US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1627

On February 06 2015 13:53 GreenHorizons wrote:
Wonder who it was that pushed to have supplements be unregulated...?



Source

On February 06 2015 14:07 IgnE wrote:


I want to know what brand of supplements those were. The only regulation the supplements industry needs is truth in labeling and harsh penalties for those who lie. No need for some kind of FDA approval scheme or anything.

On February 06 2015 14:07 IgnE wrote:


I want to know what brand of supplements those were. The only regulation the supplements industry needs is truth in labeling and harsh penalties for those who lie. No need for some kind of FDA approval scheme or anything.

On February 06 2015 18:04 IgnE wrote:
Who fucking cares if it works. That is specifically what I was trying to avoid. All I care is that it has in it what it says it has in it. Not that it says "will make you a sex god." I want it to have ginko in the prescribed quantity if it says it has ginko in the prescribed quantity. This is precisely why I said at the beginning it's idiotic to have the FDA regulate supplements like they do for drugs. Testing for efficacy will never work. But truth in ingredient labeling is achievable and desirable.

The attorney general’s investigation was prompted by an article in the New York Times in 2013 that raised questions about widespread labeling fraud in the supplement industry. The article referred to research at the University of Guelph in Canada that found that as many as a third of herbal supplements tested did not contain the plants listed on their labels — only cheap fillers instead.

On February 06 2015 18:04 IgnE wrote:
Who fucking cares if it works. That is specifically what I was trying to avoid. All I care is that it has in it what it says it has in it. Not that it says "will make you a sex god." I want it to have ginko in the prescribed quantity if it says it has ginko in the prescribed quantity. This is precisely why I said at the beginning it's idiotic to have the FDA regulate supplements like they do for drugs. Testing for efficacy will never work. But truth in ingredient labeling is achievable and desirable.

Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul push legalizing hemp growth
It’s a states’ rights and economic growth issue, they argue.

Forget legalizing pot: Two of the most powerful Republicans in the Senate believe there’s a much stronger chance to legalize growing hemp in the U.S., opening up an entirely new market for crops, health food, oil, shirts, towels and even dog toys.

Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie are pushing legislation in both chambers of Congress that would remove the less-potent member of the cannabis family from the federal list of controlled substances, allowing its return to America’s farmland after more than 40 years.

It’s a states’ rights and economic growth issue, the Republican lawmakers argue. Legalizing hemp would create jobs.

“People used to downplay the number of jobs industrial hemp might create and say, ‘Well it’s a few thousand jobs and a couple million in commerce,’” Massie said. But all told, legalizing the crop has the potential to create 10 times as many jobs “as the Keystone XL pipeline will create 10 years from now.”

Hemp legalization legislation has been considered in Congress since 2005, when then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) pushed the issue. But the current bills have champions in positions of power, including the Senate majority leader and a potential White House contender.

“It’s harder to get a majority of Republicans to sign on to industrial hemp than it is to get Democrats,” Massie said. “There’s a stigma attached to it, and Republicans don’t want to be seen as weak on the war on drugs.”

Hemp is a tough crop, well-suited for Kentucky’s climate and landscape, possibly even in the state’s mountainous eastern region, which lacks rich soil. And in a place where almost 20 percent of people live below the poverty line and employment opportunities in coal mining and tobacco are on the decline, the need for a robust new industry is critical.

Kentucky was the largest producer of hemp prior to the Civil War, according to the state’s department of agriculture, growing more than 90 percent of the entire U.S. crop. But production declined in the 1900s as the government moved to tax the crop due to its close association with marijuana.

A senior Israeli official is now implying that House Speaker John Boehner led Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to believe that his invitation for the prime minister to speak before Congress in March was bipartisan, according to Reuters.

"It appears that the speaker of Congress made a move, in which we trusted, but which it ultimately became clear was a one sided move and not a move by both sides," Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said Friday on a Tel Aviv radio program, per the news outlet.

Then, via Reuters:

The interviewer asked if that meant Netanyahu had been "misled" into believing Boehner's invitation was bipartisan, a characterization Hanegbi did not contest.

Boehner's invitation for Netanyahu to speak on Iran, extended without consultation with the White House, has stirred partisan tensions. The White House called it a breach of diplomatic protocol. House Democrats have met with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer to register their displeasure, and some have said they will boycott the speech.

Nonetheless, Hanegbi indicated that Netanyahu would still make the March 3 speech, which also comes two weeks before Israeli elections. He said that the speech could still help secure the two-thirds vote needed to override President Obama's promised veto on any new sanctions on Iran.

On February 06 2015 13:59 Nyxisto wrote:

ehh, yes that's kind of the definition of "social", else it's just retirement

The Agriculture Department is getting ready to tell a lot of people who’ve been getting farm subsidy checks without lifting a hay bale, swinging a pitch fork or driving a tractor that they’re cut off.

Congress could’ve answered the question of “who is a farmer?” and thus eligible to get payments when it passed the Farm Bill a year ago, but it punted the matter to the USDA.

Wealthy executives, celebrities and others get subsidies even if they never set foot on a farm or don’t need the taxpayer-funded assistance. They include the likes of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, according to an Environmental Working Group report.

USDA will soon issue its proposed rule for qualifying who is “actively engaged” in farming, making them eligible for some of the billions paid each year to farm families across the U.S. to support them in tough times when crop prices or farm revenues are low, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told POLITICO in an exclusive interview this week.

“The reality is that this has been a loophole that has been utilized by folks in [business] partnerships to allow for many, many, many people to qualify as actively engaged [in farming] when in fact they might only be engaged in a conference call or in a very narrow sense participating in decision-making in a farming operation,” Vilsack said. “We will close that loophole to the extent that we can.”

In 2013, the Government Accountability Office pointed to one common, troublesome practice: As much as $590 million was being paid in farm subsidies annually to so-called general partnerships, in which multiple individuals could claim to participate in the management of a single farm.