Duty to Warn

As a critic of the live stage, I usually make it a point to comment upon the sets. For example, in my review of Theatre 40’s recent production of John Morogiello’s The Consul, The Tramp and America’s Sweetheart, I noted that the location where the onstage action takes place - actress/movie mogul Mary Pickford’s (Melanie Chartoff) Hollywood office at the United Artists Studio - was “well-rendered by set designer Jeff G. Rack.” 

On November 15, 2016, the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Heath Hazard Assessment’s (OEHHA), Carcinogen Identification Committee (CIC) met to decide whether to list aspartame as a carcinogen. Just to be clear, no listing decisions are made at meetings such as this one; instead, the CIC members “prioritize” the substance and that then determines whether or not the substance at issue has a chance at being put on California’s “Prop 65” list of known carcinogens.

Remember, Proposition 65 (or “Prop 65” as it is now popularly called) was the referendum measure passed into law by California voters in November 1986, thirty years ago. Prop 65 requires, among other things, that all known carcinogens be declared (usually on food and drink labels) to consumers. It is so pervasive that even residents in other States will often see Prop-65 warnings about carcinogenicity on food and drink labels or on websites when ordering.

The CIC Voting Process

Confirmation hearings for Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, named by Donald Trump to be attorney general of the United States, will begin on Jan. 10, before Trump is even inaugurated. The rush and insistence on only two days of hearings reflect Republican efforts to cram the nomination through before Americans understand what is at stake.

Sessions will, no doubt, present himself as a humble, genial and reasonable public servant. In reality, Sessions is an outlier, an unimaginable nominee as attorney general, an implacable opponent of the very rights and liberties that the attorney general is supposed to defend. As more than 200 civil rights, human rights and women’s groups noted in a unified statement: “Sen. Sessions has a 30-year record of racial insensitivity, bias against immigrants, disregard for the rule of law and hostility to the protection of civil rights that makes him unfit to serve as the attorney general of the United States.”

In Liberal America, there's a growing feeling of hysteria

Conditioned to accept whatever's claimed

As long as it's Donald and the Russians blamed

Mr. Putin says he'll be friends with you

I don't subscribe to this point of view

It would be such an ignorant thing to do

If the Russians hate their children too

How can I risk my little boy with Oppenheimer's deadly toy

There is no monopoly in common sense

On either side of all the missile defense

We share the same biology

Regardless of ideology

Believe me when I say to you

The Russians hacked your cell phone too

There is no historical precedent

To put a stooge in the office of the President

There's no such thing as a winnable war

It's a lie we don't reject anymore

Obama says we will protect you

I don't subscribe to this point of view

Believe me when I say to you

I know the Russians hate their children too

We share the same biology

Regardless of ideology

What might kill us, me, and you

US is Incapable of Removing Aspartame from Market, Consumer Protection shifts to International Focus

A horrifying conclusion, but these are the facts: without a massive overhaul at the FDA resulting from a very large hue and cry from the American public, nothing will ever get done in terms of the FDA removing this neurotoxic carcinogen from the market. There is considerable hope, however, in efforts going on right now in Sacramento, California to require a carcinogen label on aspartame containing products, as well as international efforts to fight back against the misleading corporate propaganda that assures hundreds of millions that "aspartame" is somehow safe to consume.

Talk about Fake News! These Ajinomoto guys in Japan win the Gold Prize for getting away with audaciously lying to consumers in every nation.

Demesia Padilla’s sudden resignation as Taxation and Revenue Department secretary last week sent a jolt through state government. It was also a blow to Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, who had stood by Padilla, one of her longest-serving Cabinet members, as the Attorney General’s Office carried out a monthslong investigation into Padilla’s personal finances and allegations that she tried to thwart a state audit into one of her former tax clients.

That changed last week as the contours of the investigation came into focus with the release of a stunning search warrant affidavit. The document, released a day after agents raided Padilla’s state offices, revealed that investigators were looking into a host of possible criminal activities, including tax evasion and embezzlement.

Martinez, who had once challenged the investigation as a politically motivated attack, accepted Padilla’s resignation and said she had ordered the tax department to fully cooperate with investigators.

With its theme of inconsolable grief and how to cope with it, director David Frankel’s (Marley & Me, The Devil Wears Prada) Collateral Beauty has the kind of story one usually experiences in low budget indies by filmmakers such as Jim Jarmusch. But this is a New Line Cinema, Village Roadshow Pictures, et al, feature being distributed by Warner Bros. with an A-list cast, written by Allan Loeb (the similarly-themed Things We Lost in the Fire, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), a screenwriter who “doggedly pursues and creates unique, character-driven films… grounded in authentic emotion, poignant honesty, and a deep sense of humanity,” according to press notes.

Part I. Personal

Wednesday evening I answered the phone, and a man pretending to work for the local sheriff's department asked me to identify myself, told me that the call would be recorded because it might be used against me in a court of law, and ordered me to get a pen and paper. He spoke fast and unclearly and with lots of strange background noises. He claimed that I had failed to appear for jury duty and I would be arrested if I didn't do what he said. (I'd received no notice of jury duty.)

The CIA conclusion that the Russians intervened in our elections in order to help elect Donald Trump has sent Washington into one of its fabled tizzies.

President Barack Obama has ordered an intelligence agency report before he leaves office. Democrats and responsible Republicans are calling for congressional investigations. Pundits are arguing the Russians — combined with FBI Director James Comey’s outrageous interventions — cost Hillary Clinton the election. In response, President-elect Trump is tweeting furiously about voter fraud, peddling lies about millions of illegal immigrants voting and many other things to distract from the escalating scandal.

Left out of this brouhaha is the systematic and purposeful voter suppression that certainly cost Clinton the election. The Russians didn’t do it. It was done by right-wing partisan state officials eager to suppress the vote of people of color, the young and the working poor. These efforts were open, systematic and widespread. And this domestic hacking at our elections was far more destructive than the hacking Russia is said to have done.