In my opinion, the United States is facing an existential threat right now. Debt and dysfunction are taking a heavy toll on what’s left of our democracy.

The constitution and our institutions got us through 250 years of trials and tribulations. We must purge corruption and blackmail out of the system if we hope to survive much longer. If not, it will impair our ability to compete in the world. It will destroy what’s left of our fragile democracy, if it hasn’t already.

Unfortunately, new cracks are emerging in the fiber of this great nation. Corruption and collusion are on full display.

Our system of checks and balances has been exposed by the Epstein files. The Epstein files have revealed that the U.S. government and many others have been overthrown by a massive and aggressive criminal operation. As shocking as the revelations have been, the cockroaches and the rats aren’t running from the spotlight. In fact, it appears that the criminal enterprise is doubling down and speeding up its agenda of world domination.

The United States is being misguided and bankrupted thanks to indiscretions of elected and appointed leaders. Business leaders and Hollywood influencers also are being blackmailed due to their indiscretions with the international sex traps (control). The massive scheme has been unfolding for years. We all are paying a price for this evil scheme right now.

Ironically, the president warned Iran about killing unarmed protestors, but his staff immediately supported the killing of two young Americans in the streets? We pretend to have gun rights, but shoot innocent citizens multiple times for having one in its holster. We frame these citizens as terrorist threats despite video evidence to the contrary. What is really going on?

The Constitution Is Under Assault

Meanwhile, the constitution itself is under assault by our own government. So are public schools, public health and public opinion. Not a good sign for the global economy or the future of America. Investors are flocking to hard assets to avoid the collapse. The future is very uncertain with this much momentum. Financial markets suggest that a shocking event is imminent. It appears that the whole world knows what is happening to the United States, except American citizens. 

We have a nation of laws that is led by a convicted felon. A man who has bankrupted an airline, casino and a university. Will he bankrupt the United States to clear the path for the New World Order?

The president is giving Americans the finger as he fights for people in the shadows and those who have invaded his office. He fired most five-star generals and the joint chiefs of staff last year. He gave Musk access to our Social Security files, including personal contact information. It has already been put to work and sold cyber punks around the world. The President of Venezuela is allegedly selling pardons to criminals and fraudsters, while supposedly cracking down on fraud, waste and abuse. Now, he is pushing for the nationalization of all elections. Another unconstitutional and un-American proposal.

The Supreme Court ruled that Trump is essentially above the law. Checks and balances are gone and the fourth estate, freedom of the press, has been challenged like never before. Now, just a few billionaires own the major media and social media outlets in the United States. Censorship has replaced editorial freedom in most news rooms. A free market demands a free press.

More Than A Distraction

Some argue that this is all just a tactic to stall the full release of the the Trump-Epstein files. Those released so far paint a very ugly picture about sex, lies and schemes to control the world. They also speak about high crimes, including rape, murder and elaborate government cover-ups. The DOJ and the FBI have been sitting on bone-chilling testimony for years. The world already knows about Sasha, Bubba and Lake Michigan. We know about “Jerky” and adrenochrome. We know that Epstein was much more than a perverted sex trafficker. He is clearly a foreign agent who did his job extremely well. He did it so well that he is still alive today (playing video games in Tel Aviv). If he wasn’t smuggled out of prison in the dark of night, he would have released the Epstein files in retaliation. Crooks and cowards at the highest levels don’t commit suicide.

What else is this administration hiding? What are foreign governments hiding? It’s time to shake the tree at all levels, not just the predatory pawns who have sold out the United States.

The president of the United States/Venezuela pardoned hundreds of criminals, including hundreds who attempted to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6, 2021. On January 20, 2025, during the first day of his second term, United States president Donald Trump granted blanket clemency to all people, nearly 1,600, convicted of or awaiting trial or sentencing for offenses related to the January 6 United States Capitol attack. Several of those pardoned have been arrested again for new crimes, including sex crimes against children. Others are working for ICE.

Meanwhile, our nation ignores important laws that are intended to protect our air, food and water. Despite the calls for homeland security and a healthier America, we are spraying tons of toxins into the atmosphere with zero transparency every day. This chemical cocktail settles into the lower atmosphere where we inhale it. It settles into our water where we consume it. It contaminates fruit-bearing trees and vegetables in the fields. Fish and livestock are contaminated.

It has been going on for years. It has been referred to as geo-engineering. Others call the toxins chemical trails or chemtrails. It is bioterrorism. It is a clear violation of H.R.3448 – Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002. Geo-engineering is not science fiction. Geo-engineering is not climate protection. It is biological warfare. Even Trump called it “spraying.” Isn’t that what Hitler called his gas chambers.

Failure to enforce our laws undermines public health and productivity. It makes America a more unstable place for investments. China is doing a better job of purging corruption than the U.S. and that effort will spur innovation and competitiveness. America can’t afford more corruption, collusion and extortion.

Now, the U.S. government is brazenly executing citizens in the streets for exercising their constitutional rights. Free speech and the right to carry a gun have been massacred. Our voices have been silenced. Taxation without representation is tyranny.

When lies are this blatant and frequent, something is very wrong. This isn’t about immigration, distraction, ego or personal wealth. There is an end game in play and it is moving fast. Citizens can’t afford any distractions. Our nation demands truth, transparency and accountability immediately. Several people need to fall on their proverbial dagger in order to end the cycle and fully expose the dark side.

The Great American Experiment is under siege like never before. As ugly as our so-called democracy appears at the moment, we can’t afford to let the next government shutdown be its last. If we default on our debt, bankruptcy will end our great nation as we know it. Some appear to be counting on this outcome. Gold, silver and most assets are skyrocketing as the dollar is being destabilized. Bankruptcy is like the neutron bomb for crisis capitalists. It  will benefit a few, while seizing property and wealth from the masses and the nation. A failed nation has no laws to enforce. It will be chaos until crisis capitalism comes to the rescue. It’s a playbook that was launched by Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein describes how this neofascist playbook has already shaped geopolitics.

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post U.S. Facing Constitutional Crisis appeared first on Crossbow Communications.

Karrin Vasby Anderson, Colorado State University

In an authoritarian state, the leader engages in unconstitutional or undemocratic practices for the purpose of consolidating power.

Key components of authoritarianism include rejecting democratic rules; denying the legitimacy of opponents; tolerating or encouraging political violence; and curtailing the civil liberties of opponents.

Since he took office for a second time, President Donald Trump has sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, named other cities run by Democrats as targets for military intervention, deployed masked and unidentifiable agents in immigration raids, explicitly threatened the city of Chicago with a military invasion and used government power to persecute his perceived political enemies.

Many news outlets have yet to call Trump an authoritarian.

As a political communication scholar, I study how media framing shapes people’s understanding of the world.

Because authoritarianism is most visible in hindsight, people often don’t recognize it until it’s too late. Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard political scientist, notes that when it comes to democratic backsliding, “there are no bright lines … people often find out the world they’re in after the fact.”

That’s why it’s particularly important for journalists to label authoritarians as such when the evidence warrants. In Trump’s case, I believe the U.S. is well past that point.

Trump’s Authoritarianism

Scholars with expertise in authoritarianism have been sounding the alarm about Trump for years.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s book “How Democracies Die” describes how, during the 2016 campaign and his first presidential term, Trump exhibited the key indicators of authoritarian behavior. He undermined the legitimacy of elections Republicans lost, baselessly described his rivals as criminals, refused to unambiguously condemn violence committed by his supporters, and threatened to punish critics and members of the media.

Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that “no other major presidential candidate in modern U.S. history, including Richard Nixon, has demonstrated such a weak public commitment to constitutional rights and democratic norms.”

That intensified when Trump returned to office in 2025.

Levitsky and Lucan A. Way documented Trump’s “path to American authoritarianism” for the journal Foreign Affairs in early 2025. In March, Levitsky told New York magazine that things were going worse than even he expected, asserting, “We’re pretty screwed.”

Levitsky is not alone in that view. In a February 2025 survey of political scientists conducted by Bright Line Watch – an academic organization that researches democratic health – the percentage of scholars plummeted who said that the U.S. “mostly or fully” meets the standard for democratic health.

That was before Trump, via social media, promised to go to war in Chicago. When asked about his post, Trump said, “We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities,” but he did not back away from the intent to deploy troops against the wishes of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.

Pritzker responded to Trump’s post by noting, “This is not a joke. This is not normal.”

On Sept. 7, 2025, New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein itemized some of Trump’s authoritarian actions, concluding, “This is not just how authoritarianism happens. This is authoritarianism happening.”

What Journalists Have Been Saying

Although other opinion journalists like Jamelle Bouie, M. Gessen, Jonathan Chait and nearly every MSNBC anchor have been labeling Trump an authoritarian for some time, much hard news coverage of the Trump administration has not.

When Trump deployed troops to Washington, The Atlantic’s Quinta Jurecic dismissed it as “farcical” and “not a likely prelude to full authoritarian takeover.”

A CNN analysis similarly minimized the action as a “gambit,” a “distraction” and a “neat political trick.” CNN characterized concerns about authoritarianism as “hyperbolic warnings of looming tyranny that circulate all day on liberal media programs — whatever Trump does” and asserted that such reports “don’t really help voters understand what is going on.”

The New York Times’ Aug. 3 story by Peter Baker on Trump’s “tendency to suppress facts he doesn’t like and promote his own version of reality” bore a headline that read “Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook,” suggesting that his actions were authoritarian without applying the label to Trump directly.

During the April 14, 2025, broadcast of CNN News Central, anchor Jessica Dean spoke with Nikolas Bowie, a Harvard Law School professor participating in a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Bowie repeatedly called Trump an authoritarian for illegally freezing federal research funding awarded to Harvard.

When Dean noted that the “Trump administration says it’s doing all of this in an effort to combat antisemitism on campus,” Bowie responded that “antisemitism is really just a pretext for what is really an authoritarian attack on higher education.” Federal Judge Allison Burroughs later agreed with that interpretation in her ruling against the Trump administration.

Dean, however, sidestepped that interpretation, saying, “What I’m hearing is you think that enough was done to combat antisemitism, that this is about something else.”

Competitive Authoritarianism

There are reasons why journalistic outlets may hesitate to identify the “something else” as authoritarianism, or portray it as a looming threat rather than a current danger.

Trump’s propensity to sue journalists, and large media corporations’ decisions to settle even when the law was on their side, have likely made journalists and editors hesitant to describe Trump as an authoritarian.

And the imperative for balance sometimes results in a “both sides-ism” that misrepresents what authoritarianism actually looks like.

When California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a speech asserting Trump’s military response to immigration protests in California was an assault on democracy, the New York Times covered it, quoting Newsom at length about the danger Trump presented. The article also quoted Republicans who alleged that Newsom’s public health directives during the COVID-19 pandemic made him “the ultimate authoritarian.”

But the particular nature of the authoritarianism the U.S is facing in the 21st century also plays a role.

Levitsky and Way have written about “competitive authoritarianism,” a new version of authoritarianism that doesn’t look like 20th-century fascism.

Many laypeople associate the word authoritarianism with military dictatorships and totalitarian rule. In competitive authoritarian regimes, however, there’s a constant push and pull between democratic and autocratic impulses. Levitsky and Way write that elections are held, but they may not be fair. The authoritarian regime uses power gained democratically to break democratic norms, undermine democratic institutions and tilt the playing field in its own favor.

Constraining Free Speech

Journalistic norms of independence can pressure even ethical journalists into acquiescence to competitive authoritarianism because they want to avoid looking partisan when all coverage that falls outside the authoritarian’s approved message gets characterized as resistance.

Paramount settled what one free speech advocate described as a “widely derided lawsuit brought by Donald Trump against ’60 Minutes,’” and CBS recently pledged to stop editing recorded interviews on “Face the Nation” after complaints lodged by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The Paramount and CBS cases suggest that, left unchallenged, a competitive authoritarian leader will use their leverage to influence what should be independent journalism.

Words matter. And how a democratic society responds to its leaders can make the difference between a free society and one in which a leader increasingly suppresses the voices, rights and will of the governed.

Karrin Vasby Anderson, Professor of Communication Studies, Colorado State University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post Journalists Reluctant To Call Trump An Authoritarian appeared first on Crossbow Communications.

According to the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr., the United States is the sickest nation on earth. If the dysfunction on Capitol Hill and within the White House are any indication, he might be right.

The Senate Healthcare Committee grilled Kennedy for more than three hours last week about the health of the nation and the future of vaccine policy. The conversation again demonstrated that our government is protecting special interests, including their own, more than the American people. Kennedy promises to remove politics from the process.

“That’s my job,” Kennedy told the committee.  

Despite the drama, grandstanding and rhetoric at the Senate meeting, health outcomes for people of all ages in the United States are poor compared to other high-income nations. Despite spending the most on healthcare, the U.S. ranked last overall in a 2024 Commonwealth Fund report on healthcare system performance.

According to reports from The Commonwealth Fund and the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. lags behind other wealthy nations in several critical health areas: 

• Life expectancy: The U.S. has the lowest life expectancy at birth among high-income countries, with Americans dying younger and experiencing higher rates of disease.
• Avoidable deaths: The U.S. has the highest rates of preventable and treatable deaths. Causes of death that are unusually high in the U.S. include drug overdoses and gun violence.
• Infant and maternal mortality: The U.S. has the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality among its peer nations.
• Autism: After decades of surging autism rates in the U.S., there still is no state or national screening programs to track incidence rates in hopes of turning the tide. In 2015, the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) reported that 1 in 45 children in the United States had autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which includes Asperger’s Syndrome (a milder version of the disease). Despite the lack of any formal testing program, the CDC just updated those statistics to 1 in 31 children. Boys are five times more likely to be autistic than girls. It’s clearly driven largely by neurotoxins in food, water, air and soil. Some states are worse than others. Some countries are worse than others. Are we really supposed to believe that the ongoing surge in autism is related to pregnant mothers taking Tylenol? To Kennedy’s credit, he also points to unnamed environmental factors. Let’s hope that he looks at the undeniable exposure to neurotoxins in our food and water supplies. 
• Chronic disease: Americans have the highest burden of chronic disease and the highest obesity rate among high-income countries. Americans also report higher rates of conditions such as diabetes and heart disease compared to their counterparts.
• COVID-19 deaths: The U.S. experienced a higher rate of excess deaths related to the COVID-19 pandemic than other wealthy nations.

Unfortunately, Kennedy and every other politician has an agenda that they are trying to promote, while posturing, exaggerating and outright lying about the problems and the solutions. Right now, we need MAHA to stand for honesty, integrity and consistency in government. The truth matters. Science matters. Democracy matters. Conflicts of interest matter.

Several factors within the U.S. healthcare system and society contribute to poor health:

• No universal coverage: The U.S. is the only high-income nation without universal health coverage, leaving a significant portion of the population uninsured or underinsured. This creates financial barriers that prevent people from seeking timely and adequate care.
• Health equity issues: The U.S. has deep-seated inequities in healthcare, with significant disparities in access and treatment based on income, race, and ethnicity. Racial discrimination and an inadequate social safety net lead to poorer health outcomes for Black, Indigenous, and Latino populations, as well as low-income and rural communities. The U.S. ranks lowest in health equity.
• High costs: The U.S. spends far more per capita on healthcare than any other high-income country, but these high costs do not translate into better health. High out-of-pocket costs, expensive procedures, and administrative burdens deter many Americans from getting care. Americans have the worst access to care, particularly due to costs, according to the report.
• Inadequate primary care: The U.S. has an insufficient supply of primary care providers and a less-developed primary care system compared to other countries. This leads to less frequent check-ups and less effective chronic disease management.
• Societal factors: Beyond the healthcare system, social factors like gun violence, the opioid crisis, and unhealthy diets characterized by processed foods contribute significantly to the U.S. health disadvantage.

Meanwhile, The Make America Healthy Again Commission yesterday released the Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy, a plan that lacked details, goals or timelines. The report listed more than 120 initiatives to reverse policies that it blames for America’s childhood chronic disease epidemic. 

The assessment identified four potential drivers behind the rise in childhood chronic disease that present the best opportunities for progress: 

Poor Diet: The American diet has shifted dramatically toward highly processed foods, leading to nutrient depletion, increased caloric intake, and exposure to potentially harmful or unhealthy additives. Over 60 percent of children’s calories now come from highly processed foods, contributing to obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. 

Chemical Exposure: Children are exposed to an increasing number of synthetic chemicals, including PFAS, which have been linked to developmental issues, chronic disease and terminal disease. The current regulatory framework should be continually evaluated to ensure that chemicals and other exposures do not interact to pose a threat to the health of our children.

Lack of Physical Activity and Chronic Stress: American children are experiencing unprecedented levels of inactivity, screen use, sleep deprivation, and chronic stress. These factors significantly contribute to the rise in chronic diseases and mental health challenges. 

Overmedicalization: There is a concerning trend of overprescribing medications to children, often driven by conflicts of interest in medical research, regulation, and practice. This has led to unnecessary treatments and long-term health risks.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see any specific references to the following threats to American citizens, including our children:

• Neurodegenerative Disease. Neurodegenerative disease is the fastest-growing cause of death in the world. Despite no national screening program, and the suppression of thousands of diagnoses, we know that prion disease is escalating around the world. Misinformation and disinformation are fueling the flames. The medical term for prion disease is transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). TSEs are always fatal. There is no cure. As the name implies, TSEs are transmissible. We know TSEs by the clinical terms of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, mad cow disease and chronic wasting disease. Why is government and industry suppressing the truth and failing to protect pathways?
• Mental Health: According to a new report, the United States has an all-time high depression rate. With adequate screening and access to care, I’m sure that we would find that the rate is even higher. How about anxiety and paranoia. Deep cuts to Medicaid will only exacerbate the problem.
• Soldier Suicides: Veterans are at 58 percent higher risk of suicide than those who haven’t served. We lost 6,407 veterans to suicide in 2022. More than 6,000 soldiers have taken their lives every year since the year 2000.
• PFAS: Thanks to lies, collusion and corruption, 99 percent of the people in the world have harmful forever chemicals (PFAS, PFOAS and many more) in their bodies. The chemicals are still in production and widespread use today.

Although the Senate Committee meeting gave the illusion of bipartisan support for Making America Healthy Again, a heated conversation about vaccines just scratches the surface. Unfortunately, we need a more comprehensive vision and agenda to really promote the health of all citizens and not just industries and corporations.

It should have been a session about sanity and insanity. Yes, there is a mental health crisis in America and it seems to be trickling down from the top.

Senator Bernie Sanders summed it up quite well. 

“Republicans and Democrats alike – everyone in this room – have received money from pharmaceutical PACs. Does that mean that we all are corrupt?”

The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) annual budget is a multi-trillion dollar federal outlay, with the FY2025 President’s Budget Request proposing outlays of approximately $1.802 trillion, an increase of $132 billion from the FY2024 estimate.

HHS is the largest category of all federal spending. It consumes at least 20 percent of all federal spending. 

I need to spend more time reviewing the details of the plan to Make Our Children Healthy Again, but I see potential for good. I also see a platform that can be interpreted and twisted, as usual, to serve special interests instead of American citizens. Let’s hope for the best and brace ourselves for the worst as the fine print becomes available in this plan and the one ahead for the entire American population, not just children. Let’s hope that Kennedy can steer the HHS ship in the right direction fast. As usual, the devil is in the details. Failure isn’t an option.

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post Can Politicians Make America Healthy Again appeared first on Crossbow Communications.

In an increasingly complex and rapidly evolving government affairs landscape, where legislation and regulations are expanding globally and public perception is ever-present, government affairs teams are facing the challenge of achieving more with fewer resources. To address this, organizations are adopting strategic best practices to enhance their efficiency and effectiveness, including:

1. Media Research and Relations: The media can be friend or foe in the public affairs arena. The best strategists have relationships with the top influencers in all relevant markets. Be proactive by offering resources, insights and interesting story angles. Set news alerts so that you are notified when someone covers relevant, if not related, subject matter. Offer letters to the editor in response to related coverage that reinforces key points, while adding points that were missed. Of course, be responsive to all media inquiries. 

2. Social Media Research & Relations: Social media is one of the X factors in the world of public affairs. First, follow key influencers and even competitors. Follow key hashtag conversations to stay abreast of key developments and key influencers. Post and repost positive coverage for added exposure. Reply to allies and fellow advocates to expand the conversation. Monitor your posts and related posts for trolls. It is rarely wise to respond to trolls, but we should know who they are and neutralize them when strategic. Post videos, photos, studies, statistics, etc. that can promote your position and your message. Determine which social media platforms are the best fit for your mission and target audience and encourage your allies to join you there.

3. Leverage Big Data for Analysis: Big data is getting bigger by the day. Conduct an internal audit of the data that you have and the data that you need for optimal performance. Fill the data gaps with third-party data when possible and create new data capturing methods to garner even more ammunition. Enlist artificial intelligence to find issues, opportunities and allies that can help you turn the tide.

By utilizing legislative and regulatory analytics, government affairs teams can embrace data-driven decisions and move beyond qualitative insights from relationships, external consultants, or news reports, which can be inefficient and risky. Reliable analytics platforms provide data-driven insights to inform decision-making, enabling teams to:

• Identify strategic lawmakers for engagement.
• Predict the probability of a bill’s passage.
• Analyze legislator effectiveness in moving legislation.
• Gain insights into trends to develop effective strategies. 

This data-driven approach allows government affairs teams to quantify relationships, leverage data, and operate with greater effectiveness and efficiency.

4. Stakeholder Research, Relations & Recruitment: Policy teams need to measure and quantify their impact to demonstrate their value to executives, who prioritize metrics and ROI (Return on Investment). Since advocacy efforts don’t always directly impact the bottom line, it’s essential to look for ways to measure performance that resonate with the C-suite. 

Government affairs teams can demonstrate their value by tying results to actions through stakeholder management:

• Quantify financial impact:
  • Estimate the financial impact or cost savings of legislative efforts by tracking bills influenced or blocked.
  • Show potential financial consequences of policies through economic impact analyses.
  • Quantify savings achieved through technology use.
• Track political contributions and relationship development: Grassroots and PAC managers can track political contributions and the development of strategic relationships.
• Record granular details: Advocates should record detailed interactions with legislators.
• Use data to chart effectiveness: These data points help evaluate the effectiveness of strategies, performance, and relationships.
• Leverage technology: Use technology for legislative tracking and policy monitoring to streamline workflows and improve advocacy. Technology platforms can help log actions and connect them to relevant bills, regulations, and legislators.
• Report effectively: Create a reporting framework aligned with organizational goals and use data to demonstrate impact to stakeholders. Develop professional reports that resonate with decision-makers. 
• Recruit members and allies who share your vision and agenda.

By focusing on these strategies, government affairs teams can effectively communicate their impact and demonstrate their value to secure additional resources and support. 

5. Invest in State and Local Politics: The passage of a surging number of state bills recently emphasizes the growing importance of engaging with state and local governments for organizations, especially with slower federal legislative activity. State legislatures introduce and pass significantly more bills than Congress, directly impacting organizations at the state and local levels. 

Instead of solely focusing on potentially ineffective federal lobbying, organizations can gain more traction by engaging with state and local legislators, who are often more accessible and directly impact issues relevant to their constituents. Successful policies enacted at the state or local level can then serve as models for nationwide adoption.

Leveraging technology is crucial for managing the high volume of legislative activity and tracking relationships with numerous legislators across different jurisdictions. Modern advocacy teams need a central platform to store notes, track communications, and manage relationships with key decision-makers on a state-by-state basis. This allows teams to: 

• Track and prioritize issues effectively.
• Receive timely alerts and updates on legislative activity.
• Maintain strong ties with decision-makers by tracking interactions.
• Improve efficiency and effectiveness in their government affairs efforts. 

In summary, organizations should prioritize a state and local government affairs strategy, leverage technology for efficient issue tracking and relationship management, and recognize the significant impact of legislation at these levels.

6. The X Factors: As hard as we work on the strategies and tactics above, there are several factors that we can’t control. Bribery and blackmail are nothing new in politics and denying their persistence today is naive. We can have common sense and logic in our corner. We can have influencers and decision-makers behind us. Even the media is singing the praise of solution A. But corruption can derail even the best of visions.

There are many who believe that Jeffrey Epstein ran a blackmail enterprise on his fantasy island. They claim that he nailed the rich, famous and powerful with compromising photos, videos and more. Others claim that the Russians have compromising photos of Donald Trump, which is why he is so cozy with Putin again during his second term. The threat is real. There isn’t much that can be done, but be vigilant to the possibility.

“Government affairs today is more of an art than a science,” said Gary Chandler, CEO of Crossbow Communications. “Access to many government officials is getting more restricted, so the more that we can reach the masses through the media the better. Activating the stakeholder base is more important than ever.”

Public affairs today is more complex than ever. We have to be visionaries who can strategize and execute simultaneously on many levels, in many markets and often in many countries. Resourcefulness and results are essential. Harnessing big data and AI are now critical success factors for most consulting firms and their clients.

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post Best Practices In Government Affairs appeared first on Crossbow Communications.

Responsiveness – how closely public policies track public opinion – is a critical gauge of democratic accountability. A high degree of responsiveness indicates that citizens are guiding policy, which is a standard benchmark and expectation in democracy. Accountability is breached when public policy ignores public opinion. 

The democratic process spurs citizens to form opinions on a number of issues. Voters choose candidates in elections, consider constitutional amendments, and approve or reject municipal taxes and other legislative initiatives. Almost any matter on which the executive or legislature has to decide may become a public issue. Immigration and abortion are dominating the political landscape in the U.S., despite the fact that neither issue directly impacts most Americans. Both have become posterchilds for political smoke and mirrors. Because of labor shortages in the U.S. over the past few years, both Republicans and Democrats have stalled immigration reform and solutions, which has allowed thousands of illegal immigrants to enter our nation unchecked. Both parties blame each other for the insane situation.

The substantial inflow of immigrants to the United States during the last 30 years has significantly shaped the U.S. economy and society. Immigrants affect native workers’ opportunities in the labor market, their productivity, and their specialization. Immigrants can also have an impact on other aspects of the host country’s economy (for example, through fiscal effects, consumption, and contributions to scientific innovation), as well as on its culture, social norms, and sense of security. In addition, immigration can affect political outcomes.

Immigration took center stage in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and its aftermath, as Donald Trump took strong stands on illegal immigration, the construction of a border wall, refugees from Syria, and “sanctuary cities.” Meanwhile, he ignored the fact that his “wife,” Melania, was an immigrant and so are her parents – all are now citizens thanks to his hypocrisy.

Meanwhile, abortion is an issue that impacts very few Americans, but we are holding our nation hostage over extreme religious rhetoric.

Our nation ignores millions of children who are living and dying in poverty, but we whitewash our consciences by opposing abortion (even when caused by rape or incest). We defend guns more vigorously than we defend our country from fascism. 

Meanwhile, we don’t debate the national budget, military spending, corruption, and the poisoning of our air, land and water. We ignore people who are being battered by climate change and we ignore the threat.

In the early years of modern democracy, some scholars acknowledged the power of public opinion, but warned that it could be a dangerous force. In fact, public opinion is so powerful that most politicians will say and do anything to harness it.

The role of public opinion varies from issue to issue. Unfortunately, public opinion does not influence the details of most government policies but it does set limits within which policy makers must operate. Public officials usually seek to satisfy widespread opinion and they often try to avoid decisions that they believe will be widely unpopular.

Yet efforts by political leaders to shape government policies to fit public opinion are not always perceived as legitimate. Journalists and political commentators often characterize these politicians as pandering to public opinion and driven by the latest polls – now known as political responsiveness.

Today, most politicians tend to respond to public opinion in cynical ways. They merely use public opinion research to identify slogans and symbols that will make predetermined policies more appealing to their constituents.

Most public opinion research is used to manipulate the public rather than to act on its wishes.

Public opinion seems to be more effective in influencing policy-making at the local level than at the state or national levels. One reason for this is that issues of concern to local governments—such as the condition of roads, schools, and hospitals—are less complex than those dealt with by governments at higher levels.

Polls may serve a variety of purposes. Those reported in the mass media, for example, may be used to inform, to entertain, or to educate. In an election, well-run polls may constitute one of the most systematic and objective sources of political information. They are also the means by which journalists, politicians, business leaders, and other elites—whether they admit it or not—learn what the general public is thinking. Other things being equal, leaders who pay attention to public opinion will be better able to understand the groups they are trying to influence and better equipped to communicate overall.

Ideally, the people who prepare surveys and carry them out have no mission other than the objective and systematic measurement of public opinion. Unfortunately, it’s possible for bias to enter into the polling process at any point, especially when the entity commissioning the poll has a financial or political interest in the result or wishes to use the result to promote a specific agenda.

Polls have been skewed from the outset by news companies surveying public opinion on political issues, by manufacturing firms engaged in market research, by interest groups seeking to popularize their views, and even by academic scholars wishing to inform or influence public discourse about some significant social or scientific issue. The results of potentially biased surveys are frequently released to the mass media to magnify their impact. This deceptive practice is known as advocacy polling (fake news).

Opinion research evolved from market research. Early market researchers picked small samples of the population and used them to obtain information on such questions as how many people read a given magazine or listen to the radio and what the public likes and dislikes in regard to various consumer goods. 

From the 1930s on, the spread of opinion polls conducted by both commercial and academic practitioners continued at an accelerated pace in the United States. State and local polls—some sponsored by newspapers—were started in many parts of the country, and opinion research centers were organized at several universities.

Straw polls and other nonscientific surveys are based on indiscriminate collections of people’s opinions, while responsible surveys are based on scientific methods of sampling, data collection, and analysis. Yet, because they are so easy to obtain, data derived from nonscientific methods are often confused with responsible survey results. At best, they reflect only the views of those who choose to respond. But they are also used as tools of “spin” by those who wish to put forth a particular slant on popular opinion. Referred to as “voodoo polls” by some polling experts, they lack the statistical significance achieved through proven sampling methods, and they have grown increasingly prevalent. Reporters often present the results as serious and objective measures of public opinion.

This encourages interested political parties, campaign managers, or pressure groups to manipulate the outcomes to their advantage. They may attempt to skew the results or administer their own competing straw polls with the goal of contradicting the outcomes of properly conducted representative surveys. To take full advantage of this manipulation, the straw poll sponsor often issues press releases calling attention to the results. To further lend the poll an appearance of credibility, its sponsor might also describe it as having been published by a reputable news organization, even if it appeared only in a paid advertisement.

Interest groups such as the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), the European Society for Opinion Marketing and Research, and the World Association for Public Opinion Research serve a watchdog role regarding opinion polling. To assist reporters as well as the general public in their understanding of poll results, AAPOR published a list of guidelines for determining the credibility of online polls. A reliable poll should indicate, for example, whether its results were based on sampling procedures that gave each member of a population a fair chance of being selected and whether each respondent was limited to one and only one chance of participating in the poll; it should also state the response rate. According to AAPOR, outcomes that fail to meet criteria such as these should not be included in news reports.

In fact, anyone judging the overall reliability of a survey will scrutinize a number of factors. These include the exact wording of the questions used, the degree to which particular results are based on the whole sample or on small parts of it, the method of interviewing (whether by phone or e-mail, an online survey, or in person), the dates over which the interviewing was conducted (intervening events frequently make people change their opinions), and the identity of the sponsor as well as the reputation of the organization conducting the poll.

One signal that the poll may have been conducted by less-experienced researchers is the reporting of findings in decimal points, a practice that indicates questionable accuracy. A poll of at least 10,000 people would be required before statistically reliable interpretations could be carried to the first decimal point. The visual presentation of the results should also be checked. Frequently, graphics can be designed to mislead or confuse the reader or viewer into thinking that the responses to the poll differed from the raw figures the poll actually indicated.

There have been numerous criticisms of public opinion polling. Among these are the observations that people are asked to give opinions on matters about which they are not competent to judge and that polling interferes with the democratic process.

It is often pointed out that most members of the public are not familiar with the details of complex policies such as those governing tariffs or missile defense systems. Therefore, it is argued, opinion researchers should not ask questions about such subjects. The results at best could be meaningless and at worst misleading, since respondents may be reluctant to admit that they are ignorant. Critics also refer to the fact that many people hold inconsistent or conflicting opinions, as shown by the polls themselves. One person may favor larger government expenditures and simultaneously oppose higher taxes.

Critics allege that election polls create a “bandwagon effect”—that people want to be on the winning side and therefore switch their votes to the candidates whom the polls show to be ahead. They complain that surveys undermine representative democracy, since issues should be decided by elected representatives on the basis of the best judgment and expert testimony—not on the basis of popularity contests. They point out that some well-qualified candidates may decide not to run for office because the polls indicate that they have little chance of winning and that a candidate who is far behind in the polls has difficulty in raising funds for campaign expenditures since few contributors want to spend money on a lost cause. Other critics say that candidates, politicians, and corporations use polls less to gauge public opinion than to manipulate it in their favor.

Those engaged in election research usually concede that polls may discourage or derail some candidates and also may inhibit campaign contributions. But they also point out that candidates and contributors would have to make their decisions on some basis anyway. If there were no polls, other methods that are less accurate would be used to test public sentiment, and columnists and political pundits would still make forecasts. As far as the bandwagon effect is concerned, careful studies have failed to show that it exists.

An abuse that is recognized by both critics and poll takers is the practice of leaking to the press partial or distorted results from private polls. Politicians may exploit polls by contracting privately with a research organization and then releasing only those results for areas in which they are ahead, releasing old results without stating the time when the poll was taken, or concealing the fact that a very small sample was used and that the results may have a large margin of error.

“The real question is why would a legitimate democracy tolerate such abusive behavior,” said Gary Chandler, CEO of Crossbow Communications. “We clearly have liars and cheaters among us in American politics. The motives are clear. The stakes are high. It isn’t about abortion, immigration and gun control.”

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post Public Opinion Fading From Public Policy appeared first on Crossbow Communications.

The Supreme Court drastically cut the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should interpret ambiguous laws. The decision will impact all federal regulatory agencies.

The decision ends the “Chevron deference,” also known as the Chevron doctrine. It compelled federal courts to defer to a federal agency to interpret unclear statutes delegated to the agency by Congress. Chevron deference is the latitude federal judges give agencies over how to interpret the statutes they administer when a dispute arises. 

The principle derives its name from the 1984 U.S. Supreme Court case Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. regarding a change in the Environmental Protection Agency’s interpretation of a provision in the Clean Air Act.

Now, instead of deferring to the expertise of agencies to interpret ambiguous language in laws pertaining to their work, federal judges can interpret laws for themselves.

Federal judges are now part of the policymaking process–a move that clearly breaches the separation of powers. This policymaking role violates the intent of the Constitution.

“In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue—no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden—involving the meaning of regulatory law,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan in her dissent from the ruling. “As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar.”

The decision has profound consequences, not only for the country’s rule of law but also for how agencies function. The Chevron doctrine helped courts review, approve, and reject regulations in the context of statutory intent. It also maintained a strict rule of deference to federal agencies’ interpretations of federal laws, having given regulators broad authority to make rules related to the environment, health care, immigration, and other subjects of public policy.

Initially, Chevron was a deregulatory decision that allowed the Environmental Protection Agency in the Reagan administration to interpret the Clean Air Act in favor of business. At the time, the decision was embraced by conservatives and considered a stinging loss for environmentalists. But that view has evolved. Lately, Chevron has been seen as a symbol of government excess and overreach.

For years, Chevron deference was supported by conservative-leaning legal authorities including Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Over time, the doctrine began to see a shift in ideological thinking with some individuals, such as Thomas, reversing their views. 

The Trump administration was open about its desire to nominate judicial appointees who would challenge the broad power federal agencies have to interpret laws and enforce regulations, often without being subject to judicial oversight. That philosophy secured the nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gorsuch declared Chevron to be “no less than a judge-made doctrine for the abdication of the judicial duty.”

On June 24th, the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron deference doctrine. Now, federal courts may not defer to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute, which means that the judicial system has consolidated even more power over the commercial regulatory framework. Courts could see historic backlogs over the legal interpretations of regulations.

The demise of Chevron provides new avenues for regulated industries to challenge their regulators. At the same time, the Court offered minimal guidance to lower courts in a post-Chevron world. Reversing this precedent will encourage more challenges to agency interpretations of statutes even in situations where courts have previously upheld agency positions.

“This decision is another form of constitutional warfare,” said Gary Chandler, CEO of Crossbow Communications. “Attacks on the Constitution and the truth are eroding our democracy.”

The Supreme Court’s decision will change the landscape for agencies, Congress and the federal courts. Although much depends on the details, potential implications include:

• Agencies may find it more difficult to promulgate and defend regulations that go beyond explicit statutory authority and new administrations may hesitate to alter interpretations of governing statutes, except to the extent that they can argue that previous interpretations based on Chevron deference should be altered in favor of interpretations that hew more closely to statutory text. Within agencies, we might also see an increase in the influence of the general counsel’s office over policy offices when it comes to developing regulatory programs, as agencies anticipate judicial review of their interpretations based on legal rules of statutory interpretation that will be most convincing to judges.
• Congress will face more pressure to clearly articulate agency authority and delegate fewer details to administrative agencies. Looking at the political reality, Members of Congress may no longer be able to rely on party-aligned executive and independent agencies to engage in policymaking that conforms to political priorities if those priorities have not first been passed into law, or, avoid political debate by pushing agencies to instead address certain questions.
• Courts may see an increase in their dockets as potential parties anticipate a greater chance of success from litigation challenging agency statutory interpretations. Judges may face increased scrutiny of their decisions and pressure to justify their construction of statutes as impartial interpretations of legislation rather than based on their own policy preferences.

This decision will affect future challenges to federal agencies and the development and implementation of the regulatory framework. 

“The Supreme Court says individual judges around the country should decide the best reading of a statute,” said Kym Meyer, the Litigation Director for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “That’s a recipe for chaos, as hundreds of federal judges — who lack the expertise of agency personnel — are certain to reach inconsistent results on the meaning of federal laws as applied to complex, technical issues.”

Justice Roberts rejected any suggestion that agencies, rather than courts, are better suited to determine what ambiguities in a federal law might mean. Even when those ambiguities involve technical or scientific questions that fall within an agency’s area of expertise, Roberts emphasized, “Congress expects courts to handle technical statutory questions” – and courts also have the benefit of briefing from the parties and “friends of the court.”

Will this ruling impact the regulatory framework around issues such as forever chemicals and biosolids? Could a judicial review have prevented these public health catastrophes? How will the reversal of the Chevron doctrine impact EPA liability, for example, for past negligence? How will it impact PRPs? Cases are moving through the courts now.

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post Supreme Court Overturns Chevron Deference appeared first on Crossbow Communications.

Thanks to a massive chemistry experiment that has gone horribly wrong, most people in the United States, and likely the world, have a harmful chemical in their bodies. A chemical cocktail designed to help housewives, firemen and others is now the focus of a massive industrial crime.

PFAS are a large group of manufactured chemicals that are used to make everyday products, including cosmetics, carpet, food packaging, Teflon and fire retardants. PFAS are used in aerospace, automotive, construction, electronics, and military. PFAS is often listed on products as PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene), perfluorooctyl triethoxysilane, perfluorononyl dimethicone, perfluorodecalin, and perfluorohexane. More than 9,000 different types of PFAS have been identified.

Thanks to negligence and fraud, the vast majority of Americans of all ages are now part of this chemistry experiment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found PFAS in the blood of 97 percent of Americans. PFAS also is commonly found in breast milk. It’s safe to say that PFAS has contaminated most of the food and water supplies around the world. The contaminant also threatens fish, wildlife and livestock.

The problem is that PFAS molecules are composed of carbon and fluorine atoms. The carbon-fluorine bond is extremely strong, which means that these chemicals do not degrade in the environment or in our bodies. In fact, scientists are unable to estimate an environmental half-life for PFAS. The industry admits that there are several gaps in research that need to be filled.

PFAS are called forever chemicals because they remain highly toxic forever. Forever chemicals have leached into our soil and water, which means that food supplies have been contaminated.

People are most likely exposed by consuming PFAS-contaminated water or food, using products made with PFAS, or breathing air contaminated with PFAS. Since PFAS don’t break down, they accumulate in the tissue of humans, wildlife and livestock. PFAS causes cancer, liver, thyroid, and kidney disease. They weaken the immune system, alter the metabolism, and disrupt the reproductive system. They cause infertility, miscarriage and birth defects. They cause neurological disorders. It also can blacken the teeth of those exposed. Much more research is needed to fully understand the public health and ecological impacts. Unfortunately, Pandora left the box long ago.

Thanks to one very tenacious lawyer named Robert Bilott, legal battles are gaining momentum. The movie Dark Waters summarizes Bilott’s courageous work and it documents the horrors of Dupont’s deceit. The movie is based on an article written by Nathaniel Rich, a reporter for the New York Times.

Bilott is an environmental attorney from Cincinnati. He is known for the lawsuits against DuPont on behalf of plaintiffs from West Virginia. Bilott has spent more than twenty years litigating hazardous dumping of these forever chemicals.

Thanks to Bilott’s groundbreaking work, San Diego is suing more than 20 companies over water contamination caused by PFAS. The lawsuit claims that 3M, DuPont, Raytheon and others made firefighting foam that contained PFAS and alleges the companies were aware of the toxic nature of the chemicals, but concealed the environmental and public health dangers.

City Attorney Mara Elliott filed suit against the companies for allegedly manufacturing toxic chemicals that have been detected in San Diego area water sources. The lawsuit claims that these chemical companies manufactured and concealed the toxic nature of firefighting foams that have contaminated drinking water supplies around San Diego for decades. It could be the first of thousands of related lawsuits around the world.

The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of California in San Diego on behalf of the People of California and the City of San Diego, seeks to force the companies to pay for the costs of cleanup since they profited from selling the products containing these dangerous chemicals. Fire-suppression foams, for example, use PFAS. PFAS also are used in products that repel oil and water.

A single fire or training exercise can result in the discharge of thousands of gallons of PFAS foam, which leaches into the soil and groundwater. The residue gets carried away by surface water runoff, which contaminates streams, rivers, reservoirs and oceans. Of course, a toxic nightmare like this has likely taken a devastating toll on firefighters, not to mention those involved in the manufacture of these toxins.

The City has detected PFAS in certain drinking water supplies, storm water, wastewater, and other natural resources. It has taken initial steps to help prevent public exposure to PFAS. The cost to remove PFAS will be substantial and the task may be impossible.

“These polluters were interested primarily in profits and secrecy,” Elliott said. “This lawsuit will hold them accountable, restore the environment, and protect the health of today’s San Diegans and future generations. 3M, Dupont, and the others have known for decades that the PFAS that they developed, manufactured, and sold were toxic and that their intended use would contaminate the environment and jeopardize public health. We have documents showing that one of 3M’s chief scientists resigned in frustration over the company’s refusal to investigate the toxicity of PFAS, calling it the ‘most onerous pollutant since PCBs.’”

Although these two compounds are no longer made in the United States, chemical manufacturers have replaced them with alternative PFAS, such as GenX, which has already been found in groundwater, rain and air in the United States.

“For years and years, we’ve known the military’s heavy use of PFAS-based firefighting foam has impacted service members, their families and surrounding communities,” said Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA).

The director of the U.S. Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Environmental Health called widespread contamination by PFAS chemicals one of the most important public health issues for the next several decades.

The lawsuit claims that the chemicals have been detected in wastewater from the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant and South Bay Water Reclamation Plant. The lawsuit doesn’t seek damages on behalf of residents who have already been sickened and those who have died. It doesn’t seek medical monitoring for residents, former residents and visitors who drank the water, became sick. It doesn’t seek help for those who have already died. It doesn’t seek medical monitoring for thousands (probably millions) who could develop medical conditions in the future.

The human cost and the cost to pets, livestock, wildlife and sea creatures could bankrupt these companies, which is likely why this lawsuit isn’t going that direction, yet. On May 9, Maine Gov. Janet Mills signed a law banning the spread of biosolids that contains PFAS on land. The bill’s passage made Maine the first state in the U.S. to ban the use of industrial and municipal sewage sludge as fertilizer.

The bill was presented by Rep. Bill Pluecker (I-Warren), who owns a farm in Warren. Environmental advocacy groups including Defend our Health, MOFGA, Maine Farmland Trust and Maine Conservation Voters also campaigned for passage of this bill. 

For decades, Maine farmers used PFAS-contaminated sludge as fertilizer as part of a Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) approved program. The DEP distributed cheap sludge-filled fertilizer to farmers and heavily promoted the program as environmentally friendly. Defend our Health Deputy Director Patrick Macroy explained how closures of Stoneridge Farm in Arundel and Songbird Farm in Unity forced Maine farms to learn that spreading PFAS-sludge fertilizer on their land wasn’t safe, despite assurances from the state.

“This law assures that false promises are no longer going to be made,” Macroy said. “We have learned from the mistakes of the past and we are no longer going to distribute material with a high likelihood of being dangerously contaminated. We will prevent more farms from having to be closed because of the pollution.”

Maine took a hard look at the issue after milk from cows on a dairy farm that spread sewage sludge were contaminated with high levels of PFAS. The cows had to be killed. The farmers also had extremely high levels of PFAS in their blood.

According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), about 20 million acres of cropland in the United States may be contaminated from PFAS-tainted sewage sludge that has been used as fertilizer. The EPA no longer backs it own risk assessment on the practice of dumping sewage sludge on open land. Public health advocates warn the practice is poisoning the nation’s food supply. It’s estimated that 60 percent of the nation’s sludge is spread on cropland or other fields every year.

The health cost of using sewage sludge outweighs the benefits, advocates say. Many have questioned the sense in spending billions of dollars to pull sludge out of water only to inject the substance into the nation’s food and water supplies.

“We don’t know the full scope of the contamination problem created by PFAS in sludge, and we may never know, because EPA has not made it a priority for states and local governments to track, test and report on,” said Scott Faber, EWG’s legislative policy director.

In addition to defending its soil, Maine is going after the companies that produced the sludge and claimed that it was safe for use on crops. Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey announced over the weekend that his office is preparing a lawsuit against PFAS manufacturers.

“For those farmers who have had their businesses and health threatened, the bill is exactly what they want,” Pluecker said. “Farmers do not want to spread contaminated sludge on their fields.”

Maine will set aside $60 million to financially aid farmers impacted by PFAS pollution. The state is investigating about 700 more fields for PFAS pollution caused by biosolids.

Macroy wants to ensure the funding remains true to the goal of assisting impacted farmers, as well as families whose well water was contaminated as a result of the sludge application— who are also eligible for medical monitoring under the fund.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey just filed a lawsuit against 13 PFAS manufacturers that knowingly polluted drinking water, groundwater and other natural resources in the state. The suit will be combined with hundreds of similar lawsuits brought by other states, municipalities and private and public water districts.

“For decades, these manufacturers knew about the serious risks highly toxic PFAS chemicals pose to public health, the environment, and our drinking water — yet they did nothing about it,” Healey said. “As a result of this deception, our municipalities are spending millions of dollars to provide safe drinking water to their residents. I am suing today to hold these manufacturers accountable, require them to pay the growing costs these communities are shouldering, and repair our state’s precious natural resources that have been damaged by these illegal actions.”

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. It says that the companies marketed and sold aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) containing PFAS despite knowing the risks posed by these chemicals and therefore violated state and national laws protecting drinking water and forbidding lying to customers. It also names a further two companies that hid assets that should have been made available to help pay for the cost of dealing with the contamination.

3M, AGC Chemical Americas, Archroma U.S. Inc., The Chemours Company and DuPont de Nemours Inc. are among those named in the suit, which claims that the companies failed to disclose information about the dangers posed by PFAS. It claims that they lied to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about the issue. It alleges that they tried to stop workers from talking about the dangers posed by PFAS.

“More firefighters die of occupational cancer than anything else we face,” Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts President Richard MacKinnon Jr. said. “PFAS has been proven and linked to cause these cancers among our firefighters. This as a great step in that fight against the epidemic of firefighter cancer.”

This lawsuit says that the companies’ actions contaminated more than 126 public drinking water systems in 86 Massachusetts communities. They also contaminated rivers, estuaries, soil and important habitats for marine life.

“We’re glad the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office is taking steps to hold PFAS manufacturers accountable for the financial burden that communities are facing as they try to provide their residents with safe drinking water,” said Dr. Julia Brody, executive director and senior scientist at Silent Spring Institute. “It’s concerning that these highly persistent and toxic chemicals are so pervasive in drinking water given what we know about their health impacts, even at low levels, and especially among children whose developing bodies are more vulnerable to chemical exposures.”

In addition to the contaminated water, cities must rethink the logic of dumping sewage sludge on farms, ranches and other open spaces. It’s permanently contaminating the soil, groundwater and water runoff with PFAS and other toxins. Since plants absorb water and nutrients from the contaminated soil, crops are contaminated with PFAS, prions and others toxins found in biosolids.

The U.S. alone dumps more than 100 million tons of this toxic, infectious waste on farms, forests, playgrounds, golf courses and beyond every year.

The EPA no longer stands behind the risk assessment that once claimed that dumping sewage sludge on land is a safe practice. The practice should be banned immediately. Safer alternatives exist. In fact, dumping biosolids on land instantly qualifies property as a Superfund site. Banks and insurance companies themselves should step up and demand reform before their assets and liabilities bankrupt them.

To ensure truly sustainable use, the full chemical lifecycle of any product needs to be understood before it’s rolled out for widespread use. PFAS should have never seen the light of day.

“Robert Bilott is an American hero,” said Gary Chandler, CEO of Crossbow Communications. “He risked his life to uncover the truth. We all owe him our gratitude for blowing the wihistle on criminal corporate behavior that threatens us all.”

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post PFAS A Public Health Disaster appeared first on Crossbow Communications.

As a Colorado native, I’m excited about the return of wolves to our beautiful state. God put them here for a reason and it was wrong for the livestock industry to wipe them out with government assistance. It is equally wrong for the same industries to play god regarding the return of wolves. Put them back where they belong and co-exist on public and private land. Leave the packs alone and they will leave livestock alone.

The wolf pack that now calls Jackson County home has created a dangerous situation that can be defused with some leadership and cooperation among stakeholders. Unwinding decades of wildlife mismanagement won’t be easy. Unfortunately, the Atencios, Fletchers, Gittlesons and others are on the leading edge of a leadership vacuum. I applaud their restraint.

I grew up in Southwest Colorado on a couple of small ranches. I also worked for the National Cattlemen’s Association in Denver. I know that Colorado and other states have made great sacrifices for livestock producers over the past century. Agriculture now generates $47 billion annually and employs more than 195,000 people across the state. With more than 2.6 million head of cattle and $4 billion in annual revenue, beef is Colorado’s top agricultural product. The industry can afford to give a little back to the land and the people of Colorado, but it shouldn’t come on the back of a few small livestock producers.

State and federal agencies set this mess in motion by exterminating our wolves to support an emerging livestock industry almost 100 years ago. Biodiversity matters.

State and federal agencies are still spending millions of dollars to kill America’s predators for livestock producers. This money should be spent to compensate ranchers for losses instead of paying USDA’s Wildlife Services and other agencies to eliminate possible threats.

In the face of global warming, climate change, wildfires and drought, it’s time to be smarter with our natural resources. Wildlife demands compassion, not more conflict. Predators and their food sources have been disrupted in many ways thanks to wildfires and drought, which are causing severe stress and extreme behavior. In the wake of record heat, drought and wildfires, this winter will likely take a severe toll on wildlife populations across the West. Many predators will be pushed into new areas to survive, including more cities and towns. Predator migration isn’t just a rural issue. Colorado needs a plan to address wildlife migration now, especially as it relates to predators. Killing all that encroach on private property isn’t the answer.

Land and water use are now two of the most vital issues of our time.

• It requires mass quantities of scarce resources, including water and grain that could otherwise feed people.
• Livestock production generates tons of methane—a potent greenhouse gas.
• Agricultural expansion is pushing endangered species around the world into extinction. Consumers are as guilty as the producers.
• Thousands of cattle are turned loose on out mountains for below-market grazing. This subsidy is anti-competitive since it only benefits a few privileged cattle producers. Many of these cattle are abandoned on our public lands where they trash the watershed throughout the year.
• Many farms and ranches claim to support food safety, while being paid to turn their land into industrial-scale sewage dumps, where cities are illegally disposing of tons of municipal sewage sludge–a highly toxic and highly infectious waste that is contaminating land, water, air and food supplies. The beef industry claims to be prion-free and that there is no need for a formal program that tests for mad cow disease (prion disease). Meanwhile, they are being duped into spreading prion contaminated sludge on their land. This reckless practice promotes mad cow disease, chronic wasting disease and neurological disorders among humans. Under a more responsible prion-containment plan, wolves can help minimize the spread of prion disease back and forth between livestock and wildlife.

Agriculture as a whole must be more responsible and accountable to meet the demands of a changing world.

For example, it might make sense to turn some of these ranches in wolf country back into carbon farms to eliminate conflicts with recovering wildlife populations. Hunting guides should at least add wolf-watching tours to their list of offerings. I know hundreds of people that are eager for an opportunity to see the first wolves back in Colorado. A federal judge just restored protections for gray wolves in most of the United States. Unfortunately, it left the wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming unprotected.

Wolves continue to be a pawn in the political gamesmanship of industry. Unfortunately, many small livestock producers across America are threatened by wolves, but not gray wolves. The wolves of Wall Street have been driving small producers out of business for decades. The meat packers continue squeezing the life out of all producers. The meat industry needs reforms on many levels. Making room for wolves is just the first step of many. Consumers are part of the revolution.

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post Colorado Votes For Wolf Reintroduction appeared first on Crossbow Communications.

Six former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrators are calling for reform at the agency. Although most of the former EPA leaders were critical of the current management, they were optimistic about the EPA’s future in an open letter published Wednesday. The letter reads:

As former leaders of the Environmental Protection Agency serving both Democratic and Republican administrations, we take great pride in the agency’s many successes improving the quality of the air we breathe, safeguarding the water we drink, and protecting the environment that sustains us and our economy. As EPA approaches its 50th anniversary this December, we believe the time has come to reset the future course for EPA in a new, forward-looking direction to address the environmental challenges we face today and those that lie ahead.

The nature of the environmental and health challenges our nation faces have changed. Fifty years ago, pollution was visible and unrelenting throughout our country. Today, less visible but equally dangerous environmental hazards threaten communities in ways that differ from place to place, person to person.

Climate change is having far-reaching impacts on air quality, infectious diseases, and water quantity and quality, as well as intensifying destructive climate events such as floods, storms, wildfires, and droughts. Environmental injustices are putting lower-wealth communities, communities of color, and indigenous communities at disproportionately high levels of exposure, risk, and vulnerability to toxic pollution, not to mention the pandemic we are now facing.

Speedier, more effective assessments and responses are needed to face pandemics, new toxic hazards, and other emerging or unmitigated health risks. The Environmental Protection Network (EPN) and its over 500 EPA alumni have developed detailed recommendations for setting new directions at EPA. We invite everyone to review this important report http://www.environmentalprotectionnetwork.org/reset.

Not everyone will agree with every recommendation, for there is no single roadmap for the way forward.

The following recommendations are essential to improve people’s lives and our economy

1. EPA must reaffirm its commitment to fully protect public health and the environment.
2. EPA must conduct its scientific and economic analysis free from political interference.
3. EPA must incorporate environmental justice in every aspect of its work in order to address and resolve inequitable environmental conditions.
4. EPA must focus on the most significant and pervasive public health and environmental risks, prioritizing actions that provide the greatest health benefit for the greatest number of people, including vulnerable populations.
5. EPA must innovate and collaborate with states, tribes, local governments, and federal agencies as co-regulators, as well as with stakeholders, including the private and non-profit sectors and community groups, to build an effective and resilient system of public health and environmental protections.
6. EPA must earn and maintain broad public trust by demonstrating the best ethical behavior, transparently considering all stakeholder viewpoints, and providing objective environmental information. To do the job well, EPA will need additional resources. As new threats to the health and environmental needs of a growing population have multiplied, EPA’s budget has declined. In inflation-adjusted dollars, EPA’s budget was more than 50% higher under President Ronald Reagan than it is today. The steady deterioration of resources has undermined EPA’s readiness for the challenges ahead and the agency’s ability to adapt and respond to emerging needs.

While we are concerned about the current state of affairs at EPA, we are hopeful for the agency’s future. EPA has a strong foundation on which to build. Capable and talented staff members are ready to answer the call. They have labored in good faith across administrations of both parties to fulfill EPA’s mission by following the law, applying the best available science, and displaying openness and transparency with the public. America’s bedrock environmental laws have delivered enormous health and economic benefits to the American public, as documented by Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

The public values clean air, clean water, and a healthy natural environment, notwithstanding differences in priorities and approaches. The years ahead will bring new and often far-reaching environmental and health risks. They also hold great potential for new approaches, new opportunities, and new technologies to confront environmental problems.

Growing ranks of companies are showing internal leadership on sustainability without waiting for regulations. New technologies and data tools can pinpoint and help solve environmental threats. State and local governments, farmers and other landowners, community-based groups, universities, and others have pioneered new approaches to getting results. We have successfully risen as a nation to confront past threats to our health and environment. We are at an environmental crossroads, and we are hopeful that America will again muster the resolve, the will, and the action needed to protect public health, the environment, and our economy.

Sincerely, Hon. Lee Thomas EPA Administrator, 1985-1989

Hon. William Reilly EPA Administrator, 1989-1993

Hon. Carol Browner EPA Administrator, 1993-2001

Hon. Christine Todd Whitman EPA Administrator, 2001-2003

Hon. Lisa Jackson EPA Administrator, 2009-2013

Hon. Gina McCarthy EPA Administrator, 2013-2017

They endorsed the broad goals of new recommendations for the agency from the Environmental Protection Network (EPN), a group of hundreds of former agency employees, which also calls for “resetting the course” of the agency.

These goals include conducting analyses that are free from political interference, resolving inequitable environmental conditions faced by disadvantaged communities and prioritizing actions that provide the greatest health benefits to the most people.

The report from the EPN also made more specific policy recommendations to the agency, such as suspending its rollback of Obama-era water protections and affirming California’s authority to set its own vehicle emissions standards, both of which have been major points of contention. The EPA has also rolled back many other environmental rules in recent years like regulations governing fuel efficiency standards and power plants. The agency has lost hundreds of staff under the current administration. The letter prompted an immediate response from the EPA.

“EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is proud of our record addressing environmental problems impacting Americans, including delisting Superfund sites that have lingered for years,” said EPA spokesperson James Hewitt, in a statement to The Hill.

“He won’t be taking ‘reset’ advice from administrators who ignored the Flint lead crisis, botched the Gold King Mine response, and encouraged New Yorkers to [breathe] contaminated air at Ground Zero,” Hewitt added.

In all fairness, Hewitt makes an important point. Mismanagement at the EPA didn’t begin under the Trump administration. The most outrageous example that I will point to is regarding reclaimed wastewater and biosolids. Fraudulent risk assessments are fueling a public health disaster in the form of neurodegenerative disease. The EPA portrayed itself as an expert on the topic and exported its risk assessments and recommendations around the world. Prominent scientists were fired.

After more than 30 years of lies, the EPA withdrew its risk assessments. Changes within industry to safeguard public health have been ignored. As a result, prion disease is ravaging mammals around the world, including humans. The EPA has completely ignored deadly prions and unstoppable prion disease for decades. The illegal dumping of infectious waste continues.

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post Former EPA Leaders Demand Reform appeared first on Crossbow Communications.

Editor’s Note: In April 2019, Dr. Stanley Prusiner published conclusive evidence that Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease are forms of prion disease. The implications are far-reaching. It impacts 50-100 million victims around the world, their family, friends and caregivers. It’s time to reform policies and practices on many fronts to protect public health and animal health.

Neurodegenerative disease and autism (a neurodevelopmental disease) have been surging around the world for the past 30 years. A man-made environmental disaster is creating a public health disaster that’s still unfolding in many ways in most nations.

Neurotoxins are driving the epidemic more than age–in some countries more than others. Teenagers are now dying of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease–the most severe form of brain wasting disease. Children are contracting autism at an escalating rate and at an uneven rate, which points to environmental factors. The pattern reflects human exposure to environmental toxins. There also is a pattern of mismanagement and denial around the world.

Alzheimer’s disease alone is taking the lives of 50-100 million people around the world now. As millions die, even more will be diagnosed. Millions more are suffering in silence with a misdiagnosis or no diagnosis. Misinformation and mismanagement are fanning the flames. Compounding the problem, the Alzheimer’s Association found that doctors have withheld millions of additional diagnoses. Coroners are keeping diagnoses off of millions of death certificates. Epidemiologists can only guess at the true size of the epidemic.

Despite millions of deaths, experts suggest that the prevalence of the disease will quadruple by 2050, if not sooner. Unfortunately, there is a growing stack of evidence that Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other brain diseases are transmissible. There is zero evidence to the contrary. Victims also are being misdiagnosed and undiagnosed at an alarming rate.

A variety of factors can trigger neurodegenerative disease, including genetics, head trauma and neurotoxins. Deadly, self-replicating proteins appear to be one of those neurotoxins.

Prions (PREE-ons) are a deadly and unstoppable form of protein that migrates, mutates, multiplies and kills with unparalleled efficiency. Dr. Stanley Prusiner, an American neuroscientist from the University of California at San Francisco, coined the term as a contraction of proteinaceous infectious particle. The operative word is “infectious.”

Prions cause fatal neurodegenerative disease in humans and other animals by converting the cellular version of prion protein into a toxic form that erodes the brain and body. Prions migrate, mutate and multiply. They get stronger as they move up the food chain. At the top of the food chain, humans are highly vulnerable to prion disease. The prions shed from humans are the deadliest and most aggressive. Mismanaging human prions is a big mistake.

Dr. Prusiner earned a Nobel Prize in 1997 for discovering and characterizing prions and prion disease. President Obama awarded Prusiner the National Medal of Science in 2010 to recognize the importance of his research. Unfortunately, Prusiner’s science is being ignored and we all are facing a public health disaster because of the negligence and reckless disregard for public health.

Prions are a formidable threat. When the U.S. government enacted the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, it included a provision to halt research on infectious prions in all but two laboratories. It classified prions as select agents that pose an extreme risk to food, water and health systems. Unfortunately, the Center For Disease Control quietly took prions off the list about two years ago because the classification criminalized multi-billion dollar industries and many industry practices.

Prion disease is known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). The operative word is “transmissible.” Prusiner claims that all forms of TSE are caused by infectious prions. Prion disease often is described as a wasting disease that causes a loss of body mass and brain mass.

TSE is a spectrum disease that varies in severity and symptoms. It depends on which region of the brain is impacted first and by what prion mutation. Few cases are identical in terms of symptoms and diagnoses. When the presenting symptom is memory loss, the diagnoses flow along the following chart.

In humans, the prion spectrum includes Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and an extremely aggressive version known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The difference between these diseases is very slight and often indistinguishable to neurologists. For example, millions of people have been told that they have Alzheimer’s disease, when, in reality, it’s CJD–where it’s clearly infectious.

“It is well known that CJD is transmissible via surgical or medical procedures involving prion-infected brain tissue. Our finding of infectious prions in skin is important since it not only raises concerns about the potential for disease transmission via common surgeries not involving the brain, but also suggests that skin biopsies and autopsies may enhance pre-mortem and post-mortem CJD diagnosis,” said Wenquan Zou, Associate Professor of Pathology and Neurology and Associate Director of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. “The level of prion infectivity detected in CJD skin was surprisingly significant, but still much lower than that in CJD brains. Further investigation is necessary to determine whether extra precautions should be taken during non-neurosurgeries of CJD patients, especially when surgical instruments will be reused.”

Prion infectivity is highly concentrated in brain tissue, but it’s also in all bodily fluids and tissue. CJD transmission has occurred after patients were exposed to surgical tools previously contaminated by CJD victims. It’s also happening due to many other pathways.

According to neuroscientist Dr. Laura Manuelidis, at least 25 percent of Alzheimer’s disease diagnoses are actually CJD.

CJD, without dispute, is extremely infectious to caregivers and loved ones, but it has not been declared a reportable disease across the U.S. and many other nations. Millions of cases of deadly CJD are being misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease. Millions of patients and caregivers are being misinformed, misguided and exposed to an aggressive prion disease.

Prion disease is highly contagious, incurable and fatal. Despite all of the smoke and mirrors, prion disease is prion disease. It’s killing more and more mammals, including humans, every year. The hype about species barriers is ridiculous, reckless and irresponsible. Failure to quarantine CJD patients is negligent at best. Millions of people with prion disease have exposed us all to their infectious waste thanks to misinformation, mismanagement and negligence.

Meanwhile, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is likely a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy—prion disease. In most of these cases, the trauma was the change agent that caused prions to misfold and become toxic. Once the neurodegeneration of CTE begins, are these victims shedding infectious prions? Hopefully, prion researchers will fill in this very important blank. Again, families and caregivers need to know if they are dealing with a TSE.

Misinformed caregivers, family members, healthcare workers and others are caught in the crossfire of a deadly form of protein. In fact, few family members are warned about the infectious nature of CJD. Meanwhile, hospitals throw out surgical instruments used on such patients. Neurologists prefer not to touch or even be in the same room as a patient with CJD. The CJD Foundation and other advocacy organizations also remain mum on the risk of transmission. The CDC remains silent. Is this cone of silence at all levels incompetence, negligence or criminal misconduct?

Abnormal proteins also are associated with autism. In fact, it appears that age is the biggest difference between the neurodegenerative disease spectrum and autism spectrum disorders. Both spectrums share common environmental causes and pathologies. Plus, CJD is taking the lives of more and more young adults and adolescents.

In humans, most diagnoses are a process of elimination. The key difference is which region of the brain is attacked first and by which mutation of prion. Some prions now kill within weeks of showing clinical symptoms. Prions shed from humans are the most aggressive.

After eliminating all other diagnostic possibilities, the medical guesswork begins:

• If the patient has a memory disorder, it’s diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease;
• If they have a movement disorder, it’s diagnosed as Parkinson’s disease;
• If the patient shows both symptoms, doctors flip a coin;
• If the patient ever had a concussion, it’s now ruled as CTE;
• If the person is incapacitated, it’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and very transmissible;
• If the victim is in the deer family, it’s chronic wasting disease instead of prion disease;
• If the victim is a beef or dairy cow, it’s called mad cow disease instead of prion disease;
• In other mammals, it’s called different things, but prion disease has been found in dolphins, elephants, mink, cats and many other species. The suggestion of a reliable species barrier against thousands, if not millions of mutations is ludicrous.

Prion disease causes memory loss, impaired coordination, and abnormal movements. Prion disease is incurable and fatal.

Prion Pathways

There are many sources and pathways for deadly prions. However, we can’t ignore the biggest pathways. The cruel irony of prion disease is that victims become part of the greater problem. As stated earlier, studies confirm that people and animals dying of prion disease contaminate the environment around them. Infectious prions are in the urine, feces, blood, skin, tissue, mucus and saliva of each victim. Infectious bodily fluids and tissue are contributing to the rapid spread of Alzheimer’s disease and other mutations of prion disease.

“There has been a resurgence of this sort of thinking, because there is now real evidence of the potential transmissibility of Alzheimer’s,” says Thomas Wiesniewski M.D. a prion and Alzheimer’s researcher at New York University School of Medicine. “In fact, this ability to transmit an abnormal conformation is probably a universal property of amyloid-forming proteins (prions).”

A study published in the journal Nature adds to the evidence about the transmissibility of Alzheimer’s disease between people. A second study by the same scientist in early 2016 supports the claim. Meanwhile, there is absolutely no evidence to the contrary. Even wildlife and sea mammals are contracting brain disease from people because of the dumping of infectious waste on farms, ranches and forests. Yes, research has found that plants/crops grown in infectious prions uptake those prions and become infectious. Growing food in sewage sludge (watch the video) makes the soil infectious and toxic.

Spouses of those with Alzheimer’s disease are 600 percent more likely to contract the disease, which is further evidence that the TSE spectrum is transmissible. Caregivers, family members and others are in harm’s way. The same goes for Parkinson’s disease.

Surgical instruments infected with prions, for example, are impossible to sterilize and hospitals throw them away. Meanwhile, caregivers and family members are not warned. CJD victims are not quarantined. They are sent home to die in many cases. Reckless.

Many factors are contributing to the epidemic. Prions are now the X factor. Industry and government are not accounting for prions or regulating them. They are ignoring the threat completely, which violates the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 in the United States. Other nations also are ignoring laws developed to protect food, air and water.

Prion Aversion and Containment

Aversion is the best defense against neurodegenerative disease. Therefore, please be aware about the following risks in your life. If the government won’t regulate and outlaw certain practices, you and your loved ones should at least be informed so that you can minimize prion risks in your life:

Dental Procedures: As stated above, when hospitals expose expensive surgical equipment to patients who have prion disease, they throw out the equipment. Dentist offices don’t even ask patients if they have neurological disease. They certainly don’t turn them away. As such, these dental patients are contaminating dental tools and offices with deadly prions. These tools and offices cannot be sterilized to neutralize prions. Every patient who subsequently follows the sick patient is exposed to a contaminated dental environment.

“I exposed my dentist and dental hygienist,” said Ryan, a 30-year-old father of two who fought prion disease for about a year before losing his battle. “The lady from the funeral home said that I should be quarantined. One of my nurses died because of me.”

In addition, dentists are implanting human bone tissue in your mouth before they give you that artificial tooth implant. Unfortunately, there is no way to assure you that the person who donated that bone didn’t die with, or from, neurodegenerative disease. Actor Peter Falk and others have had deadly encounters with neurodegenerative disease at the dental office.

Blood Transfusions: The blood supply is a huge concern for prion disease. Blood donors are not screened effectively, if at all. Many people are infectious, but don’t even know that they are sick, yet.

Organ Recipients: Organ donors are not screened effectively, if at all, for prion disease. Many people are infectious, but don’t even know that they are sick, yet. Organ donation and growth hormones harvested from cadavers have spread prion disease to healthy humans.

Gel Caps: Gel caps are derived from animal byproducts, including parts that are considered high-risk material for prion disease (bones, tendons and soft tissue). These parts are boiled and the proteins are shaped to become gel caps. Once these facilities are contaminated with prions, they become perpetual prion incubators and distributors.

Collagen: Collagen derived from animal byproducts, including parts that are considered high-risk material for prion disease (bones, tendons and soft tissue). These parts are boiled and the proteins are shaped to become gel caps. Once these facilities are contaminated with prions, they become perpetual prion incubators and distributors.

Homes and Offices: As stated before, people are infectious long before they develop clinical signs of neurodegenerative disease. They proceed to infect homes, offices and beyond with sneezes, coughs and utilizing dishes and utensils. Are you willing to bet your life on the coffee cup used by someone who has Alzheimer’s disease or who just died of CJD?

Hospitals and Clinics: Once contaminated always contaminated. It just takes one patient with CJD and this becomes a pathway. Avoid transfusions (from someone else—bank yours for you if possible) and transplants if possible.

Restaurants: Utensils and drinking dishes are your biggest concern. Take your own if possible.

Biosolids: Human waste and much more is being sold as fertilizer. Sewage sludge is infectious waste. It’s radioactive waste. It’s carcinogens, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals and more. Putting this deadly soup on crops is criminal. Unfortunately, the criminals at the U.S. EPA say biosolids and sewage in mulch is legal and safe, until recently. It’s killing mammals on land and at sea. It’s killing people. It’s contributing to chronic wasting disease and mad cow disease, too. The EPA recently admitted that it can’t assess the risks associated with sewage sludge and biosolids.

Prions incubate in many places, including sewage pipes and wastewater treatment plants. Wastewater treatment plants can’t detect or stop prions. Therefore, they ignore them. So does the EPA. So do various other government agencies around the world. Wastewater treatment plants are prion collectors, incubators and distributors and have been for many years.

Wastewater reclamation and reuse spreads prions back into our world, our watersheds and our food supplies. Prions from humans are the most aggressive and deadly mutations. Recycling them into our food, water and living environments creates even deadlier mutations. It’s a vicious circle that continues over and over again. Ignoring it will only make the epidemic and the resulting contamination worse.

The world produces about 1.9 billion tons of sewage sludge every year. It all should be dumped into lined landfills. It’s time to stop growing our food in this toxic soup of infectious waste, carcinogens, nerve agents and endocrine disruptors. Allowing rains and runoff to rinse these toxins into our rivers, streams, lakes and oceans is taking its toll on public health and marine life.

The EPA never conducted a legitimate risk assessment regarding the land application of sewage sludge. It never issued official policy. It issued something known to industry insiders as the “sludge rule” back in the 1990s. Furthermore, the fake risk assessments for biosolids and wastewater reclamation were prepared before the world of science knew about prions.

“Since it’s unlikely that the sewage treatment process can effectively stop prions, adopting measures to prevent the entry of prions into the sewer system is advisable,” said the Toronto Department of Health, November 2004.

According to prion researcher Joel Pedersen at the University of Wisconsin, prions in soil become up to 680 times more infectious. From there, they migrate, mutate and multiply. It’s a real world version of Pandora’s Lunchbox.

“Our results suggest that if prions enter municipal wastewater treatment systems, most of the agent would bond to sewage sludge, survive anaerobic digestion, and be present in treated biosolids,” Pedersen said. “Land application of biosolids containing prions represents a route for their unintentional introduction into the environment. Our results emphasize the importance of keeping prions out of municipal wastewater treatment systems.”

Ironically, this public health disaster began when global leaders realized that dumping sewage in our oceans killed entire underwater ecosystems and spoiled our beaches. Now, we’re told that sewage sludge should be rebranded as biosolids and sold as fertilizer. Good thinking. We’re still polluting our oceans with sewage. It’s just getting dumped in upstream. In fact, sewage sludge also is used to reclaim mines high in the mountains. In mine reclamation, it replaces one toxin with hundreds of other ones—including heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, carcinogens and prions. These mines are still contaminating surface water runoff. In other words, we’re spreading prions from mountaintops to the ocean’s depths just with mine reclamation that incorporates sewage sludge as a soil treatment (to cover heavy metals and acids).

Food labeled as organic should be sludge-free, but that doesn’t mean those crops are immune to these toxins in the air and water.

Reclaimed Wastewater: It’s the latest sensation sweeping the nations, but it’s based on fraudulent risk assessments. The greatest threat, prion disease, is unaccounted for in the risk assessments. Suffice it to say, bad idea.

Many forms of wildlife, including sea mammals, are vulnerable to prion disease. In sick deer, it’s being referred to as chronic wasting disease (CWD). Sick wildlife is serving as the proverbial canary in a coal mine. First, sick deer, elk, moose and reindeer are confirming that the human forms of neurodegenerative disease are transmissible. Norway’s reindeer are the best example.

Other mammals are contracting brain disease from infectious human waste when it’s dumped where they eat (land application of biosolids) and drink. These prions are making their way back into the human food chain.

Secondly, sick wildlife prove that there is not a species barrier when it comes to prions—especially the aggressive prions shed from humans. Sure, deer, elk and moose are getting prions from each other, but they are having prion disease injected into the herds with infectious waste from humans. Sewage sludge. Biosolids. Reclaimed wastewater.

“My guess is that many of the game farms that are being affected by chronic wasting disease have had sewage sludge (biosolids) dumped on their farms,” said Gary Chandler, CEO of Crossbow Communications. “Unfortunately, this pay dirt is death dirt. It’s infectious waste and much more. Wild deer are exposed to sewage sludge when dumped on farms, ranches and in forests.”

Sick cattle also are falling victim to human prions in sewage that’s being dumped on farms and ranches. Mad cow disease isn’t such a mystery. It’s the bovine form of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. A deadly prion is a deadly prion. The name game is just part of the smoke and mirrors being used to sweep this global prion epidemic under the rug.

Remember, there is no research to contradict or refute any of this prion theory. Answers begin with the truth. Prions + Pathways = Victims. Reforms are needed on many fronts around the world now. Please contact us to join our coalition.

Crossbow Communications is an award-winning public affairs and government affairs firm. We specialize in public health and environmental issues. We serve the world.

The post Prion Disease Spreading Rapidly appeared first on Crossbow Communications.