The Latest Underreported News

November, 2012

Not everything that happens in this world makes it to the traditional news outlets. Here are a few of the items you might have missed. Links to further information are included, in case you want to know more.

Marijuana Prevents Lung Cancer?

Alternet recently reported on scientific findings which indicate marijuana may not contribute to lung cancer, and might even help prevent it. The study which found this was conducted by Donald Tashkin, who is a professor of pulmonology at UCLA's David Geffin School of Medicine. He was not apparently working as a marijuana advocate of some kind either. In the 1970s he was the one who identified toxic compounds in marijuana smoke and showed that it could damage cells. You can read more about this here:

Alternet Article on Marijuana and Cancer

TSA Grows More Powerful

The Transportation Security Administration has been expanding its power for years now, and probably will continue to do so. When Texas tried to pass a law last year that made it a crime for a TSA agent to needlessly grope airline passengers (the language specifically made it illegal to "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly [touch] the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast"), the TSA came down hard. They warned that passing the law could lead to them shutting down all airports in Texas. Naturally, the legislators dropped the bill. You can read more about this in a Texas Tribune article from last year.

Is Global Warming Slowing?

There has been no overall warming of the planet in the last 16 years, according to the latest research, which was reported in the London Daily Mail in October of this year (2012). This does not necessarily mean that the world will no longer warm up (and the current plateau is still at a higher temperature), but if the longer-term trend is a rise in temperature, then for some reason(s), there has been a pause in the process for a decade and a half. This might be seen as good news by many, but some scientists say that a 16-year period is too short of a time to draw valid conclusions from. On the other hand, it is a similar period of time (about 1980 to 1996) that has been used as evidence of global warming. Meanwhile, the press, which tends to look for alarming news, has mostly ignored the latest findings.

Do You Have Cash Under the Mattress?

It was somewhat surprising to economists how the Federal Reserve has been able to increase the money supply at the fastest rate ever without causing massive inflation. It's clear now that the money pumped into the banks has been mostly just sitting there, which is a partial explanation for the lack of inflation. Another part of the mystery is that individuals are holding onto more cash. As a result of these two factors and others, the velocity of monetary circulation is at the lowest level in more than fifty years, according to an article from The Independent Institute. It isn't clear why people are hoarding their cash, but there seems to be a general distrust of the alternatives. This is yet another current phenomenon that has been barely reported on in the traditional news outlets.

Where Does the Money Go?

If you have ever wondered where your tax dollars go, you can view all of the details on the following website:

http://www.usaspending.gov/

Type "music" into the search box, for example, and you get a list of the many contracts for things like musical instruments for the Department of Defense ($280,885), or rental fees for musical equipment for the Broadcasting Board of Governors ($171,169 to a government agency I had never heard of prior to seeing this contract). There are more than $5 million in these contracts that show up for the search term "music" in 542 separate transactions. Of course, we don't always get to know where the money went and what for; one of the first contracts listed is for $162,910, paid to "miscellaneous foreign contractors" by the Department of Defense for "miscellaneous items." I guess an expenditure of that amount isn't significant enough to warrant any details.

You also get to see some interesting bits of data if you dig through the site. For example, the Demining Agency for Afghanistan received at least $8 million from the Department of State in 2011 for "Humanitarian Mine and UXO clearance." Is this to clear land mines laid by the Taliban or others? Who knows, but there is at least one contract from the Department of Defense in 2011 for $194 million for the purchase of land mines. Interestingly that contract went to a company called "Mantech Telecommunications and Information Systems Corporation." I guess a land mine does communicate something.

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