"Progressive Radio Network Host Danny Schechter, Fridays @ 1pm" - AS THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER APPROACH, POLITICIANS REST BEFORE RETURNING TO THE FRAY. THE POLITICAL WAR WILL CONTINUE’

By Danny Schechter

Author of The Crime Of Our Time (Disinfo)

Now that the debt drama is over for the moment, we can all safely retreat in what was once called the “Dog Days Of Summer” and chill out if the volatile weather allows us to. We can think back to that old song, “Summer’s here and the living is easy” even as we all know that for millions “the living” is anything but.

The House and Senate have become ghost-like chambers because all its members, so filled with strident indignation and inflexible talking points just a week ago, are now off on their paid vacations hyping their political war stories to grandchildren.

Imbued with a sense of triumph, the Tea Party is huddling to come up with ongoing tactics to hold the system hostage while the party leaders plan the new “Super committee” with 12 chosen acolytes (how Biblical, that number 12!) to map the next round of fiscal blood-lettering.

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"Jane Slaughter" - USA, The Next Low-Wage Haven

Published on Saturday, August 6, 2011 by Labor Notes

http://labornotes.org/2011/07/next-low-wage-haven-usa

by Jane Slaughter

Jokes about the U.S. becoming “Europe’s Mexico” are commonplace, but now high-priced consultants are pushing the notion in all seriousness.

They’re predicting that within five years certain Southern U.S. states will be among the cheapest manufacturing locations in the developed world—and competitive with China.

For years advisers like the Boston Consulting Group got paid big bucks to tell their clients to produce in China. Now, they say, rising wages there, fueled by worker unrest, and low wages in Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina mean that soon it won’t be worth the hassle of locating overseas.

Wages for China’s factory workers certainly aren’t going to rise to U.S. levels soon. BCG estimates they will be 17 percent of the projected U.S. manufacturing average—$26 an hour for wages and benefits—by 2015.

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"Ellen Brown" - The Market Has Spoken -- Austerity Is Bad for Business

By Ellen Brown

Global Research, August 6, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25916

It used to be that when the Fed Chairman spoke, the market listened; but the Chairman has lost his mystique.  Now when the market speaks, politicians listen.  Hopefully they heard what the market just said: government cutbacks are bad for business.  The government needs to spend more, not less.  Fortunately, there are viable ways to do this while still balancing the budget.

On Thursday, August 4, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 512 points, the biggest stock market drop since the collapse of September 2008.  

Why?  Weren’t the markets supposed to rebound after the debt ceiling agreement was reached on Monday, avoiding U.S. default and a downgrade of U.S. debt? 

So we were told, but the market apparently understands what politicians don’t: the debt deal is a death deal for the economy. 

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"ScienceDaily"-Slowing Climate Change by Targeting Gases Other Than Carbon Dioxide

Carbon dioxide remains the undisputed king of recent climate change, but other greenhouse gases measurably contribute to the problem. A new study, conducted by NOAA scientists and published online August 3 in Nature, shows that cutting emissions of those other gases could slow changes in climate that are expected in the future.

Discussions with colleagues around the time of the 2009 United Nations' climate conference in Copenhagen inspired three NOAA scientists -- Stephen Montzka, Ed Dlugokencky and James Butler of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. -- to review the sources of non-carbon dioxide (CO₂) greenhouse gases and explore the potential climate benefits of cutting their emissions.

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"ScienceDaily"-Drinking Just One Measure of Spirits Increases the Risk of Acute Pancreatitis, Study Finds; But Wine and Beer Do Not Appear to Have the Same Effect

Drinking just one 4cl measure of spirits can increase the risk of an acute attack of pancreatitis, but wine or beer does not appear to have the same effect, according to a study published online by BJS, the British Journal of Surgery.

Researchers from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden followed 84,601 people from 46 to 84 years of age from the general population in Vastmanland and Uppsala for a median of ten years. During that time 513 developed acute pancreatitis.

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"Reuters"-Can vitamins help boost your memory?

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_114809.html (*this news item will not be available after 10/26/2011)

REUTERS,  Thursday, July 28, 2011

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Adults who took vitamin and mineral supplements for almost a decade performed better on one type of memory test than those who didn't take the supplements, according to a new study from France.

The researchers say the findings suggest that getting enough nutrients could aid thinking and memory skills as people get older. But further studies are needed to confirm the results, they add.

The effect was "nothing wild that you'd say, 'Everybody should take these,'" said Geraldine McNeill, a nutritionist at the University of Aberdeen in the UK.

But McNeill, who wasn't involved in the new study, said some people -- especially those who are deficient in vitamins and minerals -- might get a memory benefit from boosting the nutrients in their diet.

Emmanuelle Kesse-Guyot of the University of Paris XIII in France and colleagues write that the link between a higher intake of some nutrients and thinking and memory skills has been shown before in so-called observational studies. But those studies can't get at a cause-and-effect relationship.

"The question is, does the cognitive performance depend on the diet, or does the diet depend on the cognitive performance?" McNeill told Reuters Health. It's possible that people who have better thinking and memory skills might pay closer attention to what they're eating, she explained.

To try to get a clearer picture of the association, Kesse-Guyot and her colleagues conducted a study of close to 4,500 French men and women.

In 1994, when the study participants were 45 to 60 years old, researchers split them randomly into two groups. Half of them took a daily supplement that included vitamins C and E, selenium, zinc, and beta-carotene for eight years. The others took a nutrient-free placebo pill each day.

None of the participants knew whether they were taking the vitamin or the sham pills.

When the eight years were up, researchers stopped giving participants their assigned pills, and they could choose on their own whether or not to take vitamin supplements.

Six years after that, the investigators brought them back to the lab for a round of memory tests.

The tests included word and number problems to measure different types of memory and "mental flexibility."

While the supplement and placebo groups performed similarly on most tests, the nutrient-boosted participants beat their peers on one test of long-term memory in which participants had to recall words in different categories.

"Our results have to be considered carefully," the authors wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Because they did several tests, it's more likely that the one difference they found was due to chance.

Still, they added, the "findings support a beneficial effect of a well-balanced intake of antioxidant nutrients at nutritional doses for maintaining cognitive performance, especially verbal memory."

McNeill said that most people could probably get the vitamin and nutrient doses used in the study through tweaks in their diet -- for example, drinking fruit juice to get Vitamin C and using plant oil, which is a good source of Vitamin E.

"Taking supplements for me is a last resort," she said.

Barbara Shukitt-Hale, a nutrition researcher at Tufts University in Boston, said it's important for people to know that boosting brainpower requires more than just taking a vitamin pill every day.

"Vitamins and minerals are important for memory, but they're not the only thing that's important," she told Reuters Health. "The most important thing is eating a healthy diet, being active, and keeping your brain sharp."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/ntXIcp American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online July 20, 2011.



"Worldwatch"-Climate Contradictions: The Science Bulks up as U.S. Policy Strips Down

last few weeks have demonstrated an unfortunate juxtaposition between the U.S. federal climate policy debate and the scientific case for climate action. Strong evidence for the need to regulate greenhouse gas emissions continues to pile up, but meanwhile last week the U.S. House Appropriations Committee passed drastic cuts to environmental regulations in the Fiscal Year 2012 Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill.

The bill proposes $1.5 billion in cuts from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s budget. Members of Congress supporting these cuts hold that the EPA is too costly and hampers economic growth. The bill would cut climate change spending by $83 million, or 22 percent below last year’s budget. One of the many prohibitions in the bill prevents the EPA from regulating stationary greenhouse gas emissions. EPA’s regulation of climate-altering greenhouse gases (GHGs) under the Clean Air Act, which will be finalized in 2012, are the only federal greenhouse gas regulations on the table, as the U.S. has not passed comprehensive climate legislation, and the prospects for doing so in the near future seem dim. Negotiations on the House and Senate floor will likely alter the contents of the bill with a Democratic majority in the Senate that is very likely to refuse to withdraw EPA’s authority to regulate GHGs and impose major cuts on its budget. Also, President Obama threatened to veto the bill. Still, the proposed cuts highlight the strong disconnect between climate science and climate policy within the United States.

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"John Atcheson" - The Beast Is Starved -- Welcome to the Next Great Depression

Since Reagan, Republicans have been on a “starve the beast” campaign – by which they mean eviscerate the government by taking away as much revenue as they can.

Starving the beast has been the biggest bait and switch con game that has ever been perpetrated on the American people.  And the most tragic.

As Paul Krugman pointed out, Republicans offered popular tax cuts so that they could later cut popular government programs “as a necessity.”  Oh, we’d love to continue providing low cost, effective medical care under Medicare, but you see, the country just can’t afford it … Of course we can’t.  Billionaire hedge fund managers and Wall Street traders pay less in taxes than their secretaries.  And most corporations pay little or no taxes.

Starve the Beast was coupled with a clever campaign to make government appear to be a collection of bumbling bureaucrats who wasted tax money for pure pleasure.  Long after it became politically impossible to stereotype racial and ethnic groups (with the possible exceptions of Muslims) it was – and is – quite acceptable to characterize government workers as shiftless, lazy and incompetent.

As a result, once the Republicans succeeded in cutting government revenue to the bone and beyond, it became impossible to raise taxes – who wants to give any more of their hard earned money to a bunch of lazy bureaucrats? 

Never mind that most big government programs are far more efficient than their private sector equivalents.  That’s a mere fact.  Can’t let that get in the way of starving the beast.

Bait and switch.  Divide and Conquer.

So, after starting with a surplus in 2000, Republicans used two wars, two rounds of tax cuts, and a giant giveaway to big Pharma, to get the country racking up debt like a drunken sailor. 

Along comes the Bush recession, and the debt accelerates, and the Republicans declare the debt to be an “emergency” and right on schedule immediately attack popular programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Student loans –and virtually anything that doesn’t help the uber rich or the corporations suddenly must be cut if we are to stay solvent.

Never mind that cutting Social Security to balance the budget is like attacking the mailman because your car doesn’t work.  It has nothing to do with the budget – but again, that’s a mere fact.  When you’re drowning the beast, facts don’t matter. 

So OK.  The beast is drowned. Keynes is dead.  Now what?

Well, if past is prologue, welcome to the next Great Depression. 

See, the dirty little secret is that we never had a debt “crisis.”  We had a jobs crisis. 

While Republicans were arguing about the faux “crisis” and the press and Obama joined them, we got a series of disturbing economic signals. Consumer confidence was down, manufacturing was off, May and June’s job numbers were pathetic. In fact, if not for a hiring binge by McDonald’s there would have been a net job loss in May. That’s something to hang your hat on: McDonalds accounted for what little job growth there was.  What’s next, America gets saved by an uptick in Wall Mart greeters? 

Look. This whole drown the beast strategy has been nothing more than a stealth tactic for instituting an extremist version of a laissez faire, market uber-alles policy designed by and for the Plutocracy.

And to be sure, it’s worked great for them. Today, the richest 1% owns 40% of the nation's wealth, and the top 10% owns nearly 75% of it.

The rest of us?  Not so much.

Income and wealth inequality in the US has been increasing rapidly since Reagan,  (with a slight break under Clinton). In terms of income inequality, the US now ranks about the same as Ivory Coast, Uganda and Cameroon – countries not exactly noted for being prosperous, equitable and just societies.

News flash for all the debt mongers, Tea Partiers and other assorted ignoramuses. You can’t run a consumer-based economy when the vast majority of consumers don’t have enough money to buy anything.  After all, Paris Hilton can only buy so many yachts; Corporate CEOs can only purchase so many jetliners – even with their special jet tax credits; and Wall Street traders can only buy so many Bugattis.  But middle and working class Americans need to spend their money on food, lodging, and other necessities.  

Here’s the dirty little secret: Republicans want the economy to fail.  They want Obama to fail, and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.  They want these things, because the beast is in the bathtub and they can almost taste its demise. 

The pieces are in place for the Plutocrats final victory … an industry friendly Supreme Court; a Democratic Party that is either in collusion with the plutocrats, or so cowardly as to be neutered; a press that reports outlandish lies and objective facts as if they were equivalent; and a public that is dazed and confused and convinced the government is their enemy. 

 But government isn’t the enemy.  Laissez faire economic policies are. Every time we’ve tried them, they've produced profound income inequalities and the severe economic downturns that inevitably follow.

With private industry sitting on top of some $2 trillion in profits, exporting jobs, and shutting down plants, only government spending stood between us and an economic Armageddon. 

Now, nothing does.

So, congratulations, America.  You’ve finally gotten big bad gubmint off your back.

Enjoy the coming Great Depression.

"Mark Engler"- Stopping Obama's Next Betrayal

The debt-ceiling debate has been a sad one for the Left—and also, in large part, a boring one. Boring because we haven’t had too much to add. As a friend said to me, you know things are bad when the New York Times liberals say pretty much all there is to say.

In this case, they have. Paul Krugman noted that the debt deal

will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status....Republicans will surely be emboldened by the way Mr. Obama keeps folding in the face of their threats.

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"Diane Roberts"- The EPA, The Tea Party's Next Target

You'd think Congress would be too busy wrecking the economy to attack the environment. Yet, in the midst of a packed schedule snapping at President Obama's heels and lunging for each other's throats, Republicans have found time to try and rip the heart out of the Environmental Protection Agency, killing 40 years of protections for water, air, endangered species, wildlife habitat and national parks.

Instead of taking direct shots at the environment – not even Tea Tendency zealots come out and say they're pro-pollution – Republicans are going after the EPA. It's a "job-killer". America's high unemployment rate is not the fault of the worldwide recession or the housing bubble or Wall Street hubris or two unfunded wars on top of George W Bush's silly tax cuts for the rich, it's those damned DC bunny-huggers. Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho insists, "overregulation from EPA is at the heart of our stalled economy"; his colleague, Rep Louie Gohmert of Texas, says, "Let EPA go the way of the dinosaurs that became fossil fuels."

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