Under Proposition 37, food containing genetically engineered ingredients would have to be labeled as such, including thousands of packaged products that now fill grocery stores and routinely make their way into Californians' kitchens...

...Almost anything that's not organic and comes in a box, a bag or a can probably has some genetically engineered content. The prevalence of such ingredients, also known as genetically modified organisms - or GMOs - is the reason advocates are calling for labels.

... The parent companies for Cheerios, Chef Boyardee, Nestle, Coke and Pepsi are pouring millions into defeating the measure. With them are companies such as Monsanto, DuPont and Bayer that make pesticides and genetically modified seeds. Thanks largely to those businesses, the "no" side has raised $32.5 million.

Pushing for Proposition 37 are organic farmers, advocates and food manufacturers such as Lundberg's, Nature's Path, Clif Bar and Amy's Kitchen. They have helped the "yes" side raise $4.3 million...

[font size="1"]Members of the Montgomery County, Texas, SWAT team stand with a ShadowHawk drone in this September 2011 photo provided by Vanguard Defense Industries. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)[/font]


WASHINGTON — More than a third of Americans worry their privacy will suffer if drones like those used to spy on U.S. enemies overseas become the latest police tool for tracking suspected criminals at home, according to an Associated Press-National Constitution Center poll.

Congress has directed the Federal Aviation Administration to come up with safety regulations that will clear the way for routine domestic use of unmanned aircraft within the next three years. The government is under pressure from a wide range of interests to open U.S. skies to drones. Oil companies want them to monitor pipelines. Environmentalists want them to count sea lions on remote islands. Farmers want them to fly over crops with sensors that can detect which fields are wet and which need watering. They’re already being used to help fight forest fires. And the list goes on.

Manufacturers are also keen to cash in on what they expect to be a burgeoning new drone market. Government and commercial drone-related expenditures are forecast to total $89 billion worldwide over the next decade. On the leading edge of that new market are state and local police departments, who say that in many cases drones are cheaper, more practical and more effective than manned aircraft. Most of them would be small drones, generally weighing less than 55 pounds. They could be used, for example, to search for missing children or to scout a location ahead of a SWAT team.

But privacy advocates caution that drones equipped with powerful cameras, including the latest infrared cameras that can “see” through walls, listening devices and other information-gathering technology raise the specter of a surveillance society in which the activities of ordinary citizens are monitored and recorded by the authorities...

Huffington Post
Drone Lobbying Ramps Up Among Industry Manufacturers, Developers...


...The top recipient was Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), the caucus co-chair who also heads the House Armed Services Committee. He received $176,500 in donations from major defense contractors, including Northrop Grumman, whose Global Hawk drone is made in his district.


...The Association For Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), an industry trade group, has said once drones are allowed to fly in U.S. airspace, "the civil market has the potential to eclipse the defense market."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/28/drone-lobbying-companies_n_1546263.html

Rep. John Boehner, once "pretty happy" with the cuts, now calls them a threat.
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WASHINGTON — Republican congressional leaders are backing away from a trigger system of forced spending cuts that they hailed 13 months ago as a herald of fiscal discipline and for which GOP lawmakers voted by large margins.

With the forced cuts — called sequestration on Capitol Hill — scheduled by law to take effect Jan. 2 and no deal in sight to replace them, the Republicans say the reductions could harm the military, and they're blaming President Obama.

Obama, in turn, is accusing the Republicans of flip-flopping by rejecting the strong budget controls they once championed...

Its “National Prosperity Action Day.” Tea Partiers, Republican volunteers and conservative activists are being summoned by Americans for Prosperity—the group founded and financed by several large corporations, and led by the billionaire Koch brothers—to begin mobilizing to defeat President Obama and Congressional Democrats...

...Its the beginning of an extremely well-planned get-out-the-vote effort that duplicates what an entire national party would attempt. And its been four years in the making.

...Koch’s unique, outside-the-GOP voter mobilizing system is called Themis, named after the Greek god of divine order. It carries a similar name to the Themis project by the US Chamber of Commerce’s partners exposed for planning to hack and sabatoge liberals and some union groups, but it is not related.

...Too much attention is given to the television ads. The Koch network, which is actively training Tea Partiers, via a partnership with True the Vote, to harass and intimidate voters, may tip the scales in this election. And you won’t see their work on television, or through FEC disclosures (they refuse to register their grassroots electioneering as independent expenditures). Like Wisconsin, liberals might see the ground shifting beneath them, and wonder what happened.

President Barack Obama attacked the Republican party on Saturday, for scrapping a bill that would have established a $1bn scheme to help military veterans get jobs.

In his weekly radio address, Obama attacked GOP politicians for failing to pass the planned law before Congress ended its session last week and lawmakers returned to their own states and districts ahead of the 6 November elections.

"These men and women have made incredible sacrifices for our country. They shouldn't have to worry about finding a job when they get home. But last week, Republicans in Congress voted it down. And then they left," Obama said.

The bill, which had some bipartisan support, would have given job priority to post-9/11 veterans, aiming to put them back to work as firefighters and police officers and in public work projects.

...This past July, 38 American soldiers committed suicide, the highest rate since the Army began keeping count. A veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes. If you have ever known someone who lost a family member to suicide, you've had a glimpse of the devastation suicide leaves in its wake.

...On Aug. 31, President Obama signaled that the government is making the mental health of our service members and veterans a top priority. Obama issued an executive order called "Improving Access to Mental Health Services for Veterans, Service Members, and Military Families" that mandates several essential concrete measures. And while each and every one of these measures is laudable and critical, one component is missing from the order: funding.

...While the executive order says all the right things, on closer inspection these statements are meaningless without providing for funding. For the order to be more than rhetoric, uttered during a campaign, the administration must forcefully present the case to Congress: You voted for these wars, wars for which you allocated no money.

The time has come to pay the price.