Big pharmaceutical companies are using the homeless and impoverished as guinea pigs for testing medications.


Top of the Alty World


“Is Big Pharma Testing Your Meds on Homeless People?”—Medium

Despite a U.N. Security Council call for a ceasefire Israel has intensified its attack on Gaza.—Democracy Now!

The Republicans field of 2016 Presidential hopefuls could offer Democrats some very stiff competition.—Slate

The Atlantic breaks down the causes of the worst Ebola breakout-out of all time.—The Atlantic

Top of Alty Utah

Elected officials and business and religious leaders are criticizing Rocky Mountain Power for their proposed fee on solar panel users.—Utah Political Capitol

Lawmakers will soon be debating the future of the Utah State Fair Park.—Utah Policy

Jesse Harris of the new iVote Advisory Committee talks about security issues with electronic voting.—Utah Politico Hub

Democrat Bob Buckles faces tough opposition from incumbent opponent Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield.—Utah Political Capitol

Rantosphere

The Nation takes challenges the Obama administration for makign natural gas a centerpiece of its energy policy.

“[M]ost of the benefit natural gas offers comes not from the gas itself but from how it is burned, and this is mostly because gas plants tend to be new and use more efficient burning technologies. The lesson, not surprisingly: if you burn a fuel using twenty-first-century technology, you get a better result than with late-nineteenth- or twentieth-century technology. This is not to defend coal but to provide an important reality check on the discussion now taking place in this country.

There is a real benefit to burning gas in America, but it’s less than often claimed, and much of that benefit comes from using modern techniques and new equipment. (If the coal industry weren’t so busy denying the reality of climate change, it might publicize this fact.)”—The Nation

The Long View

City Weekly revisits the infamous murders committed by the Lafferty brothers 30 years later.


“In person, Lafferty, a child of the ’60s, seems more like an extra from a Cheech & Chong movie than a maniacal killer. Cheerful, with an easy laugh, he’s quick to acknowledge when something he’s saying makes him sound like a nut job. Independently of the digital world, he’s started using his own emojis in his letters, ending various sentences with a sketch of a toothy smile.

Lafferty is telling me about the double murders he committed 30 years ago on July 24, 1984, when, after letting slip with a profanity, he interrupts his story to explain how his vocabulary became “liberated” when he realized there is no sin in cursing.

'God doesn’t give a fuck about words; what God cares about is anything that makes you happy and that doesn’t hurt anybody else,' Lafferty says. 'So anyways, I was praying pretty steady from that point on as I pushed my way into the house and I took those two lives ...'”—Salt Lake City Weekly