Free Republic

She was never a stereotype. That was my thought earlier this month when I heard that “Mia,” as the Land O’Lakes Native American maiden was known, had been taken off the butter box. She was gone, vanished, missing. I knew Mia had devolved into a stereotype in many people’s minds. But it was the stereotype some saw that bothered me. North Dakota state Rep. Ruth Buffalo (D), for instance, told the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minn., that the Land O’Lakes image of Mia went “hand-in-hand with human and sex trafficking of our women and girls … by depicting Native...

Link only: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-29/your-health-plan-will-now-self-destruct

The next time you're at a grocery store, let the cashier ring up the sale. Then try to bargain for a better deal. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? After all, just a handful of retailers sell more than half of all the groceries in the United States, and an individual shopper has very little power to negotiate. That same imbalance of power is a real problem for farmers and ranchers in the United States. Farmers are proud of their independence, but having millions of growers bartering separately puts them at a real disadvantage in the marketplace. That is why they banded...

More Honest Debate What is a Cooperative (Co-Op)? A Cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit. A cooperative may also be defined as a business owned and controlled equally by the people who use its services or who work at it.There are many types of Co-Ops in the United States. I will attempt to address some of the most common cooperatives. If you belong to a credit union, you are already a member of a Co-Op. My electric and natural gas utility company is an EMC, another word for Co-Op....

...Americans fighting against government-run health care are out of the woods yet. Conrad insists that the Senate could pass health reform that includes health insurance co-operatives. Co-operatives do have a long and proud tradition in many sectors of the U.S. economy, but details matter. Conrad says these health co-ops will not be “government-run and government-controlled” but instead “membership-run and membership controlled.” But others in Conrad’s caucus have a starkly different co-op goal. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is pushing a vision of co-ops that are: 1) run by the government, preferably the federal government; 2) funded or subsidized by the government;...

Purchasing cooperatives stimulate competition for electricity or natural gas supply services in the residential marketplace. Purchasing Cooperatives leverage the increased purchasing power of the group over that of the individual by obtaining competitive pricing, eliminate the need for the individual to go through the process alone, share in the costs, technical support, and expertise.

Nation's largest utility will be focus as U.S. House committee takes closer look at industry. By Claudia Grisales AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Saturday, June 14, 2008 The Pedernales Electric Cooperative will face questions from Congress this month as the U.S. House of Representatives' main investigative committee takes up the controversy that has embroiled the country's largest member-owned utility for the past year. The Oversight and Government Reform Committee plans a June 26 hearing in Washington focused primarily on Pedernales. The chairman of the committee is U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who Time magazine once dubbed the "scariest guy in Washington," partly for...