Despite Obesity Crisis, Govt Slow to Rein in Fast Food Industry
December 26, 2011
By IPS
By Elizabeth Whitman
“There is something seriously wrong with you if you are still eating fast food.” –KTRN
When the fast food chain McDonald’s decided to add oatmeal to its menu in January 2011, it literally sugar-coated the offering as a “portable, affordable and balanced breakfast solution… to help make it easier and more inviting for our guests to eat more whole grains and fruits”.
Although a single serving of plain oatmeal has one gramme of sugar, one serving (253 grammes) of McDonald’s fruit and maple oatmeal with brown sugar contains 32 grammes of sugar. One serving of the same oatmeal, without brown sugar, contains 18 grammes of sugar, according to the company’s nutrition facts.
“Why would McDonald’s… take a venerable ingredient like oatmeal and turn it into expensive junk food?” lamented New York Times columnist Mark Bittman in February 2011.
McDonald’s oatmeal, he pointed out, “contains more sugar than a Snickers bar and (is) only 10 fewer calories than a McDonald’s cheeseburger or Egg McMuffin”.
But critics say McDonald’s uncanny ability to turn an inherently healthy food into an unnaturally processed product (the oatmeal itself contains seven ingredients, including “natural flavour”, according to Bittman) is not even the most egregious of the stunts that large food corporations manage to pull.
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7 Basic Things You Won’t Believe You’re All Doing Wrong
December 26, 2011
Cracked.Com
7. Pooping: What could be simpler than taking a good crap? Even babies are good at it. You might be surprised, then, to find out that even those of us who can burp without throwing up get this wrong every single day.
Chances are the pooping facility nearest you is a sitting toilet, a relatively recent invention that flushed its way into mankind’s heart with the advent of indoor plumbing in the 19th century. Indoor plumbing has turned out pretty well for the most part, but the pooping style that came with it definitely has not. Pooping on a modern sitting toilet is a big part of where hemorrhoids come from, and it can also causediverticular disease, an age-related condition that pretty much only occurs in parts of the world where sitting toilets are used, and which can lead to a range of pleasantries up to and including colonic obstruction. And things aren’t getting better: The last few decades have seen a rise in popularity of “comfort height” toilets that sit two to four inches higher off the ground than older models and that make our pooping predicament even worse.
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The Champion of Painkillers
December 26, 2011
Pro Publica
by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber
The news about narcotic painkillers is increasingly dire: Overdoses now kill nearly 15,000 people a year — more than heroin and cocaine combined. In some states, the painkiller death toll exceeds that of car crashes.
The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared the overdoses from opioid drugs like OxyContin an “epidemic.” And a growing group of experts doubts that they work for long-term pain.
But the pills continue to have an influential champion in the American Pain Foundation, which describes itself as the nation’s largest advocacy group for pain patients. Its message: The risk of addiction is overblown, and the drugs are underused.
What the nonprofit doesn’t highlight is the money behind that message.
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TSA To Start Searching Ground Transportation
December 26, 2011
RT
By RT
While two-out-of-five Americans are going to try to avoid air travel this holiday season to avoid TSA pat-downs, strip searches and never-ending security line-ups, they might not find comfort in the glimmering Greyhound stations across the US.
Don’t think a bus or train ticket will keep Uncle Sam from making your vacation this year uncomfortable. The Transportation Security Administration says that they are turning up the heat on potential problem-causers by installing more agents in not just airport checkpoints but in terminals for terrestrial traffic as well.
“We are not the Airport Security Administration,” Ray Dineen, the air marshal in charge of the TSA office in Charlotte, tells the Los Angeles Times. “We take that transportation part seriously.”
How serious? The TSA’s secret counter-terrorism team that tries to topple crimes in transportation centers have run more than 9,000 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in 2011, and the Department of Homeland Security are asking for an extra $24 million for 2012 to organize even more teams to put in bus stations and Amtrak terminals next year.
Currently the TSA commands 25 “viper” teams — what they call the two-dozen-plus Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response units that conduct the checkpoints from coast-to-coast.
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The Corporations That Occupy Congress
December 26, 2011 by William
Filed under Government
December 26, 2011
Reuters
By David Kay Johnston
Some of the biggest companies in the United States have been firing workers and in some cases lobbying for rules that depress wages at the very time that jobs are needed, pay is low, and the federal budget suffers from a lack of revenue.
Last month Citizens for Tax Justice and an affiliate issued “Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers 2008-10″. It showed that 30 brand-name companies paid a federal income tax rate of minus 6.7 percent on $160 billion of profit from 2008 through 2010 compared to a going corporate tax rate of 35 percent. All but one of those 30 companies reported lobbying expenses in Washington.
Another report, by Public Campaign, shows that 29 of those companies spent nearly half a billion dollars over those three years lobbying in Washington for laws and rules that favor their interests. Only Atmos Energy, the 30th company, reported no lobbying.
Public Campaign replaced Atmos with Federal Express, the package delivery company that paid a smidgen of tax — $37 million, or less than one percent of the $4.2 billion in profit it reported in 2008 through 2010.
For the amount spent lobbying, the companies could have hired 3,100 people at $50,000 for wages and benefits to do productive work.
Click here for the full report.
Sheldon Adelson: The Deep Pockets Behind Newt Gingrich
December 26, 2011 by William
Filed under Government
December 26, 2011
World News Daily
By Eli Clifton
The funding behind Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions for Winning the Future, an independent political committee, offers an intriguing clue into the financial deep pockets backing Gingrich’s candidacy. This week, McClatchy revealed that American Solutions footed the $8 million bill for private jet charters while Gingrich weighed whether to enter the 2008 and 2012 presidential races. Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson was the biggest funder of American Solutions, contributing $7.65 million and rumored to have committed $20 million to a pro-Gingrich super PAC, a report denied by an Adelson spokesperson. Whether the report is true or not, the facts increasingly show that the billionaire casino magnate is a central figure in Newt Gingrich’s political career.
Sands Corporation CEO Sheldon Adelson is based in Las Vegas but has business and political interests in Macau, China and Israel. In Israel, Adelson’s importance stems from his close friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ownership of Israel HaYom, a free daily newspaper which supports Netanyahu’s Likud party. Back in the U.S., Adelson sits on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition and is outspoken about his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
During the George W. Bush presidency, Adelson opposed efforts to jump start peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians and even took sides against the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) when the organization supported peace talks. “I don’t continue to support organizations that help friends committing suicide just because they say they want to jump,” Adelson told the Jewish Telegraph Agency.
Gingrich, who characterized Palestinians as “terrorists” during a December 10th GOP debate and told the Jewish Channel that Palestians are an “invented” people, would seem to be mirroring the hardline positions taken by his early, and cash flush, benefactor.
“Sheldon has always loved Newt. He stuck with him through all of this,” Fred Zeidman, an Adelson friend and major player in the American Jewish community who is backing Mitt Romney told The Daily Beast’s Aram Roston.
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Manchester Police To Hold Citizen Police Academy
December 26, 2011
Suburban Journals
The Manchester Police Department is accepting applications for its 2012 Citizen Police Academy.
The free classes will run from 7 to 9 p.m. for 10 Tuesdays beginning Jan. 10 at police headquarters, 200 Highlands Blvd.
Classes are designed to provide residents with an in-depth look at law enforcement operations and working relationships with other emergency responders.
There will be opportunities for a ride-along with police.
Applications may be obtained at the Manchester Police Department, by calling (636)-227-1410 or at the city’s website, www.manchestermo.gov
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The Kevin Trudeau Show: 12-24-11
Which is it…is the government putting pressure on the media, or is the media putting pressure on the government? Plus, Fred Van Liew gives you the facts behind electromagnetic chaos and how it is virtually killing you and your children. Find out what you can do to protect yourself and your family before it’s too late!
Health:
Exercises For Every Mood
Nutrient-Rich, Low-Calorie Diets Reprogram Fat Cells
Government:
White House Emails Show Staffer Calling Fox News’ Bret Baier A ‘Lunatic’
Congressional Trading on Advance Info Not Illegal: SEC
Congress Mulls Trading Curbs for Its Own
Abnormal Returns From Common Stock Investments From The U.S. Senate
A Perk of Power: Trading In Companies You Oversee
Conspiracy:
Whistleblower Found Dead!
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10 Economic Myths That Need To Be Corrected
December 23, 2011
Silver Circle Underground
By Silver Circle
1. This is capitalism. We live in a capitalistic country.
We can argue over the best label for the economic system in the United States of America, but there can be little argument that “capitalism” or “free market” are among the worst and most inaccurate labels for what we have in America today. With quantity and price controls rampant throughout multiple, major U.S. markets, regulations galore, and some of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, the United States is a heavily controlled, heavily regulated, and heavily taxed mixed market economy. Of the ten planks in the Communist Manifesto, seven have become policy in the United States, and the government is working on the remaining three! Can that be fairly characterized as capitalism? Take a look at this list of U.S. government agencies, notice just how unbelievably many of them there are, and observe just how many aspects of life in America they regulate. It’s a Soviet commissar’s dream, and any true capitalist’s nightmare!
2. Deregulation in the 90s led to the recent economic crash.
Okay, Clinton signed one law in the 1990s that lifted federal regulation of one aspect of financial markets, and critics of deregulation like to say “We deregulated financial markets in the 1990s,” as if we completely overhauled the entire federal regulatory system, but that’s a big stretch and very misleading. Booms and busts themselves are actually caused by government intervention into the economy. Libertarian economists who understand this (many of them belonging to the “Austrian School of Economics”) have been incredibly accurate predictors of economic booms and busts. They predicted the Great Depression, the stagflation of the 1970s (that their opponents had always claimed was impossible), and the most recent credit and housing collapse. Their predictive powers are the result of their accurate theories and understanding. Here, I’ll let “F.A. Hayek” rap it for you.
3. We need more regulation to keep big corporations in line.
If that were true, why don’t more big corporations support deregulation? Instead they seem to support more big government. Go ahead, browse OpenSecrets.org for yourself and see which politicians get the most donations from big corporations. The fact is, regulations– like most laws in this country– are written by corporate lobbyists to give big corporations an advantage over small businesses that do not have the resources or money to comply with costly regulation, putting them out of business and handing over their market share to the big companies, all by way of government regulation. Critics of moneyed corporate interests contradictorily believe that these interests pull the strings of government and that more government regulation will reign in these interests. Which one is it?
Click here for the full report.
The Ron Paul Portfolio
December 23, 2011
The Wall Street Journal
By Jason Zweig
“Here is just another example at how different Ron Paul is from the pack.” –KTRN
Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul marches to his own drummer in politics – and in his investment portfolio, too.
Here at Total Return, we’ve looked at hundreds of the annual financial-disclosure forms in which the members of Congress reveal their assets and trades – and we’ve never seen a more unorthodox portfolio than Ron Paul’s. (In fact, The Wall Street Journal revealed problematic trading in Congress more than a year and a half before the “60 Minutes” episode that recently raised a ruckus over the same topic, but that’s another matter.)
According to data available through his 2010 “Form A” financial disclosure statement, filed last May, Rep. Paul’s portfolio is valued between $2.44 million and $5.46 million. (Congressional disclosures are given in ranges, not precise amounts.)
Most members of Congress, like many Americans, hold some real estate, a few bonds or bond mutual funds, some individual stocks and a bundle of stock funds. Give or take a few percentage points, a typical Congressional portfolio might have 10% in cash, 10% in bonds or bond funds, 20% in real estate, and 60% in stocks or stock funds.
But Ron Paul’s portfolio isn’t merely different. It’s shockingly different.
Yes, about 21% of Rep. Paul’s holdings are in real estate and roughly 14% in cash. But he owns no bonds or bond funds and has only 0.1% in stock funds. Furthermore, the stock funds that Rep. Paul does own are all “short,” or make bets against, U.S. stocks. One is a “double inverse” fund that, on a daily basis, goes up twice as much as its stock benchmark goes down.
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