The most urgent $5.5 billion that’s needed is to finance retirees’ future health care. So we’re not talking about the post office needing the dough to gas up the trucks or even pay current employees. Taxpayers are needed to pay the cost for mail that was delivered years ago.

I don’t think you can blame the internet entirely for the USPS woes. Poor money management is the major cause of this problem. Can they not foresee the cost of pensions and workers healthcare?

Read on at  US Postal Service cut: Do we really want another bailout? – CSMonitor.com.

“We have Saddam Hussein,” declared billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, apparently referring to President Barack Obama as he welcomed hundreds of wealthy guests to the latest of the secret fundraising and strategy seminars he and his brother host twice a year. The 2012 elections, he warned, will be “the mother of all wars.”

Read more Inside the Koch Brothers’ Secret Seminar | Mother Jones.

Which is what Japan is doing:

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano says the government will apply the maximum allowable radiation limit for vegetables to fish.

The move came after the health ministry reported that fish caught off Ibaraki prefecture — which is about halfway between the plant and Tokyo — contained levels of radioactive iodine that exceeded the new legal limit. Cesium was also found just below the limit. The fish were caught Friday, before the safety limit was announced Tuesday.

Please. No level of radio active material inside the body is safe. The TEPCO folks are saying the radiation in the water will dissipate. What they don’t tell you is that the little radioactive fish you just ate will continue to give off radiation inside your body.

Under a bill signed  by the republican governor of South Dakota today, the state will:

…require women who are seeking abortions to first attend a consultation at one of these centers, to learn what assistance is available “to help the mother keep and care for her child.” …[It also] establishes the nation’s longest waiting period — three days — after an initial visit with an abortion provider before the procedure can be done. It makes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

Read the full story @ NYTimes.com… S.D. Requires Visit to Pregnancy Center Before Abortion

The House Agriculture Committee endorsed a letter this week to Budget Chairman Paul Ryan arguing that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps low-income Americans purchase food, would make a better target for cuts than automatic subsidies to farms.

I have a better idea. Let’s quit the ethanol nonsense, and revert back to using corn for food and feed. Then perhaps the price of corn will go down, resulting in lower food costs. You still want to cut SNAP? Then stick to growing corn for food and feed and work towards reducing the cost of food overall.

Farm subsides have been given out since the Great Depression. Due to our current economic situation, it’s time to reevaluate the program.

NationalJournal.com – Ag Committee Supports Cuts to Food Assistance, Not Farm Subsidies – Monday, March 21, 2011.

The proposed law, also known as H.R. 3, extends the reach of the Hyde Amendment—which bans federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at stake—into many parts of the federal tax code. In some cases, the law would forbid using tax benefits—like credits or deductions—to pay for abortions or health insurance that covers abortion. If an American who used such a benefit were to be audited, Barthold said, the burden of proof would lie with the taxpayer to provide documentation, for example, that her abortion fell under the rape/incest/life-of-the-mother exception, or that the health insurance she had purchased did not cover abortions.

‘SEC. 303. PROHIBITION ON TAX BENEFITS RELATING TO ABORTION.

Read the full story…GOP Bill Would Force IRS to Conduct Abortion Audits

Meanwhile the increasing use of chemicals in agriculture is being found to damage bees, weakening their immune systems, with laboratory studies showing that some insecticides and fungicides can act together to be 1,000 times more toxic to bees. They can also affect the sense of direction, memory and brain metabolism, and herbicides and pesticides may reduce the availability of plants bees need for food and for the larval stages of some pollinators.

Seriously? Who really thinks that Big Agribusiness companies care about the bee population? It doesn’t matter what you or I think. They will continue using insecticides for their crops. I sadly predict that bees will no longer be part of this Earth in 15 years…

Humans must change behaviour to save bees, vital for food production – UN report.

I didn’t expect the crazy maneuvering to ram the bill through without the Democrats. Expect legal challenges, more protests, and possibly a recall of some Republican senators…

Guess it will depend on who can mobilize the best. Unions or the Koch Brothers

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (KAY’-sik) says he expects the state’s Republican-controlled House to pass a bill that would bar all public workers from striking and limit the bargaining rights of their unions.

The measure would limit the bargaining rights of roughly 350,000 teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees. They wouldn’t be able to negotiate health care benefits or certain working conditions.

It’s basically a concerted effort by Republicans to break apart the Dems support base.