One of the most unfortunate side effects of Elon Musk’s recklessness over the last few years may wind up not being his potential breaching of securities laws and defiance of the SEC, but rather the fatal deaths associated with several Tesla accidents.
As a result of one of those accidents – a fatal Model X crash that we first documented back in March of 2018 – Tesla now finds itself on the receiving end of yet another lawsuit. The family of the man who died in the accident, Walter Huang, filed a complaint April 26 that claims his “state-of-the-art” Tesla lacked safety features, such as an automatic emergency braking system, which the family pointed out was available on less expensive vehicles from other carmakers.
The family also says that Tesla knew, or should have known “that the Tesla Model X was likely to cause injury to its occupants by leaving travel lanes and striking fixed objects when used in a reasonably foreseeable manner.”
The family says that Tesla should have issued a recall or provided a warning as a result.
B. Mark Fong, a lawyer for the family, said: “Tesla is beta testing its Autopilot software on live drivers. The Huang family wants to help prevent this tragedy from happening to other drivers using Tesla vehicles or any semi-autonomous vehicles.”
The State of California Department of Transportation is also named as a defendant, raising the question of when regulators could start to be held accountable for allowing Tesla vehicles equipped with Autopilot be marketed and sold the way they are.
Driving on Highway 101 near Mountain View, California, Huang’s Model X suffered a gruesome crash when the vehicle hit a carpool lane barrier, leading two more cars to crashing into it, and causing the lithium ion batteries powering the vehicle to ignite and explode, at which point the vehicle burst into flames.
“We saw a big cloud of smoke and then all of a sudden, there was a fire ball in the air,” witness Aiden Sanchez said at the time.
Huang was then taken to Stanford hospital and tragically, the California Highway Patrol announced the day of the accident that he had died from his injuries. According to a timeline of occurrences from the day of the crash, the cause of death appeared to be that the driver was “trapped” inside the burning car.
Walter Huang’s family tells Dan Noyes he took his Tesla to the dealer, complaining that — on multiple occasions — the auto-pilot veered toward that same barrier — the one his Model X hit on Friday when he died.
This leads us to ask: When looking back on how Tesla marketed and pitched Autopilot to its potential customers, will history be kind to Elon Musk when considering the cases of people like Walter Huang and their families?
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WltFFK Tyler Durden
Sleeping drugs such as Ambien have been making people kill themselves in their sleep, says the Food and Drug Administration. Drugs that supposedly help people sleep are linked to falls, burns, poisoning, limb loss, drowning, and even suicide.
According to The New York Times, this could all be solved by adding warning labels to the bottles of the pills instead of people trying to get off Big Pharma’s drugs.
Incidents related to sleeping pills have included “accidental overdoses, falls, burns, near drowning, exposure to extreme cold temperatures leading to loss of limb, carbon monoxide poisoning, drowning, hypothermia, motor vehicle collisions with the patient driving, and self-injuries such as gunshot wounds and apparent suicide attempts,” according to the FDA’s own research. But rather than tell people not to use such drugs, the FDA simply wants people to know they could kill themselves after taking the pills.
The FDA announced Tuesday that a prominent warning would be required on all medication guides for Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata, and the generic version of Ambien, which is called zolpidem. The FDA also mandates a separate warning against prescribing the drugs to anyone with a history of sleepwalking. –Futurism.
That’s a lovely side effect…
“Patients usually did not remember these events,” the agency wrote, according to Futurism. Bizarre actions have been widely reported after using sleeping pills, and the FDA has warned about this in the past – 12 years ago, in fact. That means this isn’t exactly new information. Big Pharma’s drugs have been problematic for quite some time now, but it is comforting to see others take note of just how disastrous some of these medications can be to humanity.
Some have expressed their surprise at the FDA’s admission that these pills may not be all that safe for people to use. “I am surprised to see this warning come out now,” University of Pennsylvania physician Ilene Rosen told The NYT.
“This is something I’ve been telling my patients for the last 15 years, and in the sleep community, this is well known. And I’d like to think we’ve done a good job putting the news out there, that these drugs have some risks.”
But all drugs have risks and hopefully, people will begin to realize that medications simply treat the symptom not the underlying problem that caused the issue to begin with. Western medicine is about management, not treatment. And it isn’t just Ambien and sleeping drugs humanity should be worried about; it’s all the drugs pushed on the public every single day.
Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients is great at explaining the dilemma we as a society have found ourselves in. We like to imagine that regulators have some code of ethics and let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve useless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients. This book shows the true scale of this murderous disaster. Goldacre believes we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how research misconduct in the medical industry affects us on a global scale.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2ZR79XB Tyler Durden
Facebook has unilaterally banned a handful controversial figures from its platform – while lumping conservative pundit Alex Jones, who has been criticized by white nationalists for not “naming the Jew” – in with documented anti-Semite Democrat ally, Louis Farrakhan.
The geniuses at Facebook really believe they won’t get accused of bias if they ban Farrakhan as well.
But the fact that they consider a brazen anti-Semite and racist in any way comparable to classical liberals and populists like @PrisonPlanet just shows their bias even more.
On Thursday, the social media giant announced total bans on Farrakhan and Jones, along with Paul Joseph Watson, Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer, Paul Nehlen, and Louis Farrakhan – labeling them “extremists” and “dangerous.”
What’s more, anyone who shares Infowars content on Facebook also faces a permanent ban.
🚨Read my lips. This is WORSE than the usual sorts of bans.
Facebook/Instagram:
“will remove ANY content containing Infowars videos, radio segments, or articles, and Facebook will remove any Groups set up to share Infowars content”
Watson, a former Infowars editor who recently launched his own website, Summit News, said that he was given no reason for the ban, and had not broken any rules.
Reports are true.
I have been banned by Facebook.
Was given no reason. I broke none of their rules.
In an authoritarian society controlled by a handful of Silicon Valley giants, all dissent must be purged.
Facebook saying they banned @PrisonPlanet & Laura Loomer because they’re “dangerous” is a lie. They know they’re not. What they’re really defining as dangerous is conservatism. This is why Facebook plans on also banning anyone who shares Infowars links. Their real target is YOU.
Loomer – who is also banned from Twitter, told The Wrap‘s Jon Levine that she now lives in a “digital gulag,” adding “even though I am a Zionist and have dedicated my life to combatting Jew hatred, these Nazis in Silicon Valley banned me during Yom Hashoah with vile Jew haters like Louis Farrakhan and Paul Nehlen.”
Laura Loomer texts me this after her social media bans today:
Also noteworthy is that several mainstream publications labeled Farrakhan as a “far-right” leader, despite the fact that he is a strong ally to the Democrats.
Notice that even @washingtonpost’s correction refuses to re-label Farrakhan as far-left. They simply go with “extremist” instead. Why is the media willing to label some folks far-right but unwilling to label others far-left? pic.twitter.com/OLAnvkgVVT
They will have to be forced into it. There is no voluntary rate cut and there never has been. This idea, however, is what’s being offered today in the wake of another stubborn line in the sand.
Central bankers are always, always the last to figure things out. Jay Powell was still talking about inflation and more aggressive monetary policy in the middle of December. He wasn’t thinking about any sort of “pause” back then, just a few months ago. He had his mind changed for him.
This new dovishness wasn’t his idea. It’s a stepped process.
At his press conference today, the Federal Reserve’s Chair (no more “man”) reiterated his new redline. Inflation is down again, unexpectedly, but it will surely pop right back up. What’s holding it back are some new “transitory” factors (mentioning airline tickets and financial services) that have, unexpectedly, replaced the old set of transitory factors (Verizon).
You may have noticed how there has been an almost continuous string of transitory factors that strung together add up to this persisting undershoot. Powell even had the nerve to use a form of that very word:
If we did see inflation running persistently below, that is something the committee would be concerned about and something we would take into account when setting policy.
If I am swimming in the deep end of a pool, and someone swimming underneath me reaches up and pulls me under the water’s surface, what matters, according to Powell, is not that I drown eventually it’s whether or not the same person holds me down the entire time. If that first devilish act is given up to a second’s, and then a third’s, maybe a fourth, each of those is to be treated separately and individually?
The more honest and unbiased out there among you might instead suspect that each of those transitory murderers was probably, likely connected together somehow. It would have to be some hugely random coincidence otherwise. The criminal investigation would start here, not end there in the usual shrug of the shoulders over a tragic accident.
The last 111 months (shown above) have been the very model of “persistent” when it comes to inflation. Economists would have you believe, though, that something substantial has changed in the past few years. The persistent undershoot is now persistent transitory inflation factors, as if that’s actually different even though both end up with the same result.
It is the theater of absurd repeating itself all over again. Nobody has paid any attention to Bill Dudley. That guy more than any of the others in 2007 made these very same mistakes of downplaying bad market signals. The eurodollar futures curve, in particular, warned him for months and months and months that the FOMC under Bernanke with Dudley as its chief advisor (Open Market Desk) was far, far more likely to cut rates than do anything else.
We know how it turned out; the rate cuts were only the beginning. It was a very different reality the whole Economist community had to be dragged kicking and screaming to face up to. A central banker is never cleverer than when being shown market data contradicting their predetermined conclusion.
To that end, is the third time the charm? Or is it Strike 3?
The only change to the FOMC’s policy today is IOER. The Committee has voted for a third “technical adjustment” to its policy mechanics. Starting tomorrow, the central bank will now pay 235 bps on excess reserves placed with the central bank. That’s a change to 15 bps below the upper bound (which didn’t change), 5 bps further down than today.
The entire FOMC affair is an abject lesson in the only reason why we pay attention to IOER. If they can’t get the small stuff right, if you have to struggle and adjust and fight just to keep the irrelevant federal funds rate on track, then no wonder you won’t see the reasons for an unwanted rate cut coming right at you. Three technical adjustments, but Jay Powell is right about transitory inflation?
The central bank’s shift follows an increase in recent weeks in the effective fed funds rate within that band. The benchmark has been above IOER for more than a month and this week crept up to 2.45 percent, fueled in part by rates squeezing higher in other short-term funding markets.
WHY ARE RATES BEING SQUEEZED HIGHER IN OTHER SHORT-TERM FUNDING MARKETS?
Even if you believe the problem is QT, you still have a big problem. Where are the dealers? In the absence of the Fed’s bank reserves, the private banking dealer system should be filling in the vacuum. That’s their entire purpose. A resilient monetary system, as Janet Yellen used to say, wouldn’t need the Fed’s balance sheet at all.
But it’s not QT. It is instead the dealers, the only “money” that matters. They won’t supply it. Increasingly, they are hoarding. Again.
Jay Powell looks at the unemployment rate and from it alone he, like Yellen and Bernanke, concludes a whole bunch of sweeping generalizations that are about to blow up in his face. At less than 4%, to officials it must mean: the financial system is totally healed; the economy is fully mended; and all because central bankers know what they are talking about. QE was genius.
There’s just no inflation, there’s not even wage data (the latest Employment Cost Index, released yesterday, shown above) to suggest there’s a tight labor market let alone one epically imbalanced in the positive direction, and now proliferating minuses all over the global economic landscape. Three technical adjustments. The very things that would make an honest person a little skeptical about the mainstream story, maybe even to consider a better chance of a rate cut certainly than rate hike. Whether or not Jay Powell today wants to, that’s entirelybeside the point.
He has no idea what he is doing. Kicking and screaming. Don’t fight the Fed? The Fed always fights…reality.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VbUeRm Tyler Durden
Cyclone Fani is crossing over the Indian Ocean with speeds above 200 km/h (127 mph), is expected to make landfall on Friday in the state of Orissa, an eastern Indian state on the Bay of Bengal that has a population of roughly 45 million, reported CNN.
Fani has been labeled as an “extremely severe cyclonic storm” by Indian government officials, prompting them to call up the Coast Guard and Navy to deploy ships, ground vehicles, and helicopters for relief and rescue operations through the weekend. Military units have established temporary camps in Odisha, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh states, on standby to assist local law enforcement in search and rescue operations once the storm passes.
Across Odisha, more than 900 shelters have been erected to house evacuees, and the school system has been shut down across the state for the foreseeable future.
“They are being told what to take with them if they leave and the precautions they need to take if they stay,” said Ameya Patnaik, assistant commandant for the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) in Odisha.
More than 1 million people have been evacuated from Odisha. Evacuations have also begun in Andhra Pradesh, while those in West Bengal have been told by government officials to be ready to leave, said CNN.
Fani will bring massive storm surges and significant wind damage near the landfall location. Inland flooding will be a significant threat. Portions of eastern India and Bangladesh can expect 6 to 12 inches of rain. As Fani approaches India, it will be moving nearly parallel to the coast.
Bloomberg reported that several companies with operations in the region are taking precautionary measures. State-run power producer NTPC Ltd. shut down one of its 3,000-megawatt Talcher Kaniha plant in Odisha on Thursday, said Operations Director Prakash Tiwari.
Indian Oil Corp., which operates a large refinery at Paradip in coastal Odisha, has begun to take necessary steps to control the impact, said B.V. Rama Gopal, refineries director.
“Weather is clear as of now and operations are all normal,” he said. “Paradip refinery is designed to withstand cyclones with speed of more than 200 kilometers per hour.”
Airlines have also prepared for the storm. Hundreds of flights have been canceled to Bhubaneswar, capital of Odisha, and Kolkata, capital of West Bengal, through Sunday. IndiGo airlines canceled all flights to Visakhapatnam, in Andhra Pradesh, for Thursday.
Fani is the first cyclone of the year in the northern Indian Ocean. It’s likely this large storm will wobble closer to the Indian coastline Thursday night, then make landfall in the Odisha region sometime Friday.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Jb5ztz Tyler Durden
Every government intervention into the economy may not be socialism, but it is a step toward socialism.
Interventionists claim to advocate for a ‘third way’ of economic organization, one that preserves the productive nature of capitalism, while merely reining in some of its destructive excesses.
For instance, Sen. Elizabeth Warren last year described herself as a “capitalist to the bone,” even declaring “I believe in markets and the benefits they can produce when they work.”
However, she added the caveat that it is “markets with rules” that can create value and insisted “markets worked better” during the timeframe of 1935 to 1980 in large part due to “more aggressive regulation of markets.”
But is there a reasonable “third way”?
The defining difference between socialism and capitalism, as described by Ludwig von Mises in his 1950 essay “Middle of the Road Policy Leads to Socialism,” is “the substitution of public control of the means of production for private control.”
More properly understood, socialism would eliminate the private ownership of the means of production by capitalists.
So efforts to impose “more aggressive regulation of markets” – which typically amount to more confiscatory taxes and stricter government regulations – may fall short of actual socialism, but erode the defining characteristic of capitalism, namely private ownership over the means of production.
It is important here to note that ownership implies the right to utilize, trade or otherwise dispose of property as the owner sees fit, as long as his actions don’t infringe on the rights of others.
Any restrictions on the owner’s use, therefore, represents an erosion of private property rights over the means of production, and a step in the direction of centralized, or public, control over those means.
Taxes, naturally, erode ownership rights of the capitalist by forcibly confiscating a portion of the fruits of the capitalist’s utilization of the means of production under his ownership, and shift them into the hands of a centralized authority.
Regulations restricting free exchange in the marketplace likewise curtail private ownership rights. Indeed, as Mises discussed, establishing price controls even over one product will not only restrict the free exchange of that item, it will lead to a domino effect whereby the end result may be full-blown socialism.
Take the case of a price ceiling imposed by the government on milk, established behind the reason to make milk affordable, and thus available, to more consumers. “The result is that the marginal producers of milk, those producing at the highest cost, now incur losses” because they are unable to sell their product at a profit, wrote Mises.
In response, these producers will instead use their means of production like cows, farm equipment and labor to produce, for instance, butter, cheese or meat. The result will be less milk available for consumers.
As such, the price ceiling will create a condition contrary to what the government intended with the ceiling in the first place. It brings about a state of affairs “even less desirable than the previous state of affairs which it was designed to improve,” wrote Mises.
To correct this situation, the government then must add “a second decree fixing the prices of the factors of production necessary for the production of milk” in order for the marginal producers to no longer suffer losses.
But then the supply of the factors of production for milk will end up being reduced, “and again the government is back where it started,” observed Mises. This additional intervention will set off a chain reaction that quickly spreads, as “the same story repeats itself on a remoter plane.”
If the government doesn’t want to admit defeat and wants to avoid shortages of milk, it will have to continue to set price ceilings for those factors necessary to produce the factors of production for milk, and then for the factors needed to produce those factors, and so on, ad infinitum.
“Thus the government is forced to go further and further, fixing step by step the prices of all consumers’ goods and of all the factors of production” in order to see the amount of milk the government wants to see produced, Mises wrote.
And no industry can be excluded from these price controls, because, as Mises pointed out, “capital and labor would tend to flow into them and the result would be a drop in the supply of those goods” that had their prices fixed by government order.
At this point of government control of prices over all the means of production, Mises concluded, “This is no longer capitalism, it is all-around planning by the government, it is socialism.”
This was no theorizing, either. As Mises pointed out, during World War II “Great Britain again resorted to price ceilings for a few vital commodities,” which lead to a chain reaction just as Mises described until the country had “substituted all-around planning of the country’s whole economy for economic freedom.” By the time the war concluded, “Great Britain was a socialist commonwealth.”
There is no sustainable “third way” to organize the economy. The fundamental struggle is between capitalism and socialism, between true private ownership over the means of production and their collective ownership.
Any intervention, even those thought to be benign, eats away at private ownership rights and pushes the economy toward socialism. As Mises argued: “Interventionism cannot be considered as an economic system destined to stay. It is a method for the transformation of capitalism into socialism by a series of successive steps.”
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2ZT6dly Tyler Durden
On the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia, a cruise ship belonging to the Church of Scientology has been quarantined after a case of measles turned up on board, according to the NYT.
Dr. Merlene Fredericks-James, the nation’s chief medical officer directed that all passengers and crew were not allowed to leave the ship on Tuesday. Meanwhile, measles is in the midst of its largest outbreak in 25 years with more than 700 cases reported.
Dr. Fredericks-James said:
“Because of the risk of potential infection, not just from the confirmed measles case but from other persons who may be on the boat at the time, we thought it prudent to make a decision not to allow anyone to disembark.”
The name of the ship was identified as the “Freewinds,” which is reportedly owned and operated by the Church of Scientology, according to Victor Theodore, a St. Lucia Coast Guard sergeant. “Freewinds” was moored in St. Lucia on Thursday morning, according to online records.
Several high profile Scientologists have spoken out against vaccines in the past, despite the church saying it “takes no position one way or the other on [the] issue”. The President of the Church of Scientology New York, John Carmichael, said in 2016 that “the church had not taken a stance on vaccinations as a religious principle.”
He continued:
“Scientologists are pretty independent people, though I will say this: they tend to do a little more research, perhaps, on the effect of various medical procedures or whatever. They make their own decisions, but those aren’t decisions that the church tries to influence in any way.”
Scientology has called the “Freewinds” a ship that is home to “a religious retreat ministering the most advanced level of spiritual counseling in the Scientology religion” and “the pinnacle of a deeply spiritual journey.” The Church says it is used to carry out “humanitarian missions” across the world. Meanwhile, in 2011, an Australian woman claimed she was held against her will on the ship.
Scientology’s website says: “The Freewinds is a very special place. It is the one place a Scientologist may go and be certain he will be able to devote himself entirely to his religious practice and in the company of people who share his religious commitment and outlook on life in general.”
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VbTCv5 Tyler Durden
Millennial and generation Z workers are becoming increasingly miserable with their jobs and careers. Since we are told several times a day by the media that the economy is booming, why are so many young workers so disastrously melancholy all the time?
“When you’re struggling with your mental health it can be much harder to stay in work or manage your spending, while being in debt can cause huge stress and anxiety – so the two issues feed off each other, creating a vicious cycle which can destroy lives,”said Helen Undy the institute’s chief executive.“Yet despite how connected these problems are, financial services rarely think about our mental health, and mental health services rarely consider what is happening with our money.”
So why are we constantly being told everything is fine? The mainstream media loves to say that the U.S. is nearly ten years into one of the longest economic expansions in history, unemployment is the lowest it’s been in almost half a century, and employees have more job choices than they’ve had in years. But there’s just one problem. That’s not actual truthful when taking all of the data into consideration. Sure, unemployment is low the way the government calculates it, but there’s a reason for that. 102 million Americans are no longer “in the workforce” and therefore, unaccounted for.
When a working-age American does not have a job, the federal number crunchers put them into one of two different categories. Either they are categorized as “unemployed” or they are categorized as “not in the labor force”.
But you have to add both of those categories together to get the total number of Americans that are not working.
Over the last decade, the number of Americans that are in the “unemployed” category has been steadily going down, but the number of Americans “not in the labor force” has been rapidly going up.
In both cases we are talking about Americans that do not have a job. It is just a matter of how the federal government chooses to categorize those individuals. –Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog
That could partially explain the misery some are feeling, but those who have jobs aren’t happy either. They are often reeling from student loan and credit card debt. Being depressed makes shopping feel like a solution, but when the bill comes, the depression once again sets in making this a difficult cycle to break for so many just trying to scrape by.
Depression and suicide rates are rising sharply and other than putting the blame on superficial issues, researchers are at a loss as to the real reason why. But could it possibly be that as the elite globalists continue to take over the world and enslave mankind, people are realizing that they aren’t meant to be controlled or manipulated, but meant to be free?
There’s something we are all missing all around the globe. Could it possibly be free will and a life of freedom from theft and violent coercion and force that’s missing?
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2JhJgml Tyler Durden
Barely a week after FBI and IRS agents raided her two homes, office at city hall and a non-profit belonging to a friend, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh’s lawyer said Thursday that his client would resign, making her the second Baltimore mayor to leave office under a cloud of corruption in the past decade.
Pugh, who has been on a leave of absence since April 1, the same day that Gov. Larry Hogan said he would call for a criminal investigation into allegations of self-dealing, reportedly tried to make a run for it after the raids. Shortly beforehand, members of the city council signed a letter asking her to resign.
According to the Washington Post, Pugh’s resignation brings her more than two-decade career in politics to an end. Her candidacy for mayor was championed by Elijah Cummings (yes, that Elijah Cummings) one of Maryland’s most influential politicians, and she initially triumphed in a hotly contested primary as the city reeled from the aftermath of the Freddie Gray riots.
A scandal erupted in March when the Baltimore Sun revealed that Pugh, who sat on the board of the University of Maryland Hospital System, was paid half a million dollars for 100,000 copies of her “Healthy Holly” children’s books (there’s suspicion that half of these books were never even delivered, yet Pugh was paid in full).
But more galling, Pugh was also paid $100,000 by Kaiser Permanente, the managed care consortium that was in the process of securing a $48 million contract with the city.
Her departure will usher in another era of political instability in a city that’s struggle with high levels of violent crime and deep mistrust of the police following the Gray killing and several other corruption scandals.
Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young, 64, who has been serving as acting mayor in Pugh’s absence, will replace Pugh at the helm of city government until next year’s election, where he said he would not seek another term.
Utilizing language favored by President Trump, Pugh initially derided the “Healthy Holly” scandal as a “Witch Hunt” before issuing a public apology.
Though facing potential criminal charges, Pugh’s position as mayor was relatively secure: According to the city charter, there is no way for the council or the governor to remove her from office.
Which suggests to us that she got the tap from prosecutors that they wanted her to resign as the investigation ramps up.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Y7MsFf Tyler Durden
Chips, candy, and carbonated beverages may soon be off the list of for food stamper recipients…
In the ongoing battle to reorganize a federal welfare program, the state of Texas is considering a bill that would prohibit people on the taxpayer-funded Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Plan (SNAP) from purchasing junk food, including caffeinated beverages, candy, cookies, and some types of salty snacks.
State Representative Briscoe Cain (R-Baytown) is the man behind HB 4364 – the latest attempt to force benefit recipients to make healthier food choices.
Mr. Cain made his intentions clear:
“At-risk Texans and families who utilize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are often the most susceptible to diabetes and the serious complications associated with it. HB 4364 seeks to curb the spread of diabetes and other health complications among Texans in at-risk populations by eliminating sugary drinks and snacks from the state’s nutrition assistance program.”
The bill is specific in outlining the types of consumables Cain believes are detrimental to the health of his fellow Texans. For example, any beverage that “contains 65 milligrams of caffeine per eight fluid ounces, a carbonated beverage, a sweetened beverage,” and what may be considered sacrilege in the Lone Star state, “potato or corn chips.” How will folks scoop up salsa, pico de gallo, and guacamole without corn chips?
There is good news for Texans currently depending on food stamps – coffee and naturally sweetened juice drinks are exempt from the proposed law.
It sounds like a solid, well researched plan — but will it pass through both chambers and land on Governor Greg Abbot’s desk for signature?
Unsuccessful Attempts
A similar proposal was narrowly rejected by the Arkansas state House of Representatives in a 31-29 vote earlier in the year. It was the second attempt in as many years and made it to the Senate, where it stalled and was left dead on the chamber floor.
The United States Department of Agriculture recently released a report on what recipients spend their monthly benefits on, and it paints an unhealthy picture with point of sale tallies showing 23 cents of every food-stamp dollar spent on processed food – terrible nutrition. Leading the junk food pack was the purchase of sugary, carbonated beverages, with the only other category in which more money was spent being “meat, poultry, and seafood.”
But the study also compared the purchasing habits of non-SNAP beneficiaries and found that most Americans are steering into the skid of obesity, heart problems, diabetes, and ongoing health crisis – with our without food stamps.
SNAP’s Love Affair With Diabetes And Obesity
Cindy Leung, a nutrition researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, is warning of the alarming connections between SNAP recipients and obesity. She found that “SNAP participants had double the odds of obesity compared to eligible non-participants.”
Leung also concludes that “The diets of low-income children are far from meeting national dietary recommendations. Policy changes should be considered to restructure SNAP to improve children’s health.”
Mr. Cain knows nearly 3 million people have diabetes in Texas and type 2 diabetes is directly linked to poor nutritional choices and obesity. The cost to treat Texans with the disease is estimated at $23.7 billion every year as serious complications like heart disease, stroke, amputation, end-stage kidney disease, and blindness are part and parcel with Diabetes progression.
It is the Texas legislator’s goal to rein in expenditures through SNAP to healthier, nutritionally balanced choices. If the bill does get the nod from Texas lawmakers, it still must be approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture – and you can bet on salty snack and soda pop lobbyists lurking around in the Swamp are going to pull out all the stops to keep that from happening.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Y23Nzi Tyler Durden
