]]>“Never has the federal government said any American had to buy anything. Now, [you] have to buy insurance. If you don’t buy insurance, pay the IRS more money,” said Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) during the Senate’s floor debate in November.
Grassley is correct in that the mandate would be enforced at tax time. If you can’t prove you’re covered, you’ll pay a penalty.
Olle Johansson, a scientist at Karolinska Institute in Sweden, submitted testimony saying that “very serious biological changes” that include cancer risks have been noticed for years from exposure to low-frequency magnetic fields like those emitted from cell phones.
via The Associated Press: Maine panel weighs cell phone cancer warning.
]]>Greek tax collectors and customs officers walked off the job on Thursday, kicking off a spate of strikes against government austerity cuts designed to halt a financial crisis caused by massive debt.
Both groups embarked on a two-day walkout ahead of industrial action called by civil servants, doctors and Communist-backed workers on February 10 and a general strike called by Greece’s main umbrella union on February 24.
“We have already made sacrifices and will accept no more cuts,” the chairman of the customs officers’ union Argyris Sakellaropoulos told Flash Radio.
The unions are on the warpath over a government austerity programme that they say has progressively become harsher under pressure from the European Union and market speculation that has hurt Greek finances and rattled the euro.
via Greece faces strike barrage over austerity cuts – Glock Talk.
]]>You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil. The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan. The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a “preliminary commitment” letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. …this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas. via President Obama Finances Offshore Drilling in Brazil – WSJ.com.
And so it goes here in the United States of America during its fin de siecle, where NIMBY knows no bounds, where we will no longer build factories here but will contract to build them in China, and we will no longer drill for oil, but will contract with third-world states to do the drilling for us instead.
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