Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013
KATIE MCDONOUGH, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: Here is the latest on the very profitable but largely dysfunctional illness profit system that passes for healthcare in the U.S. What this story doesn't tell you, but should, is that not only is giving birth in the U.S. more expensive than anywhere else in the world, it is also dangerous. A young mother would do better to have her delivery in Bulgaria than America. Our maternal mortality rates are a disgrace.
Giving birth in the United States is far more expensive than in other countries, and the additional cost does not appear to come with additional benefits - Americans do not have more access to care or better access to care than citizens in other developed nations, according to an analysis [3] from the New York Times.
‘It’s not primarily that we get a different bundle of services when we have a baby,
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Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013
BRENDAN O'BRIEN and GEOFFREY DAVIDIAN, - Reuters
Stephan: This story just never seems to end. I have held off publishing reports on it for several months, because of the endless repetition of malfeasance, but this one could not be avoided. In a just society Cardinal Dolan would be in prison. If you had behaved as he did, you would be.
MILWAUKEE — Roman Catholic Church officials in Milwaukee vigorously shielded pedophile priests and protected church funds from lawsuits during a decades-long sex abuse scandal, according to hundreds of documents released on Monday.
The documents include letters and deposition testimony from Cardinal and Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan who, during his time as archbishop of Milwaukee from 2002 to 2009, appealed to Vatican on numerous occasions to help address the ongoing fallout from the scandal.
The 6,000 pages of documents related to eight decades of abuse cases showed in great detail the Milwaukee archdiocese regularly reassigned priests who were accused of sexual molestation to new parishes and Dolan himself asking the Vatican permission to transfer $57 million to a trust fund to protect it against court action.
In 2011, the Milwaukee archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing the financial drain of settling sexual-abuse claims and acknowledging missteps by the church in dealing with pedophile priests.
The judge overseeing the archdiocese’s bankruptcy ordered the documents to be released.
The Roman Catholic Church has been hit with a series of abuse accusations and scandals during the past two decades, in the United States and elsewhere. The scandals have cost the U.S. church about $3 […]
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SANDRA LEANDER, - Arizona State University
Stephan: Further evidence that we are destroying the world we live in, in ways great and small. Since I expect nothing will be done of any substance until it is too late I counsel once you again to begin researching your options.
TEMPE, Ariz. – Arizona State University researchers have discovered for the first time that temperature determines where key soil microbes can thrive – microbes that are critical to forming topsoil crusts in arid lands. And of concern, the scientists predict that in as little as 50 years, global warming may push some of these microbes out of their present stronghold in colder U.S. deserts, with unknown consequences to soil fertility and erosion.
The findings are featured as the cover story of the June 28 edition of the journal Science.
An international research team led by Ferran Garcia-Pichel, microbiologist and professor with ASU’s School of Life Sciences, conducted continental-scale surveys of the microbial communities that live in soil crusts. The scientists collected crust samples from Oregon to New Mexico, and Utah to California and studied them by sequencing their microbial DNA.
While there are thousands of microbe species in just one pinch of crust, two cyanobacteria -bacteria capable of photosynthesis – were found to be the most common. Without cyanobacteria, the other microbes in the crust could not exist, as every other species depends on them for food and energy.
‘We wanted to know which microbes are where in the crust and whether they displayed […]
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LES LEOPOLD, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: We can't stop lying to ourselves, and the media is so compromised as to be useless. Increasingly we live an a world of illusions and self-deceptions.
Click through to see the very helpful charts that accompany this report.
America is the richest country on Earth. We have the most millionaires, the most billionaires and our wealthiest citizens have garnered more of the planet’s riches than any other group in the world. We even have hedge fund managers who make in one hour as much as the average family makes in 21 years!
This opulence is supposed to trickle down to the rest of us, improving the lives of everyday Americans. At least that’s what free-market cheerleaders repeatedly promise us.
Unfortunately, it’s a lie, one of the biggest ever perpetrated on the American people.
Our middle class is falling further and further behind in comparison to the rest of the world. We keep hearing that America is number one. Well, when it comes to middle-class wealth, we’re number 27.
The most telling comparative measurement is median wealth (per adult). It describes the amount of wealth accumulated by the person precisely in the middle of the wealth distribution-50 percent of the adult population has more wealth, while 50 percent has less. You can’t get more middle than that.
Wealth is measured by the total sum of all our assets (homes, bank accounts, stocks, bonds etc.) minus our liabilities (outstanding loans and […]
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SHARON EPPERSON, Senior Commodities Correspondent & Personal Finance Correspondent - CNBC
Stephan: I confess I did not think this would happen. I thought, surely our Congressional morons would realize that if the loan rates for students went up the country would be damaged. I was wrong. It becomes ever more clear that the 535 Congressional incompetents simply lack the skills to govern.
Congress failed in a last-ditch effort to reach a deal on student loans. As a result, interest rates on some federal student loans doubled to nearly 7 percent on Monday.
Though millions of college students taking out new student loans this fall will see interest rates that are twice what they were this spring, they won’t really get hammered by the increase until they graduate.
Here are some key points to consider about the student loan rate increase as borrowers contemplate how to cope:
What federal students loans are impacted by the doubling of interest rates?
Not all federal student loans are impacted. Only rates on new, subsidized federal Stafford loans doubled from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1. Rates on existing subsidized Stafford loans will remain at 3.4 percent. Rates on new and existing unsubsidized Stafford loans will remain at 6.8 percent. Rates on federal PLUS loans will stay the same as well, at 7.9 percent.
Radford University misspelled ‘Virginia’ on its 2013 diplomas, reports CNBC’s Brian Sullivan; and Sharon Epperson reports interest rates on federal student loans will jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent if Congress does not act.
The doubling of the interest rate may sound dramatic, but it does […]
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