Marshall Auerback - Today Germany Is the Big Loser, Not Greece

Given the German electorate’s long standing aversion to “fiscal profligacy” and soft currency economics (said to lead inexorably to Weimar style hyperinflation), one wonders why on earth Germany actually acceded to a “big and broad” European Monetary Union which included countries such as Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy.  Clearly, this can be better understood by viewing the country through the prism of the Three Germanys, which we’ve discussed before:Germany 1 is the Germany of the Bundesbank: the segment of the country which to this day retains huge phobias about the recurrence of Weimar-style inflation, and an almost theological belief in sound money and a corresponding hatred of inflation. It is the Germany of “sound finances” and “monetary discipline”. In many respects, these Germans are Austrian School style economists to the core. In their heart of hearts, many would probably love to be back on an international gold standard system.

Germany 2 is the internationalist wing of the country, led by Helmut Kohl. Kohl and his successors are probably the foremost exponents of the idea that Europe can rid itself of the “German problem” once and for all if Germany firmly binds itself to a “United States of Europe” and continues to construct institutions that broadly move the EU in this direction. It is questionable whether this vision has survived significantly beyond the tenure of Helmut Kohl himself.

Read More:

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/05/today-germany-is-the-big-loser-not-greece.html

Martin Longman - Today's GOP: Worst Political Party Since the Civil War

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein recently wrote a column for the Washington Post with a provocative headline: “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.” Their thesis was that they had never, in 40 years of observing Congress, seen the institution behave in such a dysfunctional manner. They wrote that while they had long found reasons to be critical of both Democrats and Republicans, things have changed and our current crisis is solely the fault of a Republican Party that "has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

The article went on to present extensive evidence to back their case. Nothing has signified these extreme tendencies more clearly than last summer's debt ceiling fiasco, where the Republicans acted so irresponsibly that Standard & Poor's felt compelled to downgrade America's hitherto gold-plated credit rating. In their press release, the ratings agency implicitly accused the Republicans of "brinksmanship" and said they had caused American governance and policymaking to become "less stable, less effective, and less predictable that we previously believed." They were particularly alarmed that the statutory debt ceiling had become a bargaining chip over fiscal policy.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155499/today%27s_gop%3A_worst_political_party_since_the_civil_war

Robert Preidt - One-Third of U.S. Homeless Population Is Obese: Study

One-third of homeless people in the United States are obese, about the same rate as the general population, a new study finds.

It might seem that hunger and lack of food would put homeless people at risk for weighing too little, according to the researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

But, the high rate of obesity among homeless people may be due to their reliance on cheap foods that contain high levels of fat and sugar. Another possible explanation could be physiological -- chronic food shortages cause the body to adapt by storing fat reserves.

Other factors may include little physical activity, sleep deprivation and stress.

The researchers examined the body-mass index (a measure of body fat based on height and weight) in more than 5,600 homeless men and women in Boston and found that 32 percent were obese, just less than 6 percent were morbidly obese and just less than 2 percent were underweight.

Read More:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_125352.html

Harry Papachristou and Giles Elgood - Social Nightmare Foretold if Greece Heads for Euro Exit

In Athens, the homeless are on the streets in growing numbers, soup kitchens feed twice as many people as a year ago, and the poor are diving into garbage bins in search of scrap they can sell.

Greece is close to breaking point as it struggles with austerity targets set by creditors, but this is just a foretaste of the nightmare of unrest, hunger and even anarchy that could engulf the debt-crippled nation if it is forced out of the euro.

If the exact economic impact of such a move is hard to nail down - newly issued drachmas devalued by up to 70 percent, runaway inflation, a banking meltdown, a collapse in trade - the implications for ordinary Greeks crushed by the debt crisis are even harder to predict.

Without international bailout cash, salaries and pensions would go unpaid and violence, political extremism and uncontrolled emigration could quickly follow.

After voting inconclusively for parties that opposed foreign-imposed austerity, including the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, Greeks head to the polls again in a month's time. This election is being portrayed internationally as a referendum on the single currency, even if Greeks do not yet see it that way.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30953

Jack Adam Weber - GMO Alert: Startling New Research

Time for a little GMO update and heckling of our nemesis, Monsanto and friends. New research demonstrates what most of us have suspected for years: GMOs and the poisons used on them are bad for everything on the planet. For ethical reasons, as well as the obstruction of research by Monsanto, little comprehensive GMO research has been done on humans. But finally, we are beginning to see more hard evidence showing the dangerous effects of the GMO industry.

A little over a year ago, the journal Reproductive Toxicology published the results of a study done In Quebec, Canada. It showed that Bt toxin, the pesticide now routinely genetically engineered into GE corn and cotton, was found in the blood of pregnant women and in their fetuses, as well as in non-pregnant women. This same study also discovered that glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp, was found in the blood of non-pregnant women. This is not good news.

Until recently, the Quebec study has been one of the few pieces of sound scientific evidence demonstrating the absorption of Bt-toxin into human blood, an occurrence Monsanto reportedly claimed would not occur when they proposed their nasty little invention for approval some years ago. Are we surprised that they were proven wrong? Not at all. Does this stop them? Not in the least. So we have to. Read on.

Read More:

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/05/18/gmo-alert-startling-new-research/

FDA, Under Court Order, Nevertheless Refuses to Allow Truthful Claims Based on Good Science

You would think the FDA would obey a judge’s ruling on qualified health claims. Think again.

The FTC case described elsewhere in this issue ^[1] was especially important because the FDA was hoping to use the FTC to evade some recent court rulings that it cannot willfully and unreasonably censor all science about food and supplements. Meanwhile the FDA continues to dig in its heels on the same subject.

As you know, we have for some time been fighting for freedom of speech with the FDA. Supplement and food companies are allowed by law to makequalified health claims (QHCs) on their labels ^[2] if they are approved by the FDA. However, QHCs are rarely approved by FDA, and when they are, the FDA-approved language usually undermines the meaning. Because of their denial of two health claims (that vitamin C reduces the risk of gastric cancer, and the vitamin E reduces the risk of bladder cancer), we took FDA to court—and won ^[3].

FDA was then ordered by the court to revise those QHCs. They did, and we have just received the revised versions—and they are as bad and intentionally misleading as before! The new QHCs all have the qualifier that “FDA has concluded there is very little scientific evidence for this claim.” Example: “Vitamin C may reduce the risk of gastric cancer although the FDA has concluded that there is very little scientific evidence for this claim.”

Frankly, we find this outrageous. It is clear that the FDA, in crafting these revised QHCs, has chosen to ignore the recent precedent set in the green tea case ^[2], where the judge stated that the FDA-approved QHC “effectively negates the substance–disease relationship claim altogether….There are less burdensome ways in which the FDA could indicate in a short, succinct and accurate disclaimer that it has not approved the claim without nullifying the claim altogether.”

Read More:

http://www.anh-usa.org/fda-refuses-to-allow-truthful-claims

Not so organic - USDA accused of conspiracy with agribusiness insiders

A watchdog group that handles issues dealing with the American agriculture industry is lashing out at the federal government for allegedly corrupting the advisory board that oversees organic food stuffs in the United States.

The Cornucopia Institute from the state of Wisconsin is calling out the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in their latest report by saying that the governmental panel that determines what is and isn’t considered “organic” is stacked with federal insiders with an alternative agenda.

According to the findings in The Organic Watergate paper released this week, the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) has taken a turn for the worse in recent years, hiring staffers in bed with corporate entities that aren’t as concerned with protecting consumers as they are with making a buck.

"This is the proverbial fox watching the organic chicken coop,” Mark A. Kastel, co-director of The Cornucopia Institute, says in a press release.

The NOSB was established in order to oversee and monitor any and all synthetic ingredients used in the farming or production of so-called “organic” foods to "assure that it is not a threat to human health or the environment,” as well as recommend policy and modifications “to the regulations governing organic agriculture and food processing” in the US. Without proper oversight, it is feared by some that a slippery slope will effectively erode the USDA’s original standards and allow for Big Business and the government’s corporate colleagues to remove the rules that currently exist to guide consumers.

Read More:

http://rt.com/usa/news/organic-usda-agriculture-board-820/

Prof. James F. Tracy - THE FRAMEWORK FOR SUPPRESSING INFORMATION: Public Opinion in America's 21st Century Police State

The police state’s framework for suppressing information and opinion arguably threatens all forms of independent thought and appears poised to intensify as the “war on terror” continues. As the recent emergence of US plans for indoctrination in reeducation camps reveals, Western governments’ actual enemy is the capacity for a people to exercise critical thought en route to intervening in and altering political-economic processes.

Public opinion—defined by 19th century English political thinker William MacKinnon as “that sentiment on any given subject which is entertained by the best informed, most intelligent, and most moral persons in the community”—is fundamentally at odds with police state prerogatives also exemplified in recent US Department of Homeland Security documents.

The technocratic mindset of agencies such as the DHS and Federal Bureau of Investigation that oversee federal, state, and local policing procedures seeks to short-circuit and quell dissent by identifying transgressive thought that deviates from an assumed normalcy, then interlinking it with perceived threats or violent actions against the state. In a grand governmental exercise of Freudian-style projection, the DHS’s usage of inflammatory terms such as “terrorist” and “extremist” are routinely utilized to emphasize the nature and degree of various activist groups’ alleged deviant ideologies. This practice proceeds in light of the fact that most every “terrorist” act within the US since 9/11 has been carefully guided by the FBI or, as was the case with the initial “underwear bomber, Western intelligence agencies likely working in concert.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30947

Gar Alperovitz - The Rise of the New Economy Movement

As our political system sputters, a wave of innovative thinking and bold experimentation is quietly sweeping away outmoded economic models. In 'New Economic Visions', a special five-part AlterNet series edited by Economics Editor Lynn Parramore in partnership with political economist Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy Collaborative, creative thinkers come together to explore the exciting ideas and projects that are shaping the philosophical and political vision of the movement that could take our economy back.

Just beneath the surface of traditional media attention, something vital has been gathering force and is about to explode into public consciousness. The “New Economy Movement” is a far-ranging coming together of organizations, projects, activists, theorists and ordinary citizens committed to rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up. 

The broad goal is democratized ownership of the economy for the “99 percent” in an ecologically sustainable and participatory community-building fashion. The name of the game is practical work in the here and now—and a hands-on process that is also informed by big picture theory and in-depth knowledge. 

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155452/the_rise_of_the_new_economy_movement

Lee Drutman - The changing complexity of congressional speech

Congress now speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did just seven years ago, with the most conservative members of Congress speaking on average at the lowest grade level, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis of the Congressional Record using Capitol Words.

Of course, what some might interpret as a dumbing down of Congress, others will see as more effective communications. And lawmakers of both parties still speak above the heads of the average American, who reads at between an 8^th and 9^th grade level.

Today’s Congress speaks at about a 10.6 grade level, down from 11.5 in 2005. By comparison, the U.S. Constitution is written at a 17.8 grade level, the Federalist Papers at a 17.1 grade level, and the Declaration of Independence at a 15.1 grade level. The Gettysburg Address comes in at an 11.2 grade level and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is at a 9.4 grade level. Most major newspapers are written at between an 11^th and 14^thgrade level. (You can find more comparisons here)

All these analyses use the Flesch-Kincaid test, which produces the 'reads at a n-th grade level' terminology that is likely familiar to many readers. At its core, Flesch-Kincaid equates higher grade levels with longer words and longer sentences. It is important to understand the limitations of this metric: it tells us nothing about the clarity or correctness of a passage of text. But although an admittedly crude tool, Flesch-Kincaid can nonetheless provide insights into how different legislators speak, and how Congressional speech has been changing.

To see how different legislators rank, click here for a full database of all current members of Congress.

To see how many top SAT words lawmakers speak, click here.

Read More:

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/05/21/congressional-speech/