21st-century-classical-liberal:

freebroccoli:

lady-liberty11:

21st-century-classical-liberal:

guess how long we’ve been genetically modifying plants and animals

Since before Gregor Mendel figured it out with peas, motherfuckers.

I don’t think selective breeding is the same thing as genetic modification.

Selective breeding is genetic modification.

There’s a difference between altering the genetics of food to help human nutrition and hopefully increasing corporate profits as opposed to altering the genetics of food to increase corporate profits regardless of the impact on human nutrition. 

I’m all for the former and 100% against the latter. 

Of course this is a complex issue, a lot more complex than many want to admit. People are also under the impression that we have no food on this planet and without GMOs, we’d all starve, which is false. We waste almost as much food in a year than we eat.

GMOs have also created an entirely new issue and that’s of genetic patenting. Regardless of how you feel about IP Law in general, it’s pretty easy to see why genetic patenting of life is dangerous and wrong. 

robertreich:

The public’s growing disdain of the Supreme Court increases the odds that a majority will uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare.

The latest New York Times CBS Poll shows just 44 percent of Americans approve the job the Supreme Court is doing. Fully three-quarters say justices’ decisions are sometimes influenced by their personal political views.

The trend is clearly downward. Approval of the Court reached 66 percent in the late 1980s, and by 2000 had slipped to around 50 percent.

As the Times points out, the decline may stem in part from Americans’ growing distrust in recent years of major institutions in general and the government in particular.

But it’s just as likely to reflect a sense that the Court is more political, especially after it divided in such partisan ways in the 5-4 decisions Bush v. Gore (which decided the 2000 presidential race) and Citizen’s United (which in 2010 opened the floodgates to unlimited campaign spending).

Americans’ diminishing respect for the Court can be heard on the right and left of our increasingly polarized political spectrum.

A few months ago, while a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich stated that the political branches were “not bound” by the Supreme Court. Gingrich is known for making bizarre claims. The remarkable thing about this one was the silence with which it was greeted, not only by other Republican hopefuls but also by Democrats.

Last week I was on a left-leaning radio talk show whose host suddenly went on a riff about how the Constitution doesn’t really give the Supreme Court the power to overturn laws for being unconstitutional, and it shouldn’t have that power.

All this is deeply dangerous for the Court, and for our system of government.

Almost 225 years ago, Alexander Hamilton, writing in the Federalist (Number 78, June 14, 1788) noted the fragility of our third branch of government, whose power rests completely on public respect for its judgement:

The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. [Yet lacking sword or purse, the judiciary] is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches; and that as nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence as permanency in office, this quality may therefore be justly regarded as an indispensable ingredient in its constitution, and, in a great measure, as the citadel of the public justice and the public security.

The immediate question is whether the Chief Justice, John Roberts, understands the tenuous position of the Court he now runs. If he does, he’ll do whatever he can to avoid another 5-4 split on the upcoming decision over the constitutionality of the Obama healthcare law.

My guess is he’ll try to get Anthony Kennedy to join with him and with the four Democratic appointees to uphold the law’s constitutionality, relying primarily on an opinion by Judge Laurence Silberman of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia – a Republican appointee with impeccable conservative credentials, who found the law to be constitutional.

WHAT ABOUT THE PUBLIC’S GROWNING DISDAIN FOR OBAMACARE?

antigovernmentextremist:

Unfunded Liabilities Under Obamacare to Cost $17 Trillion, Yes Trillion

Senate Republican staffers continue to look though the 2010 health care reform law to see what’s in it, and their latest discovery is a massive $17 trillion funding gap.

“The more we learn about the bill, the more we learn it is even more unaffordable than was suspected,” said Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Republican’s budget chief in the Senate.

“The bill has to be removed from the books because we don’t have the money,” he said.

The hidden shortfall between new spending and new taxes was revealed just after Supreme Court justices grilled the law’s supporters about its compliance with the Constitution’s limits on government activity. If the court doesn’t strike down the law, it will force taxpayers find another $17 trillion to pay for the increased spending.

The $17 trillion in extra promises was revealed by an analysis of the law’s long-term requirements. The additional obligations, when combined with existing Medicare and Medicaid funding shortfalls, leaves taxpayers on the hook for an extra $82 trillion in health care obligations over the next 75 years.

There isn’t even that much money in the world. The really sad thing is that all the young people who support Obama and Obamacare are the ones that will be on the hook for this. I hate my generation sometimes. 

I’m all for allowing equal and fair access to healthcare. The key word is access. No one should be denied healthcare or the access to it. 

But Obamacare takes it a step further by mandating that everyone must have healthcare. No just access but the services themselves. 

Good and services don’t just invent themselves, someone must pay for them. Perhaps it would be more prudent and logical if the government fixed the broken rules of how insurance and pharma companies work. Perhaps the gov’t could encourage better health systems and techniques. Perhaps the way to help those that can’t afford today’s healthcare isn’t to force them into the system but to create a better, simpler, cheaper and more efficient system. 

But the gov’t and this administration doesn’t want that. They don’t want people to have the power of choice, if they did, Obamacare might have more supporters. This administration and our current federal government thinks that they are smarter than you. They can and should tell you what to do and how to do it. They don’t think people are capable and without the guiding hand of the Congress, we’d all be lost in the dark. 

This is the mentality of our leaders today. They feel as if they are our caretakers. They don’t fear us, they fear for us. Or so they want us to believe. In reality, they don’t care for us anymore than it takes to win our votes that keep them in their cushy offices and lines their already fat pockets. 

 @Suga_Shane