Seems Stupak Planned to Betray Pro-Lifers Over A Year Ago – Now Group Getting $3.4B in Earmarks

Video: Stupak Speaking in Cheboygan, MI – Very Telling

Pro-Life Democrats Who Switched Vote for Health Bill Request Billions in Earmarks

FOXNews.com

The 11 House Democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak who dropped their opposition to health care reform mere hours before the final vote have requested $3.4 billion in earmarks -- and one watchdog group wants to know whether the money represents business as usual, or a political payoff.

Rep. Bart Stupak announces he will vote to pass the health care reform bill at the U.S. Capitol in Washington March 21. (AP Photo)

The 11 House Democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak who dropped their opposition to health care reform legislation mere hours before the final vote have requested $3.4 billion in earmarks -- and one watchdog group wants to know whether the money represents business as usual or political payoffs.

The Sunlight Foundation says it plans to track the earmark requests, which were put in one day after health care reform cleared Congress, to see whether they're approved and whether it appears lawmakers are being rewarded for their vote.

"We know that in Congress one of the ways that leadership tries to influence members is through earmarks," said Bill Allison, editorial director at the nonpartisan organization. "So this seemed to us something good to follow."

Stupak and the 10 other Democrats were critical to the success of the health care bill. They were holding out over concerns about funding for abortion coverage but announced the president had assuaged their worries -- with an executive order restricting abortion funding -- the morning of the big vote.

Stupak's office said there's absolutely no link between the earmarks and the health care bill's passage.

"The congressman's vote for health care has no connection to annual appropriations requests," spokeswoman Michelle Benoche said. "Appropriations requests were submitted on Monday, March 22, because that is the deadline of the Appropriations Committee."

She also said his earmark requests this year are in line with prior years, in number and in total amount.

But watchdogs want to know whether there's more to the story.

Since the health care reform push hit its final stretch, numerous sweeteners for lawmakers' districts and states have been found inside the package. Earmark requests are made outside of the health care bill, making them a bit more difficult to link to any vote-trading. But it is precisely that kind of tricky-to-catch deal-making that Republican Sen. Tom Coburn said he and other GOP senators would be monitoring for months to come.

"If you think you can cut a deal now and it not come out until after the election, I want to tell you that isn't going to happen," Coburn said a few days before the bill passed.

Lawmakers like Stupak have since been heavily scrutinized. Allison said the lawmakers who stood with him will find out if those earmarks are approved when the Appropriations Committee's bills come out in June or July.

The individual earmarks requests from each of those lawmakers range from $20 million to $1.4 billion. Of the eight lawmakers whose 2010 requests were available for comparison, five requested more money than they did a year ago. Stupak requested $579 million.

Here are the earmark amounts requested by the 11 House Democrats in the 2011 bill:

Rep. Jerry Costello of Illinois.: $1,418.7 million ($256.4 million in 2010)

Rep. Solomon Ortiz of Texas: $618 million ($726.1 million in 2010)

Stupak of Michigan: $578.9 million

Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio: $294 million ($305.7 million in 2010)

Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania: $236.8 million ($54 million in 2010)

Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota.: $207 million ($226 million in 2010)

Rep. Brad Ellsworth of Indiana.: $115.4 million ($82.3 million in 2010)

Rep. Charles Wilson of Ohio: $84 million ($62.3 million in 2010)

Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania.: $67.1 million

Rep. Steve Driehaus of Ohio: $33.2 million

Rep. Joseph Donnelly of Indiana: $19.8 million ($11.65 million in 2010)

The Sunlight Foundation also says it is going to look at Republican earmarks. House Republicans say they are not requesting any earmarks for the next fiscal year, but Allison said the Sunlight Foundation will watch GOP senators to see if they appear to be putting in earmark requests for their House colleagues.

Fox News' Molly Henneberg contributed to this report.

Vote the Bums out in November… or start a recall or impeachment movement now!! And fight to overturn ObamaCare!!

Related:

Excellent ObamaCare Article by Mark Steyn

Obama’s Medicare pick urges ‘radical transfer of power’

White House backs down on health bill deals

Kickbacks Stand: White House backs down on health bill deals

(AP) – 14 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The White House is backing down from trying to get senators to remove some special deals from the health care bill.

Senior adviser David Axelrod says the White House only objected to deals that affected just one state, such one involving Medicaid and Nebraska that's being cut from the legislation.

Axelrod says that deals that could apply to more than one state are OK.

That means deals pushed by senators from Montana and Connecticut would be fine because they're written in such a way that other states could potentially qualify.

It's a change from a couple days ago when press secretary Robert Gibbs singled out the Montana and Connecticut deals and said President Barack Obama wanted them gone.

Axelrod spoke on ABC's "This Week."

Source: Associated Press/Fox Nation

Has Forbes Gone Psychotic or Taken the Blue Pill?

Posted by: Dr. Mercola – January 2010
Forbes has declared Monsanto “Company of the Year,” calling criticism of the notorious company “vicious” attacks against a company that “has been working to make humanity better fed.”

What’s more, Forbes claims that the attacks come because Monsanto has close to a monopoly in some seed markets, which Forbes argues is because they are making “seeds that are too good.”

You read that right. Apparently, Monsanto’s decades-long attempt to control the seed market -- which has led it lawsuits against small farmers and genetically modified plants that never regerminate, forcing farmers to buy seeds year after year -- is apparently just a result of their being “too good.”

I encourage you all to BOYCOTT Forbes and cancel any subscription you may have.

Sources: Forbes January 18, 2010

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

For anyone who knows anything about the business of Monsanto, the news that this ominous company has been named “Company of the Year” by renowned Forbes magazine is simply shocking.

This follows on the heels of other oxymoronic honors, such as

• President Obama accepting the Nobel Peace Prize while firmly entrenched in a seemingly never-ending war spread across two countries, and

• Time magazine naming Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke “Man of the Year,” supposedly for “saving” the US from “an even worse” financial collapse than what Bernanke himself helped create.

• Even more ironic are the media efforts to convince you that the unsustainable situation created by printing of billions of dollars to bail out failing banks and companies can be sustained indefinitely.

So, who is responsible for these strange decisions? And perhaps more importantly, why?

Through the lens of these examples, a rather bizarre picture is taking shape. I can’t say exactly what the message is, but I believe I can say this: Beware, because deception is taking place through coordinated media manipulation.

If you know anything about how conventional media is being used on a mass scale, you realize that typically someone is trying to sell you on something – an idea, an ideology, a certain mindset, in order to eventually produce a certain behavior.

The question is, what are they trying to convince you of now?

Are We Living in Some Alternative Reality?

When reading the news these days, I often feel like I’m getting information from some alternate Universe where up is down, and left is right. Because they surely aren’t reporting reality on this planet. It’s gotten so blatantly bizarre lately, it’s as though they don’t even bother to come up with a decent cover story to shroud their attempts at manipulating your mind.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that there are still many who have not figured this game out yet, who will swallow just about anything that magazines like Time and Forbes put in print – like the story that Monsanto is a world class do-gooder.

Unfortunately, there are still those who are unaware of the many improprieties and outright crimes committed by Monsanto, such as:

• Suing small farmers for patent infringement after Monsanto’s GM seeds spread wildly into surrounding farmers’ fields, contaminating their conventional crops

• Secretly discharging PCB-laden toxic waste into an Alabama creek, and dumping millions of pounds of PCBs into open-pit landfills for decades after PCBs were banned in the US for being a possible carcinogen.

• Being found guilty of bribery to bypass Indonesian law requiring an environmental assessment review for its genetically engineered cotton.

• Last year, the supreme court of France found Monsanto guilty of falsely advertising its herbicide Roundup as "biodegradable" and “environmentally friendly.” Scientific evaluation discovered that glyphosate, the active ingredient inRoundUp, is acutely toxic to fish and birds and can kill beneficial insects and soil organisms that maintain ecological balance. Additionally, the surfactant ingredient in Roundup is more acutely toxic than glyphosate itself, and the combination of the two is even more toxic.

• In 2007, the South African Advertising Standards Authority also found Monsanto guilty of lying when advertising that “no negative reactions to Genetically Modified food have been reported.”

• According to one EPA scientist, Monsanto doctored studies and covered-up dioxin contamination of a wide range of its products. She concluded that the company’s behaviour constituted “a long pattern of fraud.”

• In 1999, the New York Times exposed that Monsanto’s PR firm, Burson Marsteller, had paid fake "pro-GMO" food demonstrators to counteract a group of anti-biotech protesters outside a Washington, DC FDA meeting.

This is but a short list of examples, but it should give you a clue as to why I question the rationale behind giving them this honor.

Monsanto – Company of the Year?

Anyone who has studied the devastating effects of the unrestrained release of genetically modified crops into the environment will see the insanity in declaring Monsanto “Company of the Year.”

What the world needs is a return to saner, more sustainable farming practices, not mass cultivation of crops infused with “suicide genes” that prevent regermination the year after, or food crops that have been contaminated with GM seeds used for pharmaceutical production.

I truly believe that letting Monsanto lead us down the garden path is nothing short of suicidal.

It’s time for people to realize that while the declared motive behind GM food is an altruistic one -- to alleviate hunger, poverty and malnutrition worldwide – in reality, the ruthless propagation of GM crops are intended to create previously unimaginable profits above anything else.

Despite their assurances, we’re already beginning to see the real price of all that tinkering with Mother Nature: unnatural crop combinations that can harm your health and potentially cause generational DNA changes, for example.

Not only that, but contrary to promises, GM crops are FAILING MISERABLY all across the world. The reality simply isn’t living up to the hype of increased yields of healthy crops.

After 30 years of GMO experimentation, we have the data to show:

• No increase in yields; on the contrary GM soya has decreased yields by up to 20 percent compared with non-GM soya. Up to 100 percent failures of Bt cotton have been recorded in India. And recent studies by scientists from the USDA and the University of Georgia found that growing GM cotton in the U.S. can result in a drop in income by up to 40 percent.

• No reduction in pesticides use; on the contrary, USDA data shows that GM crops has increased pesticide use by 50 million pounds from 1996 to 2003 in the U.S., and the use of glyphosate went up more than 15-fold between 1994 and 2005, along with increases in other herbicides to cope with rising glyphosate resistant superweeds.

• Roundup herbicide is lethal to frogs and toxic to human placental and embryonic cells. Roundup is used in more than 80 percent of all GM crops planted in the world.

• GM crops harm wildlife, as revealed by UK and U.S. studies.

• Bt resistant pests and Roundup tolerant superweeds render the two major GM crop traits useless. The evolution of Bt resistant bollworms worldwide have now been confirmed and documented.

• Vast areas of forests, pampas and cerrados lost to GM soya in Latin America.

• Epidemic of suicides in the cotton belt of India. 100,000 farmers between 1993-2003, and an estimated 16,000 farmers a year since, have committed suicide since Bt cotton was introduced.

• Transgene contamination is completely unavoidable, as science has recently revealed that the genome (whether plant, animal or human) is NOT constant and static, which is the scientific base for genetic engineering of plants and animals. Instead, geneticists have discovered that the genome is remarkably dynamic and changeable, and constantly ‘conversing’ and adapting to the environment. This interaction determines which genes are turned on, when, where, by what and how much, and for how long. They’ve also found that the genetic material itself has the ability to be changed according to experience, passing it on to subsequent generations.

• GM food and feed linked to deaths and sicknesses both in the fields in India and in lab tests around the world. For example, in April 2006, more than 70 Indian shepherds reported that 25 percent of their herds died within 5-7 days of continuous grazing on Bt cotton plants.

Forbes on a Roll – But Where?

But Forbes doesn’t just throw your intelligence for a loop by hailing the success of a destroyer like Monsanto. Oh, no. There’s more.

Tellingly, in the same issue, Forbes also lashes out against chelation therapy, and derides anyone who thinks there may be a connection between vaccines and autism.

So what is this all about, really?

I have to seriously wonder why we are being urged to imagine we live in a world where no bad deed goes unrewarded; a place where what’s bad for you is somehow beneficial, and where lack of integrity, reason and logic is applauded.

What is this type of media coverage saying to you? What is this saying to your children?

This is not what America used to stand for, if I remember correctly. And it’s not what America should stand for now, or in the future.

Quite frankly, it’s all wrong. It’s all upside-down and backwards.

The only good thing about these blatantly bizarre media displays is the fact that they are just that – blatantly bizarre. And hopefully that will shake more people from their slumber and cause them to ask some basic questions about what’s really going on in this world.

Important Questions Only You Have the Answer to

• Who taught you what you know?

• Who do you listen to? What messages are you receiving from conventional media? How do you determine what’s real and what’s not?

• When was the last time you turned OFF the television and really pondered some issue at length, on your own, looking at it from all sides, including the sides you’ve been told to ignore? Heck, when was the last time you asked WHY you are being told to ignore it in the first place!

Other questions may be even more important than the preceding ones, as they involve really tuning into yourself:

• Where do you fall within the scheme of nature?

• Do natural laws apply to you?

• Where does science fit in? How far can science take you? Are you willing to gamble the future of your children on the assurances of mega-companies like Monsanto, who have tremendous responsibility to their shareholders to turn a profit in a crumbling market?

• To what degree do you think man-made chemicals can improve your health? What IS health, really? What does your body really need in order for all those trillions of cells to thrive in harmony?

Folks, I encourage you to open your mind; think deeply and clearly, and avoid jumping to preconceived conclusions based on what you think you “know,” without first challenging yourself to discern who fed you that “knowledge” in the first place.

Personally, I’m fed up with the brainwashing that conventional media dishes out, and if you too have had enough, I suggest you boycott Forbes and cancel any subscription you may have to their magazine. Unless you simply don’t want to live in a right-side-up world, that is.

Congressman Ron Paul said the following in one of his speeches before Congress earlier this year, and it sums up my sentiments exactly:

"Is this a dream or a nightmare? Is it my imagination or have we lost our minds? It is surreal. It is just not believable. A grand absurdity. A great deception. A delusion of momentous proportions based on preposterous notions and ideas whose time should never have come.

Insanity passed off as logic. Evil described as virtue. Ignorance pawned off as wisdom. Slavery sold as liberty.The philosophy that destroys us is not even defined. We have broken from reality, a psychotic nation. Ignorance with a pretense of knowledge replacing wisdom."

Related Links:

The Doors Of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything

Why You Are Being Deceived by the News Media

World's Largest Media Source Controlled by World's Largest Drug Company

(Sometimes I wonder if we (the American People have gone psychotic or taken the idiot pill??)