Catalina Adorno & Li Adorno, Organizers for Movimiento Cosecha - truthout
Stephan:
The United States has the world’s largest gulag (see SR archive), over two million men and women are incarcerated in this country, and there is an overwhelming racial bias in this population; far more men and women of color than Whites. I think this is a national shame, and the worst of the worse are the private prisons, corporations that get paid to warehouse human beings, often under intolerable circumstances. When Biden came into office he promised, ““There should be no private prisons, period, none, period…. They should not exist. And we are working to close all of them.” Sadly, his words have not been actualized, quite the contrary, as this article describes.
President Biden walking on the grounds of the White House Credit: Anna Moneymaker / Getty
There should be no private prisons, period, none, period. That’s what they’re talking about — private detention centers. They should not exist. And we are working to close all of them.” That’s what President Joe Biden said during an April 2021 speech in Georgia, where he found himself confronted by immigrant rights activists.
Two years later, it’s clear that those were just empty words: The Biden administration is now throwing its support behind a CoreCivic lawsuit in New Jersey claiming that a 2021 state law prohibiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contracts with private prisons is unconstitutional. ICE and the Biden administration are conspiring with CoreCivic, one of the nation’s largest private jailers, to extend the contract of a converted warehouse immigrant detention jail with nearly 30 years of documented abuse.
Today, as a court decides the case, people from across New Jersey are gathering outside the courthouse in Trenton to stand up against CoreCivic, ICE and the Biden administration.
Here, for two reasons, is some lovely good news. First, cigarette smoking is disappearing from the American culture. Second, this is a leading example of how when consciousness is considered, particularly if it fosters wellbeing, non-violent change in a culture can be accomplished. Think about it. No one passed a law against smoking. The President did not go on television to urge people to quit smoking. And yet they have. My book, The 8 Laws of Change, describes how this works in detail. It is all based on consiousness and the Quotidian Choice.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
12% of U.S. adults smoke cigarettes, similar to 11% measured in 2022
Smoking rates were 20% or higher from 1944 through 2012
8% of U.S. adults smoke e-cigarettes
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Gallup’s latest update on cigarette smoking finds 12% of U.S. adults saying they smoked cigarettes in the past week, similar to the 11% measured a year ago but significantly lower than any other year in Gallup’s nearly 80-year trend.
The update is part of Gallup’s annual Consumption Habits survey, conducted July 3-27.
When Gallup first asked about cigarette smoking in 1944, 41% of U.S. adults said they smoked. A decade later, a historical high of 45% was reached. From then, smoking rates gradually descended, falling permanently below 30% in 1989 and 20% in 2015.
The decline in smoking has come as more Americans likely heed the warnings about the health dangers associated with cigarette smoking and as most public places prohibit it. The survey finds 76% of U.S. adults saying cigarettes are “very harmful” to people who use them, significantly more than for other tobacco-related products like pipes […]
Raj Chetty, Michael Stepner, Sarah Abraham, Shelby Lin, Benjamin Scuderi, Nicholas Turner, Augustin Bergeron, and David Cutler, - Stanford University
Stephan:
First, let me say that I have been thinking about the relationship between wealth and health and longevity because I have had a number of older readers write me to tell me that they were not able to get the healthcare they needed because they couldn’t afford it and none of the doctors in their area would take Medicaid patients. Clearly, the miserable healthcare system in the United States is a significant factor. But how big is this difference? I could not find a general audience article that I felt correctly addressed these issues, so I am presenting here the best academic research study I could find. It is based on more than a billion reports on individuals. In American society how much money you have determines how long you live. Can that possibly be true, am I exaggerating? This is the most definitive study that has ever been carried out and this is what they found. “The richest American men live 15 years longer than the poorest men, while the richest American women live 10 years longer than the poorest women.” I think this is atrocious, and should be a matter of national shame.
How can we reduce socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes? Although it is well known that there are significant differences in health and longevity between income groups, debate remains about the magnitudes and determinants of these differences. We use new data from 1.4 billion anonymous earnings and mortality records to construct more precise estimates of the relationship between income and life expectancy at the national level than was feasible in prior work. We then construct new local area (county and metro area) estimates of life expectancy by income group and identify factors that are associated with higher levels of life expectancy for low-income individuals. Our study yields four sets of results.
Result 1: Large Gaps at the National Level Higher income is associated with greater longevity throughout the income distribution (Figure 1). The richest American men live 15 years longer than the poorest men, while the richest American women live 10 years longer than the poorest women. The poorest men in the U.S. have life expectancies comparable to men in Sudan and Pakistan; the richest men in the U.S. live longer than the average man in any country. Importantly, these […]
And here, with this report, we see what happens when profit is placed above fostering wellbeing. Fracking, in my opinion, should be outlawed. This is a horrible story, and little children paid the price.
Researchers in Pennsylvania published a series of studies late Tuesday showing that children who live near fracking operations are roughly five to seven times more likely to develop lymphoma than kids whose homes are at least five miles away from drilling sites.
Released by the University of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the studies also found a “strong link” between fracked gas development and “severe exacerbations, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations for asthma in people living within 10 miles of one or more wells” producing gas.
While the studies weren’t designed to establish a causal connection between fracking and cancer or asthma, they add to the large and growing body of literature indicating that oil and gas operations pose a significant threat to public health.
The publicly funded research out Tuesday suggests there are “no associations” between proximity to fracking activities and childhood leukemia or brain and bone cancers.
But the results “indicated that children who lived within one mile of a well had approximately five to seven times the chance […]
Samantha Kuzma, Liz Saccoccia and Marlena Chertock , - World Resources Institute
Stephan:
I have been telling my readers for 20 years now, water is destiny, and now it is becoming clear how that is playing out. It is going to result in tens of millions of people becoming migrants within their own countries or immigrants to other countries. In the U.S. it will involve having to move away from the coasts because there is too much water, or out of the Southwest because there is not enough. The world is utterly unprepared for this.
New data from WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas show that 25 countries — housing one-quarter of the global population — face extremely high water stress each year, regularly using up almost their entire available water supply. And at least 50% of the world’s population — around 4 billion people — live under highly water-stressed conditions for at least one month of the year.
Living with this level of water stress jeopardizes people’s lives, jobs, food and energy security. Water is central to growing crops and raising livestock, producing electricity, maintaining human health, fostering equitable societies and meeting the world’s climate goals.
Without better water management, population growth, economic development and climate change are poised to worsen water stress.
Here, we dive deep into what’s causing growing water stress — and which countries and regions will be impacted the most.
What’s Causing Global Water Stress?
Across the world, demand for water is exceeding what’s available. Globally, demand has more than doubled since 1960.
Increased water demand is often the result of growing populations and industries like irrigated agriculture, livestock, energy […]
