MEGAN MCARDLE, - The Daily Beast
Stephan: This is the reality trickle down austerity economics, and Rightist social policies have bequeathed to the middle class. You may be part of this reality. This situation is going to get much worse.
We scrimp. We save. We plan. And we dream that when we retire-at 50 or 70 or 90-we’ll ride off into the sunset on a chariot made of our sequestered gold.
But you can stop the dream right there.
It turns out that for all our good intentions, American retirement is in free fall. The problem isn’t just the well-documented coming crisis in Social Security. Rather, by any measure, all the promises we made ourselves about the golden years of leisure are turning out to be empty.
By one broad measure of financial health, households in or near retirement appear to have a pretty comfortable nest egg: the present value of their Social Security benefits is about $160,000. There’s also an average $136,000 worth of defined pension benefits, $94,000 in retirement accounts, $104,000 in housing equity, and more than $300,000 in other assets. Unfortunately, those are just averages: if you put me and Warren Buffett in a room together, our average wealth is in the billions, but I still can’t buy a yacht.
When we look at the median numbers-the folks smack dab in the middle of the wealth distribution-the situation looks pretty grim. Social Security is still there. But 50 percent of Americans […]
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JEFFREY YOUNG and CHRIS KIRKHAM, - The Huffington Post
Stephan: Here is the evil truth of our illness profit system. I get so angry when I see these stories. The United States is supposed to be the most advanced country in the world. It is a lie we tell ourselves over and over. The truth is that in a number of ways, including our lack of a decent healthcare system, we are barely in the category of being an advanced nation. As you read this you will see that it makes it absolutely clear that the only thing our system is about is profit.
Click through to see a graphic that makes the points raised in the report very clear.
When a patient arrives at Bayonne Hospital Center in New Jersey requiring treatment for the respiratory ailment known as COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, she faces an official price tag of $99,690.
Less than 30 miles away in the Bronx, N.Y., the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center charges only $7,044 for the same treatment, according to a massive federal database of national health care costs made public on Wednesday.
Americans have long become accustomed to bewilderment and anxiety when confronting health care bills. The new database underscores why, revealing the perplexing assortment of prices for medical care, with the details of bills seemingly untethered to any graspable principle.
Even within the same metropolitan area, hospitals charge prices that differ by staggering degrees for the same procedures. People without health insurance pay vastly higher costs for care when less expensive options are often available nearby. Virtually everyone who seeks health care winds up paying inflated prices in one form or another as these stark disparities in price sow inefficiencies throughout the market.
While this basic picture has emerged as the consensus reality among health care experts, their evidence has been primarily anecdotal. Hospitals have protected their price lists — documents known as charge […]
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Stephan: Here is the latest on The Great GMO Experiment trend in which we are the lab rats in the study. The thing about this that is really alarming is that, like the asbestos crisis, the actual results of this study may not be known for decades, and it may take decades more to establish the link irrefutably. During that time the lives of millions of Americans may be damaged.
Increasingly, for this and other reasons, it becomes clear that if you eat food cooked by a corporation you are putting your health at risk.
A new review of hundreds of scientific studies surrounding glyphosate-the major component of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide-sheds light on its effects within the human body. The paper describes how all of these effects could work together, and with other variables, trigger health problems in humans, including debilitating diseases like gastrointestinal disorders, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
Glyphosate impairs the cytochrome P450 (CYP) gene pathway, which creates enzymes that help to form and also break down molecules in cells. There are myriad important CYP enzymes, including aromatase (the enzyme that converts androgen into estrogen) and 21-Hydroxylase, which creates cortisol (stress hormone) and aldosterone (regulates blood pressure). One function of these CYP enzymes is also to detoxify xenobiotics, which are foreign chemicals like drugs, carcinogens or pesticides. Glyphosate inhibits these CYP enzymes, which has rippling effects throughout our body.
Because the CYP pathway is essential for normal functioning of various systems in our bodies, any small change in its expression can lead to disruptions. For example, humans exposed to glyphosate have decreased levels of the amino acid tryptophan, which is necessary for active signaling of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Suppressed serotonin levels have been associated with weight gain, depression and Alzheimer’s disease.
This paper […]
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DANIELLE DOUGLAS, - The Washington Post
Stephan: This is some good news. Thanks to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman we may finally see at least some modest accountability of those banks that caused the mortgage meltdown financial crash.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Monday threatened to sue Bank of America and Wells Fargo for allegedly failing to help struggling homeowners under the $25 billion national mortgage settlement.
Schneiderman was one of 49 attorneys general to negotiate the sweeping deal with the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers over foreclosure abuses last year. If the banks do not comply, Schneiderman said, he will file suit and ask for a court injunction.
New York’s top prosecutor said he received 339 complaints that the behemoth banks were dragging their feet in processing requests from homeowners to have their loan payments lowered - a direct violation of the settlement. The banks allegedly failed to respond to requests from borrowers to have their mortgage balance or interest rates reduced within the 30 days allotted in the settlement, and some borrowers weren’t allowed to submit missing documentation.
‘Wells Fargo and Bank of America have flagrantly violated those obligations, putting hundreds of homeowners across New York at greater risk of foreclosure,
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ANDREW PORTERFIELD, - Science
Stephan: Little by little we are slowly learning that the network of life is far subtler and more complex than we have ever understood. Personally I think this idea of nanoscale sound waves is unlikely to be true. Conceptually it is preposterous. At nano scale a grain of sand would be like a mountain. It is very hard to see how the level of possible sound propagation a plant could achieve could get through the ground. I think some kind of nonlocal linkage is more likely but we will see.
The word in the garden is that basil is good to have around. Plants are known to communicate with each other via shade, aromatic chemicals, and physical touch, promoting processes such as growth and defense against disease, as well as attraction of bees and other pollinators.
Now, online today inBMC Ecology, researchers report a new type of mechanism that some plants use to communicate. The team planted common chili pepper seeds (Capsicum annuum, pictured) near a basil plant, with barriers that prevented the basil from deploying its usual growth-promoting tricks. Despite the separation, chili seeds germinated faster when basil was a neighbor, suggesting that a message was getting through.
Because light, touch, and chemical ‘smell’ were ruled out, the team proposes that the finding points to a new type of communication between plants, possibly involving nanoscale sound waves, traveling through the dirt to bring encouraging ‘words’ to the growing seeds. Understanding this novel communication could help growers boost crop yields and increase global food supplies. How neighborly.
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