‘Here’s what I suspect is really going on: The FDA is being pressured by the insurance industry to restrict consumers’ access to their own DNA because of the information asymmetry between the government’s preclusion of insurers ability to consider genetic data when determining eligibility and consumers’ recently available ability to cheaply know if they have a predisposition for a variety of potentially expensive or life-limiting illnesses. That the FDA is likely pandering to this industry under the dishonest guise of consumer health protection makes me more distrustful of it as an independent entity.‘
To the best of my understanding, this is the order of ‘relevant’ events:
Boeing builds planes in its Seattle, WA, plant – in a unionized environment
in 2008, there is some labour unrest, during which Boeing publicly speculates about relocating the plant to a ‘right-to-work’ state
the Seattle plant is not relocated – to the contrary, it is running at full tilt
Boeing needs to make more planes and builds a new plant for $2Billion – locating in in South Carolina….which happens to be ‘right-to-work’ state
AFTER the plant is built and ready to hire 1,000 people, Obama’s National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) shuts the whole thing down because they deem it to be an anti-union move – and therefore ILLEGAL
That is right!
The plant is not ‘unsafe’ – for either the workers or the environment…
The labour unions are miffed that it is located in a state where they are not permitted to have a monopoly in the workplace: so NLRB says that opening the plant would be illegal!!!
The NLRB simply said that it could block Boeing from using the new plant as Boeing’s decision to locate it in South Carolina was in part based on a desire to avoid work stoppages and strikes, and this rationale was harmful to unions and thus an illegal act.
In related news: at this point in time, there is not enough stuff – publicly AND privately owned – in the USA to pay off the US debt; perhaps it is now Mathematically impossible to pay the debt off!
Fantino is a big part of the reason why the Conservatives’ fortunes have seen a downturn: the ‘law&order’ conservatives who form a core of his constituency are not pleased. I suspect that if the Conservatives are returned to power in tomorrow’s election, it will be by a very different group of voters than originally.
Why would Harper associate himself with someone so despised in Ontario is beyond me…
The State itself, the government of Ontario has been repeatedly implicated in its interference in the application of the law against both the occupiers and the taxpaying citizen. Compliant and rebuked by Ontario courts have been the Ontario Provincial Police where their actions and inaction have allowed Canadian citizens to be terrorized.
…
On the 28th of February, 2006, early in the DCE development stage, trespassers who later were aided by anarchists, union agitators and activists hailing from the left spectrum of politics as partially detailed here by Gary McHale, occupied the DCE. The rightful owners, Henco Industries Ltd, who purchased the land from the Crown, were subsequently denied access by the new strong arm for Native protesters, the OPP.
There has been a deliberate attempt to silence the truth. The conspiracy of silence which has denied a voice to the real victims of the occupation will eventually come to an end.
…
By refusing to acknowledge the pain of the victims, both native and non-native, victimizes the victims twice.
…
And this is why conservatives are disappointed with PM Harper for embracing Julian Fantino into the CPC…
Long gone are the days of the investigative reporter.
Now, we have ‘journalists’ and ‘commentators’.
Much of their time is spent going over press releases and spinning these into politically correct stories that promote their corporate owners’ messaging. At least, that is what it seems like!
Sure, there are a some very bright exceptions – but these are few and far between. Still, most journalists these days are more interested in presenting their credential at cocktail parties and at snap poetry readings than they are at actually doing investigative reporting or writing unpopular truths.
At the same time, the Corporations that own the Media – as well as many ‘champagne journalists’ – are complaining that the blogosphere often cites them as sources of stories and links back to them. They call this ‘stealing their material’ – and claim this is why their business model is dying: because they pay journalists to write a story, then bloggers will summarize it in their posts so nobody will pay for their newspapers…
Except that – the ‘blogosphere’ convention is to link back to the source – thus driving traffic to the source site, which translates into advertizing revenue! So it is hardly the ‘poaching’ that the Corporate Media makes it out to be…
Now, the situation is reversed: National Post, one of the major Corporate Media newspapers, has lifted a story that was first broken (a week earlier) by SassyWire and spread by BlazingCatFur, who actually went and did a fewfollow-ups . Except that, unlike bloggers – who cite their source and list the relevant links – National Post and its Journalist Bell did not even mention that it was not their crack Journalist Bell who broke the story, but a blogger! No mention, not link-backs, no nothing: leaving its readers under the impression that it was they who did the work!!!
Tuesday evening, the Free Thinking Film Society presented ‘Caledonia: No More Nightmares’.
It was a memorable evening.
I hesitate to say ‘good’, because even though the speakers were engaging and informative, all the people were pleasant (with only minor exceptions, hardly worth mentioning) and everything was well 0rganized – even the Ottawa Police were friendly and effective – the very fact that the events discussed during this evening happened is deeply troubling.
Here is a taste of what the evening was like:
There was a lot of food for thought there, that evening, and I am still not done thinking it all through – I am a slow thinker. I will write more about this.
The one thing that I learned coming from the evening was this: The ‘bad guys’ here were not ‘The Natives’ – a few residents there misbehaved at the beginning, true, but as soon as there was conflict which the OPP refused to police, militants from all over, of all races and colours, traveled to the 6 Nations land and robbed, raped and otherwise oppressed the Native residents. ‘The Natives’ were just as stuck as Caledonia residents. The OPP refused to help all of them.
The only ones whom the OPP protected were the militants. Yes, some of the militants were Natives. But most of the Natives from 6 Nations were not militants and most of the militants were not from the 6 Nations!
Had the OPP done their job at the beginning, the militants would not have sensed weakness and set up camp in Caledonia. None of this would have happened!
Marie Trainer, who was the Mayor for Haldimand county during these events, gave the most moving speech of the evening. It really brought home just how helpless and abandoned the people – both on the Caledonia/Haldimand county side and on the 6 Nations Reservation side.
One could see just how responsible she felt for her people, how heavily this weighed on her.
She told us an interesting story.
A number of illegal smoke shacks had sprung up in the area. These sell cigarets which have not passed any safety controls, and they sell cigarets to minors. Marie Trainer worked together with the 6 Nations Council to shut down the two smoke shacks on the County property and the two smoke shacks on the 6 Nations land. Now, only the 2 shacks on land owned by the Province of Ontario (controlled by the militants) remained. A representative from 6 Nations and Marie Trainer together went to the Province, asking for action to be taken to shut these illegal smoke shacks which sold tainted cigarettes to minors – to no avail. The Province of Ontario refused to take action to help them!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 