|
9Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Wayne Mayo, Betsy Johnson, Brad Witt, Former President Trump, Henry Heimuller, Joe Biden, Pat Robertson, Ted Cruz, Joe Biden’s dogs, or Claudia Eagle’s Cats. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone. See Bill’s Standard Disclaimer
|
|
Fake News, Real News & Happy News
In case you bought into the recent fake news. This should clear it up. Earlier this week, a social media firestorm broke out after the Washington Free Beacon inaccurately reported that the Biden Administration was funding a $30 million program to give crack pipes to people addicted to illicit drugs. What is true is that the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services, will be funding 25 nonprofits that applied for a piece of a $30 million grant program focused on drug harm reduction measures. Meaning programs and services the government is willing to pay for, include fentanyl testing strips, opioid overdose reversal medication naloxone, clean syringes, HIV testing kits, hepatitis A and B vaccines and other services. Safe smoking kits are also one of the permitted services, but the government is only willing to pay for kits that include rubber mouth pieces, alcohol wipes, filters—but not pipes. The false narrative that the Washington Free Beacon published, which was seized upon by Fox News and obediently parroted by Republican politicians and commentators, is “misleading and misinformed. Still, politicians like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) didn’t hesitate to attack the Biden Administration and feed the social media outrage machine with fabrication. Regular Republican tactic. I know this sounds insane; I know it sounds too crazy to be true; they call them smoking kits and they say it’s about racial equity, but they’re going to be mailing and sending pipes that can be used to smoke crack and meth to underserved communities in America. Such lies! The republicans have nothing to offer America but bold faced lies. Yet 70 million people are believing the lies over facts. What a sad society we live in these days. Here comes the facts. What’s vital to know is that America has been dealing with an accelerating epidemic of fatal drug overdoses that has gotten worse every year. From April 2020 to April 2021, a record 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost a 30% increase from the year before. The majority of fatal overdoses in the U.S. are caused by the very potent synthetic opioid fentanyl. It’s estimated the total economic burden to society of America’s opioid overdose epidemic is now more than $1.3 trillion and rising. We need to do something not only to save lives but to save trillions of dollars. Trumps Accountant dumps him on Valentine’s Day. Mazars USA, Donald Trump's longtime accounting firm, abruptly severed ties with the former president last week amid civil and criminal investigations into the Trump Organization's finances, saying that the company financial statement could "no longer be relied upon. Trump inflated his assets prices for text, lending or insurances. However, the totality of circumstances make Trump's financial documents unreliable. This came after revelations in part of new court filings by New York District Attorney Letitia James, who has over the past three years led an all-encompassing civil probe into Trump's finances. James announced that her office had found significant evidence that Trump falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit." Trump has, for his part, aggressively fought to stamp out the probe, tarring it as a politically-motivated "witch hunt." Back in December, Trump brought a formal lawsuit against James' office, claiming that her investigation is guided solely by political hatred and a desire to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against a private citizen who she views as a political opponent. James submitted the letter as part of a court filing to force Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. to provide testimony to her office. Former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who was leading the probe at the time, indicted Allen Weisselberg, longtime CFO of the Trump Organization, with running a 15-year tax avoidance scheme that privileged executives with off-the-books company perks. Back in December, Vance also impaneled a grand jury to hear testimony from Donald Bender, a Mazars accountant who worked for Trump. Things are not looking good for the Trumps. Hopefully they will get some jail time for their corruption. Now for some happy news, that everyone should like. Simple Green Light saving marine life. Marine biologists have found that $8 green LED lights attached to fishermen’s gill nets were enough to discourage huge amounts of sea animals like turtles, rays, and sharks from ever swimming toward the nets. Originally tested by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on sea turtles off the coast of Hawai’i, they are proving even more effective on squid and the elasmobranch family, which contains sharks and rays. It was found that just a few green lights reduced the amount of elasmobranch and squid caught in fisherman’s nets 81% to 95%. The endangered loggerhead sea turtle also fared well, with the green glowing nets reducing their incidence of bycatch by 51%. Even non-game species of fish steered clear of the green light more than in the unlit control nets. Overall, the lit nets reduced all bycatch by 63%. The research team compared 5,000 lit nets to 5,000 unlit nets off the coast of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico, where several species of sharks and rays are declining due to bycatch, including the devil and manta rays. The study also found that there was zero reduction in the fisherman’s harvest of game species.
Tammy
|