Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
LEE FANG, - Think Progress
Stephan: This organization is the active face of the corporatocracy. Think about what it is proposing. Either social progressives are going to mount a unified response or we are headed down a dark tunnel. If you read Rick Perry's book you see this vision translated into direct political action.
How about this? Perry believes we should return to Senatorial elections in accordance with Article I of the Constitution, section 3, 'The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.' This was found to be a structural flaw in the Constitution and the 17th Amendment changed it to electing senators by popular election. The reason the change was made was it became clear that when the old system was used the power of the few increased to the expense of the many.
The Far right doesn't just want to change policies, it wants to revert to an older discredited form of government, because it makes it easier for an elite to make policy.
As this trend makes clear, your health and well-being are a distant second priority at best.
As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – one of the largest and most influential big business lobbying groups in the world – fired a letter off to Cass Sunstein, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, telling him to block the regulation of extremely toxic chemicals in consumer plastics. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the dangers of such chemicals, the chamber letter declares that that EPA ‘lacks the sound regulatory science needed to meet the statutory threshold for a restriction or ban of the targeted chemicals.
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Monday, August 15th, 2011
CATHY HAYES, Staff Writer - Irish Central
Stephan: In looking in on this trend I found stories of new investigations in six other countries, in addition to Ireland, where child sexual abuse accounts and litigation are occurring, including Columbia, Mexico, and Argentina. All countries that have traditionally avoided all questioning of the Roman Church, so just the occurrence of such litigation is notable. I have chosen to use this report on Ireland because the situation there is more fully developed. However, it is clearly a worldwide moral crisis.
A new report on the Donegal diocese of Raphoe will reveal that 20 pedophile priests sexually abused hundreds of children over a 40 years period. This report will detail another massive cover-up scandal within the Irish Catholic Church.
The report, carried out for the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, will be published by the Bishop of Raphoe, Dr Philip Boyce, during the next two weeks.
The report will outline the horrors of the allegations against the priests and how senior colleagues failed the victims.
A source told the Irish Independent ‘There were hundreds and hundreds of victims
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Monday, August 15th, 2011
, - Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Stephan: As the result of a dinner conversation for about three months I have been looking for some research on exactly how much of consumer spending goes to 'made in China' products. I finally found a trustworthy report, and it contains some major surprises. Click through to see the graphs the report references.
Galina Hale is a senior economist in the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Bart Hobijn is a senior research advisor in the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
References:
Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2010. 'Inter-industry relationships (Input/Output matrix).'
U.S. Census Bureau. 2011. 'U.S. International Trade Data.'
Xing, Yuqing, and Neal Detert. 2010. 'How the iPhone Widens the United States Trade Deficit with the People's Republic of China.' Asian Development Bank Institute Working Paper 257.
Goods and services from China accounted for only 2.7% of U.S. personal consumption expenditures in 2010, of which less than half reflected the actual costs of Chinese imports. The rest went to U.S. businesses and workers transporting, selling, and marketing goods carrying the ‘Made in China’ label. Although the fraction is higher when the imported content of goods made in the United States is considered, Chinese imports still make up only a small share of total U.S. consumer spending. This suggests that Chinese inflation will have little direct effect on U.S. consumer prices.
The United States is running a record trade deficit with China. This is no surprise, given the wide array of items in stores labeled ‘Made in China.
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Monday, August 15th, 2011
NAOKO FUJIMURA and CHRIS COOPER, - Bloomberg
Stephan: American media only rarely covers this story now -- this report being one of the few exceptions -- but the tragedy of Fukushima continues to haunt Japan. Sadly, I would not knowingly buy any wood or food product from Japan.
Mushrooms joined the threats to Japan’s food chain from radiation spewed by Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, as the country expands efforts to limit the effects of the disaster.
Japan is under pressure to enhance food inspections as it has no centralized system for detecting radiation contamination. About two-thirds of Japan’s prefectures now plan to check rice crops, the Mainichi newspaper reported yesterday, citing its own survey. Half of Japan’s rice is grown within range of emissions from the crippled nuclear plant, and farmers are awaiting the results of tests before harvesting begins this month.
‘By strengthening inspection on rice, we want to make sure only safe produce are in the market,
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Monday, August 15th, 2011
, - International Business Times
Stephan: No matter how it is calculated the polar ice is thinning. Now scientists are fine tuning the timing. Here is the latest on this trend, which corrects the recent IPCC report.
The United Nations’ most recent global climate report ‘fails to capture trends in Arctic sea-ice thinning and drift, and in some cases substantially underestimates these trends,’ says a new research from MIT. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, released in 2007, forecasts an ice-free Arctic summer by the year 2100.
However, the Arctic sea ice may be thinning four times faster than predicted, according to Pierre Rampal and his research team of MIT’S Department of Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS).
The research team’s findings will be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans.
After comparing IPCC models with actual data, Rampal and his collaborators concluded that the forecasts were significantly off. IPCC models focused on changes in temperature, which are one way to lose or gain ice. However, Rampal said that the report underestimates mechanical forces that contributed to ice-melting.
Mechanical forces like wind or ocean currents batter the ice causing it to break up. Ice in small pieces behave differently than ice in one large mass and are more susceptible to thinning due to temperature changes.
Wind and currents also play a significant role in winter, when they can cause ‘drastic effects’ on the ice’s shape and movement, said […]
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