Thursday, February 25th, 2016
Samantha Page, - Think Progress
Stephan: The Republican Party is dangerous to the health and well being of humans and the planet itself. Why do I say this? This report is an example of what I mean. Note that the states involved are all Red value states.
The party is not amenable to facts, and makes decisions based on emotion rationalized through either theology or ideology or both. The Trump campaign is the apotheosis of the trend.
More than a dozen states have advisories on eating fish from rivers, streams, and lakes, due to mercury contamination.
Credit: Charlie Neibergall/AP
If you live in one of these 20 states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, or Wyoming — your attorney general just asked Justice John Roberts to let power plants keep putting mercury the environment.
In a petition filed Tuesday, those states asked the Supreme Court to stay the Mercury Air Toxics Standard, which was issued by the EPA in 2014 and has been bouncing around the courts ever since.
The standard, commonly known as MATS, was the culmination of more than two decades of effort to limit the amount of mercury from coal-fired power plants. Methylmercury, the compound that comes from power plants, is a powerful neurotoxin that can affect coordination, impair speech and […]
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Thursday, February 25th, 2016
Mary Grace Eppes, Digital Content Director - WLBT-WDBD ( Jackson, Mississippi)
Stephan: There is a part of me that thinks it's very cool when one of my trend predictions plays out. It confirms my continued ability to do my job. But that's only a part. In too many cases there is a much larger part that feels sad. So much of what is happening is neither compassionate nor life-affirming. Wellness hardly figures into the calculation. Watching your country come unraveled and having some sense of where it leads is not pleasant.
In this case I am speaking of the deterioration of infrastructure, and the rise of lead in municipal water. Here is another horrible case. This one in the capitol of Mississippi is getting hardly any coverage in the national media. I think it will be but the first of a growing number of such stories
If you live in a city whose infrastructure was built in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, or you live in an older house I think the prudent step is to have your water tested privately. It's not hard to find a reliable lab, and the test is not expensive -- the range is $15-80. The recommendations in this report should also be taken seriously. Lead poisoning is not a casual matter. And it is going to be a growing problem.
JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI — The City of Jackson and the Mississippi State Health Department have issued a warning for residents, especially pregnant women and children, over lead found in water. (emphasis added)
Officials at the MSDH say that after consultation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency, is advising all residents who receive their drinking water from the City of Jackson Water System to take the following precautions:
- Before using tap water for drinking or cooking, run your tap on cold for one to two minutes; for more detailed information visit the CDC’s website;
- Households should never use hot water for drinking or cooking;
- Any child five years of age or younger and any pregnant woman should use filtered water or bottled water for drinking and cooking;
- Baby formula should be “ready-to-feed” or prepared using only filtered water or bottled water; and
- Parents with children six years or younger should contact their child’s pediatrician or primary care provider to ensure adequate lead screening and blood testing have been performed.
“Although the majority of home lead testing performed identified no lead, or lead below the action level of 15 ppb, we are issuing these recommendations as a special precaution for young children and pregnant women,” […]
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Wednesday, February 24th, 2016
Jim Hightower , - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: It seems to me that there are several notable thing about the media coverage of the election process. First, how overwhelmingly it centers on Trump whom I have believed for months will be the Republican nominee. He is the inevitable creature created by toxically unbalanced wealth inequity.
Second, the media is capable, or believes the public is capable, of processing only one or at most two narrative lines. I did not hear one word, or see one image, on the Sunday shows about the Kalamazoo massacre. Mass murder has become ordinary in America. International News? Are you serious?
Third, The overwhelming percentage of ads that are for pharmaceuticals. Billions of dollars are being spent to get you, me, and everyone else to buy and take pharmaceuticals. It is easy to see why we spend more for drugs, and more to buy any particular drug than any other developed nation in the world. (See the chart in the story) The bulk of the people inflict a wound upon themselves, in the form of outrageous overpricing, in order to make a small group very rich.
Jim Hightower outlines the process, and I agree with him.
2013 data from the International Federation of Health Plans
Big news, people! Especially for those of you upset by the skyrocketing prices of the essential prescription medicines you take — including thousands of patients who were hit last year with a 5,000 percent price increase for one lifesaving drug!
Determined to do something about those despised price hikes, drugmakers themselves have reached into their corporate toolbox for the two most effective means they have to fix their price problem. Of course, putting more corporate cash into research to produce new medicines would be one of those tools, and a renewed commitment to honest competition would be the other, right?
Right! But Big Pharma gave up years ago on doing right, turning to two other corporate tools that have reliably generated a gusher of profits for them: advertising and lobbying. So here they come, wielding bigger-than-ever ad-and-lobbying budgets to deal with that pesky matter of public anger at price gouging.
If you wonder why Congress keeps ignoring what the people want […]
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Wednesday, February 24th, 2016
Rick Noack, Foreign Affairs Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: We are indenturing our young through student debt, and we are paying the price. In Europe they are anxious to get as many young people into college as possible, because the need is for sophisticated workers, and they make it very cheap or free -- including for Americans. I did the first story on this a few years ago, when the trend started (See AR archives), and this is the latest.
For the adventurous, and if I were 18 again, I would take this option very seriously, and probably do it.
The Humboldt University of Berlin is illuminated during the 10th annual Festival of Lights in Berlin, Germany, 10 October 2014. The event will take place from 10 to 19 October across the city.
Credit: EPA/PAUL ZINKEN
Tuition to U.S. universities has surged 500 percent since 1985 and continues to rise. But German universities offer free education to everyone — including Americans.
The number of American students enrolled in German universities has risen steadily in recent years. Currently, an estimated 10,000 U.S. citizens are studying at German colleges — nearly all of them for free, according to NBC News.
German universities in most federal states have traditionally been free for German citizens as well as many foreigners, including many American, Chinese and British students. One reason German taxpayers foot the bill is to help attract more skilled […]
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Wednesday, February 24th, 2016
Lauren Camera, - U.S. News & World Report
Stephan: Voucher model education was always just a way to privatize and profit from what was previously a public good; all under the guise of improving education. Occasionally that turns out to be true but overall it has not worked out that way. Here is the story Louisiana, home of the 5th largest voucher model system in the country.
Students attend class at a charter school in New Orleans in 2015. More than half of Louisiana’s public schools are low-performing.
Louisiana’s private school voucher program – the fifth-largest in the country – is having a negative impact on students who use the vouchers to enroll in private school, a mounting body of evidence shows.
“Most striking, we find strong and consistent evidence that students using a [voucher] performed significantly worse in math after using their scholarship to attend private schools,” said Patrick Wolf, the lead author for a series of studies published Monday by the university’s School Choice Demonstration Project and Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance for New Orleans.
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![NEW ORLEANS, LA - MAY 27: Students take the Terra Nova standardized test in the Ruby Bridges room of the Akili Academy in New Orleans on May 27, 2014. [...]
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