Thursday, February 28th, 2013
MICHAEL WINSHIP and BILL MOYERS, - Truthout.org
Stephan: This is what besets all aging empires. It is the fever of legally sanctified corruption.
To those who would argue that the notion of a perpetual motion machine is impossible, we give you the revolving door - that ever-spinning entrance and exit between public service in government and the hugely profitable private sector. It never stops.
Yes, we’ve talked about the revolving door until we’re red or blue in the face (the door is bipartisan and spins across party lines) but this mantra bears its own perpetual repetition, a powerful reason for our distrust of the people who make and enforce our laws and regulations.
Jesse Eisinger, writing at The New York Times,reports that on January 25, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid announced the appointment of Cathy Koch as his chief advisor on tax and economic policy. According to the Times, ‘The news release lists Ms. Koch’s admirable and formidable experience in the public sector. ‘Prior to joining Senator Reid’s office,’ the release says, ‘Koch served as tax chief at the Senate Finance Committee.’
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Thursday, February 28th, 2013
Stephan: Everyone who reads SR knows my views on the illness profit system. I have written extensively about this here, in my column in Explore, and in the Huffington Post. We have the worst healthcare amongst the advanced nations of the world because the purpose of our system is not health but profit. It is appalling, and it goes on year after year and, for the most part we are as docile as sheep.
This is an excellent fact-based essay on the subject that is well worth your attention. It is the longest article Time Magazine has ever published and it focuses on the financial arrangements of our system.
There is only one solution to this, voting in different people. It works.
1. Routine Care, Unforgettable Bills
When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Stephanie’s father had been treated there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least eight years.
Because Stephanie and her husband had recently started their own small technology business, they were unable to buy comprehensive health insurance. For $469 a month, or about 20% of their income, they had been able to get only a policy that covered just $2,000 per day of any hospital costs. ‘We don’t take that kind of discount insurance,
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Thursday, February 28th, 2013
DAMIAN CARRINGTON, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: A small group of corporations now dominate the world's food supply, and they have lobbied extensively to operate with the least amount of regulatory oversight. The result, just as one would expect, is that because they believe they are above the law, their ethical standards are profoundly compromised, and affect not just the food itself, but the entire system by which it is produced. Because their priority is profit not human wellness many of the food products they produce are crap, and actually detrimental to health.
The world’s largest food companies are failing to meet ethical standards, a report from Oxfam has warned. None of the leading global brands such as Nestlé, Mars and Coca-Cola were given good overall ratings on their commitments to protect farmers, local communities and the environment, while British food giant Associated British Foods (ABF), owner of brands including Kingsmill, Ovaltine and Silverspoon, received the lowest rating.
The charity’s Behind the Brands report compiled a scorecard, rating the ‘big 10’ food companies in seven categories: the transparency of their supply chains and operations, how they ensure the rights of workers, how they protect women’s rights, the management of water and land use, their policies to reduce the impacts of climate change and how they ensure the rights of the farmers who grow their ingredients.
The company with the lowest score – just 13 out of 70 – was ABF. It scored just one mark out of 10 in its treatment of land, women and climate change, while the highest scores it managed to achieve was three out of 10, in relation to workers and transparency.
In joint second-lowest place were Kellogg’s and General Mills, which owns Old El Paso, Häagen-Dazs and Nature Valley, with both […]
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Thursday, February 28th, 2013
DAVE JOHNSON, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: I thought this was well understood; the data is certainly out there. But, the other day, I had a conversation with two men at the gym, and realized this was not the case. Then I saw a survey showing that 90 percent of Americans think the deficit is either the same or growing. This report puts it at 94 per cent. So here is an accurate data based assessment of the deficit.
We need to quit worrying about the deficit and start worrying about rebuilding our infrastructure. There are parts of the United States that are now second world. We have become like the living room of an elderly couple who last decorated 50 years ago. You may know such rooms.
We are living on the gift bequeathed to us by our parents, the veterans of World War II. It is their bridges, their railroad tracks, their trains, their water systems that make our lives possible. But the gift is of the physical world, and it has worn out.
Meanwhile the nations that are our peers, are moving out of carbon and nuclear energy. Their mobile nets, their internet are orders of magnitude better than ours. On my island there are spots that have no coverage. Rebuilding will create millions of jobs, just as it did in the post-war period. It will lead to a far more successful healthful outcome.
Click through to see charts.
There is no deficit problem. The deficit is down 50 percent as a share of gross domestic product just since President Bush’s fiscal year 2009 deficit and is falling at the fastest rate since the end of World War II. Yet the Washington debate is about how and where to cut us back into recession. Why?
Congress should just repeal the sequester – we don’t need it. We have 10 years to fix the long-term deficit situation. We should not be stampeded by deficit-scare propaganda and instead take the time to carefully consider the right approach. That way we won’t make the mistakes that Europe is making.
Deficit Falling
Once again, because it might be hard to register due to the drumbeat of deficit-scare propaganda, this is a fact: the deficit is falling at the fastest rate since the end of World War II. It is down 50 percent as a percent of GDP just since Bush’s huge $1.4 trillion fiscal 2009 deficit. And the deficit is projected to be stable for a decade.
All of that means that no, we do not have a ‘deficit emergency,
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Wednesday, February 27th, 2013
, - University of Chicago
Stephan: One of the reasons nothing adequate to the problem is being done about climate change, and the growing pollution of the earth, is that these issues are not priorities for people around the world. One should ask: Why is it a process that threatens the very nature of civilization worldwide is of so little interest to the people of the earth? Could it be the result of a cynical disinformation campaign, paid for by those corporate interests which profit from the maintenance of the status quo?
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS –A newly released international study reveals that the issue of climate change is not a priority for people in the United States and around the world.
The surveys showed that when asked to rank priority worries, people were five times more likely to point to the economy over the environment. Additionally, when asked about climate change, people identified the issue as more of a national problem than a personal concern.
Coordinated surveys, conducted by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) in 33 countries from 1993 through 2010, ‘are the first and only surveys that put long-term attitudes toward environmental issues in general and global climate change in particular in an international perspective,
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