Texas Teacher Susan Templer's Cancer Fight Inspires Students (VIDEO)

In this March 20, 2013 photo, Susan Templer passes out test forms to her science class in Richardson, Texas. Templer was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2011, but has continued teacher through her illness to reach her 25 year service mark. (AP Photo/John L. Mone)

RICHARDSON, Texas — Susan Templer wasn't supposed to make it to 2012 or 2013.

But the suburban Dallas middle school science teacher fought back against pancreatic cancer for close to two years and reached a milestone – 25 years on the job.

When doctors diagnosed her with cancer in August 2011, her students and colleagues rushed to support her.

Templer says work kept her going, and she loves nothing more than teaching science.

Richardson North Junior High Principal Philip Bates says Templer is the strongest person he has met.

But even the iron-willed Templer has limits. She's had to stop her school year early_she's in hospital now focusing squarely on her cancer fight.

___

Watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?vRZxlPw63igE

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Beverly Bell: Small Farms Fight Back: Food and Community Self-Governance

Beverly Bell: Small Farms Fight Back: Food and Community Self-Governance HPFB.init();
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GET UPDATES FROM Beverly Bell   Like 25 Small Farms Fight Back: Food and Community Self-Governance Posted: 04/15/2013 5:34 pm Follow   Environment , Department Of Agriculture , Food Safety , Agriculture , Farms , Fda , Foodborne Illness , Maine , Green News
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Part 10 of the Harvesting Justice series

Heather Retberg stood on the steps of the Blue Hill, Maine, town hall surrounded by 200 people. "We are farmers," she told the crowd, "who are supported by our friends and our neighbors who know us and trust us, and want to ensure that they maintain access to their chosen food supply."

Blue Hill is one of a handful of small Maine towns that have been taking bold steps to protect their local food system. In 2011, they passed an ordinance exempting their local farmers and food producers from federal and state licensure requirements when these farmers sell directly to customers.

The federal government has stiffened national food-safety regulations in order to address the health risks associated with industrial-scale farming. Recent widespread recalls of contaminated ground turkey, cantaloupe, eggs, and a host of other foods illustrate the serious problems at hand. These outbreaks have been linked to industrial farms with overcrowded animals and unbalanced ecosystems. The significant distance between industrial farms and consumers creates a lack of accountability and difficulty tracing problems when they arise.

Small-scale farming, however, doesn't spark the same safety risks. Small farmers who sell their food locally will tell you that the nature of their business, based on face-to-face relationships with the people who eat their food, creates a built-in safety protection. They don't need inspectors to make sure they are following good practices. Keeping their neighbors, families, and long-time customers in good health is an even better incentive. Customers are also more able to witness the farming practices firsthand.

Still, small farmers are being pushed out of business because they are saddled with the financial and bureaucratic burdens of the same regulations as large industrial farms. Heather and her family's Quill's End Farm raise grass-fed cows, lambs, pastured pigs, chickens for eggs and meat, turkeys, dairy cows, and goats. The diverse mix is better both for the land and the economic viability of the farm.

Given the scale of their business, building their own chicken processing unit was financially out of the question, so instead they were butchering at a neighboring farm's USDA-approved unit. When state inspectors told them that USDA regulations didn't allow them to share this neighbor's facility, Quill's End Farm was forced to stop raising and selling chickens altogether.

"I just remember the feeling that if that was happening to us, the same message was being given to all sorts of farmers of our scale and people were just going to give up and stop farming," said Heather. "My sense, more than anything, was a really daunting realization that, 'Oh, this is how farms get disappeared.' And people are so supportive, but then when we disappear, everybody might just kind of shake their heads like, 'Oh, it must just be really tough to make it farming.'"

So Heather, together with a small group of other farmers and farm patrons in Maine, began crafting the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance, the ?rst of its kind in the country. The ordinance exempts direct sales between farmers and customers -- at farms, farmstands, and markets, for example -- from state and federal licensing and inspections. It allows Heather to sell chicken at her farmstore, and Bob St. Peter, a fellow farmer and organizer, to sell his homemade cookies at the farmers market.

In March 2011, the ordinance passed unanimously in the town of Sedgwick, Maine. Three days later it was presented at Heather's town meeting in Penobscot. "We spent a good while talking about whether to give $3,000 to our local library," says Heather, "and I was sitting there thinking 'Whoa, this is a tough crowd.' But then when the ordinance came up, it was another unanimous vote. It was tremendous." Other towns in Maine immediately followed suit.

Since then, says Heather, "We've heard from people in Tennessee, Texas, California, Virginia... someone in New Zealand. Last year, Vermont passed a food sovereignty resolution with similar language. Over in California they're working in the direction of an ordinance in Mendocino County. In Arizona they're beginning to circulate petitions. And this fall we heard that a town in Utah had passed the ordinance." Over the two years following Sedgwick's success, more than eight towns in Maine itself have adopted such ordinances.

As of this writing, Maine's State Department of Agriculture is challenging one of the local ordinances by suing a dairy farmer. Community members are reaching out to friends in surrounding counties and national food justice coalitions, asking them to call in and urge the state to drop the suit. The case has drawn national attention. Meanwhile, organizers from far and wide are watching closely, hoping to launch similar initiatives in their own communities.

In addition to efforts at the local level, farmers and activists are attempting to tackle the government's one-size-fits-all approach to food safety at the federal level. When U.S. legislators voted to increase Food and Drug Administration inspections and reporting requirements for farms in 2010, more than 150 food groups succeeded in winning an amendment that provides some exemptions for small farmers.

"Foodborne illnesses don't come from family agriculture," says Sen. Jon Tester from Montana, who co-sponsored the amendment.

Download the Harvesting Justice pdf here, and find action items, resources, and a popular education curriculum on the Harvesting Justice website. Harvesting Justice was created for the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, check out their work here.

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'The Biggest Loser' Makeover Week: See The Contestants' New Looks As They Fight For Immunity (VIDEO)

'The Biggest Loser' Makeover Week: Danni Tears Up At Her Own Transformation

This was the week that everyone had been waiting for on "The Biggest Loser." It was time for makeovers! The kids even returned to campus for the exciting experience. But nobody's transformation was more emotional than Danni's. The 26-year old hadn't felt beautiful in so long that when she walked out in skinny jeans, she immediately got emotional.

Then in a dress it was tears again. "The way I feel walking out, I feel beautiful," she said. "I feel pretty, I’m wearing heels and a dress! It’s just the best feeling I’ve ever felt in my whole life, I think."

Zap2It was in tears as well, calling Danni's transformation a tearjerker. Gossip & Gab felt the emotion, too, referring to Danni as an inspiration. But it was all the contestants who got to take their new looks home and inspire their friends, families and communities to a workout.

The contestants were also fighting for immunity during their two-week stays at home. If they could lose 5% of their total bodyweight in those two weeks, they would have individual immunity. One by one they hit the scale, and one by one they got their immunity. Everyone was safe.

That means there are still five contestants going into next week's penultimate episode. Who will get eliminated next on "The Biggest Loser," Mondays at 8 p.m. EST on NBC.

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CRFB Corporate Ties: Budget Watchdog Funded By Big Tobacco In 1990s Health Care Fight

Packs of cigarettes wait to be purchased at a Chicago-area news stand on Nov. 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

WASHINGTON -- The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is known in Washington as a nonpartisan budget watchdog, a central voice in calls to rein in the nation's debt. The CRFB features a respected list of Republicans and Democrats on its board and regularly hosts current leaders in the nation's capital for panel discussions on the future of the budget.

But historical documents raise questions about whether the CRFB -- which is also the primary vehicle advocating private equity billionaire Peter Peterson's debt reduction agenda, including cuts to social safety net programs --- has allowed corporate donations to influence its work on budget issues.

The organization was used in the early 1990s to create a front group for tobacco companies during the battle over President Bill Clinton's health care reform proposal. That group, called the Cost Containment Coalition, presented itself as a civic-minded coalition of those interested in finding the most responsible solution to the health care crisis. The corporate interests funding it had entirely different motives, according to documents collected by the Public Accountability Initiative, a public interest research nonprofit.

According to these documents, found in the Tobacco Legacy Library and at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the CRFB from 1992 to 1994 accepted money from the tobacco industry -- including Philip Morris and the Tobacco Institute -- in exchange for using the group's image as a bipartisan budget watchdog, through the coalition, to advocate against a proposed excise tax on tobacco products.

In a 1992 memo, Philip Morris spokesman Craig Fuller wrote that health care coalitions at the time were focused on how to solve the problem of access to health care, while "[v]ery little attention has been paid to the true problem with the health care system that actually impairs access and also puts Philip Morris at risk vis-a-vis increased excise taxes -- the escalating costs of the system and how to pay for it."

The solution to explaining this "true problem" was found in the formation of the Cost Containment Coalition. This group, according to the same 1992 Philip Morris memo, was to be formed "under the auspices of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and will be directed by Carol Cox," then president of the CRFB.

At the time, the CRFB president, whose full last name is Cox-Wait, was listed in an internal Philip Morris document as one of many "corporate affairs consultants" receiving personal compensation from the company. These documents show that she received $47,000 from the tobacco company in 1993, in the middle of the CRFB's work for the tobacco industry. Cox-Wait was also married to Philip Morris Vice President Bob Wait.

In an interview, Cox-Wait denied any impropriety, saying that the information in the tobacco documents may reveal Philip Morris' perspective on its interaction with the CRFB, but it was not that of the committee.

"They contributed to us, and they may have seen it that way, but what we were doing was a very serious study," Cox-Wait said, referring to a report on health care reform costs released by the CRFB.

In 1993, Calvin H. George, tax counsel at the Tobacco Institute, the industry's lobbying arm, described that report as "useful" to protecting tobacco profits.

"What is most useful here is a strong statement from a bipartisan group of budget experts warning that rhetoric about reforming health care as a means of bringing the deficit under control should be viewed with skepticism, at best," George wrote in an internal message to Susan Stuntz, vice president of public affairs at the Tobacco Institute.

Cox-Wait further defended her dual work at the time as both a corporate consultant and the head of the respected budget group. "When I was president of CRFB, I also ran a small consulting firm called Carol Cox & Associates. My board was aware of it. When I did that, I took a cut in pay and separated the time I did for the two of them."

Corporate interests pushing unpopular policies often seek cover from respected independent groups. In the tobacco industry's eyes, the CRFB apparently filled that role. "Because of her bipartisan Board, 'Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget,' and given her 'neutral' status, Carol is able to access many people who would be inaccessible to us given our issues," another internal Philip Morris document explained.

Cox-Wait said she always made it known that her consulting work was separate from her work at the CRFB. "I would say this is two hats, and this has nothing to do with the committee when I was giving budget process advice to private parties and being paid for it," she said.

The CRFB's connection to the tobacco industry did not end after the Clinton health care proposal fizzled in 1994. Internal documents from both Philip Morris and the Tobacco Institute show that Cox-Wait continued her consulting for the industry up until 2001. In a Feb. 7, 2001, letter dictating a schedule for a Philip Morris tax-and-budget team meeting, Cox-Wait is listed as the presenter for the "Federal Budget Situation."

Tobacco companies were not the only ones who saw the CRFB as worth connecting with. During the 1990s, insurance companies made contributions to the group and, according to a 1994 SEC filing by the health insurer Cigna, Cox-Wait was paid $12,000 as a consultant before joining the company's board in 1995. While Cox-Wait was under contract with Cigna, which opposed health care reform, the CRFB released a 148-page report that pointedly criticized seemingly every significant health care reform proposal at the time.

Cox-Wait remains on the board of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is now run by Maya MacGuineas. Last year, the CRFB created a new entity called Fix the Debt, also headed by MacGuineas and funded by Peterson and multiple CEOs and corporations. Fix the Debt is calling for a grand deficit bargain to be reached by raising revenue, cutting spending and reforming social insurance programs.

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'Scandal': Will Fitz Fight For Both His Presidency And His Marriage? (VIDEO)

'Scandal': President Fitzgerald Grant Ask Mellie For A Divorce

"Scandal" spent this week's episode in two different times. In the present, Fitz was fighting for his presidency after Mellie forged his signature and put everybody's political and legal future in jeopardy. In the past, he was fighting to win the presidency over the stern disapproval of his father. That sequence in the past showed viewers when he and Olivia began to fall for one another, and it showed how Olivia came to go along with the idea of rigging the election to hand it to Fitz.

In the present, he mustered up strength he didn't have to not only address the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but he even did a press conference on television. The first one didn't go so well, but he paced himself and was able to assuage any concerns the public might have had in him. Madame Vice President even groveled a bit in the end.

The biggest bombshell was saved for the end, though, when Fitz was lying in bed. Mellie was telling him that his approval was sky-high and he could probably have anything he wanted in that moment. So he said he wanted a divorce.

Could that possibly happen? It seems it would be a long-shot, considering she's pregnant and he's president, but wilder things have happened on Shonda Rhimes shows. It would free him up to be with Olivia.

Viewers will just have to tune in to "Scandal" every Thursday at 10 p.m. EST on ABC to find out what happens next.

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Webcam Porn Actress Gets Into Fight With Daughter Live On Camera

BroBible.com:

Webcam pop-unders are THE WORST. Except when you're watching porn and you're greeted by the sounds of a massive fight brewing between a webcam porn actress and her daughter.

That's what happened to Max Landis, who's amazingly upfront about the fact that he was watching porn when he caught the fight happening.

WARNING: The video contains explicit language

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