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What Boondoggle? Carney Unaware of $34M Military HQ Troops Won’t Use

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Photo Credit: APWhite House Press Secretary Jay Carney apparently isn’t reading his hometown paper.

The Washington Post carried a fairly explosive story on Wednesday about a $34 million military headquarters in southwestern Afghanistan that probably will never be used by U.S. forces. A scathing inspector general letter was also released Wednesday morning on the war-zone boondoggle.

But asked on Thursday whether President Obama was outraged by the waste, Carney said he hadn’t heard anything about it.

“I would have to take the question. I haven’t seen the report,” Carney said.

He added: “But we’re obviously outraged by wasteful spending in general — again, I’m not aware of this report, or any specifics about the base that you described.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Taxpayer-Funded Research Lets People Experience What it Feels Like to be a Cow

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerWould experiencing a day in the life of a cow make you less likely to eat meat? How would chopping down a tree affect your paper usage? These are questions that the National Science Foundation awarded universities $748,000 dollars to use virtual reality to answer.

“If somebody becomes an animal, do they gain empathy for that animal and think about its plight?” asked Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. “In this case, empathy toward the animal also coincides with an environmental benefit, which is that [not eating] animals consumes less energy.”

Bailenson is heading research at Stanford in which participants don virtual reality helmets and walk on their hands and feet. They are then able to see themselves as a cow in a virtual mirror. They experience what a cow does on its way to being slaughtered and then record what they eat for the next week to see if being a cow reduced meat consumption.

This is just one experiment Bailenson is conducting, but all his experiments are tailored to finding new ways to encourage environmental conservation.

E&E News reports: “Volunteers also have virtually chopped down a tree, a study aimed at examining attitudes toward paper use. Others took a virtual reality shower while eating lumps of coal — literally consuming it — to gain insight into how much was needed to heat the water.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Lessons not Learned: State Spending Out-of-Control as New Fiscal Year Begins

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Photo Credit: APA new fiscal year began on Monday in most states. To celebrate, capitals from Hartford to Sacramento are going on a spending spree, acting as if the recent fiscal crisis never happened…

Exhibit A is California’s Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who just signed a $96.3 billion budget, up from $87 billion two years ago, amid a festival atmosphere in Sacramento. This was the first real increase since the Golden State’s $60 billion deficit three years ago.

Oil-rich North Dakota is also celebrating Christmas early. The Republican legislature and Gov. Jack Dalrymple approved budgets this spring for the next two years that pump up spending by more than 50%. The budget finances a massive expansion of Medicaid and pork projects, such as the purchase of a marina at a state park. “It’s hard to imagine Democrats would have spent this much,” laments Rob Port, the state’s top taxpayer watchdog and creator of the popular political blog, Say Anything.

Texas approved a biennial budget that increases outlays to $106 billion from $84 billion. Florida was so flush with cash that lawmakers increased the state’s annual budget by more than 6%, to $74.5 billion. Spending was approved for ballet academies, historic courthouses, river ferries and even funds to help cities keep Major League Baseball teams for spring training. All this in a state governed by Republican Rick Scott with GOP majorities in both houses of the legislature.

Virginia and Maryland passed massive transportation bills, aggregating more than $1 billion, to pay for highways, transit, trains and bike paths. The crown jewel of Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley’s Maryland budget, up 8.5%, was a $1 billion “investment” for the construction of wind farms, financed with new utility surcharges.

Read more from this story HERE.

State Department Bureau Spent $630,000 on Facebook ‘Likes’

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Photo Credit: Thinkstock Image

Photo Credit: Thinkstock Image

State Department officials spent $630,000 to get more Facebook “likes,” prompting employees to complain to a government watchdog that the bureau was “buying fans” in social media, the agency’s inspector general says.

The department’s Bureau of International Information Programs spent the money to increase its “likes” count between 2011 and March 2013.

“Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as ‘buying fans’ who may have once clicked on an ad or ‘liked’ a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further,” the inspector general reported.

The spending increased the bureau’s English-language Facebook page likes from 100,000 to more than 2 million and to 450,000 on Facebook’s foreign-language pages.

Despite the surge in likes, the IG said the effort failed to reach the bureau’s target audience, which is largely older and more influential than the people liking its pages. Only about 2 percent of fans actually engage with the pages by liking, sharing or commenting.

Read more from this story HERE.

$509K Federal Safe-Sex Study Will Text Gay-Lingo to Meth Addicts

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A $509,840 grant by the National Institutes of Health will pay for a study that will send text messages in “gay lingo” to methamphetamine addicts to try to persuade them to use fewer drugs and more condoms. The study began in February.

Lead researcher Dr. Cathy Reback of the Baltimore-based Friends Research Institute, Inc., told CNSNews.com how she and her team of health educators will spend the next four years and over half a million dollars encouraging gay meth addicts to cut down on unprotected sex by periodically sending them “gay-specific” text messages.

“We did a pilot about four, five years ago with 52 out-of-treatment MSM (males who have sex with males),” Dr. Reback explained. “And we sent them text messages that were gay specific – used gay lingo – and made references to the connection between high-risk sex and methamphetamine use among MSM.”

The current study, she added, will test the effectiveness of using text messages to alter gay meth addicts’ behavior.

“So what I wanted to do with this text messaging intervention was to optimize the opportunity to get these guys [to have safer sex] by sending text messages as opposed to ‘Come into my brick and mortar site that’s ten miles from your house, and come for a group [session].’ I mean – you know – okay maybe!” Dr. Reback explained.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Spends $228K to Find Out Why Gay Kenyans Avoid Free HIV Treatment

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has authorized a three-year study to find out why some HIV-positive homosexual men in Kenya do not seek the free treatment that American taxpayers already are funding.

The study, which will cost U.S. taxpayers $228,147, seeks to encourage Kenyan homosexuals, including prostitutes, to avail themselves of the AIDS treatment known as antiretroviral therapy (ART)–and to continue taking it once they start.

“Although men who have sex with men (MSM) are at very high risk for HIV globally, this group has only recently become an important focus of national HIV/AIDS programs in sub-Saharan Africa,” the project description says.

“While it is clear that antiretroviral therapy (ART) can reduce AIDS-related morbidity and mortality and prevent sexual transmission from HIV-infected MSM, little is known about antiretroviral adherence and barriers to care among African MSM.”

Researchers say they have worked with male prostitutes on the Kenyan coast since 2005 and have found “significant disparities” among people who seek treatment and continue with the therapy, partly due to “stigma and social isolation.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Family’s June Africa Trip Could Cost a Colossal $100 Million

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Photo Credit: senorglory

When President Obama makes his first extended trip to sub-
Saharan Africa this month, the federal agencies charged with keeping him safe won’t be taking any chances.

Hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency.

Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bullet­proof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay. Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close.

The elaborate security provisions — which will cost the government tens of millions of dollars — are outlined in a confidential internal planning document obtained by The Washington Post. While the preparations appear to be in line with similar travels in the past, the document offers an unusual glimpse into the colossal efforts to protect the U.S. commander in chief on trips abroad.

Any journey by the president, such as one scheduled next week for Northern Ireland and Germany, is an immense and costly logistical challenge. But the trip to Africa is complicated by a confluence of factors that could make it one of the most expensive of Obama’s tenure, according to people familiar with the planning.

Read more from this story HERE.

Bernanke Out by August, QE Ends, Rates Up; Prepare for Crash Now Because Easy Money Will Dry Up

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesHis clue? Consumer sentiment: “Harris estimates that in the next five years, catch-up consumption will boost annual consumer spending growth by a half point to above 3% from about 2%.”

Reassuring? No, wishful thinking. Be very skeptical. As Robert Kuttner, author of the new “Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Prosperity” once wrote in BusinessWeek, “What do you call an economist with a prediction? Wrong.”

Harris is bucking the headwinds of history. As Jeremy Grantham, chief strategist of the $100 billion GMO money managers, recently told InvestmentNews, the newspaper of record for America’s 90,000 professional investment advisers, “3% annual GDP growth is history.”

Here’s why you better be preparing today for a crash dead ahead. As Pimco’s Bill Gross warned in his recent newsletter: “You’re going to lose money investing … because the central banks say so.” That’s right, this is a Fed-driven rally. Soon the Fed will be forced to stop printing cheap money.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamanomics in Action: Feds Spend $2.5 Million per Stimulus Job

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Photo Credit: APIt’s more than a little disheartening when the chief executive officer of one of America’s most storied Fortune 500 corporations is “comfortable” with the fact that his company created a mere 10 jobs with a $25 million grant under President Obama’s economic stimulus program in 2010. The CEO in question is Honeywell’s David Cote, and the stimulus grant involved came from the Department of Energy to advance Obama’s green energy agenda. The funds were to be used by Honeywell’s UOP subsidiary to build a biofuels technology demonstration plant in Oahu, Hawaii, supposedly creating 85 construction jobs and 40 permanent positions in each succeeding year.

The Energy Department further envisioned a facility producing biomass fuels “on a commercial scale … with the potential to create approximately 800 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs, including in biomass production.”

The problem now is that it appears to be all but impossible to determine whether those rosy projections will come to pass. An April 2012 news report by Honolulu Civil Beat, a trade publication, quoted James Rekoske, Honeywell UOP’s vice president for renewable energy, saying only “about 10 jobs” had been created at that point. (The Energy Department refused to provide Civil Beat with a copy of Honeywell’s grant application.)

Read more from this story HERE.

Addicted Nation: The Price Tag to our Society and a Way Out for Those Suffering

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Photo Credit: IrishCentral

America launched a war on illegal drugs in 1979, spending an estimated 1 trillion on law enforcement efforts since then…..How’s that working out so far? See CNN’s War on drugs, a trillion dollar failure

Mexican drug cartels are profiting hugely from our war and have now grown so powerful they are moving into the United States.

Americas insatiable desire to get high, has kept our prisons full. Many of those incarcerated, abused drugs or alcohol; which may have accounted for the criminal behavior that landed them in prison…Perhaps they were involved in the sale and marketing of drugs, or were themselves the end users.

The cost of addiction to our society can’t even be measured in dollars alone. What bad decisions do addictions cause when judgment is impaired? How many families are shattered? Careers and reputations ruined? Accidental deaths and overdose?

In a world view, President Clinton commented on an incident in his book. He said he was briefed by the Secret Service after they found Russian President Boris Yeltsin standing outside the White House guest quarters, totally inebriated. Dressed only in his underwear, he was trying to hail a taxi in order to get a pizza…this was a world leader with his finger on the button of nuclear weapons. Yeltsin was well known for his chronic drinking problems.

Libertarians like Fox News correspondent John Stossel, have been calling to legalize current “illegal drugs,” saying it’s no business of the government to tell adults what they can, or cannot ingest.

Many experts in the field of addiction say it’s time to take the focus away from criminalization and the stigma that goes with it and focus instead on education/treatment.

There are many great organizations ready to help those suffering from addictions.

Alcoholics Anonymous has successfully helped millions of alcoholics to become productive members of society. Many other organizations adopted AA’s basic premise of 12 step groups and have successfully helped millions of others in their struggle with addictions to drugs, gambling and other harmful behaviors. AA and organizations such as Narcotics Anonymous, are available to help those suffering and are free of charge. See addiction recovery groups

Addiction treatment facilities have developed their own unique and successful ways of helping people break their addictions. Some are free or relatively inexpensive such as what the faith based Salavation Army offers. There are also many state supported facilities which offer drug and alcohol treatment for a nominal fee or free of charge. See recovery resources

There are private rehabilitation facilities offering state of the art treatment using their unique brand of intensive psychotherapy and holistic treatments, such as those developed by Richard Taite at Cliffside Malibu. Richard outlined his roadmap for an addiction free life in his book: Ending Addiction for Good

Louise McCallion’s facility in Northern California, Reflections, has devoted itself to providing treatment for not only the addictions to drugs/alcohol…But also has expertise in dual-diagnosis and co-occurring disorders, all under the care of her well qualified and professional staff.

But private treatment facilities can be expensive; from several thousand dollars for a 30 day stay, to tens of thousands and more for high end facilities.

Other unique forms of help are available such as what Declinol offers in natural cures for alcohol cravings. It is an eight-week at home alcohol program that is completely anonymous. There are no group meetings and clients can go about their regular daily routine. Declinol claims its unique blend of herbs assists the body by restoring the balance and helps to reduce alcohol cravings. While on their program, they offer phone support to answer questions and an online forum where you can communicate with current and past clients of the program.

Declinol isn’t a long term treatment program and doesn’t purport to be, but like many of the other programs, it can be a tool to take that first step towards a long term sober lifestyle…. for a fraction of the price that rehab facilities charge.

Millions of people suffer from their addictions, they should know there is a helping hand ready to lift them up. All they have to do is ask for help.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.