Do you find it interesting that, as this article describes, all kinds of businesses, particularly restaurants and farmers are desperate for migrant labor, while politicians from both parties whine and shout about immigration? Do you think maybe we aren’t handling immigration into this correctly?
Migrant kitchen worker. Credit: SBS
Mark Berzins has a devil of a time finding enough kitchen staff for his 17 bars and restaurants in the Denver area.
The metropolis has an unemployment rate slightly below the national average and a highly educated populace that shies away from manual labor. While some employers might be able to lure foreign workers through the H1-B visa program, that isn’t an option for cooks and dishwashers.
So instead, Berzins is tapping into a city program to hire asylum seekers — primarily from South and Central America — who have obtained federal work permits. So far, he’s given jobs to about a dozen people at kitchens where the managers speak Spanish.
“It’s really gotten so bad that almost all of these kitchens around Denver are chronically understaffed,” he said. “They try to make college a priority for graduates of Denver public schools. When that happens, those are not your cooks of the future.”
Denver’s program and similar efforts in places ranging from New York to North Dakota […]
We are the only developed nation in the world that does not have universal birthright single payer healthcare; what we have is an illness profit system. It is the worst healthcare in the developed world. And, by orders of magnitude, the most expensive. It is also getting worse ever year. It has nothing to do with the wellbeing of the American people. It is all about profit, and particularly in rural areas it is essentially vanishing, particularly in states controlled by the MAGAts that used to be the Republican Party. OB/GYNs are leaving those states, pediatricians are growing fewer and fewer, and we are thousands of physicians shy of what the country needs. Some areas are now medical deserts, and with no hospital at all.
A hospital that is closing. Credit: MedPage Today
More rural hospitals are in danger of closing, in large part because of insufficient reimbursement from private health plans, a report found.
“The primary reason hundreds of rural hospitals are at risk of closing is that private insurance plans are paying them less than what it costs to deliver services to patients,” the report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR) noted. “Although the at-risk hospitals are losing money on uninsured patients and Medicaid patients, losses on private insurance patients are the biggest cause of overall losses.”
The report documents 703 rural hospitals nationwide at risk of closing, compromising almost a third of rural hospitals. This is on top of the 105 hospitals that have closed since 2015. In addition, more than two dozen hospitals shut down their inpatient services in order to become Rural Emergency Hospitals (REHs), which offer emergency services only, the report explained.
People may think that changing from being a full-service hospital to becoming an REH means eliminating only inpatient beds, but that’s not true, […]
Do you know a child or teenager, or have a child or teenager in your family? If you do read this, and get them to change their diet as described. IT will change their entire life in a good way.
The Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes eating more fruits, vegetables, legumes, and healthy fats, has already been associated with health benefits for adults. Now, a systematic review suggests it may have similar effects on children and teens. Researchers analyzed data from 9 randomized clinical trials involving 577 children aged 3 years to 18 years that measured the effects of Mediterranean diet–based interventions on cardiometabolic markers.
Researchers looked at such biomarkers as blood pressure, total cholesterol, and triglyceride levels. They then compared changes in biomarker levels between the intervention and control groups. The children in the intervention group lowered their systolic blood pressure by an average of nearly 5 mm Hg and their triglyceride concentration by an average of about 16 mg/dL. They also lowered their total cholesterol and raised their high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels.
Although the researchers noted in JAMA Network Open that the biomarker changes were modest, they added that even these reductions may decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease in adulthood.
Amy Gibbons, Dominic Penna, and Cameron Henderson , Reporters - Microsoft Start / The Telegraph (U.K.)
Stephan:
Finally, someone in the position to do something is trying to take on the tidal wave of misinformation that has flooded the internet to the benefit of the oligarchs who own social media, particularly Elon Musk. The democracies of the world, particularly the United States are in crisis, but almost no one talks about it. Real journalism is dying. If you saw the Trump media session the other day you saw what it has become. The only media person on television who saw it and called it out was Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. It is getting harder and harder to find real facts, even in the scientific press.
Tech companies will be forced to ban fake news from their platforms under plans being considered by the Government in the wake of the riots.
The Telegraph understands that ministers are looking at introducing a duty on social media companies to restrict “legal but harmful” content.
It could mean that firms are required to remove or suppress posts spreading fake news about asylum seekers or other topics such as self-harm, even if they do not meet the threshold for illegality.
However, critics have said the proposals expose “the sinister and authoritarian side” of Sir Keir’s Labour Party, driving “a coach and horses” through the principle of free speech.
The plans come after a row between Elon Musk who owns X, formerly known as Twitter, and the Prime Minister over his handling of the riots.
The potential crackdown on tech companies would likely form part of a review of the Online Safety Act, which was passed last year.
The Act requires platforms to take “robust action” against illegal content and activity and […]
If you have ever seen what children are offered for lunch in Europe compared to what they get in the U.S., you know how inferior school lunches in America are. It’s pathetic and, of course, it is all about money and profit. The fundamental problem we have as a country is that the only social priority we have is profit. It negatively affects every aspect of our lives, from healthcare, to child care, to elder care, to school lunches. And because we are an oligarchy dominated democracy nothing about this seems to change. Only you and I can change this, and that is by voting only for Democrats. Yes, I know all the Democrat problems, but the alternative is Project 2025 run by a criminal.
Student getting a slice of pizza for lunch Credit: Getty / SDI Productions
In 2022, The Lancet, a British peer-reviewed journal with a focus on global public health, published a short article with the title: “Unhealthy school meals: A solution to hunger or a problem for health?” As the report laid out, providing school meals is an important measure in preventing food insecurity as nearly 30 million children receive a free or reduced-cost breakfast and lunch on an average American school day, and many of those students rely on school meals as their main source of nutrition.
Yet while those meals meet federal nutrition mandates, they are often simply composed of a smattering of processed foods — breakfast cereal, fruit juice, chicken nuggets, corn dogs, frozen pizza — served alongside a fruit or vegetable and carton of dairy milk. “In fact, the official meal dietary guidelines do not discourage serving pizza or corn dogs, as long as the nutritional specifications (total calorie, sugar, fat, and salt content) are met,” the report said.
Dean Baker, Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. - The New Republic
Stephan:
There is so much misinformation being spewed out all over the internet, particularly on X, that I am afraid most American voters really don’t know what is going on with the economy. I searched for what I felt comfortable publishing as a fact-based report that might help my readers to make a valid assessment. Here it is.
Credit: The New Republic
Over the last few weeks, an extraordinary series of events has altered the course of an election that previously seemed to have few surprises in store. Eight days after Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt, President Joe Biden announced his historic decision to withdraw from the presidential race and cast his support for Vice President Kamala Harris to run in his stead. It will be some time before we know all the political ramifications of these events, but whatever they may be, they will not change the past.
What can the past tell us about what’s to come? Perhaps the most critical element of a candidate’s platform is their approach to the economy. In assessing Harris as a presidential candidate, people will want to look at the economic track record of the Biden-Harris administration. As always, the president takes the lead role in setting the economic course for the administration, but throughout Biden’s term in office, Harris was standing alongside him. The Republicans will surely blame her for everything that went wrong and many […]
