XTIVIA aligns plumbing distributor, Plumbers Supply Company, with local plumbing companies for enhanced automation, collaboration, and data visibility through their consulting engagement and implementation of Salesforce and Salesforce Customer Communities as their materials and project management application.
After 92 years of being in business, Plumbers Supply Company has accumulated decades of historical data in their back-end inventory and accounting system. This data was not actionable and there was exclusive reliance on phone conversations to distribute data to their customers. Through several iterations and data cleansing efforts, there is now a seamless, real-time integration from this system into Salesforce.
The business and industry needed a fully customized application with an enhanced user experiences and business rules to drive adoption. This integral feature was launched simultaneously for their customers to expedite requests and orders. Internally, Plumbers Supply had complete visibility to the voice of their customers and was better suited to fulfill their needs. Through text, image and video mediums, customers were able to clearly articulate their message; and criteria based assignment ensured these requests were handled by the appropriate staff member.
Exposing internal data to their customers was a task that was not taken lightly. Data integrity was paramount, as was data security to ensure the right information was delivered to the right person at the right time. Leveraging and configuring the Salesforce Community allowed more efforts to be focused on branding and data delivery as opposed to backend security architecture. Furthermore, pre-existing user interface templates and overall formatting allowed for rapid deployment, ease of training and quicker user adoption. Seamless integration with the internal Salesforce instance tied everything together with minimal expenditure as compared to developing a customer portal from scratch.
And the process continues. As the organization continues to evolve, Salesforce evolves. Through a carefully orchestrated change management process and ongoing consulting arrangement, Plumbers Supply Company will continue to grow by adding functionality, expanding utilization into new departments and finding new ways to attract, retain and sell to their customers.


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text:
Proportionality in East Asia
In Asia, only the courts in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea deploy Structured Proportionality (SP) , i.e the Courts reason through a structured Proportionality Analysis (PA) sequentially and they use PA to enforce constitutional rights against the government routinely and regularly. This Presentation will explore how these East Asian Courts use SP, and explain why in Asia, SP is exclusive to these three East Asian jurisdictions, while other Asian courts may have PA in form but do not use it regularly in practice.
Proportionality in Southeast Asia
Among the courts in Southeast Asia, the use of proportionality has been sporadic and anemic. But there are signs of a shift. Some Southeast Asian courts have begun to embrace and develop a proportionality analysis to scrutinize government rights restrictions. The Malaysian apex court's use of structured proportionality in several recent decisions, for instance, marks a shift in legal doctrine and, more broadly, a shift in the judiciary's perception of its own institutional position. That example has important resonance for courts in other fragile Southeast Asian democracies, many of which operate in challenging political systems with military regimes or dominant political parties.
Proportionality in South Asia
South Asian judiciaries have adopted – or have claimed to adopt – proportionality in ad hoc, unstructured fashion. In practice, the higher courts of India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka have blurred the distinction between constitutional and administrative law, applying less searching standards such as Wednesbury under the guise of proportionality. In Bangladesh, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court has adopted a more fleshed-out "reasonableness" test. But this approach, too, defers to reasonable legislation without the scrutiny of structured proportionality. This Presentation will explore these developments within the peculiar political and institutional context of South Asia in which courts, echoing their British roots, remain ostensibly deferential to lawmakers, but nonetheless exercise (often) untrammeled powers of judicial review.
Discussant
Rosalind Dixon will offer commentary, including by drawing on her recent work on hybrid models of proportionality and tiered scrutiny in Australia. Specifically, she will draw on her recent argument in the (Australian) Federal Law Review that proposes a test of 'calibrated proportionality', which looks to a range of context-specific factors and constitutional values to help calibrate the intensity of the Court's application of the tests of 'necessity' and 'adequacy in the balance' under a test of structured proportionality.
Proportionality in the U.S. and Latin America
My paper will discuss some of the historical institutional features, including especially the presence vel non of stable, centrist political parties, mediating legislative and administrative institutions, and the subject matter jurisdiction of apex courts, that have made the United States and Latin America differentially fertile ground for proportionality-style reasoning. I will also discuss how more recent evolution in these features might bear upon particular jurisdictions' current fit with proportionality.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Is The Philippine Judicial System Effective in Fighting Corruption?
This research study, entitled "Is the Philippine Judicial System Effective in Fighting Corruption?" was prepared by the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) in partnership with Transparency International (TI)-Philippines.
In early November 2006, Transparency International (TI), in its 2006 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), rated the Philippines as among 163 countries whose ranking fell to 121 from 117 in 2005. TI also ranked the Philippines as the third most corrupt country in the Association of Southeast Asian (ASEAN) region next to Myanmar and Indonesia.
Earlier in 2004, TI's Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) named the judiciary as among the top institutions where the incidence of corruption is very high in the Philippines. Likewise, topping the GCB with the judiciary was law enforcement, another pillar of the criminal justice system.
These studies by TI about the incidence of corruption in the Philippines have been disputed by the government of President Gloria M. Arroyo, particularly its anti-corruption consultant and the Ombudsman both of whom called the findings of TI in its GCB - as well as of the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, Ltd. (PERC) - as mere perceptions. Their reactions suggested that government was doing all it can to address the endemic problem, and that corruption had been minimized and, hence, should not be projected internationally as a hopeless case.
Assistant Ombudsman Cyril Ramos also dismissed perceptions that the country's judicial institutions are toothless in the crusade against corruption for failing to convict powers-that-be or, in his own words, the "big fish". On the contrary, he said, several municipal and city mayors have been convicted for graft and related offenses by the Sandiganbayan.
CenPEG and TI thus planned this study in order to evaluate the validity of these claims to the effect that government institutions including the Ombudsman and Sandiganbayan, as well as other agencies have been playing their part in the prompt and fair investigation and judicial disposition of complaints regarding graft and corruption and related cases. The study focuses particularly on the performance of the Ombudsman, as a pillar of the judicial system, and the Sandiganbayan, the anti-graft court, from 2001 to May 2006, or during the present term of Mrs. Arroyo.
The study also covers the performance of the media in publicizing reports about graft and corruption in order to gauge the industry's adversarial role vis-à-vis government especially in checking its excesses and abuses. Another important pillar of the judicial system, the citizens movement or grassroots organizations, is included in the study because of their equally crucial role in the fight against corruption during the period.


Our busy modern lives disconnect us from all sorts of things – how food is grown, how goods are produced, our waste dealt with, and the processes behind recycling. The following is a brief overview how some products are recycled past the point of extraction from the waste stream.
After arriving at a smelter and inspected, the crushed aluminum cans are shredded. The pieces are then heated to remove the paint and any moisture, after which the material passes over fine screens to remove contaminants.
The material is heated again to melting point (around 600C) and chemicals added to separate more impurities that are then skimmed off. Aluminium and other metals may then be added to bring molten material to the required alloy specification.
The molten aluminum is poured into very large ingots and once cooled and cleaned, sent through rollers multiple times until a thin sheet is produced; which can then be remade into cans.
It's an energy intensive process, but the recycling energy savings are around 95% compared to mining and smelting from new raw materials and aluminium can be recycled an unlimited number of times.
After arriving at a steel smelter, bales of crushed cans are placed in a furnace with other recyclable steel. Molten iron is added and oxygen is pumped into the furnace, which heats up to around 1700 degrees Celsius, for 30 minutes. By the end of this time, impurities have been driven or skimmed off.
The molten steel is poured into large ingots, which go through multiple rollers while still very hot until the desired thickness is achieved for making products such as cans.
While the steel can recycling process doesn't have as many stages as aluminium cans, much higher temperatures are used therefore requiring more energy. Regardless, the recycling energy savings are around 62 – 74%. Steel can be recycled over and over in this way.
This deals specifically with PETE (or PET) plastics (plastic resin code 1).The bottles are first inspected for foreign materials then sorted into colors. The bottles are then sterilised, crushed and chopped into flakes.
The flakes undergo another separation and cleaning process to remove remaining foreign materials. The flakes are then chemically reverse engineered by either methanolysis or glycolosis, which can restore the material to the original raw materials and blended to create new PET.
The recycling energy savings of plastic soda and water bottles is around 90%.
Glass bottles are separated by color and broken into small pieces, usually at a recycling center, in order to cut down on volume for shipping. They are then transported to a bottle making plant where the material is crushed. Magnets, filters and vacuums remove foreign objects such as labels and metals. The cleaned powdered glass, known as cullet, is mixed with raw materials and placed in a furnace which melts it into molten glass; ready to be formed into new bottles and jars.
Glass recycling uses only two-thirds the energy needed to manufacture glass from raw materials.
The paper is sorted according to quality and shipped to a paper mill where water is added in order to turn it into a pulp. Foreign matter is then removed by various filters and screens. Chemicals are added to remove the ink from the pulp. Depending on the type of process, de-inking can be a simple detergent process or one that may involve chlorine or other more harmful chemicals depending on the ink being removed. The ink used in newspapers and packaging these days is usually soy-based; however, copy machine and laser printed document "ink" is a plastic polymer burned onto the page that requires harsher processes to remove.
Once de-inked, pulp is flushed with more water and air is injected to form an inky foam that is skimmed. The remaining water is drained and reused. The pulp is then bleached – more often with hydrogen peroxide these days as chlorine can combine with organic materials to form dioxins – one of the most deadly of man-made poisons.
More chemicals may be added at that point and the final pulp is either pressed into sheets and dried or mixed in with virgin pulp.
Recycling paper uses about 60% less energy than making paper from new materials; however, each time paper is recycled, it loses quality – so in effect it is really downcycled each time. Given the wide range of processes that may be used, not all recycled paper is created equal from an environmental aspect.
Another product often recycled is motor oil – most people don't realize that motor oil can be fully recycled into new motor oil as it never wears out; it just gets dirty. I describe the motor oil recycling process here.
As you can see from above – recycling isn't all that straightforward and there can be a lot of chemicals involved. We all need to continue recycling of course, but reducing consumption is equally as important. For example, perhaps next time you feel like a can of soda, consider heading to the tap for a glass of water instead. Instead of buying newspaper, duck online and read it there.


ATLANTA - Dave Justice is among those wondering what he could've done in a full year for the Atlanta Braves. Then again, he's just glad he got to play at all.
Justice, who began the season in the minor leagues, didn't get a chance to start full-time until Dale Murphy was traded in early August. But once he broke into the lineup, he broke loose.
``If Dale had not been traded, I probably would still be platooning at first. I wouldn't be sitting here,'' Justice said yesterday after being selected National League rookie of the year in a near-unanimous vote.
Justice hit 28 home runs, most of them after Murphy went to Philadelphia and right field opened up. In 127 games and 439 at-bats, Justice batted .282 with 78 runs batted in.
Justice got 23 of 24 first-place votes for 118 points. Montreal second baseman Delino DeShields got the other first-place vote and 60 points.
Hal Morris, Cincinnati first baseman was third, followed by John Burkett, San Francisco pitcher; Mike Harkey, Chicago Cubs pitcher; Todd Zeile, St. Louis catcher, and two Montreal outfielders, Marquis Grissom and Larry Walker.
-- ESPN will begin its Sunday night coverage of the 1991 major league season on April 14 with the Seattle Mariners at the American League champion Oakland A's.
ESPN will televise games on 25 consecutive Sunday nights.
-- SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Voters rejected a tax-funded stadium for the San Francisco Giants, casting the baseball team's future in Northern California in doubt.
Owner Bob Lurie announced today that the Giants would stay in San Francisco in 1991 and that he would make a decision about 1992 early next year.
Voters in five Santa Clara County communities defeated the 1 percent utility tax to finance a 45,000-seat, $153 million ballpark that would have opened in 1994, replacing aging, windswept Candlestick Park.
-- Seattle's Ken Griffey, Jr. hit a two-run homer and Cecil Fielder hit a three-run shot at his former home park today as a touring team of major-league players defeated the host team of Japanese all-stars 10-5, the visitors' first victory in five games in the eight-game series. Fielder tied the score at 5 with his eighth-inning blast before a crowd of 32,000 at Koshien Stadium, where he played for the Hanshin Tigers in 1989.
-- New York Yankees outfielder Mel Hall, charged with illegally bringing cougar cubs into the state, has agreed to pay $2,000 to charity in exchange for having the misdemeanor charges dropped.


An innovative program of animation has been developed by the Department of Primary Industry of Victoria.
Victoria is well known for its variable climate. From year to year, four global climate processes vary their behaviour, potentially resulting in wetter or dryer seasons.
Explore 'The Climatedogs' and learn how these four drivers work by herding rain towards or away from Victoria.


Apple unveiled its first credit card in partnership with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard at a special event on March 25.
The Apple Card, coming summer 2019, targets iPhone users. The card boasts unlimited 3 percent cash back on all Apple purchases, 2 percent back when you use Apple Pay and 1 percent on all purchases made with the physical card.
There are no fees on the Apple Card which means no annual fee, no late fees, no over limit fees and no foreign transaction fees, according to Apple.
Interest rates vary, ranging from 13.24 percent to 24.24 percent.
When the card is released this summer, consumers will be able to sign up through their iPhone's Wallet app, where the card will be integrated.
Cash back will be paid to Apple Card users in the form of "Daily Cash," applied directly back onto your Apple Card. According to Apple, once your Daily Cash is in your account, you can choose to spend it like real cash, pay down your card balance or even share with friends through the Messages app.
In a push for privacy, Apple says it will have no access to your Apple Card transaction history, including what you bought, how much it cost and where you bought it. Partners Goldman Sachs and Mastercard will not share your personal information with third parties.
Apple is also focusing on security. The physical credit card will show no card number, CVV, expiration date or signature. Instead, all authorization information is stored securely within your Wallet app.
The card's minimalism also keeps it in line with Apple's sleek design standards. The titanium card will be engraved with just your name, Apple's logo and an EMV chip for non-Apple Pay purchases.
Apple says its goal is to help cardholders live a healthy financial life. The Apple Card will offer budgeting tools like account statistics, interest calculations and purchase analytics to help you understand your spending habits. Unlike similar apps like Mint, though, you won't be able to pull in your full financial picture.
The Apple Card will likely be popular among iPhone users, especially those who have already made Apple Pay a part of their daily lives. But it's not going to be the best option for everyone.
He compares the Apple Card's reliance on other Apple products with the Uber Visa Card, which offers high-end cash back rewards without requiring cardholders to be frequent Uber customers.
"Apple could have made a similar push for a broader customer base but did not," Rossman says.
There are already similarly-structured cards on the market that may work better for consumers than the Apple Card, Rossman adds.
Apple Pay users already earn three points per dollar on mobile wallet spending with the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve Visa Infinite card, he says. Those points are worth 3 percent cash back or 4.5 percent off travel.
"That's really interesting: U.S. Bank offers better Apple Pay rewards than Apple," Rossman says.
Still, like any Apple product, the Apple Card is poised to be a simple, streamlined cash back offering with seamless integration for Apple users. If you're looking for a no-fee cash-back card and Apple's Wallet app integration sounds like a helpful tool for you, the Apple Card may be a worthy addition to your wallet.
Consider your spending habits and financial needs before applying to any card to ensure you're getting the best value that works for you. Bankrate's guide to the Best Credit Cards of 2019 can help you get started.


text:
Q: Problem preventing evaluation of AngularJS expression when bound with ng-model I have a problem with a web page that is rendered using the ASP.NET MVC (5.2.3) razor engine but which also uses AngularJS (1.7.4). The problem is that what should be rendered as plain text is being evaluated by AngularJS.
So, for example, in our model we have a property Name that when the value is, for example, {{1 + 1}} is being displayed as 2 i.e. the AngularJS expression is being evaluated:

The (redacted) cshtml page is along the following lines:
@model Models.SomeViewModel

            @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Name, new HtmlAttributeBuilder().WithCssClass("col-sm-1  control-label"))

                @Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.Name, new HtmlAttributeBuilder().WithCssClass("form-control form-group-margin").WithNgModel("viewModel.name").WithNgChange("updateName(viewModel.name)").WithRequired())
                {{errors.viewModel.Name}}

The C# class that is referenced in the Razor view - HtmlBuilder - inherits from `Dictionary'
[Serializable]
public class HtmlAttributeBuilder : Dictionary<string, object>
{
    public HtmlAttributeBuilder WithCssClass(string cssClassName)
    {
        this.Add("class", cssClassName);
        return this;
    }

    public HtmlAttributeBuilder WithNgModel(string property)
    {
        this.Add("ng-model", property);
        return this;
    }

    public HtmlAttributeBuilder WithNgChange(string val)
    {
        this.Add("ng-change", val);
        return this;
    }
}

Interestingly, when I look at the value of $scope.viewModel.name in the RuleController I can see that it is {{1 + 1}} and not 2.
I have tried using ng-non-bindable and while it prevents evaluation of the Angular expression it also prevents persisted updates to the value as it removes two-way binding.

A: Have you tried this directive?
https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/directive/ngNonBindable
Note, this should probably go in the comments, but I don't have enough reputation.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
A review by Elmer Louis Kayser in Courier, October 1961,
THE EVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATIONS,
by Carroll Quigley.
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960
The Evolution of Civilizations
(New York, The Macmillan Company, 1960.
Pp. x, 281, $5.95)
Reviewed by Elmer Louis Kayser
[Dean of University Students and Professor of European History
at The George Washington University.
Born in Washington, Dean Kayser holds his A.B., M.A., and LL.D.
from George Washington,and a Ph.D.
from Columbia University.
Vitally interested in international affairs,
Dean Kayser is the author of several books,
an associate Editor of World Affairs,
and a director of the American Peace Society.]
A work of the importance of The Evolution of Civilizations deserves much more than the hurried first reading that a deadline has imposed. Reading Professor Quigley's volume is a pleasant, but rather exacting exercise. He demonstrates Toynbeean erudition and non-Tonybeean brevity.
It is fortunate that a brief review is expected, for a truly critical review would have to be longer than the book itself. A vast time span, a tremendous area, and an amazing diversity of fields are involved. A high degree of selectivity must be exercised in determining what material is to be presented. The sector is small within which anyone could claim the competence of a specialist. The work of others must be used and judgments made. A detailed criticism under these circumstances becomes a race between author and critic to see who has read the latest monograph or special study and made the soundest evaluation of it. Toynbee, in reconsidering the first ten volumes of The Study of History in the recent twelfth volume, found that there had been new writing while he was publishing which made it desirable that he make changes. The blurb (author unknown) on the jacket of the latest Toynbee volume goes so far as to assert that, during the publication of the First Decade of Toynbee, new discoveries in some fields "have changed the picture almost out of recognition."
The present reviewer accepts the historical data which Professor Quigley uses as what a competent scholar selected at the time of writing as valid supports for the ideas that he presents. The reviewer makes no attempt to examine these individually and critically. His interest is in what the author was trying to do, in the patterns of thinking that he sets up.
The author is thinking of aggregates of human beings as they constitute themselves in social groups and various types of society: parasitic societies, producing societies, and civilizations, depending upon whether the members have the major portion of their relationships outside the group or within it. He finds "two dozen civilizations," living and dead, within the last ten millenia and suggests various groupings. Before discussing historical change, he considers methods of analyzing the evolution of a society, the resultant of development and morphology. Civilizations pass through "seven stages": mixture, gestation, expansion, age of conflict, universal empire, decay, and invasion, which he offers as a convenient way of breaking into segments an intricate historical process.
A very interesting chapter devoted to the physical setting of the earliest civilizations is followed by a detailed discussion of Mesopotamia, Canaanite and Minoan, Classical and Western Civilizations. These discussions of the civilizations which relate directly to the stream of Western Civilization through historic time occupy the major portion of the study. In a final word of conclusion, Professor Quigley states his belief that six points have emerged from his study. The first three, he points out, merely underscore well-recognized and long accepted points of view. The last three, he feels, represent a real contribution. They are: 1) the "seven stages" (which proves, as Toynbee's [stages do] not, a basis for an analysis of the whole course of the evolution of a civilization, including the earliest phases), 2) an improved nomenclature and 3) techniques for dealing with historical problems.
Professor Quigley's indebtedness to his predecessors is obvious and acknowledged. While he lacks the Wagnerian tone of Spengler and the severely classical attitudes of Toynbee, he does have the more direct approach of the social scientist. His heavy emphasis on scientific method in the first chapter, even though he concludes by pointing out the difference between the natural and social sciences in the subjective factor, leads us to expect a much more rigorous method than the one applied. In the case, we notice such statements as "To be sure there are difficulties, but in some cases, at least these can be explained away." You wonder again at the grading system applied to Western society in the chart on page 81. The reviewer is not sure just how it is determined when a civilization reaches "its peak of achievement" and how this is related to the seven stages of development.
All of these are matters of detail. The important fact is that the author has distilled from a vast store of historical knowledge a highly suggestive approach for the systematic study of major historical movements. The real review will probably have to wait until that traveler from New Zealand in the midst of a vast solitude, standing on a broken arch of London Bridge, has finished his sketch of the ruins of St. Paul's.
Scan of original review


text:
Live Auction 21508 The Collection of Thomas and Doris Ammann Evening Sale
Lot 33 A
The Collection of Thomas and Doris Ammann
ON KAWARA (1932-2014)
MAY 29, 1972, from Today, 1966–2013
signed 'On Kawara' (on the reverse)
acrylic on canvas with newspaper clipping, in artist's box
18 x 24 in. (45.5 x 60.9 cm.)
Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, Zurich
On Kawara, continuity/discontinuity, 1963-1979, exh. cat., Stockholm, 1980, p. 65 (installation view illustrated).
A. Choon and T. Simoens, eds., On Kawara: Date Painting(s) in New York and 136 Other Cities, Antwerp, 2012, p. 19.
Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Carl Andre / Marcel Broodthaers / Daniel Buren / Victor Burgin / Gilbert & George / On Kawara / Richard Long / Gerhard Richter, January-February 1974.
Zurich, Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, The Power of Painting, November 2014-January 2015.
Michael Baptist Specialist
MBaptist@christies.com +1 212 636 2660
Reaching across time and space with a profound sense of materiality, On Kawara's Today paintings are essays on a life spent in the quiet contemplation of everyday existence. Although they are specific to a particular day, they are also universal, cosmic and timeless. The present work, MAY 29, 1972, from Today, 1966-2013, is an early large-scale example from this pivotal series. It was executed in lower Manhattan on Monday, May 29, 1972 – Memorial Day – while U.S. President Richard Nixon visited Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow for a global peace summit. On that day, while the world was watching events in Russia, On Kawara spent his time, as he did many days, painting.
In MAY 29, 1972, that day's date is proclaimed in a series of crisp, white lettering and centered on a dark expansive black background. In keeping with his technique, Kawara writes the date in the chosen language of the city in which he painted it. While some Today paintings abbreviated longer months such as "JAN." "SEP." or "NOV.," in the present work, Kawara must have enjoyed the tidy, wholeness of three-letter word for "MAY" and the palindromic pairs of "2s" and "9s" in May 29, 1972. Although he adopted a standard, sans-serif font, close examination reveals slight, almost miniscule, deviations in the execution of the numbers and letters. This is due to the fact that Kawara never used stencils, and instead worked free-hand to delineate each element of that day's date. He relied only upon a ruler or T-square to aid him in his maintain his graphic discipline; the result is that, although the Today paintings are emptied out of imagery, color or traditional 'meaning,' they are deeply personal and almost tender paintings—the result of countless delicate interactions of the hand, body and brush with the surface of the canvas.
On Kawara was born on December 24, 1932, in Kariya, Japan, just outside of the central city of Nagoya. He was barely a teenager when atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. He felt the pacifist teachings of his youth—including those of the Shinto, Buddhist and Christian traditions—were at odds with the trauma and horror of what he witnessed during the war, and would later describe this moment as an "awakening" of his consciousness. After spending time in Mexico City and Paris in the early 1960s, On Kawara settled in New York in 1965. It was there that he painted his first Today painting on January 4, 1966. In doing so, Kawara joined with a small group of artists that were beginning to incorporate ostensibly simple words or phrases in their art. Along with artists like John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner and Joseph Kosuth, Kawara was part of a burgeoning new movement that would later be called Conceptual art. In the mid-1960s, these artists adopted a limited palette and often used a plain "all-caps" sans-serif font that isolated single words or phrases against a plain background. In this way, Conceptual artists appropriated language as a "readymade" much in the way that Marcel Duchamp had first pioneered its usage in the early twentieth-century.
With their sleek, authoritative surface and declarative text, the Today paintings are minimalist in their execution and conceptual in their intellectual rigor. Yet, each canvas is also a painstakingly crafted object, and the result of period of extended labors that often lasted an entire day. Over the course of his lifetime, Kawara painted Today paintings in more than 112 cities around the world. He didn't always make one painting a day; he imposed limits upon himself, and if a painting wasn't completed to his satisfaction by midnight, he destroyed it. In this way, each Today painting is a powerful celebration of its very own existence.
At this point in his career, Kawara kept a journal in which he wrote down details of each Today painting, noting the color, size, date, and subtitle. For May 29, 1972, Kawara wrote: "U.S. President Nixon and the Soviet Communist party leader, Leonid I. Brezhnev at the Kremlin ceremony, Moscow," a phrase reflecting events reported in that morning's newspaper which Kawara then tucked into a handmade box that accompanies the painting. Kawara's chosen subtitle is a powerful reminder of the extraordinary world events that transpired while the artist humbly went about his task. In this way, each Today painting is a lingering relic of history but also connects us to the quiet poetry of daily life.
In addition to painting MAY 29, 1972, Kawara also sent two postcards to friends or associates stamped with the phrase "I GOT UP AT 8.19A.M. Kawara spent 17 days staying at German art curator Kasper König's apartment at 65 East Broadway in Lower Manhattan producing Today paintings. Later, he would travel to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, to be its artist-in-residence. By this point, Kawara had developed an international following, and would exhibit his Today paintings at Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany in the summer of 1972, in addition to them being included in gallery exhibitions around the world, including Paris, Milan, London, Brussels, Düsseldorf, and Bern.
When the Today paintings were exhibited at the artist's retrospective organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim's museum in New York in 2015, just months after the artist's death, they offered an opportunity to surmise the depth and breadth of On Kawara's epic undertaking. Spiraling up the museum's ramp leading up to the top floor, the Today paintings were breathtaking in ways that were often at odds with each other; they are both humble and grand; timeless yet specific; intimate and personal yet connected to a larger, more cosmic and global world. To this day, there is something about the Today paintings that goes beyond the mere fact of their materials; perhaps this is related to the idea taken from the Shinto religion that inanimate objects can have spirits (called kami) and that as well as being beautiful objects, they can possess an innate and indestructible soul.
More from The Collection of Thomas and Doris Ammann Evening Sale


text:
"""
Kyle McChesney

Ruffus pipeline for simple bowtie alignment
Does not support paired end reads

"""
import logging
import argparse
from rpy2.robjects import r
from rpy2.robjects.packages import importr

parser = cmdline.get_argparse(description='Perform the MEDIP analysis on a set of bam files')

# really just need bams i think
#parser.add_argument("--output", help="Fullpath to output directory", default="./")
#parser.add_argument("--cond-one-input", help=" Space seperated list of the condition one input files", required=True, nargs="+")
#parser.add_argument("--cond-one-treated", help=" Space seperated list of the condition one treated files", required=True, nargs="+")
#parser.add_argument("--cond-two-input", help=" Space seperated list of the condition two input files", required=True, nargs="+")
#parser.add_argument("--cond-two-treated", help=" Space seperated list of the condition two treated files", required=True, nargs="+")

# parse the args
options = parser.parse_args()

# logging
logging.basicConfig(format='%(levelname)s: %(message)s', level=logging.INFO,)
log = logging.getLogger(__name__)
log.info("Starting MEDIPs run")

def roi_to_bed(roi_file):
    # going for a pretty simple bed here
    # chrom start stop name score
    # score will just follow the difference since they are s
    basename = os.path.basename(roi_file)
    bedfile  = ''.join(basename, ".bed")
    with open(roi_file, "r") as roi:
        with open(bedfile, "a+") as bed:
            header = next(roi)
            for line in roi:
                [chr, start, stop, first_mean, second_mean] = line.split("\t")
                score = (second_mean - first_mean) if second_mean > first_mean else (first_mean - second_mean)
                bed.write("{}\t{}\t{}\t{}\t{}".format(chr,start, stop, name, score))

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Beer Cheese Dip with Bacon is an easy appetizer or snack dip perfect for celebrations! This super easy-to-make cheese dip will be the hit of the party when served with your favorite pretzels, crackers, or even celery sticks! It's tangy and full of bacon...because just about everything is better with bacon. Am I right?
Beer Cheese Dip and pretzels is one of those restaurant appetizers that always grabs my hubby's attention. I have to admit, mine too. We love the cheesy, tangy beer infused flavor on salty pretzels. But I've never attempted to make beer cheese at home.
It is so easy, I don't know why I waited so long. And...since I was recently given the chance to tour Fresh Mark's Sugardale bacon plant here in Northeast Ohio through the Ohio Pork Council and find out exactly how bacon is made, I've been wanting to add bacon to just about EVERYTHING! (Seriously, I mean everything!) So why not jazz up beer cheese dip with bacon?
Fresh Mark is the parent company to both Sugardale and Superior's brand. Collectively, they have been in the business of producing quality pork products such as ham, hot dogs, and bacon for nearly 100 years! They are a family owned and operated company that takes great pride and care in what they produce for their consumers.
I found the bacon plant tour fascinating! I admit, I had absolutely no idea what went into making a pound of bacon. The plant I toured made A LOT of bacon...which is understandable because Americans love bacon. This facility alone makes enough bacon to feed about 650 million people breakfast a year!
At this plant, raw pork bellies are received and inspected for quality, then begin their journey to become bacon. They are infused with in a special blend of sugar and spices. It's these seasonings that give Sugardale bacon it's signature flavor.
Once the flavor has infused, the bellies are hung on metal trees and travel to the smokehouse. This Sugardale bacon facility was very clean and cold! Which is just how these soon to be bacon pork bellies like it!
The pork bellies are smoked with natural hickory hardwood chips, where the internal temperature is brought up to 120 degrees F then the bellies are sent to chillers to bring the temperature down quickly. So your the Sugardale bacon you buy in the store is raw, but not completely raw. This was something I didn't know!
It smelled AHmazing in the smoking area of the plant!
Once the temperature of the smoked pork bellies is brought down to where it needs to be, the bellies get compressed and are sent to be sliced.
One thing I absolutely appreciate about Sugardale Natural Hickory Smoked Bacon is that the slices are always uniform. That makes this foodie happy, because that means my bacon will cook evenly.
Once sliced, the bacon is put into its packaging and sent out for purchase at your retailer!
I was shocked at the manpower it takes to turn pork bellies into bacon! It truly is a labor of love.
As far as I'm concerned, cheese and bacon are natural partners in life. I love the salty pop of bacon in this Bacon Pineapple Jalapeno Cheese Ball and bacon is an awesome addition to these Chipotle Ranch Bacon Cheddar Nachos. And, the addition of bacon in this Beer Cheese Dip recipe is perfection!
It's super easy to make beer cheese! (and Beer Cheese Dip with Bacon!) Chopped bacon is browned up in a saucepan, where the drippings are reserved. A little more fat is added in the form of butter, and then a roux is made with a little bit of flour. Half and half or milk is carefully whisked into the roux along with a cup of your favorite beer and some seasonings and, of course, cheese..and voila! Beer Cheese!
I like to use a combination of cheddar and monterey jack cheese in this beer cheese dip because I think it makes the cheese dip smoother and less stringy. If you can't find the cheese packaged as a combination, just use half shredded cheddar cheese and half shredded jack cheese in this recipe.
Beer Cheese Dip with Bacon is definitely better served warm, so popping it into a small slow cooker turned to warm is a great idea when serving it at parties or tailgating!
Yep...I said tailgating because we are just slowly getting away from the holidays and slipping into that time of year when there's plenty of championship games that can't be missed. And, where there's a big game, there's some serious tailgate snacking! Beer Cheese Dip with Bacon would make a great addition to your party!
What Beer to use in Beer Cheese Dip?
I say, use what you like to drink. First off...I am not a beer expert by any stretch of the imagination. I couldn't tell you the difference between a pale ale or an IPA, but I do know what I like to drink by taste. I love a good wheat beer and that's what I've used in this recipe. I loved a bit of tang it added t to the cheese dip. But, there are so many great microbrews out there now, the choices are almost endless!
Beer Cheese Dip with Bacon is an easy to make traditional beer cheese dip with the addition of crispy bacon. Great party dip for pretzels, crackers. or celery sticks!
In large saucepan, cook the bacon until crispy. Remove to a paper towel lined plate to drain and set aside. Reserve bacon drippings in pan.
Add the 1 or 2 TBSP butter to the reserved bacon drippings and allow to melt over med heat. Whisk in the flour. Cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes.
Slowly add in the half and half, stirring while you add. Add in the beer and the Dijon mustard. Stir well. Allow mixture to come to a boil, and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, or until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon.
Take off heat and whisk in the cheddar cheese blend and the paprika. Taste for salt and add as needed.
Stir in reserved bacon. Serve with pretzels, crackers, and raw veggies.
Bacon is probably my most favorite treat of all time. Love how you added this into the cheese dip. Perfect for New Year's Eve!
HI Shelby! I agree...everything is better with bacon! Thanks for stopping by!


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Home Blog Do Americans Have the Right to Eat Healthy Food?
October 30, 2021 October 30, 2021 1 Comment on Do Americans Have the Right to Eat Healthy Food?
Do Americans Have the Right to Eat Healthy Food?
Review published July 31, 2013
There is no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular food. . . . There is no 'deeply rooted' historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds. . . . Plaintiffs' assertion of a "fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families" is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish. . . . There is no fundamental right to freedom of contract.
— U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in a legal brief supporting the dismissal of a lawsuit by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund
The 18th century was the century of political rights; the 19th century was the century of women's rights; the 20th century was the century of civil rights. The challenge of the 21st century will be the struggle for food and farming rights.
— Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation
David E. Gumpert, author or co-author of eight other books, and formerly a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and editor for Inc. and Harvard Business Review, has written for us a fascinating exposé of the emerging movement to produce and consume local, high-quality, nutrient-dense foods outside of the industrial agriculture system, and the costly and invasive actions taken by the FDA and assorted state agencies intended to contain, suppress, or perhaps even wipe out this movement entirely.
In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights: The Escalating Battle Over Who Decides What We Eat, Gumpert gets down and dirty, sifting through thousands of pages of documentation, obtained through a combination of helpful sources in government and requests under the Freedom of Information Act and state open records laws. These pages document a bizarre world into which we are now entering.
This is a world in which government agencies spend literally millions of dollars ostensibly to strengthen food safety, often using the most outrageous tactics imaginable: sending undercover agents to farmers' markets to entrap farmers into selling cheese to the wrong people, charging ordinary citizens with multiple felony conspiracy counts for distributing farm-fresh products, secretly surveilling email conversations for months on end, raiding private food clubs with guns drawn, ordering the destruction of hundreds of thousands of dollars of perfectly good food, and sending U.S. Public Health Service agents to inspect small-scale cheese plants dressed in intimidating camouflage fatigues and combat boots. Gumpert provides us with strong indications, moreover, that all of this is being coordinated at the highest levels within the FDA, all the while intended to appear as an assortment of unrelated and independent actions taken by state and local agencies.
Yet this tale is not woven only in tears, nor is it even slightly defeatist. Advocates of food rights have won many legal victories, and even as these legal struggles continue, many people are recovering their health by shifting to locally produced, high-quality, nutrient-dense foods.
Nor is it a one-sided tale that tells only half the story. Gumpert masterfully fills the roles of both journalist and advocate. His support for the food rights movement is clear and explicit. Yet he provides extensive quotes from government agencies and food safety advocates, critiquing their views but delivering them with fairness and clarity. And while the food rights movement has its share of valiant heroes, as in any true story, or really any story worth its salt, there is no shortage of personal conflict, quirky characters, and disappointing behaviors. Gumpert never shies away from any of it. Rather, he beautifully seams together all these loose fabrics to form a three-dimensional story where the characters truly come alive.
Is There Such a Thing as Private Food?
At the heart of this conflict is whether there is such a thing as private food. Does anything we produce and consume automatically fall under the jurisdiction of state and federal regulators? Even if we drink the milk from our own cow or eat the tomatoes from our own garden? Or is there some sphere of privacy in which we can operate independently of these regulators, and if so, how large is this sphere?
The question is critical. Most of our food is produced in large-scale industrial operations prone to both nutrient depletion, contamination with pathogens, and terrible abuse of animals. State and federal regulations are aimed at minimizing the risk of acute illness from pathogens. They do nothing to encourage nutrient density, and in many ways worsen the problem, thereby contributing to the epidemics of chronic degenerative disease sweeping modern society. They certainly do nothing to support the well being of animals on industrial farms. The surging wave of consumer demand for healing, nourishing, and humanely produced nutrient-dense foods has led to demand for foods that these regulations have largely shut out of the market.
Raw Milk and the Politics of Private Food
Principal among these foods — though by no means the only such food — is unpasteurized or "raw" milk from grass-fed cows. Such milk is in high demand because of research suggesting it protects against allergies and asthma, and is richer in certain vitamins and minerals, biologically active whey proteins, and probiotic bacteria. According to a recent CDC survey, as many as nine million Americans may drink raw milk.
On the other side of the coin, the prospect of producing raw milk attracts producers because they can better make a living selling it. America lost 90 percent of her dairies between 1970 to 2006, and downward pressure on dairy prices in 2009 and 2010 led several dairy farmers to commit suicide, including one who massacred his 51 cows before turning his rifle on himself. By cutting out the middle man and selling raw milk from grass-fed cows at a premium, farmers can double their revenue per gallon, leading to greener pastures in more ways than one.
Laws governing the sale of raw milk are highly variable and differ from state to state. In many cases the sale of raw milk is completely prohibited; in many others it is allowed direct from the farm but not in retail stores; and in a handful it is allowed even in retail stores. Yet in many cases where sales are legal, the required permits prohibit the production of value-added products such as butter, cream, or fermented milk — all in high demand among consumers conscious of the need for food-based sources of fat-soluble vitamins and probiotic bacteria.
Overlaying the variation in state regulations, the FDA prohibits commercial transport of raw milk across state lines. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the FDA resisted pressure to institute such a ban, preferring to let states regulate raw milk themselves. In response to a 1984 lawsuit from the American Public Health Association and Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, however, a federal judge ordered the FDA to institute the ban. The ban has been active since 1987, and the FDA now defends it, having gone so far as to successfully argue for the dismissal of a lawsuit to repeal it by claiming that there is "no fundamental right" to "freedom of contract," to "bodily and physical health," or for consumers to choose "what foods they do and do not. . . consume for themselves and their families."
Producers and consumers who wish to obtain raw milk and value-added products made from it have pursued several types of contractual arrangements intended to place their exchanges outside of the regulated system of retail sales. These include cowshare or herdshare arrangements, where the consumers own a share in the animal or herd and are therefore simply obtaining milk from their own cow rather than purchasing it. Alternatively, in the similar but distinct leasing model, a private food club signs a lease agreement with a farmer, through which it obtains exclusive rights to the animals and their products for a period of time. In all cases, the members pay the farmer fees for services such as boarding and caring for the animals, milking, and bottling.
These arrangements have enabled the private exchange of raw milk and value-added products derived from it in most states where these products are otherwise illegal. They have also enabled the private exchange of raw milk products across state lines, which is especially critical in Maryland, home to the FDA and completely intolerant of raw milk, where even herdshares are explicitly prohibited.
Food Rights Is About More Than Raw Milk
The pursuit of food rights, however, is about a lot more than raw milk. The motivations to pursue some private food arrangements may seem quite obvious to us. School bake sales and roadside lemonade stands, for example, are something most of us grew up with. Applying retail sales regulations and licensing requirements to these ventures would swiftly bring them to an end, and the thought of doing so immediately strikes many of us as absurd.
Less obvious to many of us, extensive regulations make it costly for small farmers and artisan vendors to start businesses, which limits the availability of high-quality foods, especially near urban areas where zoning laws and the high cost of land add additional difficulties. Farmer Joel Salatin, who wrote the forward to Gumpert's book, has described some of these factors in more detail elsewhere. For example, requirements to sell retail foods in supermarkets involve preposterously expensive insurance policies that discourage pasture feeding, and the purchase of expensive equipment that is completely irrelevant to small-scale operations.
Sales direct from the farm or private contractual arrangements offer alternatives that allow small-scale farmers to operate outside of the industrial agriculture model. Consumer-supported agriculture (CSA) systems, which have been around for decades, are a form of private arrangement where individuals buy a share of a farmer's production for a season. More recent models like private food clubs allow communities to form broader networks that include multiple farmers and artisan producers.
San Francisco's Underground Market, for example, was a private club that allowed consumers to connect with vendors selling foods ranging from foraged seaweed to Belgian waffles. Iso Rabins launched the club at the suggestion of local health department officials in 2009, although in 2011 they changed their tune and shut the club down. Gumpert quotes Rabins describing the rationale for the market:
I started the Underground Market in 2009 as a reaction to the high bar of entry that has been created to start a food business, something that I experienced personally. Starting in a house in the Mission with seven vendors and 150 eaters, the market has grown to feed over 50,000 people and help over 400 vendors get their start.
Private arrangements, then, not only allow the exchange of foods otherwise directly prohibited, but also allow an increase in the availability and diversity of high-quality foods produced in small-scale operations that are otherwise cost-prohibitive because of regulations that favor large-scale, industrial, and confinement operations.
The Heavy-Handed Crackdown on Private Food
In the last few years, the government has quietly launched an undeclared war on private food. Perhaps the pettiest and most absurd examples are the crackdowns that have targeted nursery school bake sale fundraisers and lemonade stands for selling foods without retail licenses. The increasingly common crackdowns on lemonade stands, in fact, inspired the creation of Lemonade Freedom Day in 2011, which joined forces with raw milk supporters for the 2012 event.
Some of the more destructive incidents seem like isolated, local occurrences. Gumpert describes a 2011 incident, for example, where a health inspector sabotaged a Nevada farm's first ever farm-to-fork dinner. Nearly all the food was produced on the farm itself, yet the inspector showed up right before the food was to be served to guests who had paid in advance, and ordered it all to be destroyed — not even fed to the pigs — because of the lack of receipts, labels, and evidence of USDA certification. The farmer thinly escaped the total collapse of her event when local police failed to support the inspector and, despite the destruction of huge amounts of food, her chefs masterfully improvised delicious meals for the guests.
Gumpert opens the book by describing an incident on June 17, 2012, however, that ends much less happily. Enforcement agents at a weigh station on a Florida interstate pulled over a refrigerated truck carrying food from two Pennsylvania farms for members of three private food clubs in Florida. Because of bottles containing brown liquid, labeled "kombucha," a lacto-fermented health drink containing infinitesimal levels of alcohol, the agents called in the Florida Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, arrested the driver, and charged him with a third-degree felony for illegally shipping alcoholic beverages into the state. The inspectors judged the rest of the food on the truck — beef, chicken, dairy, eggs, and fermented veggies — to be "poisonous" and destroyed it by burying it in a local landfill the following morning. The prosecutor dropped the charges, but the farmers and food club members were collectively out $45,000 for the destroyed food, $2,000 for the dumping fee charged to the farmers, and had to find a new trucker.
Other seemingly isolated incidents include the closing of San Francisco's Underground Market in 2011, and a 2008 armed raid of an Ohio private food club. In the latter case, the Ohio Department of Agriculture sent inspectors along with officers from the county sheriff's office dressed in full tactical armor, to the home of the food club's owners. With weapons drawn, they herded the owner, her in-laws, and her eight small children into the living room and kept them under armed guard for seven hours while they confiscated cell phones, computers, business records, and meat.
A common thread running through many of the other incidents links them in some way to Aajounus Vonderplantiz's organization, Right to Choose Healthy Food (RTCHF). Vonderplanitz, a raw food advocate with an arguably cultish following, some rather idiosyncratic beliefs about bacteria, and conflicting stories about his introduction to raw foods that often sound like tall tales, had masterfully carved out a niche for himself as an unlicensed legal advocate after playing a major role in the liberalization of raw milk regulations in LA County in the early 2000s. Around the same time, he organized RTCHF as an umbrella group of private food clubs based on the leasing model.
Among the many RTCHF food clubs was Rawesome, later the target of two armed raids. James Stewart, an aging hippy rebel who had worked closely with Vonderplanitz since 1998, started Rawesome out of his garage in 2001 when it was simply named "The Garage." Vonderplanitz and Stewart both played a role in helping Mark McAfee launch Organic Pastures Dairy Company, a major California producer of raw milk. McAfee would later offer substantial financial and moral support for Stewart and other Rawesome members arrested in the raid of 2011.
The story of the Rawesome raid begins with undercover investigations targeting Sharon Palmer, a farmer marked by a criminal past trying to make a fresh start. She ran a CSA program and provided foods to Rawesome. Undercover agents from the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) repeatedly approached her or her staff, at her farm or at farmers' markets, attempting to entrap her into selling CSA-destined cheese to them as a retail product. The investigators learned of Rawesome through this undercover work.
Police, district attorney investigators, and agents from CDFA, the LA County Health Department, and the FDA raided Rawesome in 2010 with guns drawn, wearing bulletproof vests. They confiscated $8,000 of food, closed the club, served Stewart with a summons, and raided Palmer's farm the same day. They sealed all investigation details from the public for months while they secretly surveilled thousands of emails from the accounts of Vonderplanitz and others.
Vonderplanitz had successfully defended RTCHF clubs from government intrusion for almost a decade by insisting that they were private clubs and not retail establishments, and that the regulators therefore had no jurisdiction. Rawesome continued this approach and reopened its doors, leading to a second raid in 2011.
The second time around, an even more expansive number of government agencies raided Rawesome, leading to the confiscation of $80,000 worth of food and the arrest of Stewart, Palmer, and Victoria Bloch, who worked part-time for Palmer. The prosecutors charged them with multiple felony counts of "criminal conspiracy charges stemming from the alleged illegal production and sale of unpasteurized goat milk, goat cheese, and other products," seeking preposterous bails ranging from $60,000-$123,000, which were later greatly reduced in court.
Some of the story lines that converge on the Rawesome raid involve farmers who joined RTCHF for legal protection after experiencing their own raids. Amish farmers, whose religion encourages shying away from battles of all kinds, including court battles involving aggressive defenses and lawyers, were particularly fond of Vonderplanitz in the mid- to late-2000s because his lawyer-less legal approach — to simply warn government officials they had no jurisdiction over his private clubs and watch them back off in silence — had been successful for years and was more amenable to their religious beliefs than other approaches.
Daniel Allyger, for example, an Amish farmer from Pennsylvania, provided raw milk to Grassfed on the Hill, a private food club based in Washington, DC and Maryland. In 2010, following infiltration of Grassfed on the Hill by undercover agents, he was raided by FDA agents, US Marshals, and a Pennsylvania state trooper. After this event, Allyger moved his arrangement with Grassfed on the Hill under the umbrella of RTCHF.
Similarly, Vernon Hershberger, a Wisconsin farmer with an Amish background, had worked with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (DATCP) in 2003 to establish a private arrangement that allowed him to legally produce and distrubute raw milk. DATCP pulled an about-face in 2009 and began aggressively persecuting Hershberger, destroying hundreds of gallons of his milk and forbidding him from using or distributing large quantities of food. Like Allyger, Hershberger moved his club under the umbrella of RTCHF.
Other story lines converge on the Rawesome raid as fallout from the event, since the raid led to the targeting of many other farmers connected in one way or another to RTCHF or to Rawesome itself. These include actions against Amish farmers from Pennsylvania and Indiana, Amos Miller and David Hochstetler, as well as an earlier but more vicious attack on Missouri-based Morningland Dairy:
FDA agents and a US Marshal spent hours searching Miller's farm in April, 2011 during his absence, over the objections of one of his associates that the farm was involved in private food production only and therefore outside of the FDA's jurisdiction.
In October of that year, the Department of Justice summoned Hochstetler before a federal grand jury, required by the Fifth Amendment whenever anyone is "held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime." The summons required Hochstetler to produce "any and all documents relating to or concerning the sale, purchase, delivery, receipt, production, packaging, transfer, disposal, marketing, promotion, furnishing, sharing, labeling, manufacturing, distribution, shipment, or transportation of milk during the Relevant Time Period."
In August of 2010 in the immediate aftermath of the first Rawesome raid, two agents assigned to the FDA from the U.S. Public Health Service, part of the Department of Defense, showed up to the Missouri-based Morningland Dairy in intimidating attire replete with camouflage fatigues and combat boots, eventually leading to aggressive state-level legal tactics to run the dairy out of business.
The Crackdowns Aren't Just About Private Food
Although the recent heavy-handed crackdowns have been largely aimed at private food, their scope has been expanding to include bans on heritage breeds of animals used by pasture-based farmers. The clearest example is the Michigan Department of Natural Resources' (DNR's) prohibition of so-called "feral" pigs and persecution of Mark Baker and Bakers Green Acres. Gumpert briefly describes the action as an outgrowth of the Food Safety Modernization Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2011, and which empowered regulators to prevent wild animals from defecating on produce, but notes the controversy that soon ensued:
In late 2010, Michigan's Department of Natural Resources issued an order (to take effect in April 2012) prohibiting the possession of feral pigs, supposedly to protect crops. But the matter turned into a controversy when the state began going after small artisinal farms that raised feral pigs as premium sources of pork and was accused of using the order to favor corporate pork producers. Even if they were kept confined, the pigs were still outlawed. Other states watched Michigan to determine if it made sense to implement a similar ban.
The case against Bakers Green Acres is developing as of the writing of this review, and Gumpert has been devoting attention to it on his blog, The Complete Patient.
The Bakers argue that there is nothing "feral" about the "feral pigs" the DNR is banning. A "feral" animal is one that is descended from domesticated animals but has gone wild. The DNR's ban targets pigs because of characteristics like straight or curly tails; or erect, folded, or floppy ears; it has absolutely nothing to do with whether the pigs are wild, how they are used and treated on the farm, or how well they are enclosed. The Bakers argue that the ban is so ambiguous that "any hog can meet the criteria" laid down by the DNR for prohibition. By labeling their domesticated heritage Mangalitsa hybrid pigs as "feral" simply because of their physical characteristics, and by applying the ruling to heritage foraging breeds in general, they further argue, the DNR's application of the ruling "effectively eliminates genetic diversity in the Michigan hog population, leaving us with the less hardy, non-foraging hybrids suited only for large hog-house production."
As of this writing, the DNR is pushing to have the Bakers fined $700,000 for not destroying their pigs. On July 12, 2013, the case went before a judge, and the Bakers' attorney argued that this fine is "outside the realm of comprehension." The case is pending a written opinion from the judge and may go to trial on August 27.
Is the FDA Hiding Behind State Agencies?
The war against non-industrial food is undeclared in more ways than one. Not only has no one representing the FDA or other government agencies involved ever publicly and plainly stated their intention to shut down private food or explained their rationale for doing so, but Gumpert has compiled a considerable amount of evidence that the FDA is intentionally hiding behind state-level agencies to make it appear as if the war does not even exist, at least in any cohesive form. "The FDA appears to have launched the campaign nationally," Gumpert suggests, "with enforcement actions made to appear as if they were occurring randomly around the country, initiated by state regulators in an uncoordinated fashion."
The FDA's initial attack on private food began in 2008. The Wisconsin Department of Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) went after a food club managed by Max Kane because of a possible case of brucellosis in a child, tied to the club's raw milk. Extensive tests showed that the child did not, in fact, have brucellosis at all, but DATCP continued demanding extensive information from Kane, who felt the demands violated his constitutional freedoms and refused to cooperate. Kane eventually used Wisconsin's Open Records Law to obtain eight pages of email documents proving DATCP was not acting alone, and had in fact been coordinating its investigation with the FDA and other state agencies in the Midwest.
A separate case in 2009 also revealed hidden FDA involvement. Eric Wagoner, a part-time farmer, ran a food club in Georgia that supplied fresh meat and vegetables to several hundred members. Georgia only allows the sale of raw milk for consumption by pets, and has hassled farmers accused of selling it for human consumption. Wagoner made trips to South Carolina to pick up legally produced raw milk and deliver it to his members. He insisted the members pay for it in advance as an attempt to head off any accusations of selling the milk or transporting it for commercial purposes. He made the trips for five years without encountering a problem, until one Thursday in October of 2009 when Georgia Department of Agriculture (GDA) agents stopped him at the border and ordered him to destroy all the milk, totaling over a hundred gallons. Since he didn't own the milk, he had the dozens of club members who owned the milk come to his farm and destroy their own milk the following Monday, captured on video and in the presence of GDA agents.
In 2010, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund filed suit against the FDA, alleging in part that the FDA had been involved in the Wagoner affair. Lawyers from the U.S. Justice Department called these "bizarre allegations," but the FDA changed its tune and stopped denying involvement after raw milk supporters presented video evidence of an FDA agent present at the dumping. The FDA admitted the presence of the agent but insisted her only role was to silently supervise the proceedings.
The clearest evidence of FDA meddling is from the case of Daniel Allyger and Grassfed on the Hill. Gumpert obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) showing that the FDA had assigned an undercover agent to pose as a member of Grassfed on the Hill, with over a dozen FDA officials sharing information about the group, apparently under the direction of John Sheehan, head of the agency's dairy division.
Three Minnesota events occurred in 2010 with no direct evidence of FDA involvement, but a very rich money trail leading in the FDA's direction. That June, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) went after Rae Lynn Sandvig, by background a teacher and at that time a homeschooling mom who picked up food from farms for her neighbors. The MDA issued her a cease-and-desist order and threatened her with criminal charges for "reselling food without a license." Only days later the MDA launched an intimidating investigation of Traditional Foods Minnesota, a buying club that distributed a wide variety of hard-to-find artisinal products, shutting it down permanently, even despite efforts by its management to negotiate licensing acceptable to the state. The raid of Traditional Foods Minnesota led to the targeting of Minnesota farmer Alvin Schlangen over the course of 2010 and 2011, whose 2012 trial is discussed below.
Was the FDA involved? Gumpert writes that "there is no smoking gun," but the MDA received 1.6 million dollars from the FDA to strengthen "food safety" during this time period, and the FDA reported to Congress that it had 74 employees in Minnesota working closely with the MDA.
Similarly, in the Wisconsin cases where DATCP went after Max Kane and Vernon Hershberger, open records requests revealed that those crackdowns corresponded to a more than doubling of FDA funding for DATCP between 2007 and 2009.
The FDA even has a Division of Federal-State Relations and boasts of handing out more than 41 million dollars a year and working with over 1,300 state and local officials to strengthen these relations. Gumpert suggests this should worry us, and I agree:
Why should anyone care about such a seemingly upstanding goal? Traditionally, state and local public health agencies have been independent, much like school systems and fire departments. We don't hear talk about "a national public school system" or "a national fire-fighting system," even though the latter have much to do with safety. The funding and statement suggest growing FDA control over local public health agencies to achieve federal goals.
Where Did This Attack on Food Freedom Come From?
Gumpert notes that the present attacks on food rights have a deep history dating back to mandatory pasteurization laws in the 1950s and 60s and Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz's repeated calls on farmers to "get big or get out" through the 1970s, but identifies key factors over the last decade that have fueled the hardcore crackdowns that have become increasingly common since 2008.
The first of these is the 9/11 terrorist attacks, after which many feared America's food and water supplies could become targets of bioterrorism. The Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 (the Bioterrorism Act) led to increasing centralization of food safety control, even as consumer interest in local, decentralized food surged in parallel.
The second of these is the efforts of the personal injury lawyer Bill Marler, whose high-profile lawsuits, mastery of the internet, and creation of the food safety blogosphere fueled the growth of a broad-based fear of food pathogens. Marler's advocacy also helped push through the Food Safety Modernization Act, which further accelerated the national centralization of food safety measures.
Where is the role of "Big Ag" in all this? Gumpert covers the consolidation of the food industry into the hands of just a few corporations, the widespread perception among many small farmers and consumers that legislators are in the pockets of industrial food producers, and the terrible toll that regulations designed for these industrial operations take on small producers. As a direct contributor to the regulatory crackdown on small-scale, pasture-based and private food, however, he mainly indicts the industry for inspiring such a suffocating regulatory environment through its own bad examples, whether it be the puss-filled milk from sick cows fed whiskey distillery waste that originally inspired pasteurization laws or the modern concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that gave birth to pathogens like E. coli O157:H7 and inspired deeper and broader fears of foodborne illness.
Gumpert does point out that the National Milk Producers Federation lobbied the FDA in November 2011 to "stand firm" and "hold fast" in its defense of its ban on interstate transport of raw milk, but such direct examples of clear evidence that Big Ag has been supporting the crackdown on food rights seem few and far between. From reading this book it would appear that there is scant evidence supporting the idea that industrial agriculture is behind the crackdown on small food, using it as a means to secure its own marketshare from competition.
The ban on interstate transport of raw milk does emphasize, however, the diversity of motivations behind the heavy-handed regulations. Ralph Nader's anti-corporate Public Citizen played a critical role in forcing the FDA to institute the ban, while the corporate milk producers played an important role in defending the ban more than two decades later. Caught in the middle, the FDA flip-flopped from fighting lawsuits aimed at forcing the ban in the 1980s to fighting lawsuits aimed at repealing it just recently. Does this flip-flopping reflect a simple resistance to change within the FDA, a territorial defense of its regulatory status quo, or does it reflect a change in ideology or personal leadership within the agency?
Such a question would be easier to answer if it were clearer who among the regulators is pulling the strings. Gumpert's FOIA requests traced the sting operation against Grassfed on the Hill as far up as FDA dairy division chief John Sheehan, whose tenure at the FDA traces back to 2000, stretching across three presidential administrations, and whose public and active stance against raw milk dates at least as far back as 2005, stretching across two. Has Sheehan entered government through its revolving door with industry? As Gumpert has blogged about in the past, FOIA requests into Sheehan's connections to the dairy industry revealed nothing more impressive or nefarious than his experience as a pizza cheese quality control manager. Though Sheehan did migrate to the FDA from industry, such a revelation hardly exposes him as a chief architect of the Dairy-Industrial Complex.
It is easy to imagine that somewhere businessmen from industrial agriculture are reading the signs of the times, seeing rapidly growing interest in local and traditional methods of food production as a threat to future marketshare, making backroom deals with legislators and regulators to use the threats of terrorism and foodborne illness as pretenses to pursue policies that will contain this interest before it gets out of hand. Gumpert rarely speculates deeper than the evidence runs, however, and hard evidence of these backroom deals is lacking.
Light at the End of the Tunnel — Hope for the Future of Food Rights
Some of the stories in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights end sadly, while some are continuing sagas that Gumpert is covering on his blog as time marches forward and new twists in the storylines emerge. Yet others are cause for celebration and provide us with hope for real progress in the fight for food rights. These include legal victories for herdshares, organized resistance on the part of local law enforcement to federal regulators overstepping their bounds, the emerging food sovereignty movement, and major victories in jury trials.
While the legal status of herdshares and cowshares is variable and sometimes ambiguous, suffering numerous setbacks in some states, there have been several cases vindicating these models. These include decisions by an Ohio judge, Michigan's attorney general, and the Colorado state legislature rendering the models legal.
Once a federal grand jury subpoenaed David Hochstetler, as described above, his prospects for escaping the compulsion to testify were slim. His summons required him to produce documentation not only about his own milk production but "any and all documents relating to, or reflecting communications with, Right to Choose Helathy Foods or Aajonus Vonderplanitz." If the FDA and Department of Justice were after information about Vonderplanitz, his organization, or the Rawesome affair, the grand jury could have granted Hochstetler immunity and compelled him to testify.
Hochstetler happened to live, however, in a county whose sheriff was involved in the County Sheriff Project, organized to defend local law enforcement from federal encroachments on their authority. The sheriff recognized Hochstetler as an upstanding and law-abiding citizen. He wrote to the Justice Department threatening that, if any federal agents forced an inspection of Hochstetler's farm without a warrant signed by a local judge based on probable cause, he would arrest them for trespassing. The Justice Department lawyer wrote back with similar threats, claiming the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution nullifies local law whenever it conflicts with federal law. Yet before the sheriff could respond, Hochstetler received a letter from the very same Justice Department lawyer letting him off the hook, releasing him from the grand jury subpoena and respecting his right to silence.
While there is no way to know what role the sheriff's defense of Hochstetler played in this victory, the story at least hints that local law enforcement are a more important check and balance on federal power than we generally recognize, and may be an important ally in the fight for food rights.
Several changes in Maine agricultural policy dating to 2009 that negatively impacted small farmers gave birth to the "food sovereignty" movement. These included the sudden emergence of licensing requirements for the sale of small amounts of raw milk to neighbors, in contrast to long-standing state policy exempting such arrangements from regulation, and cost-prohibitive regulations for small chicken farmers that appear to have contributed to nearly a quarter of chicken processors exiting the business by 2011.
Disenchanted farmers then began organizing to declare themselves independent of state and federal food regulations. Sedgwick passed the first "food sovereignty" ordinance in March of 2011. About 120 of the town's citizens attended, roughly ten percent of its population, and the ordinance passed unanimously. Five other Maine towns quickly followed, and Santa Cruz, California was not far behind as the movement spread out of state. By the spring of 2012, eight towns had passed food sovereignty ordinances. Although such ordinances are unlikely to gain legitimacy in the eyes of state and federal courts, they provide an important organizing principle for the food rights movement to rally around, and only time will tell where municipalities, like county sheriffs, hang in the balance of power.
The most promising tool so far within the food rights movement's tool belt appears to be good old-fashioned trial by jury. The first food rights case to go to trial was that of Minnesota farmer Alvin Schlangen. The state charged him with selling raw milk on more than an "occasional" basis, selling unlabeled and adulterated products, and selling food without a retail license. He could have pled guilty to a misdemeanor and walked out of court a free man, but instead risked two years of jail time and thousands of dollars of fines by pleading not guilty. He was tried in 2012 and acquitted on all charges.
Although Gumpert admits the food rights movement is more analogous to the homeschooling movement than to the civil rights movement, he provides the tentative but hopeful suggestion that the Schlangen trial may prove in retrospect to be the movement's "Rosa Parks moment." Time will tell.
Another jury trial victory occurred in 2013, after the book went to press. Gumpert covered the case extensively on his blog. Wisconsin farmer Vernon Hershberger was tried for producing milk without a license, operating a dairy plant without a license, operating a retail establishment without a license, and violating a holding order. He had worked with the state to establish his private food club back in 2003 as a way to legally sell raw milk, but the state changed its tune in 2009 and attempted to shut him down. Even though the case revolved around raw milk — the product for which no license was available and which could not be sold in a retail establishment — the judge supported the prosecution's request to banish all mention of raw milk from the trial. Despite such heavy biases against Hershberger during the proceedings, the jury acquitted him of all charges except violating the holding order.
Overall, the trial was a major victory: the jury fully vindicated the private food model. Hershberger's sole conviction, however, was illogical when paired with the rejection of the other charges levied against him. The state had ordered Hershberger not to move food out of his refrigerators, but as a Christian he considered it a sin to let the food go to waste, so he distributed it between his family and the members of the food club. The holding order was based on the very charges the jury had rejected. After the trial, several jurors expressed regret for convicting Hershberger of violating the holding order. During the trial they were only able to see a version of the order so heavily redacted that they didn't realize it was based on the very charges they had acquitted him of, and the judge instructed them not to consider the legitimacy of the order. While the prosecution urged the judge to throw Hershgberger in jail, several jurors wrote to the judge, pleading with him to give Hershberger a light sentence. The judge read the letters aloud, saying in all his years on the bench he had never received anything like them. Hershberger escaped unscathed with nothing but light fines, though he is now appealing the conviction to remove it from his record. After the trial, several jurors decided to speak on behalf of food rights, join Hershberger's food club, or begin growing their own food.
These cases show that juries made up of common American citizens simply don't buy the argument that there is no such thing as private food and no nook or cranny of American soil exempt from state and federal regulators. The right to a jury trial may prove to be one of the movement's most important assets.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights is a fascinating read. It treats the themes discussed in this review in much more depth, often delving into historical context, whether it be nineteenth century debates about germ theory or the late twentieth century surge in American imprisonment; often delving into personal stories, whether it be the poisonous infighting in some corners of the food rights movement, the strain and stress imposed on the families of persecuted farmers, or the inspiring searches for solutions to medical problems that has propelled many people into the world of traditional, nutrient-dense foods.
This is an excellent introduction to the history of the food rights movement. It ties together many seemingly disconnected events into a single, coherent story, and provides a foundation for a much-needed societal discussion about food and our liberty to consume it.
Who should read it? If you are interested in food or you are interested in liberty, you are bound to enjoy the book. If you are interested in both, it is a must-read.
You can share this article or leave a comment below.
Natural Immunity Uncensored Slide Deck
The New CDC Study on Natural Immunity
Media Now says:
This is very informative blog.


Christ: appearing in Galilee -- Christ, nimbed, partially draped in mantle, showing wounds in side, feet, and hands, holding cross-staff with cross-inscribed banner in left hand, raises right hand in blessing toward three nimbed apostles, including one with hands crossed on his breast. Scene in landscape with mountain, trees, and sky. Scene in medallion in right margin.


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Bao Linghui (; fl. ca. 464) was a Chinese poet of the Southern Dynasties. A native of Donghai, Jiangsu Province, she was the younger sister of poet Bao Zhao, and, like her brother, wrote in the style of refined imitation of Han dynasty folksongs and ballads. Dates of her birth and death were unknown, but according to Bao Zhao's Qingjiaqi (), she might have died during the reign of Emperor Xiaowu of Liu Song. Her poems can be found in New Songs from the Jade Terrace. Seven of her poems are extant, all of the "boudoir lament" genre, in which the poet laments the absence of her lover.

See also
 Six dynasties poetry

References

Works cited

Liu Song poets
Year of death unknown
Chinese women poets
5th-century Chinese poets
Year of birth unknown
Poets from Jiangsu
Writers from Lianyungang
5th-century Chinese women writers

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Palestinian Authority Schoolbooks
Israel and Jews in the Palestinian Authority (PA) Schoolbooks: De-legitimization, Demonization, and Advocacy of Violent Struggle, Jihad, Martyrdom and the "Right of Return", instead of Peace
Dr. Arnon Groiss
Between the years 2000-2006 the PA introduced a new curriculum to be taught in all schools in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as in schools in East Jerusalem. Over 250 books for grades 1-12 in various subjects were published within a project partly financed by European countries. The books are continuously reprinted with some changes, but the fundamentals regarding Israel and the Jews have not been altered: delegitimization of the very presence in the country of both Israel and the Jews, demonization of Israel and the Jews, non-advocacy of a peaceful solution to the conflict and, instead, emphasis on a violent struggle for the liberation of Palestine without limiting it to the areas of the West Bank and Gaza. Jihad, martyrdom and the perceived "Right of Return" are part and parcel of that violent struggle.
Following are examples taken from the newest versions available that were mostly published in 2014 and 2015.
De-legitimization
1. Jews have no right in Palestine, only "greedy ambitions" as Zionists:
"The Zionist colonialist greedy ambitions [atmaa'] in Palestine started in 1882"
(National Education, Grade 7 (2013) p. 20)
2. Jewish holy places in the country, such as the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, are all presented as Muslim holy places usurped by the Jews:
"The 1929 [Arab] revolt [in Palestine against the British authorities]… is known as 'Al-Buraq Revolt' in protest against the Jews' efforts to take hold of the Al-Buraq Wall [the Wailing Wall]."
(National Education, Grade 7 (2013), p. 21)
"The effort to Judaize some of the Muslim religious places such as the Ibrahimi Mosque [the Cave of the Patriarchs] and the Mosque of Bilal bin Rabbah [Rachel's Tomb] (Bethlehem)."
3. Israel's establishment in 1948 by virtue of the 1947 UN Partition Resolution is considered "occupation"
Read the full report in PDF, click here.
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Introducing FrontRow: The Camera Re-Invented
Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 11:07:51 AM
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Ubiquiti Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: UBNT) today announced FrontRow, a new camera technology enabling the effortless capture and sharing of life's experiences.
This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170815005526/en/
Truly Wearable
FrontRow's sleek, 55-gram (less than the weight of a typical smart-watch) form-factor was specifically designed to wear conveniently. Unlike traditional cameras and smartphones requiring manual operation, FrontRow can operate fully autonomously — allowing one to capture life's experiences while completely staying in the moment.
A subtle interlocking connector provides the flexibility to wear FrontRow using the included stylish lanyard or multi-purpose magnetic clip, or third party chains. Upcoming accessories include a car window mount and flexible coil mount. FrontRow features cameras on both sides of the device. The primary camera features a 140 degree wide-view lens (roughly double that of a typical smartphone) that, combined with FrontRow's microphone array, allows for more complete capturing of experiences. The device features a speaker for local playback and an easy-access clickable media button that can be used to quickly start and stop many of FrontRow's capture functions. FrontRow has a standby time of up to 48 hours and is capable of capturing in Story Mode (time-lapse capture of experiences) for up to 16 hours and in Live-Streaming Mode for up to 2 hours. With its USB Type-C connector, the device can be charged on the go using other Type-C smartphones and has a quick-charge time of around 20 minutes.
The User-Experience
FrontRow's user experience is unlike any camera brought to market. Built around a custom 2-inch circular hi-resolution touch screen, FrontRow's user interface allows instant live streaming on social networks including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as integration with a variety of popular applications like Dropbox, Spotify, and more. Fast Bluetooth allows effortless connectivity to smartphones running the FrontRow App (iOS and Android compatible) and provides seamless captured media transfer along with powerful remote control capabilities. The device can also be accessed (even remotely) through the Internet using the web UI controller at frontrow.com.
Not Just a Device, A New Platform
Although FrontRow's user experience and graphical user interface are unique, its underlying operating system was designed to be Android-compatible in an effort to open up 3rd party application development. Users and developers are welcome to openly discuss new applications and shape the future of the platform — directly with the FrontRow's engineering team on community.frontrow.com.


Enjoy your coffee, tea, or hot cocoa with "Pin-Ups For Vets" Founder, Gina Elise. This vintage-style image of Gina Elise in camo is printed in grey-tones on both the front and the back of the mug, to accommodate both right and left handed people. This "KISS A VET" MUG makes a great birthday or holiday gift for a Veteran!
Your purchase of this fundraiser mug helps nonprofit "Pin-Ups For Vets" in its mission to improve the quality of life for our Vets and Troops. Thank you !!


At The Killino Firm, our cases are the news. From The Philadelphia Inquirer to The New York Times to major legal publications, our cases have been featured in major news stories throughout the country.
When the lawsuit we filed against Chinese tire manufacturer Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Company forced its American importer to recall over 450,000 light truck tires, The Legal Intelligencer, Philadelphia's daily legal newsletter, featured The Killino Firm's efforts as the top news story because our case was the reason for the massive tire recall. This recall may have prevented countless injuries and deaths on our highways. Read the full Legal Intellencer story.
When we filed a class action lawsuit against Mattel to force the toy manufacturer to pay for testing of children at risk of lead poisoning from its toys, The Legal Intelligencer again featured The Killino Firm, as its top news story because our case was the news. We make the news because we are dedicated to assuring that our clients, and every American, can feel safe and secure when buying tires, playing with toys, and using the many items we take for granted in our daily lives. Read the full Legal Intelligencerstory.
Please feel free to click on one or more of the links below to read one of the many other articles that demonstrate how The Killino Firm is Keeping America Safe.
When the Internet was still in its infancy, say in the long-ago past of 2006, the rules governing evidence in most civil cases were limited largely to paper.
A Philadelphia attorney filed a lawsuit Monday against Tyco Healthcare on behalf of the family of a Missouri man who died after allegedly suffering adverse reactions to tainted heparin that originated in China.
A Philadelphia law firm filed suit yesterday against the health-care company Covidien Inc., alleging that it had supplied tainted doses of the blood thinner heparin to a Missouri retiree who died as a result of allergic reactions to the drug.
A Philadelphia attorney filed motion in federal court to stop an Arizona tire dealer from selling 3,500 tires that may be part of a recall of Chinese-made tires announced earlier this summer. He says the episode underscores how potentially dangerous tires sometimes continue to be sold long after they were meant to be pulled from the market.
A lawsuit filed by a Mattel Inc (MAT.N) shareholder on Wednesday contends the world's largest toymaker misled investors by failing to report serious defects in its toys.
Toy giant Mattel Inc. was blasted in Congress on Wednesday for failing to detect the recent flood of lead-paint contamination in Chinese-made Barbie dolls, Thomas and Friends train sets and millions of other toys. Democrats and Republicans alike accused Mattel of negligence as the House Energy and Commerce consumer protection subcommittee convened a two-day hearing on tainted toys.
Two Fontana parents have filed a class- action lawsuit against toy maker Mattel for selling dangerous toys. The suit, filed Aug. 20 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, blasts Mattel for selling toys made in China that contained lead and magnets that could fall off and choke small children.
A family sued Mattel Inc. yesterday, claiming the world's largest toy-maker should pay for testing to determine if children have been exposed to lead from millions of recalled toys.
From dog food to toothpaste to Sponge Bob, it seems everywhere you turn lately there is another bad product imported from China. Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., wants a moratorium on imports of Chinese food, toys and pet food. And, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, has called for quick federal action to insure products are safe.
A lawyer filed a suit against Mattel Inc. because of recent recalls of toys made in China that might have contained excessive amount is seeking class-action status.
When Mark Lanier, a liability lawyer in Houston, took the case of a 6-year-old girl who choked to death on a toy, he tried suing everybody in the supply chain: the fast-food restaurant that sold the toy in a children's meal, the American importer and the toy's Chinese manufacturer.
Toy maker Mattel Inc was sued on Monday in an attempt to force it to set up a fund to pay for testing children who may have been exposed to lead poisoning from its toys, according to a Los Angeles-based attorney. The attorney, Jeffrey Killino, said a family in Los Angeles is the lead plaintiff on the case, but added he is seeking class-action status for the case.
Jeffrey Killino filed suit on behalf of several Philadelphia families in May in Common Pleas Court against Foreign Tire Sales, a North Jersey tire distributor, alleging that its Chinese-made tires caused a crash in August that claimed the lives of two Philadelphia construction workers and severely injured another.
When The Killino Firm signed on to represent victims of a fatal car accident, they initiated a 9 month investigation into what caused the driver of the van to lose control, killing two passengers and seriously injuring the third.
When you need a lawyer who will exhaustively investigate your case and make sure that every responsible party is held accountable, contact The Killino Firm, where Keeping America Safe is our primary goal. To speak with one of our attorneys, call us toll free at 877-875-2927, or click here to send us an email. We will respond promptly to your inquiry so that you can experience The Killino Firm Difference.