazon has previously announced its cloud business will build a network of satellite facilities on Earth and Bezos’ space venture Blue Origin continues to move closer to launching space tourists.
“Project Kuiper is a new initiative to launch a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in an emailed statement.
…
A race among several major players is underway to build a next-generation broadband network in space, as companies lay out plans to use a so-called constellation of hundreds or even thousands of small satellites. Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched two test satellites for its “Starlink” network last year, the first step toward its goal of a constellation of 4,425 satellites. Additionally, last month Softbank-backed OneWeb launched the first six satellites of its network, which plans to begin with a constellation of 650 interconnected satellites.
Boeing and Canadian operator Telesat have also revealed plans for high speed internet constellations.
Drugmakers Pay $123 Million to Resolve U.S. Charity Kickback Probe
April 4th, 2019Via: Reuters:
Three drugmakers will pay $122.6 million to resolve claims they used charities that help cover Medicare patients’ out-of-pocket drug costs as a way to pay kickbacks aimed at encouraging the use of their medications, including some expensive ones.
The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday said Jazz Pharmaceuticals Plc, Lundbeck and Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc had become the latest companies to settle claims stemming from an industry-wide probe of drugmakers’ financial support of patient assistance charities.
The government has alleged in earlier settlements that drugmakers used such charities as a means to improperly pay the copay obligations of Medicare patients using their drugs in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute.
The investigation came amid growing attention to skyrocketing U.S. drug prices. Copays are meant to serve in part as a check on healthcare expenses by exposing patients to some of a drug’s cost and make them price-sensitive.
The United States of Incarceration
April 4th, 2019Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world.
Via: Prison Policy:
The U.S. incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 residents, more than any other country. In fact, our rate of incarceration is more than five times higher than most of the countries in the world. Although our level of crime is comparable to those of other stable, internally secure, industrialized nations, the United States has an incarceration rate far higher than any other country.
Nearly all of the countries with relatively high incarceration rates share the experience of recent large-scale internal conflict. But the United States, which has enjoyed a long history of political stability and hasn’t had a civil war in nearly a century and a half, tops the list.
If we compare the incarceration rates of individual U.S. states and territories with that of other nations, for example, we see that 36 states and the District of Columbia have incarceration rates higher than that of Cuba, which is the nation with the second highest incarceration rate in the world.
Bitcoin Soars 20 Percent, Mystery Buyer Seen as Catalyst
April 2nd, 2019Via: Reuters:
Bitcoin burst to its highest level in almost five months on Tuesday, sending smaller cryptocurrencies up, with analysts ascribing the move to a major order by an anonymous buyer that triggered a frenzy of computer-driven trading.
…
Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, chief executive of London-based cryptocurrency firm BCB Group, said the move was likely triggered by an algorithmic order worth about $100 million spread across major exchanges – U.S.-based Coinbase and Kraken, and Luxembourg-based Bitstamp.
“There has been a single order that has been algorithmically-managed across these three venues, of around 20,000 BTC,” he said.
“If you look at the volumes on each of those three exchanges – there were in-concert, synchronized, units of volume of around 7,000 BTC in an hour”.
The Measles Couldn’t Kill the Brady Bunch
April 1st, 2019Via: YouTube:
Trump Cuts Aid to Central American Countries as Migrant Crisis Deepens
March 31st, 2019Trump should have used the military to shut the border on the day he became President. Over two years later, the situation is worse than ever.
Via: Reuters:
The U.S. government cut aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras on Saturday after President Donald Trump blasted the Central American countries for sending migrants to the United States and threatened to shutter the U.S.-Mexico border.
A surge of asylum seekers from the three countries have sought to enter the United States across the southern border in recent days. On Friday, Trump accused the nations of having “set up” migrant caravans and sent them north.
Trump said there was a “very good likelihood” he would close the border this week if Mexico did not stop immigrants from reaching the United States. Frequent crossers of the border, including workers and students, worried about the disruption to their lives the president’s threatened shutdown could cause.
Apple Developing an Electric Car, Hires Tesla’s Former Head of Electric Powertrains
March 31st, 2019I wonder if it will be made in China by Foxconn…
Via: Electrek:
There has long been a debate about Apple’s secretive automotive project being only about a self-driving system for vehicles rather than a full electric autonomous vehicle. It now looks clear that the latter is the case as Apple hires Tesla’s head of electric powertrains.
