Day: February 6, 2025

What Has Happened To the Gov Websites

The takeover of government by unqualified thugs has begun.

In the last few weeks websites of the government having started going dark and seemingly disappearing….WTF?

As an FYI I would like to help my readers that maybe looking for one or more of these sites….

In recent days—in response to directives from the Trump administration—thousands of federal agency web pages have been deleted or altered to remove research, reports, and references to everything from vaccines to environmental policy initiatives. According to The New York Times, more than 8,000 pages have disappeared from the websites of agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Census Bureau, the Department of Justice, and the Food and Drug Administration (to name a few). In other cases, sites are still accessible but have had language related to diversity, gender, and climate change scrubbed.

There are a number of efforts from scientists, researchers, journalists, and advocacy groups to compile and save information that has been removed from federal websites (or is at risk). For example, CDCGuidelines.com has downloadable PDFs of documents on topics like contraception, LGBTQIA+ health, and intimate partner violence, while the Public Environmental Data Project has replicated the Council on Environmental Quality’s deleted Climate & Economic Justice Screening Tool. The Harvard Dataverse is another repository for public data, while the End of Term Archive preserves government websites at risk of changing or being lost in transition between presidential administrations.

You can also find deleted pages yourself using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which scrapes and archives websites across the internet to create a digital information repository. You can enter a specific URL (if you know it) or search specific collections—such as .gov websites and .gov PDFs—using keywords.

On the Internet Archive’s main page, enter the URL of the page you want to read into the Wayback Machine search bar. When the results appear, hover over any calendar date with a blue circle and select a time from the pop-up, which indicates when a snapshot of the page was taken. Depending on the page you’re searching for, you may need to navigate back into 2024.

Alternatively, locate the collection search bar at the bottom of the page, enter keywords, and select a collection from the drop-down. The Wayback Machine has collections for .gov pages and PDFs as well as COVID and end-of-term data.

(lifehacker.com)

I try to be helpful….Hopefully this will help those that are interested in what is being done to our government….if not then stick with fake news of FOX and remain ignorant for the rest of your life.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Never to Return

Most of us shop for eggs and most of us have been bitching about the stark rise in prices…..the question has been asked….will we ever see cheap eggs again?  Many do not understand what is happening so I feel a little background will help….

Bird flu is forcing farmers to slaughter millions of chickens a month, pushing US egg prices to more than double their cost in summer 2023. As the AP reports, it appears there may be no relief in sight, given the coming Easter demand. The average price per dozen nationwide hit $4.15 in December. That’s not quite the $4.82 record set two years ago, but the USDA predicts prices are going to soar another 20% this year. “It’s just robbery,” says Minneapolis resident Sage Mills. “Eggs used to be kind of a staple … (but now) you might as well just go out to eat.” A look:

  • What’s driving prices? In two words, bird flu. More than 145 million chickens, turkeys, and other birds have been slaughtered. Cage-free egg laws in 10 states that set minimum space for chickens may also be responsible for some supply disruptions and price increases.
  • Why is the virus so hard to control? Bird flu is primarily spread by wild birds such as ducks and geese as they migrate. It’s also easily tracked into a farm on someone’s boots or vehicle. The virus found a new host in dairy cattle last March, creating more opportunities for it to linger and spread. More than five dozen people have also become ill with bird flu and one died.
  • What’s being done? Many poultry farms installed truck washes to disinfect vehicles and require workers to shower and change clothes before stepping inside a barn. Some farmers have even invested in lasers that shoot beams of green light to discourage wild ducks and geese from landing. Cooking meat to 165 degrees kills bird flu, and pasteurization kills it in milk.
  • How much has the outbreak cost? It’s impossible to know how much farmers have spent to seal barns, build shower houses, or adopt other biosecurity measures. “Over the last five years, my small farm alone has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on biosecurity,” says Minnesota turkey farmer Loren Brey. The USDA has spent at least $1.14 billion compensating farmers for the birds they’ve had to kill. A USDA rep said the department also spent more than $576 million on its own response

The answer is probably never again.

Why?

The egg industry has learned from the oil industry….take advantage of a situation and raise prices then come down a few cents and people will reveille in their savings and what a good job the industry is doing to help the common man.

Of course that will be bullshit and greed has set in so high prices are the norm and for a long time.

Here’s a factoid for you about the egg industry…..

As avian flu rapidly circulates in the U.S., Cal-Maine Foods, the nation’s largest egg producer, appears to be having a bumper year, bolstered in part by taxpayer bailouts in the multi-millions.

The company’s stocks recently soared to a record high, as its net sales rose by a staggering 82 percent last quarter. Cal-Maine Foods expanded its operations last spring, paying around $110 million in cash to acquire the assets and facilities of another egg producer, ISE America. Despite culling at least 1.6 million hens on infected farms last year, the poultry corporation is getting richer and bigger.

U.S. taxpayers have given the poultry giant a lift. The company has received $44 million in indemnity payouts to compensate for bird deaths tied to the avian flu outbreak. Despite the company’s growth, Cal-Maine Foods is the fourth largest recipient of indemnity payments for the ongoing outbreak from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)’s indemnity program.

The compensation system, distinct from the agency’s program for livestock, pays poultry farmers and producers for the market value of the birds and eggs. It does not pay for birds that directly die from avian flu. It only pays for “infected or exposed poultry and/or eggs that are destroyed to control the disease,” — i.e. deliberately killed to prevent the spread of the virus. The agency also provides compensation for other virus control activities, such as destroying contaminated supplies and disinfecting a barn after an outbreak.

How U.S. Taxpayers Bailed Out the Poultry Industry, and Helped Entrench Avian Flu

Here is my problem….if these people are compensated for their loss how can the government allow them to fleece the public.

Basically it is corporate welfare….and you about those ‘welfare queens’ (sorry for the use of this insulting bullshit)

You might want to pay attention for this is not the only industry that gets rich from fucking the public.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”