Carnac on the TEA Party

What do the TEA Party Kool-aid drinkers in Hudson, Madison and Washington D.C. shout when they hear that Carnac is back?

Is he eating bean soup or his own barf?

That Doesn't Sell Books

"This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African American President."

Mark Shields
PBS News Hour

Wisconsin Governor Walker A Friend of CAFOs

"...Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, where in 2009 animal waste contaminated more than 100 wells in a single town, the legislature had been considering a bill that would allow the state's Department of Natural Resources to set limits for how much animal manure can be spread on fields in areas with porous limestone karst that makes it easy for the waste to seep down and spoil the groundwater. Those areas would include Brown County, which has 15 dairy CAFOs with more than 1,000 cows each, and where many residents drink bottled water to avoid well water contaminated by manure. However, newly elected Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who has called the Department of Natural Resources "out of control," is unlikely to let these groundwater protections become law...."



"Ending last year's pitched battle between industrial dairy's desire to avoid regulation and the public's right to clean, safe drinking water, New Mexico's new Republican governor, Susana Martinez threw out regulations intended to control the continuing discharge of poisonous dairy waste into the state's water supplies. According to the state environment department, at least two-thirds of the groundwater underneath or adjacent to New Mexico's dairy CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) has been poisoned by nitrates. When other pollutants are included, estimates of water contamination by these factory farms can rise as high as 90 percent. No wonder New Mexico's legislature voted to have regulations drawn up to prevent this ongoing groundwater pollution..."

Read more @Huffington Post.

What's In Your Neighborhood?

Check out the interactive map on the link below...

Factory Farm Map

Obama: Take A Walk On The Supply Side

Talk about ditching the political liabilities on the far left, Obama has embraced the supply side economics theory. Read on...

Check out the remarks made by President Obama in Meeting with the President’s Export Council today (12/9/10):

"...The bipartisan framework that we’ve forged on taxes will not only protect working Americans from seeing a major tax increase on January 1st; it will provide businesses incentives to invest, grow and hire. And every economist that I’ve talked to or that I’ve read over the last couple of days acknowledges that this agreement would boost economic growth in the coming years and has the potential to create millions of jobs. The average American family will start 2011 knowing that there will be more money to pay the bills each month, more money to pay for tuition, more money to raise their children.

But if this framework fails, the reverse is true. Americans would see it in smaller paychecks that would have the effect of fewer jobs.

So as we meet here today to talk about one important facet of our economic strategy for the future, I urge members of Congress to move forward on this essential priority.

Now, the top priority of my administration since I took office has been to get the American people back on their feet and back on the job in the aftermath of the most devastating recession in our lifetime. That’s job one. But as I said in greater detail on Monday, we’ve also got to ask ourselves how do we position our economy to be strong, growing and competitive in the long run..."

What did Bush and Reagan do? Cut taxes and increase spending, i.e., suppy side economics.

Read more...

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations Near Schools May Pose Asthma Risk

Children who attend school near large-scale livestock farms known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) may be at a higher risk for asthma, according to a new study by University of Iowa researchers.

The study, led by Joel Kline, M.D., professor of internal medicine in the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, appears in the June issue of Chest, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians http://www.chestjournal.org/.

“Previous research has shown increased rates of asthma among children living in rural areas of Iowa and the United States,” said Kline, who also is deputy director of the Environmental Health Sciences Research Center (EHSRC) in the UI College of Public Health, which helped fund the study. “Given that CAFOs release inflammatory substances that can affect the health of workers at these facilities and the air quality of nearby communities, we were interested in whether there was a connection between CAFOs and increased rates of asthma among kids in rural areas.”

Researchers surveyed the parents of kindergarten through fifth-grade students attending two Iowa elementary schools to compare the prevalence of asthma among students. The “study” school was located a half-mile from a CAFO in northeast Iowa; the “control” school was in east-central Iowa, more than 10 miles away from any CAFO (generally classified as a livestock facility that houses more than 1,000 animal units). Sixty-one participants responded from the study school, and 248 participants responded from the control school.

Study results indicated a significant difference in the prevalence of physician-diagnosed asthma between the two schools: 12 children (19.7 percent) from the study school located near a CAFO and 18 children (7.3 percent) from the control school. The overall rate of physician-diagnosed asthma reported for Iowa is around 6.7 percent, the study authors noted.

Read more..

Big CAFO to Southern Wisconsin

BRADFORD TOWNSHIP — The Bradford Town Board on Tuesday will get its first look at plans for a 4,600-cow dairy on the Rock Prairie east of Janesville.

Nebraska dairy farmer Todd Tuls asked to be on the agenda for Tuesday night’s regular board meeting so he could share information about the project, Clerk Sandra Clark said.

Tuls is considering a 160-acre parcel on the northeast corner of Highway 14 and Scharine Road in far eastern Rock County.

The parcel is owned by Tom and Sue Metcalf, according to Rock County records.

If it happens, the dairy herd would be the biggest in Rock County.

Tuls is Nebraska’s biggest dairy farmer, Dairy Council of Nebraska spokeswoman Stacey Fletcher has said. He milks 10,000 cows on two sites near Shelby, Neb., about 80 miles west of Omaha, Fletcher said.

Ralph Wetmore is one Bradford Township property owner who toured Tuls’ Nebraska operation.

The size of Tuls’ barns is a little overwhelming, Wetmore said...

Read: Bradford board to hear plan for 4,600-cow dairy

http://gazettextra.com/weblogs/latest-news/2010/aug/25/large-dairy-farm-could-be-2011/

Dairy + Wisconsin = $$$$$$$$

"...Agriculture is a key part of Wisconsin’s economy. To be exact, Wisconsin’s farms and agricultural businesses generate $59.16 billion in economic activity and provide jobs for 353,991 people, according to a recent study conducted by University of Wisconsin-Extension based on data for 2007.

“This study clearly demonstrates agriculture’s huge role in our state’s economy and the importance of having a diverse agricultural portfolio. No other sector is so broadly based across the entire state,” says Rod Nilsestuen, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

The findings show that Wisconsin agriculture contributes in a significant way to the state’s economic base despite the acute financial pressures caused by low prices for several products including milk and cheese as well as high input costs. Results indicate agriculture’s economic activity increased 14.9 percent, up from $51.5 billion, from a similar study conducted in 2004 using data for 2000..."

Read: Study: Ag contributes billions to Wisconsin’s bottom line