"Peter Hart & Julie Hollar" - 'Serious’ Republicans vs.‘Starry-Eyed’ Progressives

Published on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)

http://www.fair.org/index.php

Beltway media scorn People’s Budget, hail Ryan hoax

by Peter Hart and Julie Hollar

The budget proposal released on April 5 by Rep. Paul Ryan (R.-Wisc.) includes tax cuts for the wealthy, tax hikes for the middle class, drastic cuts in social spending and a radical restructuring of Medicare that would shift most of the cost of healthcare to seniors. Its dubious claims of deficit reduction rely on fatally flawed assumptions and inexplicable projections (CBPP, 4/7/11; CEPR, 4/11).

Meanwhile, the 76-member Congres-sional Progressive Caucus unveiled its own “People’s Budget” proposal on April 13, which would eliminate the deficit in 10 years without eroding social services or raising taxes on the working class. Serious economists like Paul Krugman (New York Times, 4/25/11) and Jeffrey Sachs (Huffington Post, 4/8/11) have spoken out in favor of the People’s Budget as, in Krugman’s words, a “genuinely courageous” plan and “the only major budget proposal out there offering a plausible path to balancing the budget.”

Guess which one the Beltway media have embraced?

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"James Gustave Speth" - Off the Pedestal -- Creating a New Vision of Economic Growth

Published on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 by Yale Environment 360

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/off_the_pedestal_creating_a_new_vision_of_economic_growth/2409/

by James Gustave Speth

Is anything in America more faithfully followed than economic growth? Its movements are constantly watched, measured to the decimal place, deplored or praised, diagnosed as weak or judged healthy and vigorous. Newspapers, magazines, and cable channels report endlessly on it. Promoting growth may be the most widely shared and robust cause in the United States today.

If the growth imperative dominates U.S. political and economic life, what happens when growth hits some serious stumbling blocks?

When I was in school in England, the dean of my college told us when we first arrived that we could walk on the grass in the courtyard — but not across it. That helped me love the English and their language. Here is another creative use of prepositions: there are limits to growth, and there are limits of growth.

Let’s first take up the limits of growth. Despite the constant claims that we need more growth, there are limits on what growth can do for us. The ecological economist Herman Daly has reminded us that if neo-classical economists were true to their trade, they would recognize that there are diminishing returns to growth. Most obviously, the value of income growth declines as one gets richer and richer. Similarly, growth at some point has increasing marginal costs. For example, workers have to put in too many hours, or the climate goes haywire. It follows that for the economy as a whole, we can reach a point where the extra costs of more growth exceed the extra benefits. One should stop growing at that point. Otherwise the country enters the realm of “uneconomic growth,” to use Daly’s delightful phrase, where the costs of growth exceed the benefits it produces.

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"Military Medicine Journal" - Veterans show a 50 percent reduction in PTSD symptoms after 8 weeks of Transcendental Meditation

Military Medicine Journal, June 1, 2011

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-06/muom-vsa053111.php

Veterans of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars showed a 50 percent reduction in their symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after just eight weeks of practicing the stress-reducing Transcendental Meditation technique, according to a pilot study published in the June 2011 issue of Military Medicine (Volume 176, Number 6).

The study evaluated five veterans, ages 25- to 40-years-old, who had served in Iraq, Afghanistan or both from 10 months to two years involving moderate or heavy moderate combat.

The study found that Transcendental Meditation produced significant reductions in stress and depression, and marked improvements in relationships and overall quality of life. Furthermore, the authors reported that the technique was easy to perform and was well accepted by the veterans.

The Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) was the primary measure for assessing the effectiveness of TM practice on PTSD symptoms. CAPS is considered by the Department of Veterans Affairs as the "gold standard" for PTSD assessment and diagnosis for both military Veteran and civilian trauma survivors.

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"S. L. Baker" - Maybe you aren't doomed to cancer or other diseases because of your genes; scientists find risk research is inaccurate

by S. L. Baker

http://www.naturalnews.com/032577_genetic_testing_disease.html

(NaturalNews) Countless people have had regular expensive testings and even organs removed because, based on genetic testing, they've been told they are sure to get cancer. Think about women having breasts amputated to avoid breast cancer in the future, for example. Others live a life of worry and a feeling of impending doom if they believe test results of "biomarkers" for specific diseases show sooner or later they will probably get heart disease, dementia or some other potential killer.

But it turns out, according to a new study, the research about the associations between genes and other biomarkers and various maladies is vastly overstated. Bottom line: were told you are more or less doomed to eventually get a certain disease so you need constant vigilance and testing? Turns out, none of that may be true.

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"Sarah Jaffe" - The Next Bubble Is About to Burst: College Grads Face Dwindling Jobs and Mounting Loans

By Sarah Jaffe, AlterNet
Posted on June 1, 2011, Printed on June 1, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151149/the_next_bubble_is_about_to_burst%3A_college_grads_face_dwindling_jobs_and_mounting_loans

It's the beginning of summer: warmer weather, longer days, the end of the school year. And that means graduation for thousands of young people across the U.S.; graduation with more student debt than ever before, and into a job market that is anything but promising.

Young people between the ages of 16 and 24 face an unemployment rate nearly twice that of the rest of the population, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. 2010's 18.4 percent rate for youth was the worst in the 60 years that economists have collected such data. ColorLines notes that in 2010, 8.4 percent of white college graduates were unemployed, 13.8 percent of Latino graduates, and a dismal 19 percent of black graduates.

Those bright, shiny new degrees simply aren't worth the paper they're printed on all too often. The cost of a college degree is up some 3,400 percent since 1972, but as we all know too well, household incomes haven't increased by anything close to that number -- not for the bottom 99 percent of us, anyway.

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"Rudi Nussbaum" - Clinging to the Nuclear Option – A Reckless Denial of Reality

By RUDI H. NUSSBAUM

http://counterpunch.org/nussbaum05302011.html

The national organization Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), committed to protecting public health, demands the de-commissioning of all currently operating nuclear plants in the US and urges members of Congress to refuse to subsidize the construction of new ones with guaranteed loans and liability insurance premiums. Why? Here is the scientific/common sense justification for such an uncompromising position: 1. After the accident at the Three Mile Island (TMI) plant, the official Columbia U. study found no increased health effects among the surrounding population, consistent with the officially accepted exposure levels as estimated by the TMI plant operators and applying the internationally accepted radiation risk factors, derived from the long-term follow-up of the externally exposed A-bomb survivors. Contradicting these findings, a subsequent study by Wing et al found statistically significant excess cancers. These cancers have affected the lives of real persons. Yet, Wing's results were angrily dismissed by the radiation establishment and government health agencies because risk assessments, based on “current radiological science,” precluded that the officially accepted, very low levels of population exposures (doses) released from the TMI reactor could induce the observed excess cancers. The possibility that combining flawed dose estimates with flawed risk models could predict flawed numbers of cancers that might be off by several orders of magnitude (factors of ten), was never considered by the Columbia U. investigators.

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"Terra Daily" - Dalai Lama formally cedes political role

Terra Daily, May 30, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Dalai_Lama_formally_cedes_political_role_999.html

Dharamshala, India (AFP) May 30, 2011

The Dalai Lama has formally relinquished his political powers "in a historic move" but will remain the symbol of Tibetan unity, a spokesman for the spiritual leader said on Monday.

Tibetan exiles elected a Harvard scholar, Lobsang Sangay, 43, in April as their new prime minister to assume the political duties of the globe-trotting spiritual icon.

"It is a very historic moment. He will still be the religious leader and the symbol of Tibetan unity, but he has formally devolved his political role," the Buddhist monk's spokesman, Tempa Tsering, told AFP.

The Dalai Lama, 75, said in March he would give up his role as the Tibetan movement's political leader, transferring powers to a newly-elected head of the government-in-exile based in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamshala.

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"networkedblogs.com" - WikiLeaks: Saudis Often Warned U.S. About Oil Speculators

http://networkedblogs.com/iuEb0

Further evidence of the vacuity of the ‘war for oil’ argument. Much of the price for oil is today determined in the derivatives market by Wall Street speculators rather than by producers or suppliers. The underlying commodity usually has a minimum impact on the actual price. But the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will not investigate this for the same reason why it was prevented from investigating the banks. Because Wall Street owns the executive branch.

Kevin Hall: The Saudis have been saying for years something should be done to curb the influence of banks that are speculating on the price of oil

The Palestine Papers are as damning as the Balfour Declaration. The Palestinian “Authority” – one has to put this word in quotation marks – was prepared, and is prepared to give up the “right of return” of perhaps seven million refugees to what is now Israel for a “state” that may be only 10 per cent (at most) of British mandate Palestine.

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"Mark Hennessy" - Oxfam Warns of Mass Hunger Over Food Prices

Published on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 by the Irish Times

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0531/1224298145343.html

by Mark Hennessy

Prices of staple foods will more than double over the next two decades unless urgent action is taken to change the rules of world agriculture, Oxfam has warned, raising fears that hundreds of millions more could face hunger.

Maize, one of the main foods of the world’s poor, will cost between 120 per cent and 180 per cent more by 2030, with up to half of the price hike coming from the impact of climate change, said the London-based charity.

“Depleting natural resources, a scramble for fertile land and water, and the gathering pace of climate change is already making the situation worse,” it said, in a report titled Growing a Better Future. The dangers, caused by demand outstripping production, threaten to erase much of the “steady progress in the fight against hunger” made over recent decades, said Oxfam.

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“UPI” - 'Good Gut Bacteria' May Help Fight Obesity

http://blogs.mercola.com/sites/vitalvotes/archive/2011/05/31/good-gut-bacteria-may-help-fight-obesity.aspx

Daily intake of a specific form of lactic acid bacteria could help prevent obesity and reduce low-level inflammation.

Rats who were given the bacterium from before birth until adulthood put on significantly less weight than other rats, even though both groups of rats ate a similar diet.

UPI reports:

“The study ... found the rats given lactobacilli had a richer and better composition of the bacteria which occur naturally in the intestines. A healthy gut flora should contain a large proportion of ‘good bacteria,’ such as lactic acid bacteria -- found in yogurt, cheese, sauerkraut, pickles, beer, wine, cider, chocolate and other fermented foods”.

Sources:

  UPI May 25, 2011