May, 22 2017, 01:45pm EDT
Landmark Report Shows Bee-killing Seed Coatings Aren't Worth the Harm
Farmer and environmental friendly alternatives should replace toxic neonic seed coatings
WASHINGTON
A new report, Alternatives to Neonicotinoid Insecticide-Coated Corn Seed: Agroecological Methods are better for Farmers and the Environment, released today from Center for Food Safety, shows that environmentally harmful neonicotinoid (neonic) insecticide seed coatings are largely unnecessary and ineffective. The landmark report is the first of its kind to compile and analyze the peer-reviewed science on the efficacy of neonic corn seed coatings and to offer recommendations for viable alternatives for protecting both farmers and the environment.
Neonic-coated corn seed is the most extensive use of an insecticide on any crop in the United States, affecting close to 90 million acres of farmland, along with the broader environment. Neonic insecticides are known to cause significant harm to pollinators, aquatic organisms, birds, and possibly people. Yet harm from neonic-coated corn seed is unnecessary. As this report shows, agroecological and other alternative farming methods that are not highly dependent on pesticides are available and result in high productivity.
"For years we have seen dramatically increasing use of these toxic pesticide, yet the peer-reviewed research shows that they rarely protect farmer profit or crop productivity," said Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman, the report's author. "What we've also seen is that industry-sponsored analysis of the chemicals' efficacy relies heavily on non-peer-reviewed research, and contains several biases that overestimate the value of neonic seed coatings for improving corn yield."
Dr. Gurian-Sherman's report compiles and analyzes the peer-reviewed research in the field, which shows there is no need for neonic seed coatings to protect the productivity of corn. Data examined also shows that the so-called secondary pests targeted by the seed coatings are rarely a problem for farmers; and, in fact "the published peer-reviewed evidence reveals that [these early-season insect pasts] infrequently reduce corn productivity in the absence of insecticide use."
Unfortunately, due to monopoly control by seed companies and the pesticide manufacturing industry, farmers can rarely find uncoated seed and are left without choice. Almost all corn seed is pre-coated by seed companies or their distributors. Farmers may also be lured by misinformation and industry scare-tactics that promote the seed coating as necessary to protect yield.
"One of the main reasons that neonic seed coatings are ubiquitous has nothing to do with yield or farmer profits, but rather monopoly control by seed and pesticide companies that make it extremely difficult for farmers to find and buy uncoated seed," said Gurian-Sherman. "Yet farmers can almost completely avoid even already low rates of corn pest infestation by applying available, simple changes in farming practices that are beneficial to both their livelihoods and the environment."
Significantly, Gurian-Sherman notes research which suggests that neonic seed coatings may sometimes actually decrease yields or reduce profit. This may occur because neonics may reduce the populations of organisms that normally help keep pest insects in check, and farmers may be unaware of this possibility when using the chemicals.
Because of the widespread contamination and harm associated with the overuse of seed coatings, particularly on corn, the report makes several recommendations for government action:
- Greatly restrict the use of neonic seed coatings, eventually leading to prohibition;
- Conduct surveys of farmers to understand why they may feel the need to use the seed coatings;
- Provide resources for farmers to learn about and adopt profitable, ecologically and socially friendly alternative pest control methods;
- Make affordable or subsidized insurance available for the rare cases where target pests might be a problem;
- Conduct research to fill in gaps in our knowledge of the pests, and ecological practices that can control them;
- Require seed companies to make uncoated seed available.
In addition, EPA should release its analysis of the efficacy, benefits, and costs of neonic corn seed coatings, including harm to honeybee colonies and any resulting reduced yields of pollinated crops; reduced production of honey and other bee products; harm to other pollinators and other beneficial and non-target organisms; financial harm to beekeepers and consumers; loss of ecosystem services; and market damage from contamination events.
Alternatives to Neonicotinoid Insecticide-Coated Corn Seed... makes clear that neonic seed coatings are a prime example of an expensive, chemically-dependent, pale substitute for free, ecologically and scientifically based advanced farming alternatives. They are a symptom of even more extensive farmer and environmental harm, and lack of sustainability caused by industrial farming.
Center for Food Safety's mission is to empower people, support farmers, and protect the earth from the harmful impacts of industrial agriculture. Through groundbreaking legal, scientific, and grassroots action, we protect and promote your right to safe food and the environment. CFS's successful legal cases collectively represent a landmark body of case law on food and agricultural issues.
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Report Shows How US Drug War and Deportation Machine Are Destroying Lives
"It's imperative that the U.S. government revises federal law to match current state-based drug policy reforms to end and prevent the immense human suffering being inflicted in the name of the drug war."
Jul 15, 2024
Thousands of people are deported from the United States each year for past drug offenses that often aren't even crimes anymore under evolving state narcotics laws, a report published Monday revealed.
The 91-page Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) report—titled Disrupt and Vilify: The War on Immigrants Inside the U.S. War on Drugs—highlights the experiences of people deported years or even decades after they committed drug offenses.
One of those immigrants, Natalie Burke of Jamaica, was convicted in 2003 of cannabis-related offenses but pardoned last August by Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, who acted on the unanimous recommendation of a state clemency board, which found that Burke was a victim of domestic violence who was "lured" into trafficking marijuana.
However, according to the report:
She cannot move on with her life because U.S. immigration authorities are trying to deport her, even though marijuana is now legal in Arizona and she has a pardon...
Natalie explained that one day in 2009, her probation officer asked her to come into the Tucson office to fill out some paperwork. Her son, who was in fifth grade at the time, waited for her outside in the parking lot. Natalie never came back to him that day. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers took her directly to an immigration detention center because her conviction made her deportable from the United States.
"Even with a hard-won gubernatorial pardon, and even in a state where marijuana is now legal, ICE is still trying to deport Natalie," the report adds. "She continues to fight back and is currently pursuing new legal arguments based on the pardon."
Burke is far from alone. Analyzing data from 2002-20, the report's authors found approximately 500,000 deportations of people whose most serious offense was drug-related. More than 150,000 of those deportations were the result of convictions for drug use or possession, including 47,000 for marijuana—which is now legal for recreational or medicinal use in a majority of U.S. states.
"The uniquely American combination of the drug war and deportation machine work hand in hand to target, exclude, and punish noncitizens for minor offenses—or in some states legal activity—such as marijuana possession," DPA federal affairs director Maritza Perez Medina said in a statement.
"This report underscores that punitive federal drug laws separate families, destabilize communities, and terrorize noncitizens, all while overdose deaths have risen and drugs have become more potent and available," she added. "It's imperative that the U.S. government revises federal law to match current state-based drug policy reforms to end and prevent the immense human suffering being inflicted in the name of the drug war."
The publication notes that "of all immigrants deported with criminal offenses, people with drug-related offenses had lived in the U.S. for the longest periods of time."
This has resulted in the deportation of immigrants who have lived in the United States since childhood and U.S. military veterans being separated from their families.
The report's authors interviewed some people living under the threat of deportation who have become parents or even grandparents of U.S. citizens during their time in the country.
"I'm not able to live and operate without fear because I'm not a citizen," one California resident convicted for marijuana and paraphernalia possession said in the report. "I've lived here for more than 20 years now. This is my home. I have children here. I want to be a citizen, and I'm making every effort to do that. But it seems like that's not going to be possible."
"Congress should reform immigration law to ensure immigrants with criminal convictions, including for drug offenses, are not subject to 'one-size-fits-all' deportations."
HRW immigration and border policy director Vicki Gaubeca said: "Why should parents or grandparents be deported away from children in their care for decades-old drug offenses, including offenses that would be legal today? If drug conduct is not a crime under state law, it should not make someone deportable."
The report also highlights cases of legal permanent residents lawfully employed in states' marijuana industries who cannot become citizens because, due to enduring federal criminalization of cannabis, they are considered to lack "good moral character," and immigrant women who have been sexually abused by corrections officers who know their victims would soon be deported.
HRW and DPA asserted that "Congress should reform immigration law to ensure immigrants with criminal convictions, including for drug offenses, are not subject to 'one-size-fits-all' deportations."
"Instead," the authors argue, "immigration judges should be given the discretion to make individualized decisions. As an important first step, Congress should impose a statute of limitations on deportations, so people can move beyond old offenses and get on with their lives."
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'Utterly Unhinged': Trump-Appointed Judge Dismisses Classified Docs Case
"This is how republics collapse," one lawyer said, noting that even if the decision is reversed, it will likely delay "Trump's trial long enough to prevent any form of accountability before the November election."
Jul 15, 2024
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, dismissed the criminal classified documents case against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in a Monday decision denounced as politically motivated and "a punch in the mouth to the rule of law."
The Florida-based judge's dismissal came as the Republican National Convention kicked off in Milwaukee, Wisconsin after Trump survived an assassination attempt at a Saturday campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump is expected to formally become the GOP presidential nominee on Thursday.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel for a pair of federal probes after Trump announced the current presidential campaign in November 2022. Trump was finally indicted for his handling of classified documents the following June. He faces 40 charges in this case alone.
"Unless the 11th Circuit and ultimately SCOTUS disagree, Trump goes free for walking out of the White House with top secret documents."
In response to Trump's motion to dismiss, Cannon on Monday agreed with his defense team that "Smith's appointment violates the appointments clause of the United States Constitution" and dismissed the superseding indictment.
Cannon wrote that "both the appointments and appropriations challenges as framed in the motion raise the following threshold question: Is there a statute in the United States Code that authorizes the appointment of Special Counsel Smith to conduct this prosecution? After careful study of this seminal issue, the answer is no."
"None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment... gives the attorney general broad inferior-officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith," she continued. "Nor do the special counsel's strained statutory arguments, appeals to inconsistent history, or reliance on out-of-circuit authority persuade otherwise."
With an appeal all but certain, Cannon's decision could be reconsidered by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta or the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a conservative supermajority that includes three Trump appointees. Journalists and legal experts on Monday framed the dismissal as just the latest move the judge has made to benefit the man who appointed her.
The Associated Presspointed out that Cannon previously "appointed an independent arbiter to inspect the classified documents recovered during the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, a decision that was overturned months later by a unanimous federal appeals panel," and "since then, she has been slow to issue rulings—favoring Trump's strategy of securing delays—and has entertained defense arguments that experts said other judges would have dismissed without hearings."
The New York Timesnoted that "Judge Cannon's ruling came exactly two weeks after Justice Clarence Thomas deeply questioned the constitutionality of Smith's appointment in an odd concurrence in the Supreme Court's landmark ruling granting Trump broad immunity against criminal prosecution," which stemmed from Smith's other case against Trump.
University of Alabama law professor and MSNBC legal commentator Joyce White Vance also highlighted how Cannon's decision—which she roundly criticized and called "absolutely incredible"—came after Thomas' concurrence.
"Unless the 11th Circuit and ultimately SCOTUS disagree, Trump goes free for walking out of the White House with top secret documents. At best, this is seriously delayed," said Vance, adding that she was "disgusted."
Congressman RaĂşl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said that "the dismissal of this case reflects a clear bias for the former president and the outlying opinion of the far-right wing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas."
"To dismiss this case would be a miscarriage of justice," he added. "I urge Attorney General Garland and Special Counsel Smith to appeal this egregious decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals."
As the Times reported: "The ruling rolls back nearly 30 years of how special counsels have gotten their jobs. Special counsels are governed by Justice Department regulations set through the statutory authority of the attorney general."
MSNBC host Chris Hayes accused Cannon of failing to do her job correctly by defying precedent and potentially hoping that the nation's highest court will uphold her decision.
"Just to be crystal clear: SCOTUS has upheld special counsels repeatedly. Cannon is a district court judge, her job is to apply controlling precedent," he explained. "She's doing this because she thinks the MAGA court is on the same page as her and Trump's lawyers and will go along."
Human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid suggested that Cannon's timing was intentional, saying: "She saw the nonstop media coverage of the shooting, used that distraction to overturn decades of legal precedent without citing a single case in her ruling's favor, and dismissed Trump's classified documents case. This is how republics collapse."
"To be sure, Cannon's absurd ruling is so extreme that only one of the MAGA justices supported it in his immunity decision (Thomas). Her decision will likely be reversed because it has absolutely zero basis in precedent whatsoever. It is utterly unhinged," he added. "But Cannon's indefensible opinion still serves its purpose of delaying Trump's trial long enough to prevent any form of accountability before the November election. That was the move all along."
Damon Silvers, a visiting professor at University College London, said that "it's important to understand Judge Cannon's dismissal of the criminal case against Trump as both an attempt to grant him legal immunity AND an effort to escalate tensions in our country for political purposes. The right response is an appeal."
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington president Noah Bookbinder also called for an appeal, saying in a statement that "this is a lawless, outlier decision with no basis in statute or case law. It is deeply dangerous for accountability and checks and balances going forward."
"This decision should and assuredly will be appealed immediately," he added. "It endangers the very concept of ensuring the most powerful people in government have to follow the law."
While fighting this case, Trump in May was convicted of 34 felonies in New York for the falsification of business records regarding hush money payments to cover up sex scandals during the 2016 presidential election. He faces two other cases—one overseen by Smith and another in Georgia—related to his attempt to overturn his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection.
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World's Richest Man, Other Billionaires Rally Around Trump After Assassination Attempt
Elon Musk, Bill Ackman, and David Sacks spoke out in support of the presumptive Republican nominee, who helped make billionaires $1 trillion richer during his first White House term.
Jul 15, 2024
Several prominent billionaires—including the richest man on Earth—took to social media over the weekend to endorse presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump shortly after a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate the former president at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
One of the billionaires was Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who took to the social media platform that he owns to
declare, "I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery." The endorsement came days after reports that Musk donated to a pro-Trump super PAC and just ahead of the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
An analyst with the Atlantic Council
toldThe Washington Post that Musk's endorsement of Trump garnered "the most engagement of any post on X related to the attempted assassination."
Musk also
suggested that the Secret Service's failure to detect and stop the gunman before he opened fire may have been "deliberate"—a post that was viewed 87 million times.
Hours after Musk's endorsement post went live, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman
announced his decision to formally back Trump's bid for a second term in the White House, four years after the former president attempted to overturn President Joe Biden's 2020 victory and sparked a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Ackman, who has
historically supported Democrats, wrote in a lengthy X post that he had privately decided to endorse Trump "some time ago" and suggested he would offer a more thorough explanation of his decision in the near future.
"I just haven't had the time nor felt the urgency to write the post as we are still a few months from the election," Ackman wrote on Saturday, hours after a gunman later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire with an AR-style rifle, hitting Trump's right ear and killing one rally attendee.
Another billionaire, venture capitalist David Sacks, reiterated his support for Trump over the weekend after formally endorsing the former president last month and hosting a $300,000-per-person fundraiser for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Sacks, who declared following the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection that Trump had "disqualified himself from being a candidate at the national level again," called the former president a "hero" on Sunday and gushed that he has "risked everything for this country."
The trio joins
at least a dozen other billionaires backing Trump, who postures as a populist ally of the working class while supporting policies that overwhelmingly benefit the ultra-rich.
Billionaires got $1 trillion richer during Trump's first term and have seen their wealth soar by $2.2 trillion since the passage of the Trump-GOP tax cuts in 2017.
Between December 2017 and September 2023, according to a recent analysis by the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness, Musk saw his net worth rise from $20.4 billion to nearly $270 billion—a 1,222.8% increase.
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