Wednesday, February 6th, 2013
PAUL CAMPOS, Professor of Law - University of Colorado - Boulder - Salon
Stephan: It is in the interest of a nation that kids capable of doing so should be educated as far as they can go, without financial considerations. The GI Bill literally created America's post-war prosperity, and made us the envy of the world. That whole trend has now been perverted and, as this report shows, students are now just another group to milk for the benefit of the few. The damage this does will haunt us for generations.
The American system of higher education is increasingly becoming a fiscal disaster for ever-larger numbers of students who move through it. That disaster is being caused by a combination of terrible incentives, institutional greed – and the pervasive myth that more education is the cure for economic inequality.
The extent of this myth is highlighted by a new report from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which indicates that nearly half of all employed college graduates have jobs that require less than a four-year college education. Despite such sobering statistics, the higher-education complex remains remarkably successful at ensuring that American taxpayers fund the acquisition of educational credentials that, in many cases, leave the people who obtain them worse off than they were before they enrolled.
Far from being ‘priceless,
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Wednesday, February 6th, 2013
MICHAEL HUDSON, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: Here is an excellent exegetic economics essay on how we got into the mess we are in, and how we might get out.
Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 & 2003), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971).
When World War I broke out in August 1914, economists on both sides forecast that hostilities could not last more than about six months. Wars had grown so expensive that governments quickly would run out of money. It seemed that if Germany could not defeat France by springtime, the Allied and Central Powers would run out of savings and reach what today is called a fiscal cliff and be forced to negotiate a peace agreement.
But the Great War dragged on for four destructive years. European governments did what the United States had done after the Civil War broke out in 1861 when the Treasury printed greenbacks. They paid for more fighting simply by printing their own money. Their economies did not buckle and there was no major inflation. That would happen only after the war ended, as a result of Germany trying to pay reparations in foreign currency. This is what caused its exchange rate to plunge, raising import prices and hence domestic prices. The culprit was not government spending on the war itself (much less on social programs).
But history is written by the victors, and the past generation has seen the banks and financial sector emerge victorious. Holding the […]
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Wednesday, February 6th, 2013
, - Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Australia)
Stephan: The sperm count of men has been following for years. Interesting phenomenon, in a culture that does not have a sustainable birthrate.
Men who watch television for 20 hours per week have almost half the sperm count of those who watch very little television or none at all, a new study has found.
US researchers recruited 189 young men aged between 18 to 22, questioned them about their exercise, diet and TV habits and asked them to provide a sperm sample.
Men in the top quarter of TV-watchers - those who watched for 20 hours or more - had a 44-per cent lower sperm count than those who watched least, meaning they said they watched ‘none or almost none.’
Another big factor was exercise, according to the study, published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
Men who exercised for 15 or more hours weekly at a ‘moderate to vigorous’ rate had a 73-per cent higher sperm count than those who exercised less than five hours per week.
None of the sperm levels was so low that the man would have been unable to father a child.
Semen quality appears to have declined over several decades, according to studies conducted in several countries.
It is unclear why this has happened but scientists suspect that sedentary lifestyles may warm the scrotum and affect semen concentrations. Physical inactivity has also […]
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Wednesday, February 6th, 2013
CHRISTOPHER PETRELLA, - Truthout.org
Stephan: Yet more on the growing New American Slavery trend. This is a really unhealthy vector for a democracy, and it is markedly racist.
‘All servants imported and brought into the country … who were not Christians in their native country … shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion … shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resist his master … correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction … the master shall be free of all punishment … as if such accident never happened.’
-Virginia Slave Code of 1705, Virginia General Assembly
Although many criminal justice activists are quick to denounce the most egregious race-based expressions of prison privatization, ranging from involuntary prison labor to racially disparate sentencing policies, few, if any, have attended to the deeply racialized, yet somewhat arcane, relationship developing between the private prison industry and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Curiously, one of the best ways to understand exactly how the private prison industry views itself and its fundamental mission is to analyze changes in the IRS corporate filing status of private prison companies.
In July 2012, the GEO Group – the nation’s second-largest private prison operator behind Corrections Corporation of America – sent a letter to the IRS requesting a conversion from a typical ‘class-c’ […]
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Tuesday, February 5th, 2013
Stephan: It is a measure of the power and control Big Oil commands over the Congress that this is accepted as just business as usual. We citizens, like the frog in the sauce pan, just sit there and croak.
While you were paying record prices at the pump in 2012, the cash was flowing to oil companies such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron, according to recently released earning reports. Exxon, which is now the world’s most valuable company, made $45 billion while Chevron’s profit was $26.2 billion.
In total, Big Oil-which benefits from continued subsidies paid by you, the taxpayer-earned more than $100 billion during the year.
Here are some highlights of Exxon’s and Chevron’s reports from Think Progress:
Exxon Mobil:
Exxon received $600 million annual tax breaks. In 2011, Exxon paid just 13 percent in taxes. The company paid no taxes to the U.S. federal government in 2009, despite 45.2 billion record profits. It paid $15 billion in taxes, but none in federal income tax.
Exxon’s oil production was down 6 percent from 2011.
In fourth quarter, Exxon bought back $5.3 billion of its stock, which enriches the largest shareholders and executives of the company.
Chevron:
In October, Chevron made the single-largest corporate donation in history. Chevron dropped $2.5 million with the Congressional Leadership […]
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