Iceland Sentences 26 Corrupt Bankers to 74 Years in Prison

Stephan:  Not all the societies in the world have reached the level of corruption and bias favoring the interests of the rich as has happened in the U.S.. One example of what I mean can be seen in what Iceland has done about bankers. I take this story as very good news; it's a shame it hasn't happened here, and probably couldn't.
Iceland just sentenced their 26th banker to prison for his part in the 2008 economic collapse. The charges ranged from breach of fiduciary duties to market manipulation to embezzlement. Credit: Nation of Change

Iceland just sentenced their 26th banker to prison for his part in the 2008 economic collapse. The charges ranged from breach of fiduciary duties to market manipulation to embezzlement.
Credit: Nation of Change

Iceland just sentenced their 26th banker to prison for his part in the 2008 economic collapse. The charges ranged from breach of fiduciary duties to market manipulation to embezzlement.

When most people think of Iceland, they envision fire and ice. Major volcanoes and vast ice fields are abundant due to its position on the northern part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge(A hot July day in Reykjavik is around 55 degrees.) However, Iceland is also noted for being one of the Nordic Socialist countries, complete with universal health care, free education and a lot other Tea Potty nightmares. Therefore, as you might imagine, they tend to view and react to economic situations slightly differently than the U.S.

When […]

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Drug shortages in American emergency rooms have increased more than 400 percent

Stephan:  There are so many things wrong with the American Illness Profit System it's hard to focus on any single aspect. But focus we must. Here is one aspect of the system's failure that could affect you no matter how much money you have. Suppose you are taken to the emergency room and the drug they need to save your life, well, it just isn't available. And why is this happening? The same reason that accounts for most of the rest of our problems. The system really only has one priority -- profit. Any wellness produced is just a lucky by-product created by the dedicated service of the caregivers.

ct-emergency-room-drug-shortages-20160124-001Emergency rooms are health care’s front line – in the United States, nearly 45 out of 100 people visit an ER in any given year. But there’s an issue brewing behind the scenes in emergency medical facilities, one that can’t be fixed by a simple stitch or bandage. A new study published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine shows that drug shortages in ERs across the United States increased by more than 400 percent between 2001 and 2014.

The study analyzed data from the University of Utah Drug Information Service, which receives drug shortage reports submitted through a public site administered by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. Two practicing emergency room physicians assessed whether the reported shortages had to do with drugs used in ERs, then looked at whether they were associated with lifesaving or acute conditions.

Of the nearly 1,800 drug shortages reported between 2001 and 2014, nearly 34 percent were used in emergency rooms. More than half (52.6 percent) of all reported shortages were of lifesaving drugs, and 10 percent of shortages affected drugs with no substitute. The […]

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All Hollowed Out — The lonely poverty of America’s white working class

Stephan:  Everywhere I go as I have been travelling, people tell me stories of how the financial security they once felt as dissipated, and they, as well as people close to them, just hang on month to month. When I ask, "how much do you have in savings they tell me, "I don;t have any savings," or they say, "I don't know I could probably get $1,000 together if I pushed." Here is a very good report on what I have experienced. I want you to note particularly the linkage of the growth of the unions and the concurrent growth of the middle class in the U.S.. The gutting of the unions has been the passionate work of the Republican Party and no one seems interested in holding them accountable.
A man sits on his car outside the Riverview Baptist Church in Wellsburg, West Virginia April 6, 2011. The city is a part of America's Midwestern "Rust Belt", the heartland of the country and home to big unionized manufacturers like the auto and steel industries. Wellsburg, with a population of about 2,500, is located on the Ohio River in the northern panhandle of West Virginia. Credit: Reuters/Eric Thayer

A man sits on his car outside the Riverview Baptist Church in Wellsburg, West Virginia April 6, 2011. The city is a part of America’s Midwestern “Rust Belt”, the heartland of the country and home to big unionized manufacturers like the auto and steel industries. Wellsburg, with a population of about 2,500, is located on the Ohio River in the northern panhandle of West Virginia.
Credit: Reuters/Eric Thayer

For the last several months, social scientists have been debating the striking findings of a study by the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton.* Between 1998 and 2013, Case and Deaton argue, white […]

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The Strange History of Corn Flakes

Stephan:  This is one of the weirdest stories I have ever done. It's not really a trend, but I couldn't pass it up. Who knew corn flakes were invented to stop people from masturbating. Only a religious fundamentalist could have made such a connection.

corn flakesCorn flakes cereal is a staple on breakfast tables all over the world. Today it is marketed as a healthy part of a balanced breakfast. But corn flakes were originally invented by a fanatically religious doctor as a way to stop people from masturbating.

In 1894, two brothers, Dr John Harvey Kellogg and Will Keith “WK” Kellogg, were running a sanitarium and health spa in the town of Battle Creek, Michigan. John was the Superintendent, and WK was the bookkeeper. Among the treatments offered at the sanitarium/hospital for various ailments were hot and cold water baths, hydro-therapy with water enemas, electric-current therapy, light therapy using both sunlight and artificial lamps, and a regimen of exercise and massage. Among the more famous of the hospital’s clients through the 1910’s and 1920’s were President Warren G Harding, actor Johnny Weissmuller, Henry Ford, Amelia Earhart, Sojourner Truth, and Mary Todd Lincoln.Both of the Kellogg brothers were Seventh-Day Adventists, a fundamentalist church emphasizing strict Biblical literalism and clean living, and their religious beliefs had a huge influence on many of […]

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White people have least confidence in the American Dream

Stephan:  I have been doing a lot of travelling recently, talking about my new book, The 8 Laws of Change. And the one constant I am hearing from all over the country, but particularly in the Central-West and East is the sense of their world being lost before their eyes that I get from White people. This is, of course, all part of the Vanishing White Majority Trend and it is, I think, what is fueling the Trump campaign. Unfortunately, corporate media cannot address this issue, except obliquely so we are having almost no public conversation on one of the biggest social trends in our history. The result: Anger, fear, hate, frustration, and depression.
Leave it to Beaver on set cast photo

Leave it to Beaver on set cast photo

Americans say the American Dream is suffering — and that our laziness and low morals may be partially to blame.

Searches for “American Dream” have fallen 24% since Google began tracking this data in 2004 — and when you type “American Dream” into Google, three of the four top autofills are “dead,” “a lie” and “leaving America,” according to an analysis of Google Trends data released Friday in a report by brokerage firm Convergex.

Read: Trump’s downtrodden supporters don’t deserve our sympathy

Furthermore, three in four Americans now say that the “American Dream” — broadly, the notion that through hard work and determination every American can have a successful life — is suffering, according to the 7th Annual American Values Survey unveiled last year at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

What’s more, 69% say the obstacles to realizing the dream are “more severe today than ever” — and note that a decline in work ethic is the primary hurdle to Dream achievement. The poll […]

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