Violence Act Returns in Test of Republicans’ Appeal to Women

- By JONATHAN WEISMAN - The New York Times - February 4, 2013

WASHINGTON — For all the attention on the Republican Party’s efforts to attract Latinos, the first test for the party on 2012’s lessons learned will arrive this week for a voting bloc that has drifted out of its grasp: women.

Restarting a politically tinged debate, the Senate voted 85 to 8 on Monday evening to take up a renewal of the Violence Against Women Act. The measure foundered last year on Republican concern over obscure issues like the bill’s inclusion of additional visas for abused illegal immigrants, its treatment of same-sex couples and its strengthening of American Indian courts. Final Senate passage is expected by the end of the week — with broad, bipartisan support.

That will leave House Republicans a stark choice: stand against the provisions that derailed the bill last year or adjust, given November’s electoral blowout with women. Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, practically pleaded with her party on Monday to move forward.

“This is not and never should be a partisan political issue,” she said on the Senate floor. “This is an equal-opportunity crime that harms people regardless of their political affiliation, their profession or their status in life. It’s an issue that deserves bipartisan support.”

House Republican leaders are struggling for a way forward. On Tuesday, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, will meet with Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, to try to compromise on the biggest sticking point, a provision that would allow American Indian women assaulted on reservations by non-Indians to go to tribal courts, which have no jurisdiction over assailants who do not live on Indian land.

Many Republicans see that as a dangerous and unconstitutional expansion of tribal court power, while victims’ advocates say women on reservations have virtually no recourse when raped by non-Indian interlopers.

“On reservations and tribal lands, it’s open season on women,” said Kim A. Gandy, the president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, an advocacy group pressing for passage of an expanded domestic violence law.

But both sides concede the politics of the bill are clear.

“Socially moderate, fiscally conservative women, we do everything we can to drag them away from our party by fighting over things we shouldn’t,” said Steven C. LaTourette, a moderate Ohio Republican who retired from the House last year. “The public only sees the headline, and the headline says, ‘Republicans clocking a bill called violence against women.’ ”

In 2000, a year when the total vote for House candidates split 50-50 between the two parties, 54 percent of women voted for Democratic candidates. Two years later, that gender gap had evaporated.

But in November last year, it had reopened wide. In a year when Republicans maintained control of the House, exit polls showed that 56 percent of women voted against their candidates, an even higher total than the 55 percent that voted for President Obama.

“I do not believe Republicans can change their stripe on this,” said Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “They just can’t.”

House Republican leadership aides said they were in serious negotiations with Senate Democrats, White House officials and tribal leaders on a way forward. Senate Democrats have already made the path clearer by dropping one contentious provision, which would have expanded the number of available visas for illegal immigrants who were victims of domestic violence. That provision, because of its slight cost and a modest fee, ran afoul of the constitutional mandate that tax measures originate in the House.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would instead include the measure in a comprehensive immigration bill his committee planned to take up soon.

Rather than introducing an anti-violence bill that would pass largely along party lines, as House Republicans did last year, House Republican leaders will move forward only after a compromise is reached, aides said.

“Our focus is on passing a bill that protects women and prosecutes offenders — that’s always been our goal,” said Doug Heye, a spokesman for Mr. Cantor. “We have made clear that Dems last year were more interested in using this as a political issue against Republicans than finding a solution to the issues.”

But the politics within the Republican Party are anything but resolved. Some Republicans still oppose using money set aside for domestic violence cases to aid victims in same-sex relationships. Last week, the conservative Independent Women’s Forum said the Violence Against Women Act, passed first in 1994, was a waste of money that could actually be intensifying domestic violence.

“Although there is little credible evidence that V.A.W.A. programs are reducing the effects and occurrence of domestic and sexual violence, there is evidence that several of the policies instituted under V.A.W.A. may actually be harming the very victims they were designed to protect,” wrote Christina Villegas, a visiting fellow at the group.

Fresh off their political victories, Democrats, if anything, may be less willing to compromise further. With a record number of women in the Senate and 60 co-sponsors of their version, including seven Republicans, Democrats are practically daring Republicans to stand in the way again.

“We’re going to have these votes,” Mr. Leahy said. “The proof will be in the pudding.”

“There’s no question that both parties have noticed the extremely important role that women voters played in the last election,” Ms. Gandy said. “You ignore women voters at your own peril.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 4, 2013

The Benefits of Growing and Eating Organic Foods

- By Dr. Tahir Mahmood, Grotek Manufacturing, Inc.

The definition of organic food is very broad, but in simplest terms it is a way of producing food without using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, thereby making little or no impact on our soil, water, air, or the environment in general. The word organic stands for a commitment to agriculture that helps conserve natural resources, reduces air, water and soil pollution, and produces healthy plants and better tasting produce.

“Healthy soils equals healthy food equals healthy people” is a fundamental tenet of many ecological farming systems. 

Production of organic food was very difficult a few years back, but with the introduction of new methods and means of providing adequate nutrition and plant protection measures, such as using natural plant extracts and beneficial insects, it is no longer a problem. It has been seen that with some experience a farmer can produce anything organically with only a slight decrease in crop yield. Organically produced fruits and vegetables grow slowly, but they are full of nutrition, vitamins, and the best anti-stress compounds for human health. Inorganic growers, on the other hand, can definitely produce more using inorganic fertilizers and all kinds of pesticides, but they do so at the cost of nutritional value and health. Inorganically produced fruits and vegetables not only have low/toxic nutritional values, but they also have a very strong negative impact on human health. Materials used for inorganic crop production are causing severe damage to our environment, like soil erosion, water pollution, and air pollution. This damage is having an overall impact on our current health, while posing a threat for our future generations.

A study shown in the American Journal states that in the early 1990s fewer than 3% of people had cancer, while in 1996 close to 50% of people developed cancer and 30% of them died because of this disease. Similarly, asthma cases have increased, more than doubling since 1980. These findings prompted scientists to start thinking about why these changes were occurring, why the numbers were increasing day by day, and why diseases had become so out of control in the modern world. They all agreed that this steep decline in human health coincides with chemical farming, which has replaced organic farming over the years. They also strongly believe that there are four primary causes of the diseases and three out of four are directly related to inorganically produced food.

These factors are:
• Nutritional deficiencies in fruits and vegetables
• Toxicities of the heavy metals in fruits and vegetables (heavy metals are part of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides)
• Congestion • Stress

The final point - stress - is mostly related to nutrition (i.e. deficiencies and toxicities in fruits and vegetables grown by means of heavy inorganic fertilizers and pesticides). Along this same line, there are numerous facts related to diseases and their causes that relate primarily to the consumption of foods grown using inorganic fertilizers and pesticides. In spite of these several compelling reasons: only health-related problems will be good enough for us to decide about whether we need to grow organic or inorganic food.

Benefits of Organic Food:

There can be a debate on exactly how much benefit is gained form eating organic food, but there is no doubt that organic food is much better than inorganic food. Organic food has many benefits over inorganic food quite simply because the food produced is grown naturally, safely, and with better high mineral nutrients. A large body of the scientific community concluded that consumers who want to improve their intake of minerals and vitamins while reducing their exposure to potentially harmful pesticide residues and food additives should choose organic food whenever possible.

A study was done back in 1977 comparing the nutritional value of tomatoes during the 1940s versus that of recently grown food. It was found that the average nutrient content dropped in all areas compared to the 1940s. The drop in Calcium was from 71 mg. to 13 mg. Magnesium dropped from 109 mg. to 14 mg., and Iron, from 29.8 to 0.5 mg. This study concluded that the nutritional value of produce declined drastically since chemicals started to be used in agriculture. This decrease was not only in terms of nutrients like Calcium and Iron. It also occurred with levels of vitamins and other essential things man used to get from plant sources.

There are quite a number of advantages/benefits to eating organic food over inorganic, and they require a lot of space and time to discuss in detail. Below are a few key benefits:

• Organic food has certain compounds that increase our resistance against several diseases, most importantly against cancer. Several scientists from different parts of the world have proved that organically grown food is high in cancer-fighting chemicals. The basic reason for this is the secondary plant metabolites that play a critical role in human health and are nutritionally very important. Some of these very important compounds in plants are called phenolic compounds. These compounds play a very important role in humans because of their wide range of pharmacologic properties, including anti-cancer, anti-oxidant and platelet aggregation inhibition activity. Studies have indicated that these compounds are in very low concentration in plants grown inorganically compared to organically grown because these compounds are produced in the plant body when the plant is under stress like disease/insect attack. These compounds help plants develop resistance to fight against these diseases and insects, while the use of chemical pesticides leave no choice for plants to produce any of these compounds. The application of chemical pesticides and fertilizers result in disruption of the natural production of these phenolic metabolites in plants, which leads to either no or very low concentrations of these compounds in plants.

• Organic food will also cut down the intake of chemicals in the human body, as organic food production does not use any pesticides, growth hormones, fertilizers, or toxic artificial additives like flavoring, coloring and preservatives. It has been noticed by the University of Washington that children who eat a diet of organic food show a level of pesticide six times lower than compared to children who eat a diet of inorganically grown food. Organic food arrives at the market in its natural state with its nutrient content intact. Organic food tastes better and stores better.

• Several studies provide evidence that growing vegetables, fruits and grains organically provides more beneficial nutrients like iron, magnesium, phosphorous, and vitamins, while carrying fewer harmful nutrients (like nitrates), and virtually no toxic pesticide residues.

• Organically grown food is non-GMO, which means that in its pure form the food is free of any imported materials from animal and other plant sources.

• Production of organic food also helps indirectly by improving the environment. Its production helps improve the health of the soil and the ecosystem.

Human health is declining day by day because of deficiencies/toxicities of mineral nutrients. This decline all started happening 50 years back when we began using pesticides, GMO food and inorganic fertilizers. Scientists believe strongly that now is the time to change our growing methods and eating habits, and to select a healthy diet that will keep us away from diseases while keeping our environment safe for us and our future generations. Always try to grow and eat organic food. Keep the environment safe for yourself and for the future generations by growing organically.

Get Your Essential Nutrients From Naturally Grown Foods

Our body needs many different vitamins and minerals to function properly, but getting those daily vitamins can be a difficult challenge. - If you are tired of taking dozens of expensive, artificially made chemical supplements in order to get your daily dose, why not try eating your actual nutrients using and enjoying naturally made vitamins by Mother Nature instead!

The simple vitamin chart below clearly illustrates how you can get all of your essential daily nutrients from naturally grown foods.