California Bans All Ivory

California under Governor Jerry Brown has taken decisive action to ban virtually all trade in ivory and rhino horn in the state. The Governor signed AB96 into law on Sunday. Owners can sell ivory and rhino horn up until the deadline of July 1, 2016 After that penalties for violations reach up to $50,000 fine and a year in prison, a felony crime. The legislation was hailed by elephant conservationist working desperately to save the planets remaining pachyderms from the ruthless onslaught of poachers. California was among the world's major consumer markets for ivory. California joins New York and New Jersey as states that have passed a comprehensive trade ban. Washington state may be next as Microsoft founder Paul Allen has funded an initiative to ban ivory, horn and body parts from trade. These bans need to be extended nationwide so the United States can take the lead in eradicating this despicable predation without moral justification. The recent African Elephant Summit in Botswanna issued a statement saying that African elephants may go extinct in the next ten years if draconian measure are not taken to save Earth's most majestic and wise land animal. People who want the elephant to survive can help by touring those dwindling areas of the world that are wild. US Person tells you it will be beautiful experience, and well worth the expense. Safaris pay the bills that keep game parks and their wild inhabitants secure. Kenyan wildlife expert Jonathan Scott says, "if we abandon tourism, we abandon conservation."

US Wastes Seafood

Fishing stocks are plummeting around the globe leaving the seas empty, but the United States wastes around 40-47% of the seafood it harvests annually according to recent calculations. That is enough protein to feed about 10 million men. Researchers published in Global Environmental Change concluded about 2.3 billion pounds of seafood go to waste in the supply change from fishing boat to table between 2009 and 2013. Total annual supply was estimated at 4.7 billion pounds.  Consumers throw away the most--51 to 63%--while bycatch counted for 16-32%. The size of the loss concerns the study's authors because of the impact on ecological systems and treating aquatic systems as though they were limitless is detrimental to public health and the environment. They recommend stricter bycatch reduction programs, more consumption of parts not typically eaten, and marketing seafood in smaller packages.

Toontime: The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Redux

credit: Robert Ariail
Wackydoodle sez: Y'al never knows when ya need a good ploy!

One could call it the death by a thousand e-mails: the death of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. Right wing activists are making sure this story does not go away anytime soon. According to Bloomberg there are 30 FOIA suits pending against Ms. Clinton because of her ill-advised use of a private internet server for official government business while she headed the State Department She really has her self to blame for this persistent torment by giving her adversaries such as easy target. Requested records concern the Benghazi attack. potential conflicts of interest between her husband's foundation seeking donations from foreign leaders, and her aide's employment for the Clinton foundation and the federal government. The dispute has become a daily distraction for the campaign and has allowed her socialist rival to gain ground as well as entice more competition from Vice President Joe Biden. A federal judge has ordered Clinton to turn overs some 30,000 work-related correspondence on a rolling basis by the end of January. The right-wing Scaife Foundation of Pittsburg is partially funding Judicial Watch, the organization behind most of the e-mail requests. It has an annual budget of $30 million.

Ms. Clinton was apparently warned of the potential problems of using a private server by her staff according to released communications. The former Secretary of State was concerned about a 2011 hacking of Google's Gmail which prompted her switch to a private server in New York.  Suspected Chinese hackers tried to steal the passwords for hundreds of Gmail accounts held by senior officials.  She discussed her concerns with State Department staff who were not unanimous in supporting her decision to use a private facility, her chief of staff among those recommending caution. So far 403 classified e-mails have been found in the released documents, including three marked "secret".

Police Homicide, Inc.: More Unlawful Killings

Think US Person is exaggerating the police brutality trend? Just look at this video in which Delaware police kill a man in a wheelchair. The victim ignored or was unable to put his hands up. Someone shouts, "What gun?" in response to police orders. Go to this link to read the latest about the latest police killings in September that totaled 99. The police in this country are becoming the corporatist sweepers of a dystopian future in which their job has become little more than disposing of the mentally ill, the unwanted, or disruptive:

COTW: Inhumane Drug Prices

No wonder 'Mericans are angered by prescription drug prices.  This table compares US prices with four other developed countries that have socialized medicine:

In every case US prices are considerably higher. Similar price differentials exist for common diagnostic and surgery procedures. Former hedge fund head Martin Shkreli hiked the price of Enbrel, used to treat AIDs cases and toxoplasmosis, 5500% overnight. Daraprim (generic name) cost about $1 per pill to make and has been in the pharmacopia for sixty years. When Shkreli acquired the drug the price for a bottle when from $405 to $22,500. Other examples of price gouging are those by Valeant Pharmaceuticals which increased the price for two heart drugs, 515% and 212% the same day they were acquired.  An antibiotic, Doxycyclene, was increased in price from $20 to $1849 within a six month period, but the real story is that drug prices have going up rapidly for the past 10 years despite passage of the Affordable Care Act. Cash buyers in the US face the highest prices of all, often these are the poorest citizens without drug coverage. The federal institutional buyers such as the Veterans Administration and the Defense Department pay the lowest prices in the country at 58% of the cash price. Other instituional buyers such as hospitals, Medicare Part D and HMOs pay 5-30% less. Once again the economic leverage exerted by a single payer is demonstrated in these statistics. So US Person says one more time: Medicare for All!

Long Time Coming: Banning Blood Ivory

mature bulls, credit: NatGeo

After the visit of Chinese Premier Xi, the White House was able to announce Friday that both countries have committed to ivory trade bans. The trade bans are described as "nearly complete". China is the world leader in ivory consumption, but the US is not far behind. This is the first time China and the US have made a specific, public commitment to protect wildlife. This precedent is significant because the Chinese government controls the Chinese ivory trade itself. Conservationists welcome the announcement with reservations about its actual implementation as an elephant is illegally killed every 15 minutes for its tusks.

credit: B. Stirton

The enormous pressure of poaching is having genetic effects for elephants in Africa. In Mozambique, where a decades long civil war nearly wiped out elephants, a generation of tuskless elephants has been produced because individuals with tusks were selectively slaughtered to fuel the civil war with materiel and manpower. Despite  increasing trade restrictions, trophy tusks can still be imported into the US with proper certificates. All trophy hunting should be stopped immediately world-wide to reduce the unsustainable rate of elephant mortality. China has lobbied hard in the past to obtain permission from CITES to conduct a controlled domestic market . Under pressure from the world's second largest economy, CITES granted the request for an exemption to the global embargo begun in 1990 in 2008. China bought 73 tons of ivory from African countires, and attempted to legitimize the domestic carving industry by adding it to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The government encouraged more trade by raising the price of ivory. No wonder China's internal ivory trade controls have largely failed.

An established fact is that the illegal trade in ivory is closely linked to terrorist organizations and criminal syndicates. Pope Francis has earned a reputation as an environmentalist, but his own Vatican trinket store, Savelli Gallery, sells hundreds of objects made from ivory. The Vatican city-state has not signed the CITES treaty, so it is not subject to the global ivory ban. This has to change immediately. Pope Francis, US Person aka "the Lawyer from Hell", hopes you read this post and take appropriate action as you did at the Vatican's bank. Your city-state cannot afford to be in the same business as bombers and crime lords who heartlessly destroy one of God's most impressive creatures for gain.  After all, Holy Father, Jesus threw out the moneychangers in the temple.

Tru'merica: Who Is Dorothy Day?

Pope Francis mentioned her among the great modern Americans, but she is practically unknown. She is a potential saint, and an American that should be better known for the right reasons. This short video explains who is Dorothy Day, founder of the movement newspaper The Catholic Worker:



Predictably, but no less disgustingly, the extreme right in America is becoming biblical in its attacks against a world leader it sees as socialist and anti-capitalist. Mouthpieces like Fox News, Washington Times and Newsmax are invoking their multi-purpose authority for matters eschatological, Revelations, to label the Catholic Church's leader a "false prophet". The fact is the Catholic Church as an institution espouses a non-capitalist economic philosophy. The Church understands that markets are made up of people, and any view that considers them perfect or beyond social control is engaging immoral idolatry. No wonder Catholic John Boehner is resigning. The House is full of extremist 'tea partiers' who have debased the Republican Party beyond recognition and demanded Boehner's resignation. Pundits dub them the Kamikaze Caucus because of their single-minded determination to once again shut down the federal government, their own 'Great Satan'. US Person believes their religiously tinged fear-mongering is causing Dwight Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt to turn in their graves.