Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate Economist and Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman has written what, in my opinion, is a particularly accurate description of the corruption that is eating away American democracy and wellbeing like a cancer.
Illustration by Woody Harrington
America is, in principle, a democracy, in which every vote counts the same. It’s also a nation in which income inequality has soared, a development that hurts many more people than it helps. So if you didn’t know better, you might have expected to see a political backlash: demands for higher taxes on the rich, more spending on the working class and higher wages.
In reality, however, policy has mostly gone the other way. Tax rates on corporations and high incomes have gone down, unions have been crushed, the minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was in the 1960s. How is that possible?
The answer is that huge disparities in income and wealth translate into comparable disparities in political influence. To see how this works, let’s look at a fairly recent example: the budgetary Grand Bargain that almost happened in 2011.
At the time, Washington was firmly in the grip of deficit fever. Even though the federal government was able to borrow at
Stephan: The country seems to have accepted as normal Trump's endless racist and fascist dog whistles. But we have now gone past that. Recently, for Trump and his orces that wasn't enough. Now we are at the stage of blaring trumpets. But, even at that level, this is gobsmacking.
The Trumplicans are now running an openly fascist campaign from its symbology to the desire of Trump for mass gatherings. Were it not for the Covid-19 pandemic I am sure we would be seeing the modern-day equivalent of Hitlers' rallies, with red hats in place of raised right arms.
Trump campaign symbol (left). Hitler’s comparable symbol
Donald Trump‘s re-election campaign has a new “America First” logo — and it looks a lot like the Nazi eagle used by Adolf Hitler and modern white supremacist groups, according to many critics on Twitter.
The logo, which can be found on T-shirts sold through the Trump campaign website, shows a stylized eagle grasping a circle containing the American flag. The eagle has its wings spread and its head turned to show its profile.
Photos of the new apparel quickly went viral on Twitter Wednesday, with critics sharing side-by-side images of the Trump logo and the Nazi eagle, which the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes as a “hate symbol.”
The Nazi symbol shows an eagle clutching a circle containing a swastika. The Trump and Nazi symbols depict the eagle in the same perched spread-wing pose, although the Nazi bird is typically drawn with more sharp-edged lines.
“Trump’s latest logo is yet another rip off of the Nazi logo,” tweeted Qasim […]
Stephan: I believe history is going to treat the Mueller Report as a historic failure. But why? Here is an answer.
Robert Mueller submitted his final report as the special counsel more than a year ago. But even now—in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and the Administration’s tragically bungled response to it, and the mass demonstrations following the killings by police of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others—President Trump remains obsessed with what he recently called, on Twitter, the “Greatest Political Crime in the History of the U.S., the Russian Witch-Hunt.” In the past several months, the President has mobilized his Administration and its supporters to prove that, from its inception, the F.B.I.’s investigation into possible ties between his 2016 campaign and the Russian government was flawed, or worse. Attorney General William Barr has directed John Durham, the United States Attorney in Connecticut, to conduct a criminal investigation into whether F.B.I. officials, or anyone else, engaged in misconduct at the outset. Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has also convened hearings on the investigation’s origins.
The President has tweeted about Mueller more than three hundred times, and has […]
Stephan: Here is the latest on yet another trend that should alarm us but which gets almost no attention outside of a small part of the agricultural community. Industrial chemical mono-culture agriculture must be replaced with an organic system that recognizes the interconnected and interdependent nature of the matrix of consciousness. And it is important to recognize that this is happening in a world radically changing because of climate change.
In Iowa they call it “black gold” – a fertile blanket covering the landlocked Midwestern state. Thousands of years of prairie grass growth, death and decomposition have left a thick layer of dark, organic matter on the vast plains.
When European-American settlers first began ploughing in Iowa, they found the weather and local geology had combined this organic mulch with sand and silt to form a nutrient-rich type of soil called loam. It gave Iowa one of the most fertile soils on the planet and enabled it to become one of the largest producers of corn, soybeans and oats in the United States over the last 160 or so years.
But beneath the feet of Iowa’s farmers, a crisis is unfolding. The average topsoil depth in Iowa decreased from around 14-18 inches (35-45cm) at the start of the 20th Century to 6-8 inches (15-20cm) by its end. Relentless tilling and disturbance from farm vehicles have allowed wind and water to whisk away this priceless resource.
The same picture is seen on farms worldwide. Soils […]
Rich Haridy, - New Atlas/ University of Massachusetts Amherst
Stephan: Primary research paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smll.202001858
I have been warning readers since Trump came into power and disemboweled the federal agencies whose job was to protect Americans from the greed and lack of ethics of American corporations that it is now incumbent on each of us, each family, to check the food we buy and the water we drink and bathe in because we can no longer take it for granted that they are safe.
Well here is the latest report confirming that.
Titanium dioxide, aka E171, was found to be most damaging to the gut microbiome in nanoparticle form Credit: Subonych/Depositphotos
New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst is adding weight to a growing body of evidence suggesting the food additive titanium dioxide, also known as E171, can disrupt the gut microbiome, leading to colonic inflammation.
Titanium dioxide has long been used as a food coloring additive, but at the beginning of 2020 France became the first country in the world to ban the compound being used for this purpose. Over recent years many global companies have moved to stop using titanium dioxide as a food additive amidst growing concerns over its safety, however, it still can be found in hundreds of foods.
Much of the current debate over the safety of titanium dioxide as a food additive revolves around particle size. The majority of titanium dioxide particles used in food additives are relatively large – over 100 nanometers (nm) in diameter – so most toxicology research has focused on the health […]
The country seems to have accepted as normal Trump's endless racist and fascist dog whistles. But we have now gone past that. Recently, for Trump and his orces that wasn't enough. Now we are at the stage of blaring trumpets. But, even at that level, this is gobsmacking.
The Trumplicans are now running an openly fascist campaign from its symbology to the desire of Trump for mass gatherings. Were it not for the Covid-19 pandemic I am sure we would be seeing the modern-day equivalent of Hitlers' rallies, with red hats in place of raised right arms. 
