Glennamaes

Delays in implementing Oklahoma’s “seed-to-sale” tracking system for medical marijuana have sowed confusion for businesses in the fast-growing cannabis industry as law enforcement authorities step up their enforcement efforts for illicit marijuana products.

The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority’s efforts at putting the seed-to-sale system in place at the end of April was delayed by a lawsuit from a group of businesses who said the state was forcing them to buy the tags needed to track the cannabis products. A judge in Okmulgee County agreed to halt implementation until the end of June.

Oklahoma voters approved medical marijuana in 2018 under State Question 788. Most states with legal medical or recreational cannabis markets have some type of tracking system to verify that products are grown, processed, transported and sold under the law. The state’s seed-to-sale system was part of House Bill 2612, the so-called “unity bill,” in 2019.

There is broad agreement among cannabis businesses that seed-to-sale is needed to ensure legal products and enable quicker consumer recalls if there are health or safety problems with a particular product. But how the state chose its vendor and how much businesses should bear the costs of regulation has split many in the industry.

Attorney Ron Durbin, who filed the lawsuit in Okmulgee County on behalf of a few dispensaries, said the law requires a seed-to-sale system but doesn’t require businesses to use Metrc LLC, the Florida-based vendor that won the bid for the system in September. More than a dozen other states with legal cannabis markets use Metrc for their seed-to-sale systems.

Durbin’s clients want the state to pick up the costs of the Metrc system and the radio-frequency identification tags to track cannabis products. The online Metrc system costs licensees $40 per month, with plant tags costing 45 cents and product tags costing 25 cents. Average compliance costs per year would be about $705, according to estimates in the state contract.

Durbin said the state failed to properly require medical marijuana licensees to use the Metrc system under agency rulemaking. He said press releases and social media posts by the medical marijuana authority notifying cannabis businesses about Metrc’s implementation constituted “backdoor rulemaking” and didn’t allow for public comment. Durbin said tag costs and monthly subscription fees for the platform was a tax or fee never approved by the Legislature.

“I’m arguing those are not the way you adopt regulations, and the regulations don’t require any of this,” Durbin said in an interview. “If that’s the case, we’re back to where I said we should be, which is: Go adopt some lawfully appropriate regulations to implement your seed-to-sale tracking program. OMMA has way over complicated this. Quite frankly, they dropped the ball and didn’t do their job in getting regulations done.”

Durbin said the state’s 7% medical marijuana excise tax, which has brought in $100 million since 2018, should allow for the authority to pay for the seed-to-sale tracking systems and tags, or at least the costs for the first few months. (Medical marijuana products are also subject to state and local sales taxes.)

The medical marijuana authority declined to comment on the lawsuit but said in court filings the state legally awarded the contract to Metrc and a seven-month training and implementation period had been derailed by the lawsuit. Metrc allows other seed-to-sale programs or point-of-sales systems to communicate with its tracking system. More than 7,100 licensees in Oklahoma have already signed up to use the Metrc system.

“It is only once a commercial licensee’s data makes its way into Metrc that the OMMA can view and track that inventory,” Kelly Williams, the authority’s director, said in an affidavit filed in the case. “In other words, the contract with Metrc provides the OMMA a cloud-based system that gives it visibility in real time to perform its auditing and regulatory function.”

Metrc wasn’t named in the original lawsuit. The company successfully argued in a June 1 hearing that it should be allowed into the lawsuit as a party because the temporary restraining order interfered with its state contract. The next hearing is scheduled for June 29 in Okmulgee County. 

Ready To Go

LeeAnn Wiebe, CEO of Apothecary Extracts in Beggs, said her businesses were all ready to go on the Metrc system by April. Apothecary Extracts is vertically integrated and has a grow operation, manufacturing facility and a dispensary. Her company also has hundreds of clients on the wholesale level.

“We hit that April 30 date and we already had everything loaded in before the extension, so we just said, ‘Now we’re live, we’re going to keep it going,’” Wiebe said.

The same wasn’t true for many of her wholesale clients, who had Metrc accounts but stopped using the system amid the confusion over the lawsuit and the new deadline for implementation. Wiebe estimated about 9 out 10 of her company’s wholesale clients aren’t using the platform.

“We really had to adjust at our end because we’re fully integrated to Metrc to be able to transfer products,” she said. “We’ve worked with other clients who aren’t in Metrc, but we’ve had to create some workarounds. It’s really put a damper on the rollout for sure.”

Before the state awarded the Metrc contract, medical marijuana businesses still had to track their inventory and keep records for the medical marijuana authority. But it was in an oftentimes cumbersome program that required a lot of manual entry. Wiebe, who started a cannabis business in Colorado, said there were growing pains in that state when the Metrc system was implemented there.

Weibe said Metrc’s costs, for the license and the RFID tags, is less than 1% of the costs for her Oklahoma businesses. She spends much more to test medical marijuana products, with an estimated $2 million in testing costs this year compared to $20,000 in Metrc tags.

“Anytime you have a new system, it can be overwhelming or cumbersome and it’s a bit fearful because you don’t know it,” Wiebe said. “But shortly after it was implemented, everyone could see the value in transparency and everyone using the same system.”  

Wiebe said some of the reluctance to use the Metrc system might be because it’s easy to manipulate the current system.

“Based on working with hundreds of growers at this point, and our challenge in getting license verification, test results or batch information, nine of 10 places we can’t work with because they can’t provide us that information,” she said. “I think most people who don’t want Metrc don’t want it because it eliminates those loopholes or that ability to easily get unregulated product into the market.”

Curbing Illegal Sales

Lawmakers passed several bills in this year’s session to help curtail illegal black market activity in the medical marijuana industry. The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics has broken up illegal grow operations in the past few months, including one earlier this month in Muskogee County that had up to 24,000 plants. Last month, authorities seized 4,700 plants in Logan County.

“We are working a lot of investigations statewide on growers illegally shipping out of state and a few stores selling product brought in from out of state,” said Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics spokesman Mark Woodward. “Black market growers are thriving in Oklahoma. Regarding seed-to-sale, tracking would be helpful in some of our investigations, but it hasn’t hampered our ability to build solid cases on those we’ve already shut down.”

Among the legislative changes are laws that allow the state Bureau of Narcotic and the medical marijuana authority to hire more agents and inspectors. House Bill 2904 would let the authority, which is under the state Health Department, to hire 76 new employees by Dec. 1 for compliance, inspections and investigations. That addition would take the authority to more than 200 employees.

At a special meeting last week for emergency rules, Williams said the authority has a goal of inspecting all licensed businesses this year. So far, about 40% of businesses have had an inspection. The authority has a contract with health department food inspectors to perform some of those inspections.

Sam Bein, owner of Rocking Star Farm in Inola, said enforcement and seed-to-sale tracking are the only ways to ensure legal businesses are on a level playing field. Bein was initially a Metrc skeptic, but said he’s come around to the platform after seeing how it worked.

“It’s going to make it harder to cheat,” Bein said. “Illegal products are still going to get in here, but Metrc is going to slow it down. If you’re a legal business and you’re buying from certified and compliant farms like ours, our product is going to be safe for you. I think the consumer is going to gravitate to those dispensaries and those farms.”

To make up for some of the costs of the Metrc system, Bein said lawmakers should direct the Oklahoma Tax Commission to provide tax credits or deductions to allow medical marijuana businesses to write off their compliance costs. Because marijuana is a controlled substance at the federal level, many deductions or credits available to other industries aren’t available to cannabis businesses under federal tax law. Limited banking options also force many businesses into cash-only operations.

“These costs get passed on to the patient,” Bein said. “If we make those costs higher, then we drive people back to street drugs and out of the safe, legal means of going to a dispensary and the state won’t receive any tax revenue.”

OMMA licensing report as of June 1st, 2021. pic.twitter.com/tqyrWKsHGs

— Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (@OMMAOK) June 3, 2021

For dispensaries, the Metrc system will need a lot of up-front costs when it gets implemented, said Blake Cantrell, CEO/partner of The Peak, which is about to open its fifth dispensary in Oklahoma. The company also runs a distribution business supplying dispensaries across rural Oklahoma.

Cantrell said the delays and uncertainty when the system might go live means it’s a guessing game for many dispensary owners. The Peak had to buy enough tags and get on the Metrc platform to account for all its inventory at the original deadline at the end of April. Then that got pushed to the end of June, although the next court hearing is June 29.

“We had scheduled it out with our point-of-sale provider because it requires their involvement as well to upload to Metrc our initial inventories for each of our stores to take that systemwide and check the integrations,” Cantrell said. “Now we’ll have to make these exact same types of time-based decisions and plans for the new upcoming date, which could very well be delayed again.”

Cantrell said a lack of communication, from both the medical marijuana authority and Metrc, has meant a lot of confusion among many in the industry. He is also board president of the Oklahoma Cannabis Industry Association.

“We need better understanding, and we need better communication,” he said. “I know that OMMA is actively working on improving that, and they’re getting better, but it’s still not good. Something like this has real-world impacts on us and hard financial costs.”

Paul Monies has been a reporter with Oklahoma Watch since 2017. He covers state agencies and public health. Call or text him at (571) 319-3289 or email pmonies@oklahomawatch.org. Follow him on Twitter at @pmonies. 

The post Seed-to-Sale Delays Sow Confusion In Medical Marijuana Market appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Welcome to Custer County, Oklahoma, where emailing a public record is apparently a burden for the local sheriff’s office.

After a year of limited public interactions and meetings over videoconference amid COVID-19, it may come as a surprise that a case involving emailed records has reached the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals.

Transparency isn’t just a highlight for the annual Sunshine Week or a convenient trope to allude to on the campaign trail. It’s an everyday effort for thousands of people in Oklahoma. Attorneys, researchers, private citizens and journalists all make use of state public records laws. And sometimes, they feel like they have no choice but to sue the government for access.  

Among them are Nick Brooke, an Oklahoma City data scientist whose concern over COVID-19 records at the Oklahoma State Department of Health led him to sue the agency, and A. Jay Wagner, an assistant professor at Marquette University in Wisconsin. Wagner’s requests for law enforcement records led to the Custer County case.

Brooke and Wagner took different paths to the courthouse for their public records lawsuits. Brooke, who has no legal training, is representing himself. Wagner’s case was taken pro bono by an Oklahoma attorney who specializes in open records.

Pandemic Records

In the early weeks of the pandemic last year, Brooke said he became increasingly concerned about the epidemiological models forecasting infections and deaths. He felt like the information wasn’t getting to the right people, like Gov. Kevin Stitt, and wanted to request health department records to the governor.

The department said it had the records but it would take some time to review and send to Brooke. Attorneys for the agency said Brooke was never denied the records and he filed his lawsuit too quickly. Oklahoma law has no specific timelines for Open Records Act requests. Instead, the law encourages “prompt and reasonable access.”

“Sixteen days while the department deals with the largest global health catastrophe in more than 100 years is simply not reasonable,” attorneys for the department wrote in their June 5 attempt to dismiss the case. “The Department of Health has been expectantly inundated with requests for records and documents all while trying to manage the response.”

Brooke, who provides data analysis to clients in retail and travel sectors, said he’s used public records laws before on a limited basis on behalf of clients. But his request to the health department felt a little more personal because of the pandemic’s disruptions to daily life and his daughter’s schooling.

“It went from being a business question of how are we going to save dollars to a moral question of how are we going to save lives,” Brooke said. “It is a bit tilting at windmills, and some of my colleagues give me a hard time about it. I’ve fought a traffic ticket once. This is a lot more complicated than that.”

His first courtroom appearance, in October, made him nervous. Brooke, who works from home, wears a mask when he goes out in public but wasn’t accustomed to presenting arguments for long periods of time with a face covering. His glasses got fogged up, making him even more nervous. He’s since experimented with different masks and got some new contacts so he’ll be ready for the next hearing in April.

“Ordinarily, the person who has themselves for a client, the person who doesn’t hire an attorney, has a fool for a client,” Brooke said. “But in this particular instance, I thought that it would help. Also, I’m kind of cheap. I was willing to throw away $250 on (filing) this if I’m wrong, but I’m not usually wrong about this kind of thing.”

Brooke said the judge and opposing attorneys have been respectful and understanding of his lack of courtroom experience.

“Everything I’ve talked about with the court has been very laser-focused on the law,” Brooke said. “I’ve done no ethos; I don’t want to whine. I just want to point out this is what the law says, and I want them to follow the law.”

An Email Burden

Wagner’s request was made in the summer of 2019 as part of a research project he was doing with graduate students at Marquette’s journalism school. They requested various records from agencies in 10 states, including about half the sheriff’s offices in Oklahoma.

For the most part, sheriff’s offices across the country complied with the records requests and emailed Wagner the records.

But not Custer County, where then-Sheriff Kenneth Tidwell said nothing in state law compels him to email records to a requester. He offered the records to be inspected at his office in Arapaho. Tidwell and his attorneys said the Open Records Act allows for “for inspection, copying, or mechanical reproduction during regular business hours.”

Tidwell said he resisted emailing the records because doing so could set a precedent for all kinds of requesters making demands of county offices under the Open Records Act. Last summer, Custer County District Judge Jill Weedon agreed, albeit reluctantly. She said it’s up to the Legislature to fix the law.

“The court finds that the ORA does not currently require the sheriff to email a digital copy of the requested documents,” Weedon wrote in her July 23 order. “Obviously, the ORA is due a legislative update. The court agrees with plaintiff that it would be more efficient to produce the requested documents electronically; however, the ORA does not require that the sheriff do so.”

Wagner and his attorney, Kevin Kemper, appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which sent the appeal to the Court of Civil Appeals in October.

Wagner said Oklahoma sheriffs weren’t alone when it came to pushing back against requests in the project. Usually, a follow-up phone call or email was enough to shake the records loose in other counties and in other states. Tidwell lost in his GOP primary election last June to Dan Day, who took office in January.

“The fact that they’ve received very few requests and the fact that they have emailed records in the past tell you this isn’t about principle,” Wagner said of Tidwell’s office. “This is about them not wanting to be responsive to a professor from Milwaukee.”

A handful of other states, like Virginia, Tennessee and soon Kentucky, require requesters of open records to be residents of the state. But Oklahoma’s law doesn’t make that distinction. Wagner said even in states with a residency requirement, few agencies bother enforcing it. It’s not hard to find a willing resident to make the request on behalf of those from out of state.

“What’s the purpose of those laws? Is it transparency for everybody or just transparency for a select few,” Wagner asked. “Ultimately we’re making sure we have good, effective governance.”

Paul Monies has been a reporter with Oklahoma Watch since 2017 and covers state agencies and public health. Contact him at (571) 319-3289 or pmonies@oklahomawatch.org. Follow him on Twitter @pmonies. 

The post ‘Tilting at Windmills’: What Happens When the Public Fights For Open Records appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Minneapolis-based prefab purveyors Alchemy Architects has completed the Lake Elmo weeHouse, one of the newest additions to its growing portfolio of weeHouses, a series of eco-friendly homes built with the firm’s patented prefabricated housing system. Named after its location in Minnesota, the Lake Elmo weeHouse demonstrates efficient and space-saving design by fitting three bedrooms, two bathrooms and an open layout in 990 square feet without compromising a sense of spaciousness or views. The home is elevated above the ground on helical piers embedded 22 feet underground to minimize site impact.

Completed in 2019, the Lake Elmo weeHouse was commissioned by clients who split their time between Australia and Minnesota. As a result, the architects wrapped the home in low-maintenance and durable weathering steel as well as black cedar cladding to recede the building into the forested landscape. The simple, boxy design responds to the project’s constraints that include a modest budget as well as a maximum zoning height of 16 feet above the flood plain, which was also a major factor of the project.

Related: Alchemy Architects build tiny prefab weeHouses that connect with nature

Surrounding views of the forest and the need for privacy from neighboring plots informed the placement of Lake Elmo weeHouse’s many windows, including the full-height glazed doors that slide open to connect the living spaces to a wide, enclosed deck for a seamless indoor/outdoor living experience. A spacious entry porch provides additional elevated outdoor space.

Inside, the bright, light-filled interiors provide a striking contrast with the dark, weathered steel facade. A kitchen located in the open-plan heart of the home draws the eye with its silver accents, while a built-in bench provides views of the wetland at the end of the hallway. To minimize visual clutter, mechanical equipment is tucked underneath a trap door in the kitchen. In-floor hydronic heating keeps the home warm and cozy during Minnesota’s long winters. 

+ Alchemy Architects

Photography by Brooks Geenen via Alchemy Architects

This piece originally appeared on Truthout.

In a scene straight out of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the GOP-controlled Senate has refused to allow timely testimony from witnesses who had front row seats to Donald Trump’s abuse of power. The senators voted 53-47, strictly along party lines, to table any possible discussion of whether to allow witnesses and documentary evidence until six days of legal arguments and two days of senator questioning had occurred. That means the parties will argue the case and senators will ask questions before they ever get to see documents or hear from prospective witnesses.

The House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed several documents and witnesses to testify during the impeachment inquiry. But unlike any prior impeached president and despite the Constitution’s command that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole power of impeachment,” Trump totally refused to cooperate with the inquiry. He declined to provide even one document. He forbade all members of the executive branch to testify, raising the discredited theory that subpoenaed witnesses who refused to testify would enjoy “absolute immunity” from civil and criminal prosecution. But every court to examine that theory has rejected it.

Ultimately, 17 witnesses testified in the House inquiry. Nine followed Trump’s command and defied their subpoenas. The testimony provided overwhelming evidence of Trump’s abuse of power and obstruction of Congress as charged in the Articles of Impeachment issued by the House.

On the first day of the Senate trial, the Democratic House impeachment managers made 11 motions to amend Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s proposed trial rules to allow witnesses and documents. The managers moved to subpoena relevant documents from the White House, State Department, Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget. They also moved to issue subpoenas to Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff; John Bolton, former national security adviser; Mike Duffey, White House budget official; and Rob Blair, adviser to Mulvaney.

In the course of arguing their motions, the managers laid out the case of Trump’s abuse of power. The four men the managers want to testify witnessed Trump’s withholding of almost $400 million of congressionally authorized military aid to Ukraine until President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to announce investigations into one of Trump’s political rivals.

During arguments on the managers’ motions, Trump’s lawyers repeatedly bemoaned the threat to executive privilege if witnesses were required to testify. Executive privilege means that some internal executive branch communications are protected from compelled disclosure. But Trump has relied on the “absolute immunity” theory to prevent witnesses from testifying; he never asserted executive privilege. During a witness’s testimony, Trump can invoke executive privilege to prevent an answer to a specific question. But he can’t stop the witness from testifying in the first place. In United States v. Nixon, a unanimous Supreme Court denied Richard Nixon’s claim of executive privilege and ordered him to produce the inculpatory tapes. Nixon resigned shortly thereafter.

Even if Trump asserts that a witness is absolutely immune from compelled testimony, House manager Jerry Nadler observed, the president has no authority to block that person from testifying. Nadler cited a judge who recently wrote, “Presidents are not kings. That means they do not have subjects … whose destiny they are entitled to control.”

Trump’s legal team spent the bulk of its time arguing about process. His lawyers criticized the method the House used to issue subpoenas even though the House has the “sole power of impeachment.” They claimed that Trump was denied due process in the House inquiry even though he was invited to participate and declined. What Trump’s lawyers didn’t do was to refute the powerful evidence presented by the managers.

All 100 senators must sit silently, on pain of imprisonment, for six days a week for the duration of an impeachment trial except for during the 16 hours when the senators get to ask questions. McConnell is under pressure from Trump to conduct a quick trial so that the president can brag about his acquittal during his State of the Union address on February 4. McConnell insisted that all motions be resolved on Day 1 of the trial so the arguments could begin on Day 2. Thus, the senators and Chief Justice John Roberts, the presiding officer, were forced to sit in the Senate Chamber for nearly 13 hours into the early morning hours.

McConnell wants a “rushed trial with little evidence in the dark of the night,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “If Trump is so convinced he’s innocent,” he added, “why not in broad daylight?” Because, the managers argued, Trump wants to minimize the incriminating evidence the American people hear.

“A trial without evidence is not a trial; it’s a cover-up,” Schumer charged. All prior impeachment trials featured evidence. “The witnesses we subpoenaed weren’t Democrats,” Schumer said. They’re “the president’s own men.”

The most important decision the senators can make is whether there will be a fair trial, lead manager Adam Schiff noted, saying this decision is “more important than the vote on guilt or innocence.” If senators wait to call witnesses, they “won’t have any of the evidence the president seeks to conceal during most of the trial,” he added.

Moreover, Schiff argued, limiting the evidence to that developed in the House would make the Senate function as an appellate body, meaning that it would just review what the House inquiry had found. This role is inconsistent with the Constitution, which grant the Senate the “sole power to try all impeachments.”

Zoe Lofgren, the first woman ever to address the Senate as an impeachment manager, challenged the senators to “end President Trump’s obstruction” by authorizing subpoenas. “If the Senate fails to take this step, you won’t even ask for the evidence,” she said. “This trial and your verdict will be questioned.”

The managers also made a motion to rectify an unfair defect in McConnell’s draft resolution that would permit Trump to cherry-pick documents he had refused to provide to the House and then introduce them in the Senate. That would allow Trump to “use his obstruction not only as a shield to his misconduct, but also as a sword in his defense,” Schiff noted. The proposed amendment said that if any party tries to admit evidence that wasn’t produced in the House, it must provide the other party with all documents responsive to the subpoena. This is consistent with the well-established Rule of Completeness, which prevents the selective introduction of evidence that would mislead the jury. That motion was also tabled by a 53-47 vote.

But the rubber hit the road when the Senate tabled the managers’ motion to ensure they would be able to argue for witnesses and documents later in the trial. Before trial, a few moderate GOP senators had publicly expressed a desire to hear witnesses. On the first day of trial, however, they walked in lockstep with McConnell and Trump in refusing to guarantee even the opportunity to discuss whether witnesses will be called. Schumer accurately told CNN at a break earlier in the day that when the Republicans say “later” for witnesses, “they mean never.”

Finally, the managers moved to allow the chief justice to determine whether a requested witness’s testimony would be relevant to the inquiry, a determination that could be overruled by the Senate. That motion, too, was tabled by the same margin.

“Every Republican senator has shown that they want to be part of the cover-up by voting against every document and witness proposed,” Nadler said.

Indeed, Day 1 of the trial is a harbinger that all Republican senators will ultimately serve as loyal foot soldiers to the president, seriously imperiling the constitutional separation of powers. To borrow Frank Rich’s striking characterization, they are “Vichy Republicans,” referring to the French government that did Hitler’s bidding during the Nazi occupation of France.

Texas Republicans’ 2020 election game plan somehow made its way into Democratic inboxes Monday evening, listing 12 statehouse districts to attack and focusing on how to mitigate “the polarizing nature” of President Donald Trump.

According to the Dallas Morning News, Republicans intend to set up attack “microsites” for the 12 incumbents who won by less than 4 percent in 2018. Part of the plan includes buying ostensibly supportive domain names to reroute them to the negative sites.

The document is also permeated with Republicans’ concern about the Trump effect on down-ballot races.

“Given the polarizing nature of the President, I suspect some Republicans will refuse to turnout during the General Election because they don’t want to vote for him – though I don’t know that we will know what this universe would look like without us or a stakeholder creating a model,” the document reads. “Regardless, I suggest we set up a contingency budget to target these folks with mailers, digital ads, and texts to encourage them to turnout for U.S. Senate, State Senate, State House, and so on.”

Democrats are aiming to win the majority in the Texas House for the first time since 2003, after making significant gains in the 2018 blue wave.

Like I wrote last week, athleisurewear is no longer just a weekend category. Brands are increasingly stepping up options, styles, and value to get your attention and prove to you that theirs is the best of the best.

One such push combines the efficiencies and technologies of athleisure with the style and elegance of office attire. And so you have a sea of options that lets you elevate your clothes to high-function and maintain your favorite style for a day at the office or an important dinner. Comfortable, durable, breathable, sweat-wicking, quick-drying — these are just some of the features we’re seeing in more and more office-worthy apparel.

After we put out our prequel to this (obviously) main story, readers asked for a women’s edition. Here are some great options to keep in mind about the pants best fit for your work, your style, and the fire within you.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

100 easy, family meals that are on the table in less than 20 minutes! Looking for some super quick meals for busy school days and nights’ I’ve got plenty of quick, easy and tasty recipes that fit the bill without sacrificing anything in the way of flavour! Not only that but you have lots of...

Read On →

The post 20 Minute Meals appeared first on Closet Cooking.

 

Everyone loves baby chicks. That’s probably why every Easter, we hear about families who buy chicks for their children, only to realize they grow up to be full size chickens that don’t really fit into their lives. One farmer in Nebraska turned that into a business idea: she rents chicks to families for Easter.

Mariel Barreras is the farmer, and the Barreras Family Farm‘s Rent-a-Chick is the result.

Families come to the farm, pay $60, and take home a kit with two cute chickies, keep them for a couple of weeks, then bring them back to rejoin the Barreras’ flock where they grow up and live out their happy chicken lives laying eggs.

Barreras has grown it into an educational program that caters to day cares, schools and home school families. They’re now providing a full kit of supplies, emails with activities, and a certificate good for the eggs the chicks will grow up to lay in the fall.

It’s important to note that Barreras’ program started much smaller. In 2017, the third year for the Barreras, the price was $35, and chicks came only with a cardboard box.

Anyone could start with a simple setup like that. I could even see a 4H or ag student group trying this idea.

Hat tip to @maniactive on Twitter for the link

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What interesting, useful and fruitful discussions you - TGB readers - have been carrying on in the comments of posts about my pancreatic cancer. Some of you have been-there-done-that with a variety of cancers and I appreciate your generosity in sharing your experiences – it enriches our understanding.

On Wednesday, I met with the medical oncologist and her team to talk about my upcoming chemo. I had been dreading the meeting since it was booked a few weeks ago.

Despite what you think from my written reports here, my upbeat, optimistic days run parallel with dark, pessimistic, even frightening ones that include horrible images that appear unbidden as I am falling asleep at night or for an afternoon nap.

My mood worsened in the days leading up to Wednesday's meeting with memories of how chemo sickened my father and wasted his body 35 years ago, which I tried to counter with the success my friend Joyce Wadler had with chemo through three different cancers.

It didn't help much and even though I told myself that there was no point in having gone through the terrible recovery period from the Whipple procedure surgery and not follow up with the recommended chemo was just stupid, my gloom persisted.

“Stupid” is the word since, as the experts keep telling me, I am in better shape to beat this cancer than 90-plus percent of patients. To recap:

⚫ Because most pancreatic cancer is detected after it has spread, only ten percent of people diagnosed are eligible for the surgery.

⚫ The portion of my pancreas that was removed, including the tumor, was “clean at the margins” meaning it has not spread from that organ.

⚫ In addition, 17 lymph nodes touching the pancreas were removed and tested for cancer cells; three were positive.

⚫ Eighty percent of patients in my circumstance who take the chemotherapy are dead from the disease in five or fewer years.

And you wonder why I'm sometimes morose about this?

On the other hand, there is what my primary care physician said when I saw him a couple of weeks ago: “Ronni, you are very healthy - except for the cancer.” Maybe that is what made the medical oncologist on Wednesday more upbeat about my chemo outcome than some others: that it will be “curative” which means, like many other cancers, it is considered cured if the patient is cancer-free in five years.

To know that, there will need to be regular checkups, tests and scans to monitor the cancer (or – best case scenario – lack thereof) which, of course, leaves me with the life I have always wanted to avoid: being a professional patient.

But what other choice is there? So in mid-September I will begin chemotherapy with two drugs – one intravenous weekly through a port permanently embedded (for the duration) in my chest, and the second drug taken orally twice a day every day, each for three weeks in a row, then a week off before starting again.

For six months this goes on which will take me to March 2018. There are, of course, potential side effects – fatigue, various kinds of sores, peeling and cracking skin but not, in my case, hair loss, or not much they say.

With the intravenous drug alone, 55-60 percent of patients are alive after three years, the medical oncologist tells me. When the second, oral drug, which is relatively new, is included that number is increased by 15-plus percent.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the cancer might come back, usually in the liver or lungs and there is little treatment then.

Those of you who have discussed your chemotherapy in the comments undoubtedly know all about this with whatever differences apply to your kind of cancer.

To me, this is all new and in my gloom, I sometimes lean toward agreeing with those people who renounce these “poisons” in favor of herbs and other “natural” treatments.

My more rational self knows perfectly well that if flax seeds cured cancer we would have heard about it and they would cost $5000 an ounce.

Like me, you have probably noticed through the years, that people are remarkably adaptable to difficult even, sometimes, severe circumstances and once I get started with this new weekly routine in mid-September, I'm sure it won't feel as burdensome as it does now.

ABOUT THE PURPLE RIBBON: For readers who have commented or emailed objections to my use of the pancreatic cancer purple ribbon, I ask you to consider this advice Albus Dumbledore gives to Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, with which I heartily agree and applies to symbols as well as words:

"Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself."

The Internal Revenue Service has granted tax relief for victims of the recent severe storms in Missouri. The April storms produced straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding in at least 26 counties.

The post Missouri Storm Victims May Qualify for Relief appeared first on Taxing Subjects.

Right on the heels of Jeff Sessions' announcement that even non-criminals will now be charged with a felony and imprisoned for simply trying to find a job, ICE just announced they awarded The GEO Group with a brand new contract. The GEO group is one of the largest private prison corporations with seventy-four prisons,fifty residential re-entry facilities, sixty-one day reporting groups and twelve juvenile prisons. Thanks to all the money they shell out to politicians, they can add one more prison specifically designated for immigrants. This new facility is to be built in Conroe, Texas where it already owns and runs the Joe Corley Detention Facility that also houses immigrants and federal Marshall's prisoners.

Federal pay for play using tax payer dollars

Private prisons have been dumping money into politicians' pockets for years now. It's nothing new. And all of that money, every bit of it, is taxpayer money. Over the last fourteen years, GEO alone has hired over 290 lobbyists costing over $11.5 million. Add to that another $7.5 million given directly to candidates and you've got a pay for play scandal. GEO maintains prisons all over the country, but their biggest political targets are in Florida and the southern border states.

read more

There is a reason for hope in the ongoing tragedy of America’s growing opioid crisis – and that is medical marijuana. According to a study coming out in the April issue of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, hospital admissions for opioid addiction and emergency room visits for opioid overdose have dropped significantly in states

The post Big Pharma’s Big Secret: Study Finds Legal Weed Reduces Rate of Opioid Overdose appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

With thousands of water systems in the United States testing positive for higher-than-allowable levels of lead and other contaminants, clean water has become a luxury in the United States. Even worse, this story doesn’t appear to be bothering too many people and the corporate media is completely ignoring it. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses

The post Third World America – Clean Drinking Water Is Now A Rare Commodity appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

Every time a company decides not to move jobs out of the United States, expect Donald Trump to claim credit and too many gullible reporters and, especially, headline writers to go along with it. Still more poisonous, expect some crafty CEOs to give Trump credit, knowing that he’ll eat it up … and maybe toss them a few favors later on.

Ford is the latest in the “no, not really” crew, with its announcement that rather than opening a factory in Mexico, it would be expanding one in Michigan. Ford’s CEO cited “the pro-growth policies [Trump] said he’s going to pursue” (translation: tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, weakened consumer and worker protections) and called it a “vote of confidence.” Kind of a turnaround from the last time Ford and Trump were in the news, way back in September, when Trump was claiming Ford was moving jobs to Mexico that they actually weren’t and the CEO was publicly unhappy about it. It’s almost like in the interim, something happened that made Ford think sucking up to Donald Trump was a good business move.

But, you’re thinking, maybe something about this really is Trumpy. Except not.

Analysts, though, say Ford’s decision stemmed more from its long-term goals than the new administration or devotion to U.S. workers. The company aims to invest $4.5 billion in electric vehicles by 2020. (The company would not comment on the specifics of the 700 new positions.) [...]

The Ford engineers, tasked with creating these models, work in Dearborn, Mich. — 20 miles from the Flat Rock assembly plant. Moving production to Mexico would have made their jobs harder, said Brett Smith, an auto analyst at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor.

“Keeping a new technology near the engineers is an important thing, at least in the first generation,” he said. “That gives them a lot more control to monitor a system.”

Trump can be vindictive and inappropriately threaten companies’ federal contracts. He can throw tantrums that briefly depress stock prices. He can give companies good headlines and the belief that future tax breaks or favorable regulatory decisions are coming. But he can’t change market dynamics—at least not quickly, not yet. He can't bring back coal jobs. He can’t make it easier for engineers in Michigan to oversee work being done in Mexico. He’s not personally responsible for the willingness of American consumers to buy electric cars or small cars.

But if sucking up to him by giving him credit for market forces beyond his control gets a company into his good graces? Plenty of CEOs are ready to say “sign me up.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is giving consumers a few extra days to sign up on HealthCare.gov in time for health insurance coverage to take effect Jan. 1.

Read More →

Deputy People editor JD Heyman told Fox News viewers there had been “absolutely” no coordination or communication with the Hillary Clinton campaign about a bombshell account of one its reporters being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump.

https://youtu.be/mJinfBpfoMI

The original Wheely's café was little more than a humble coffee-making box on a bike. But, the company's dedication to sustainable products and efficient design led to 550 cafés popping up in over 65 countries. The latest Wheelys cafe branches out from selling strictly coffee to act as a full-service, high-tech mobile kitchen.

Related: Tiny Human-Powered Wheely’s Cafe Serves Coffee Brewed by the Sun

The Wheelys 5 is decked out in cutting-edge technology. A solar panel on top the cart provides clean renewable energy, and built-in LED lights illuminate the cafe at night. The kitchen offers a 3 burner gas stove, running water, a hand sink, and a built-in display, and the cafe can event be outfitted with Wi-Fi. Despite all that tech, Wheelys is still a small organic business based on down-to-earth sustainable values. It's still your friendly neighborhood cafe, just with more stuff.

+ Wheely's 5 Open Source Bike Cafe

BY DAVID PERRYMAN Raising cattle provided a nearly endless supply of “organic fertilizer” for our garden and flower beds. Gathering the fertilizer from our corrals, pastures and pens was relatively labor intensive but it paid huge dividends. The spring I got my license to drive our old 1951 Chevy pickup to town, I scooped and […]

Back a dozen years ago after the initial reports and photos of Abu Ghraib appeared and proved torture had been used on suspected terrorists, foes of the practice—which you would think would include everyone, but obviously doesn’t—made three basic arguments: moral, legal, and utilitarian. 

The moral argument was easy enough. Torture is evil and its modern practitioners claiming they are using it only to save civilization are, in fact, barbarians beneath a veneer of fake probity. 

The legal argument was more complicated. While torture foes argued that it violated the Geneva Conventions, pure and simple, it was learned that the amoral sophists in support of the Bush administration had secretly laid out a twisted justification. Alberto Gonzales was key. Before President Bush appointed him as attorney general in the winter of 2005, he was the prime legal architect for the policy of torture carried out in violation of the Geneva agreements. You may perhaps remember what he wrote in a January 25, 2002 memorandum about the post-9/11 world: 

"This new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges." 

This was followed up less than two weeks later by a memorandum from Bush himself under the Orwellian title “Humane Treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda Detainees.” Then, in August 2002, there was the so-called Bybee memorandum, a 50-page document approving “coercive interrogation” drafted by John Yoo as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States and signed in August 2002 by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice.

Outside of a few people with a top security clearance, what was in those memos was unknown to Americans until much later.

Read the rest of Small town restauranteurs transform former church into a stunning cafe

The New York Public Library just digitized and made available more than 180,000 high-resolution items, which the public can download for free.

The images come from pieces in the library's collection that have fallen out of copyright or are otherwise in the public domain. This includes botanical illustrations, ancient texts, historical maps—including the incredible Green Book collection of travel guides for African American travelers in the mid-1900s. They've also released more than 40,000 stereoscopes, Berenice Abbott's amazing documentation of New York City in the 1930s, and Lewis Hines' photos of Ellis Island immigrants, as well as the letters of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, among other political figures.

One of the related projects they've created with this release is a cool visualization tool that lets you browse every item released.

It's a true treasure trove and—warning!—a total time suck.

Say goodbye to your afternoon.

Teacher Amy Berard describes her experience under a creepy, creepy, creepy instructional model in Lawrence, Massachusetts:

"Give him a warning," said the voice through the earpiece I was wearing. I did as instructed, speaking in the emotionless monotone I’d been coached to use. But the student, a sixth grader with some impulsivity issues and whose trust I’d spent months working to gain, was excited and spoke out of turn again. "Tell him he has a detention," my earpiece commanded. At which point the boy stood up and pointed to the back of the room, where the three classroom "coaches" huddled around a walkie talkie. "Miss: don’t listen to them! You be you. Talk to me! I’m a person! Be a person, Miss. Be you!" [...]

If you’re not familiar with No Nonsense Nurturing or NNN, let’s just say that there is more nonsense than nurturing. The approach starts from the view that urban students, like my Lawrence, MA middle schoolers, benefit from a robotic style of teaching that treats, and disciplines, all students the same. This translated into the specific instruction that forbade us from speaking to our students in full sentences. Instead, we were to communicate with them using precise directions. As my students entered the room, I was supposed to say: "In seats, zero talking, page 6 questions, 1-4." But I don’t even talk to my dog like that. Constant narration of what the students are doing is also key to the NNN teaching style. "Noel is is finishing question 3. Marjorie is sitting silently. Alfredo is on page 6."

Oddly enough, the Lawrence schools ultimately decided Berard was not the right fit.

Continue reading for more of the week's labor news.

Open Thread below...

 

You don’t have to wait for someone from outside to come in and save your town. You don’t need some other person with some special qualities to show up and help you. You don’t have to wait for fate to take its course. You have the choice to act to shape the future of your town.

Here’s where you should start: downtown. Start with downtown. 

Here’s why. A lively downtown means…

• a lively environment for your local small businesses
• a better breeding ground for new businesses
• more chances for people to realize that you have more local businesses than they thought
• more chances for people to run into each other and interact, and ultimately make new things happen.

A lively downtown means a healthy town.

Here’s one idea: a Pop-up Fair.

What is it? It’s a festival of local businesses, artists, direct marketers, home-based businesses and others who have neat stuff to sell, creating pop-up temporary businesses right on your downtown sidewalks, just for one day.

Like an old-fashioned sidewalk sale, but with a decidedly new feeling of life and interesting new vendors. Rather than boring old tables and clothes racks from stores everyone knows all too well, we’re talking new and different mini-stores that pop up right on the sidewalk with shelves and displays and interesting items for sale.

You are welcome to take that idea and just run with it. But we know you’re much more likely to follow through and actually do it if we keep pushing you step by step. So that’s what Deb Brown and I are going to do.

We’re sending out four weekly emails guiding you through the process. You can always hit reply and ask questions, and we’ll come up with answers. We’re charging for it because we know that, too, will make you more likely to stick to it and actually follow through.

We know if you’ll take this idea and actually do it, you’ll kick off a run of good things for your town. We wanted something small enough to do in a town of 300 people, but flexible enough to scale up to big small towns and neighborhoods.

So if you’re ready to shape the future of your town, head to SmallBizSurvival.biz/popup.

Don’t wait too long. The sales close on June 15, 2015, and then you’ll have missed it.

It’s a heart-dropping feeling: you come back to the pole where you left your brand new bike and all you see is a dangling, clipped chain. Even as biking grows in popularity as a form of green transportation, worries about bicycle theft and vandalism still prevent many from taking it up. Reliance Foundry‘s bike lockers are a reliable, durable and secure solution that offers peace of mind to cyclists. The versatile, heavy-duty storage chambers are an ideal alternative to easily clippable chain locks, and a way to encourage more people to put down their car keys and pick up their bike helmets.

Read the rest of Reliance Foundry bike lockers provide secure storage for cyclists on-the-go

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“I think it’s worth noting that Republicans seem to be talking only about me. I don’t know what they’d talk about if I weren’t in the race.”

— Hillary Clinton, quoted by Politico.

The “Daily Show” host dedicated two segments Monday night to discussing Indiana’s heinous Religious Freedom Restoration Act, including a witty bit on “pizza hate.”

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Come on, Walmart!

We were just slightly proud of you for asking the governor of Arkansas to veto the state's so-called religious liberty laws, but then you go and do this? According to Richard Johnson, writer for Page Six of the New York Post:

Walmart — the largest seller of guns and ammo in the country — is refusing to sell a book by cage-fighting cutie Ronda Rousey on the grounds that she’s too violent.
“My Fight/Your Fight” (due May 12 from Regan Arts) has pre-sold thousands of copies at Barnes & Noble, and the ravishing Rousey is already booked on “Good Morning America,” “CBS This Morning” and other shows. But the mouth-breathers at Walmart will be denied.

In addition to selling more guns and ammo than any retailer in the country, the following books are all listed on Walmart's Top 200 bestseller list:

American Sniper—In which Chris Kyle shoots and kills at least 160 men, women, and children.

Walking Dead Graphic Novels—In which heads are routinely blown off and faces regularly eaten off by zombies

Every book by Bill O'Reilly about killing someone—Patton, Jesus, Kennedy, etc.

10 Day Green Smoothie Cleanse—which is basically about violent butt explosions in the name of weight loss.

The point is this: Guns, which actually kill people, aren't too violent for Walmart, books about men who actually kill people with those guns aren't too violent for Walmart, but a book from an Olympic silver medalist who fights for sport is too violent?

Something's off. What do you think?

Planting a butterfly garden isn’t enough to help monarchs thrive in North America, according to the USDA. A new study published last week in the journal Science and Nature illustrates the deadly relationship between the neonicotinoid insecticide clothianidin and the rapid decline of monarch butterfly populations over the past 20 years in North America. The USDA research shows that the butterflies are facing a two-fold fight for survival. On one hand, farmers are eradicating milkweeds, the main food source of monarch caterpillars, by using the Monsanto herbicide RoundUp. On the other, neonicotinoids used to control other insect pests are also being applied in agriculture fields and, as the report indicates, “negatively affect larval monarch populations.” The USDA report is the first to link neonicotinoids to monarch butterfly survival and reproduction. This news comes on the heels of a ban on neonicotinoid insecticides in Portland, Oregon, where city officials were concerned about its lethal impact on local bees.

Via ISN

Images via Shutterstock

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April 7, 2015:  Today’s NOOK Daily Find offer is RAYLAN: third in the Raylan Givens series by Elmore Leonard for just 1.99. 

Overview: 

The revered New York Times bestselling author, recognized as “America’s greatest crime writer” (Newsweek), brings back U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, the mesmerizing hero of Pronto,Riding the Rap, and the hit FX series Justified.

With the closing of the Harlan County, Kentucky, coal mines, marijuana has become the biggest cash crop in the state. A hundred pounds of it can gross $300,000, but that’s chump change compared to the quarter million a human body can get you—especially when it’s sold off piece by piece.

So when Dickie and Coover Crowe, dope-dealing brothers known for sampling their own supply, decide to branch out into the body business, it’s up to U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens to stop them. But Raylan isn’t your average marshal; he’s the laconic, Stetson-wearing, fast-drawing lawman who juggles dozens of cases at a time and always shoots to kill. But by the time Raylan finds out who’s making the cuts, he’s lying naked in a bathtub, with Layla, the cool transplant nurse, about to go for his kidneys.

The bad guys are mostly gals this time around: Layla, the nurse who collects kidneys and sells them for ten grand a piece; Carol Conlan, a hard-charging coal-mine executive not above ordering a cohort to shoot point-blank a man who’s standing in her way; and Jackie Nevada, a beautiful sometime college student who can outplay anyone at the poker table and who suddenly finds herself being tracked by a handsome U.S. marshal.

Dark and droll, Raylan is pure Elmore Leonard—a page-turner filled with the sparkling dialogue and sly suspense that are the hallmarks of this modern master.

Don’t have a device? Read this title on the free NOOK Reading App™, newly updated for Android and IOS.

This special price is valid for today only – stay tuned for tomorrow’s NOOK Daily Find.

PLEASE NOTE: You will no longer be able to find the Daily Find on the NOOK Blog! Find the Daily Find on our Twitter (@nookBN) every morning at 10 AM and on our website, updated daily.