(No longer a newspaper, we try to matter)
Permanent Editorial?
Ignored in this and past political campaigns, the US wastes $1.56 Trillion/yr on inefficient health care compared with the OECD per capita average. Let's adopt efficient best practices instead of cutting Medicare and Medicaid coverage as part of some "Grand Bargain"
US per capita health care spending continues to be DOUBLE OECD countries in Europe and Asia (2009) without better results! (Ref.
2007,
selected 2007 with avg. doctor visits showing we're least cared for for the money, and
2003 and 1998.)
EXTRA PRICE GOUGING OF $4,727/PERSON/YR is trending ever higher; making US-made products higher priced, which makes it more profitable to offshore jobs. Lastly and importantly, health workers' pay—excepting some greedy surgeons—is NOT a significant cause of the problem.
Sorry I didn't date this, which has been updated over time, my anger unrelenting. It was first posted in 2010, I think.
Government ministers are "very skeptical" about the technology, which environmentalists claim can pollute groundwater.
by NEIN DANKE in Spiegel | 12.05.14 More than 1.5 million people have petitioned Dilma Rousseff to reject a bill that may lead to further destruction of the Amazon
by JOHN VIDAL and DAMIAN CARRINGTON in UK Guardian | 12.05.11 Was the US drug Vioxx responsible for far more deaths than has been acknowledged so far?
GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”
What an irony that instead of fighting pollution and demanding change, the rich and famous think they can escape this noxious air.
[Quelle Surprise! Europe is smarter, while the US opts for shelf-life over health]
Food scandals are so costly to Big Food that it has repeatedly tried to kill the messenger rather than clean up its act.
by MARTHA ROSENBERG in AlterNet | 12.05.10 ...we do know from archaeological data that pretty much everywhere we can measure — Europe, China, South Africa, Australia — that brains have shrunk...roughly 10 percent
In 2009, Americans spent $7,960 per person on health care. Our neighbors in Canada spent $4,808. The Germans spent $4,218. The French, $3,978. If we had the per-person costs of any of those countries, America’s deficits would vanish....
How Industry Money Reaches (bribes?) Physicians
OECD Indicators
Why is Healthcare Absurdly Expensive in USA: Graphics (Part 2) (Part 1 is here)
Videos of Health Care Systems in Less Corrupt Countries
SOURCE: Public Broadcasting System & ABC News | Ref.
Health Care Reform Reality Check
SOURCE: The White House | Ref.
Health Care Reform: An Online Guide
SOURCE: Slate Mag. | Ref.
OECD Health Data [Updated 11.08.07]
SOURCE: OECD | Ref.
International Healthcare Systems Primer
SOURCE: The American Medical Student Association | Ref.
Global Warming LinksSOURCE: Readers | Ref.
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This galactic screwup by usually-slick banker lawyers gives us a rare peek into the internal mindset of these companies, and their attitude toward regulations, the markets, even their own clients.
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Those who think and talk like Rush Limbaugh have championed policies that wreak havoc on the family lives of working Americans.
by JUNE CARBONE and NAOMI CAHN in AlterNet | 12.05.16 Emmet Bondurant thinks the filibuster is unconstitutional. And, alongside Common Cause, where he serves on the board of directors, he’s suing to have the Supreme Court abolish it.
by BETSEY STEVENSON and JUSTIN WOLFERS in Bloomberg | 12.05.16 Where once big business favored the GOP by 2 to 1, a survey by the Center for Responsive Politics has found Republicans enjoying a 7-1 advantage in some sectors.
There are two arguments against the recommendation that Greece and Argentina are similar enough to warrant an Argentinian road for Greece.
How Chief Justice John Roberts orchestrated the Citizens United free-speech decision.
For too many of us, truth doesn’t have to be the real truth. That's terrible and can lead to real trouble.
by FRED CEDERHOLM in his blog | 12.05.15 |
A new film provides a much-needed wake-up call for Americans: Our false sense of water abundance may be our great undoing.
Civil Administration issues demolition order against the school, though residents have no access to any other.
by AKIVA ELDAR in Haaretz | 12.05.15 Obama lands on the right side of history.
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When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die.
Many ideas are labeled dangerous, not because they’re false but because they might be true.
Atheists are becoming a force to be reckoned with. They are a powerful ally when inspired to take action -- and a powerful opponent when they're treated like dirt.
by GRETA CHRISTINA in AlterNet | 12.05.11 The world’s super rich are fashioning themselves into a new global tribe of footloose and stateless. The rest of us get to gawk — and foot the ultimate bill.
Interview with Phil Huckelberry
Americans today enjoy access to effective birth control. But it wasn't always this way and religious conservatives are trying to turn back the clock.
The Vermont Progressive Party wields outsized influence on state politics. The VPP's politically savvy and flexible approach has helped it struggle against what Party Director Morgan Daybell calls 'the negative perception of third parties in general.'
Rupert Murdoch is a man driven not so much by market forces as a deep desire to optimise his empire's power and influence
Somerby is undoubtedly America's best mainstream media critic, holding both "conservatives" and "liberals" to account for unprofessional journalism.
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America's political-economy is caught in a vicious cycle, with concentrated wealth at the top leading to outsized political power.
by JOSHUA HOLLAND in AlterNet | 12.05.11 Recent supreme court hearings sum up the US polity's central contradiction: liberty is sacrosanct for the market, not the citizen
[Very detailed but its hard to read]
[Very detailed, it's hard to read]
Tony Blair urges action and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas fears potential 'disaster that no one could control'
The two groups appear to be diametrically opposed, but a deeper look reveals they have a great deal in common. The totalitarian worldview has many manifestations.
by BARBARA HANS and JULIA JüTTNER in Spiegel | 12.05.14 by ANDRES R. MARTINEZ in Bloomberg | 12.05.10 Amnesty International reports the harrowing testimonies of the people of Idlib and nearby villages terrorised by regime forces
This war has killed tens of thousands of Afghans — the vast majority of whom were not fighting back — were not “insurgents.” Countless children, women, and the elderly have been killed, but President Obama does not even acknowledge their deaths.
Unemployment in the 17 countries that belong to the euro zone rose to 10.9 percent in March
The [face saving] agreement pledges that the US will have no permanent bases in Afghanistan.... There are roughly 88,000 US troops in Afghanistan, but that will come down to some 69,000 by September, and then most of those will leave by the end of 2013.
The American people have a right to know how 'enhanced interrogation' practices became U.S. policy and whether they produced useful information.
Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter.
by HENRY GOLDMAN and ESMÉ E. DEPREZ in Bloomberg | 12.05.01 Can the Quebec student movement, clearly a collective struggle against austerity-driven economics, spark or inspire broader mass struggles for social justice in Canada?
by STEFAN CHRISTOFF in Rabble | 12.05.01 Most German Christians saw no contradiction between the demands of Jesus’ gospel ethic of love, mercy and forgiveness and the ruthless and cruel “gods” of war and wealth. Are we in the U.S. so different?
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Regulations can give us a couple of generations without major banking panics before we screw-up and rescind them again.
It's bad enough that the banks strangled the Dodd-Frank law. Even worse is the way they did it - with a big assist from Congress and the White House.
Why has the Obama administration so aggressively protected the financial industry from legal accountability?
by GLENN GRENWALD in Salon | 12.05.11 Predatory lenders are keeping us in debt peonage through misguided economics and bank-captured legislators. Two million U.S. seniors age 60 and over have student loan debt, on which they owe a collective $36.5 billion; and 11.2 percent of this debt is in default.
The promise of democracy delivers little for those with empty wallets. Genuine freedom will be established when economic rights are entrenched as human rights.
[Boycotting is encouraged!]
On both sides of the Atlantic, these interactions mock the very notion of democracy on which the nation's illusions are based.
We've been here before, Krugman argues, during the Great Depression and WWII. Krugman's solution: The federal government needs to step in and spend. A lot. On debt relief for struggling homeowners; on infrastructure projects; on aid to states and localities; on safety-net programs.
Next time you fill up your tank, remember that $10 to $25 is going right from your pocket to the financial sector. [Same tactics were used by Enron 12 years ago to manipulate electricity prices in California]
Austerity now is the best way to ensure that in the long run, the euro zone is dead.
The iconic writer scolds the superrich (including himself—and Mitt Romney) for not giving back, and warns of a Kingsian apocalyptic scenario if inequality is not addressed in America.
[Being moral about the most important matters is a difficult concept for some] When faced with a letter of condemnation by 90 Catholic faculty members at Georgetown University, Paul Ryan abruptly decided to back away from his famous endorsement of the works of controversial author Ayn Rand and her philosophy of “Objectivism.”
Tea Party incumbents are collecting thousands of dollars for re-election campaigns from the same Wall Street firms whose excesses they criticized.
by HEIDI PRZYBYLA and PHIL MATTINGLY in Bloomberg | 12.05.01 |
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