Saturday, November 24th, 2012
PAUL KRUGMAN, Nobel Laureate - Op-Ed Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: I have been holding this story for almost a week waiting for a conservative response, but none has been forthcoming.
This essay makes a very important point that explains why under Republican Administrations the government seems so inept, a point the general media simply has not seemed to grasp.
If you don't think government is capable of properly doing anything, your assessment will result in policies that confirm your expectations. It is a political philosophy that seems to be very seductive to people who either can't or won't think very deeply, but history has shown how utterly bankrupt this Randian worldview is. We can see it play out in the present moment with the privatization of prisons and schools and the results that has wrought.
Let me take a moment to flag an issue others have been writing about in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy: The weird Republican obsession with killing the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Kevin Drum, a political blogger at Mother Jones magazine, has the goods: they just keep doing it.
‘At a deep ideological level, Republicans believe that federal bureaucracies are inherently inept,’ Mr. Drum wrote on Oct. 30, ‘so when Republicans occupy the White House they have no interest in making the federal bureaucracy work. And it doesn’t. Democrats, by contrast, take government services seriously and appoint people whose job is to make sure the federal bureaucracy does work. And it does.’
George Bush the elder turned the agency into a dumping ground for hacks, with bad results; Bill Clinton revived the agency; President Bush the younger ruined it again; President Obama revived it again; and Mitt Romney – with everyone still remembering Brownie and Katrina! – said that he wanted to block-grant and privatize it. (Even TV news didn’t let him Etch-A-Sketch that comment away).
There’s something pathological here. It’s really hard to think of a public service less likely to be suitable for privatization, and given the massive inequality of impacts by […]
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Saturday, November 24th, 2012
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, Business and Economics Reporter - US News and World Report
Stephan: This is part of the perfect storm of transition that is underway. As with Climate Change we need to move out of denial, and prepare for the multipolar world that is evolving.
SOURCE: OECD Economic Policy Papers No. 3
Our children and grandchildren will live in a vastly different global economy. Someday, U.S. economic dominance will be a distant memory. A new report is showing just how soon that might be. The paper, from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a European-based think tank, shows that over the next 50 years, the size of China and then India’s economies will surpass that of the U.S.
According to the report, the global economy is expected to undergo seismic shifts over the next 50 years. China will surpass America as the world’s largest economy as early as 2016, and a fast-growing Indian economy will outstrip the American economy by 2060.
These are just individual examples of a broader change that will take place over that period. The share of global GDP from OECD member countries-currently consisting of many of the world’s large, advanced economies, like the U.S., European Union member countries, Japan, Australia, Canada, and Mexico-will shrink considerably, from nearly 65 percent as of 2011 to 49 percent in 2030 and just over 42 percent in 2060. Non-OECD countries, a group that includes all of the emerging BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), will likewise grow, from 35 percent in 2011 […]
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Saturday, November 24th, 2012
CAROLINE CRAWFORD and EILISH O'REGAN, - The Belfast Telegraph (Northern Ireland)
Stephan: This case in Ireland has received considerable worldwide attention and you may already be familiar with it. If not, the basic facts are at the bottom of this report. My reason for publishing it is that it is an example of what would happen if the Theocratic Rightists in the U.S. had their way. The next time you hear a Rightist politician talking about overturning Roe vs Wade, keep this tragedy in mind.
I consider the physicians attending in this case to be murderers. Their acknowledgment of guilt is made obvious by their alteration of Savita Halappanavar's medical records.
The husband of Savita Halappanavar has spoken of his shock that the couple’s repeated requests for a termination are missing from her medical notes.
The detailed notes from Galway University Hospital include information on requests for tea and toast and additional blankets - but make no reference whatsoever to the couple’s requests over two separate days for the unviable pregnancy to be terminated.
Medical records made available to Mr Halappanavar do not include doctor’s notes for Monday, October 22 - the day the couple first requested a termination. While doctors’ notes are available for Tuesday, October 23, they make no reference to the requested termination which was reiterated on that date.
Praveen Halappanavar revealed how the missing information had destroyed his faith in the Republic’s Health and Safety Executive.
‘It’s time to get the facts and the truth for Savita,
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Saturday, November 24th, 2012
DAVID FERGUSON, - The Raw Story
Stephan: This is exciting good news and the latest in the New Medicine Trend.
Scientists at Wake Forest University in North Carolina have developed a ’tissue printer
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Friday, November 23rd, 2012
JOAN LOWY, - The Associated Press/Salon
Stephan: We had a taste with Sandy of what climate change does to our aging infrastructure. Hopefully we will now conclude the utter failure of the neocons' wars and focus on rebuilding America's infrastructure.
WASHINGTON — Extreme weather is a growing threat to the nation’s lifelines - its roads, bridges, railways, airports and transit systems. That’s leaving states and cities trying to come to terms with a new normal.
Superstorm Sandy is the latest and most severe example. It inflicted the worst damage to the New York subway system in its 108-year history. New York isn’t alone; intense rain, historic floods and record temperatures are taking a toll on transportation across the country.
Transportation engineers build highways and bridges to last 50 or even 100 years. Now they are reconsidering how they do that.
The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials is weighing rewriting its standards on design, construction and maintenance of roads and bridges to reflect new weather extremes.
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