Why Do We Save Billionaires, but Not Teachers?

This week thousands of New Jersey public school students walked out of class to protest draconian school budget cuts. "Save my teacher," their signs read. In a state that is home to a bevy of high finance billionaires, with the highest per capita income in the nation, teachers are being sacked left and right. In our town half the student body protested outside the high school. Perhaps the protesters should turn their eyes towards the twenty-five top hedge fund honchos who took in $25 billion in 2009. Their "earnings" alone could fund 658,000 entry level teachers.

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Are Prozac and Other Psychiatric Drugs Causing the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America?

In 1987, prior to Prozac hitting the market and the current ubiquitous use of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, the U.S. mental illness disability rate was 1 in every 184 Americans, but by 2007 the mental illness disability rate had more than doubled to 1 in every 76 Americans. Robert Whitaker was curious as to what was causing this dramatic increase in mental illness disability. The answers are in his new book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (Crown Publishers, April 2010).

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Can You Stomach Gluten? How Giving Up Grain May Better Your Health

In the relatively short amount of time I have been on a gluten free diet, the wheat free and gluten free marketplace has become a booming business. It’s not surprising, since Celiac Disease affects 1 out of 133 people. But, what is surprising is that 97 percent of people with Celiac Disease go undiagnosed. And according to the Mayo Clinic, “young people today are more than four times as likely to have Celiac Disease than was the case 60 years ago.”

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Goldman Executives: "No Regrets" for Deals That Accelerated Crisis

Washington - Goldman Sachs traders who helped the firm rack up billions of dollars in profits from secret bets against the housing market told a Senate investigating panel Tuesday that they'd done nothing wrong. Among the four present and former traders was Fabrice Tourre, the 31-year-old Goldman vice president accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 16 of fraudulently helping a Goldman client rig an offshore deal that cost two European banks $1 billion.

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Which fish to eat? Study finds low mercury in most top-selling seafood.

Experts send a mixed message to consumers when it comes to eating fish: it's good for your heart health but beware of the methylmercury. A new way of organizing and ranking the pollutant's levels in fish and shellfish may help consumers navigate this apparent contradiction, according to the study's author. The reanalysis of the government-collected data could provide consumers in the United States with an easier method to evaluate dietary exposure to mercury through the fish they eat, making it more likely they will choose the types and amounts of seafood that are safest to eat. In particular, the calculation of a “mercury input factor” weights both the amount of a particular fish sold and its mercury content.

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God, What a Piece of Crap

It was the Perry Mason moment in the unraveling of what was left of Goldman Sachs’ reputation. Only in this case, it involved a grizzled former prosecutor, Sen. Carl Levin, rather than a genial defense attorney. The case was broken and the truth about the depth of Goldman’s corruption revealed in his startling cross-examination of Goldman Chief Financial Officer David Viniar.

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Growing Public Anger in America

The Pew Research Center (PRC) for the People & the Press is "an independent, non-partisan public opinion research organization that studies attitudes toward politics, the press and public policy issues." On April 18, it published a report titled, "Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor," saying: "By almost every conceivable measure Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days." A new PRC survey confirms it, and why not under a "perfect storm of conditions" - a wrecked economy for millions fueling distrust and an "epic discontent with Congress and elected officials" who betrayed them. People want help, by a reformed, not activist government, and Republicans as well as Democrats draw ire. Growing numbers want less government, except for regulating Wall Street, and "ratings for both major parties, as well as for Congress, have reached record lows while opposition to congressional incumbents, already approaching an all-time high, continues to climb."

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The Food Nightmare Beneath Our Feet: We're Running Out of Soil

John Jeavons is saving the planet one scoop of applesauce at a time. Jeavons stands at the front of the classroom at Ecology Action, the experimental farm he founded on the side of a mountain above Willits, in Northern California’s Mendocino County. For every tablespoon of food he sucks down his gullet, he scoops up six spoonfuls of dirt, one at a time for dramatic effect, and dumps them into another bowl. It’s a stark message he’s trying to get across to the 35 people who have come from around the country to get a tour of his farm -- simplified, to be sure, but comprehensible: For every unit of food we consume, using the conventional agricultural methods employed in the U.S., six times that amount of topsoil is lost. Since, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the average person eats a ton of food each year, that works out to 12,000 pounds (5,443 kilograms) of topsoil. John Jeavons estimates that using current farming practices we have 40 to 80 years of arable soil left.

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Obama's No Human Rights Crusader -- Just Look at How He Aids Israel's Atrocities

The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders -- with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s. The basic principles have been accepted by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states (who go on to call for full normalization of relations), the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran), and relevant non-state actors (including Hamas). A settlement along these lines was first proposed at the U.N. Security Council in January 1976 by the major Arab states. Israel refused to attend the session. The U.S. vetoed the resolution, and did so again in 1980. The record at the General Assembly since is similar.

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Obama, Nuclear Weapons and the Future of the Planet

Isn't it strange? In the 1980's an overwhelming 80% of Americans wanted to see an end to the nuclear arms race. The U.S. establishment treated this grassroots movement almost as an aberration, virtually ignoring it. This massive, global, grassroots movement helped bring an end to the Cold War. But, throughout the duration of the Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush presidencies there was no respect for, no move to act on, the wishes of the American people and the worldwide supporters of nuclear disarmament.

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