01.01.70

With the year nearly at a close and a newly elected Legislature now seated in office, the real work of Santa Claus will begin not on Christmas Day 2012 but rather in January 2013 when the Hawaii State Legislature commences its upcoming session.  You can almost be certain that you will be told that we need to build more things and buy more things with tax dollars in order to keep Hawaii economically prosperous. One might even be lucky enough to see charts, hear studies from “respectable” universities and see projections from government analysts that spending tax dollars will help Hawaii. But how much truth is there to these claims? Economist Joseph Salerno writes in the Mises blogs that one cannot trust studies which purport that state expenditures add to the economy. Salerno warns, “Each state is a small open economy with completely open borders with respect to the movements of goods and factors (capital and labor) to and from other states. It is therefore virtually impossible to accurately calculate the value of a state’s exports and imports or to ascertain the income earned by its resident workers and investors in other states.

Source: Hawaii Reporter

by Charles Douglas

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Worldwide, 395 million acres of farmland were planted in 2011 in biotech crops, 30 million more than 2010.

The amount of land devoted to genetically engineered crops grew 8% last year, down from 10% growth in 2010. Nearly 90% of the global area planted to these crops was in just four countries – the US, Canada, Argentina, and Brazil. In contrast, less than 3% of cropland in India and China is planted in almost exclusively one crop – genetically modified cotton. Only two biotech crops are grown in the European Union: a tiny amount of its feed corn and just 245 acres of potatoes.

U.S. farmers and those in developing countries increased plantings of genetically modified crops around the globe in 2011, despite resistance from Europe and those who think such crops ought to carry special labels. GMO crops can now be found in 25 countries.

Genetically engineered food has had its DNA artificially altered with genes from other plants, animals, viruses, or bacteria, in order to produce foreign compounds creating desired traits in that food. Different than selective breeding or cloning, this genetic alteration is performed through experimental biotechnology and not found in nature....

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by Hugh Ashton

TOKYO (majirox news) — Genetically modified crops and organisms (GM and GMOs), according to their promoters, offer greater efficiency in production, resistance against disease and pests, and overall greater profitability for all.

On the face of it, this would seem to be ideal for all involved: farmers, food processing companies, and consumers. Inside the United States, according to some sources, GMOs now comprise two-thirds of the crops grown.

However, there is significant opposition to the introduction of such biotechnology outside the US, especially in Japan, the EU, and Australasia (in 2008, according to the UK’s Soil Association, the use of GMOs had cost the US $12 billion in lost exports since 1999). One company, Monsanto, has a large stake in this aspect of agribusiness, but suffered a setback in 2003, when the British government released the results of three studies on the effects of GMOs, wherein lasting damage to the environment was predicted if GMOs were introduced.

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