Articles by Thomas G Brown

Prop 37 in the state of California will be on the ballot November 6th. The voter guide provides a description of the bill and what it means. There is a group for and against this referendum and their claims will be examined through the prism of the description offered in the California voter's guide. Genetically Engineered food (GE) are foods which are those animals and plants that have been altered at the genetic level for benefits.  Labeling will be required for all raw foods such as fruits a...

Source: U.S. Senate Official Photo It is no secret that partisanship is more polarized than ever. From local politics to the Senators in Washington D.C., the barriers to policy making have been bolstered by this extreme partisanship. Here is a list of the top five most partisan Democrats in the Senate. To determine partisanship, which is generally subjective, the rankings provided by Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) as well as OpenCongress.org are used to demonstrate how often a candidate...

Credit: commodityonline.com A news story that appeared in the New York Post reported that a dealer in New York City's diamond district unknowingly acquired phony gold bars. The dealer later discovered that at least ten bars of gold he purchased were counterfeit. The bars had just a gold coating on the outside with the majority of the bar being tungsten. A gold dealer named Ibrahim Fadl, the man who received these fake gold bars, stated in the report how they came into his possession: "Fadl, a...

Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Author: Candelwicke Some in the education community are voicing their concern for Mitt Romney's recent vice presidential pick, US Representative Paul Ryan (WI). One such voice is that of American Federation of Teachers President, Randi Weingarten who said: "Rep. Ryan's record speaks for itself. He would reduce, not expand, real opportunities for all students to have access to high-quality public education." Our public education system was not always a federal issue. ...

Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Author: Kjetil Ree The reverse mortgage is a financial vehicle that allows home owners who are 62 years of age and older to take out a loan on their primary residence. The Department of Housing and Urban Development will back a loan up to $625,500 which means that banks and financial institutions are enticed into setting these loans up as they have a "heads they win, tails you lose" opportunity. If you have a home that is valued higher than this limit you can take ou...

Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Author: Christopher Seliga There has been a lot of talk about cities in California defaulting and going into bankruptcy, but this problem is happening all over the country. One city in Pennsylvania is heading toward a similar financial cliff. Things in Scranton have gotten so bad that the mayor has broken contracts with city employees and declared their new pay scale will be minimum wage. How did Scranton get here? What lessons can we learn from this failure in budget...

The police in Long Beach, CA raided a marijuana dispensary on June 19th and were caught on film destroying surveillance cameras in an attempt to hide evidence of misconduct and excessive force, unaware that the video footage was being recorded off site. A volunteer at the collective can be seen in the video below with his neck stomped on by one of the officers who raided the facility. The THC Downtown Collective was raided for not having a city permit although it was in compliance with state re...

For decades the US government and the DEA have classified marijuana as a Schedule I drug. Their definition is as follows: "Substances in this schedule have a high potential for abuse, have no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and there is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision. Some examples of substances listed in schedule I are: heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), peyote, methaqualo...

During my lifetime I've personally experienced the effect of many changes to health care policy, most of which were not for the better. When I was born I had a number of severe birth defects in my stomach and heart. These and several other less severe problems allowed me to observe first-hand how health care policy affects patients. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act upheld by the Supreme Court has created a whole new host of problems that will actually burden and harm people like me...