Author Archives: gt67dx1

Quote of the Day: Let’s Go To War In Syria

by gt67dx1 Posted on May 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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From John McCain and Lindsey Graham, beating the drums for yet another military intervention in the Middle East:

There are many options at our disposal, including military options short of boots on the ground in Syria, that can make a positive impact on this crisis, which is destabilizing the region.

I have one question for McCain and Graham about this: what if these “options” don’t work? What’s next? Have they given this even a moment’s thought?

I know this is hardly a novel insight, but the crisis in Syria has really rubbed my nose in just how capriciously conservatives have come to treat war. They no longer even consider it an especially difficult decision to make, let alone a last resort. It’s just a routine extension of foreign policy.

The chances that an American intervention could have a positive outcome in Syria strike me as close to zero. Nevertheless, the war crowd is raring to dive in anyway. They have no idea what we should do; no idea what the outcome might be; and most importantly, seemingly no idea of how many ways the entire operation could go wrong. All they know is that there’s a bad guy somewhere in the vicinity of Israel, so we ought to go in and kick his ass.

It’s astonishing. I’m no isolationist, and I’m no pacifist. But at the very least I think war should be treated as a deadly serious matter. When did it become such a casual thing?

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Quote of the Day: Let’s Go To War In Syria

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CDC Reports That Lots of Kids Still Suffer From Lead Poisoning

by gt67dx1 Posted on April 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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Via Susie Cagle of Grist, here’s the latest from the CDC on blood lead levels in young children. We’ve known for a long time that lead is dangerous in much smaller concentrations than previously thought, and last year the CDC finally adopted a “reference level” of 5 ug/dl for the study of lead in kids. In its latest study, CDC reports that a total of 2.6 percent of children age 1-5 have blood lead levels above 5 ug/dl. That’s bad (though better than it used to be), but it’s also not evenly distributed. If you’re black, or poor, or live in old housing, the odds that your kids have elevated lead levels is much higher. The chart below tells the story.

As the CDC says, “Childhood exposure to lead can have lifelong consequences.” This includes cognitive damage that reduces IQ and contributes to poor performance in school. It also produces cognitive damage that increases the propensity to commit violent crime. But you knew that already, right?

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CDC Reports That Lots of Kids Still Suffer From Lead Poisoning

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NAF Proposes Big Expansion of Social Security

by gt67dx1 Posted on April 3, 2013

Mother Jones

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It’s time for liberals to fight back on Social Security! Today, the New America Foundation released a plan that not only declines to endorse any kind of compromise on Social Security that would cut benefits, but proposes that we add a brand new benefit:

We propose to replace most of the country’s current, inadequate, hybrid public and private retirement system with a two-part, wholly public system called Expanded Social Security. Expanded Social Security would have two distinct parts. The first part, Social Security A, would be similar to the current Social Security Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program, which provides a retirement benefit related to earnings. The second part of Expanded Social Security would be a new universal flat benefit, Social Security B, to supplement the traditional earnings-related benefit that would continue to be provided by Social Security A.

….If we assume that Social Security benefits are maintained at current levels and that there are no additional cuts to the program, we propose to set Social Security B at $11,669 per year for all elderly earners.

How much would this cost? A little over 1 percent of GDP to fully fund current Social Security with no benefits cuts, and about 3.7 percent of GDP to fund the new Social Security B. Altogether, call it about 5 percent of GDP. That’s….a lot. The authors suggest that current Social Security would be fully funded via higher payroll taxes, while Social Security B would be funded by “either general revenues or a new dedicated tax or taxes, which might include portions of a federal value-added tax (VAT).” The chart on the right compares the benefits under current Social Security vs. the NAF plan.

The basic contention here is that old-style corporate pensions are pretty much gone, and 401(k)-style programs are a disaster. So we should just ditch them entirely and beef up Social Security so that it’s a sufficient retirement program all by itself. I still haven’t been able to quite convince myself that 401(k)s are the disaster area that a lot of people say they are, but the evidence on this score is certainly fairly hazy. It’s quite possible that 401(k)s really are failures.

In any case, this is the first serious shot across the bow from the forces who not only don’t want to compromise on Social Security, but want to expand it. I expect to hear a lot more along these lines in the near future.

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NAF Proposes Big Expansion of Social Security

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Bottled water doesn’t actually come from where you think it does

by gt67dx1 Posted on March 15, 2013

Bottled water doesn’t actually come from where you think it does

By Susie Cagle

Are you still hung up on Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s post-State of the Union weird water flub? Well, Peter Gleick sure is. The author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water (and the underhanded liberator of those climate-denying documents from the Heartland Institute) has been researching bottled water for years, and after Rubio’s odd moment with a bottle of Poland Spring, Gleick saw his chance to finally nail Poland Spring bottler Nestlé on where the water actually comes from.

A “distinct character profile” and not quite 1/3 legit? Sounds Rubio-appropriate. Mother Jones reports:

In researching the book, Gleick said he found that most of the companies that he talked to were cagey about their water sources. “They don’t like to advertise that fact, and there’s no legal requirement that they say on their label where the water comes from,” he says. As a result, despite spending $11 billion a year on bottled water, most Americans don’t know much about the origins of these beverages.

There are a few rules that bottled-water brands have to follow, however. In order to be called “spring water,” according to the EPA, a product has to be either “collected at the point where water flows naturally to the earth’s surface or from a borehole that taps into the underground source.” Unlike the term “spring water,” other terms like “glacier water” or “mountain water” aren’t regulated and “may not indicate that the water is necessarily from a pristine area,” according to the EPA.

Gleick found that only about 55 percent of bottled waters are actual spring water. The other 45 percent of brands is mostly treated tap water. Aquafina, PepsiCo’s bottled water brand, and Dasani, which is Coke’s, are from municipal sources. …

The murky facts around bottled-water sources prompted the Environmental Working Group (EWG) to survey the industry’s overall transparency and disclosure and issue a report card. Researchers found that 18 percent of bottled-water brands give zero information about where they come from. Thirty-two percent of the 173 bottled-water brands failed to disclose information about their treatment procedures or water purity on the label.

In 2012, according to Gleick, Americans drank more bottled water than in any year before. Sure, you can make a lot of cool stuff out of all the detritus resulting from our bottled-water culture, but let’s just stick with the Nalgene, ok? Oh god but please, please wash it once in a while.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Bottled water doesn’t actually come from where you think it does

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Whole Foods to label frankenfoods by 2018

by gt67dx1 Posted on March 8, 2013

Whole Foods to label frankenfoods by 2018

By Susie Cagle

Out of the pure goodness of its big corporate heart, Whole Foods wants you to know if there are any GMOs in your $8 kombucha and $30 take-out salad.

Several states are kicking around proposals to require labels on genetically modified foods, but the (w)holier-than-thou natural foods giant waits for no government! It will wait for its suppliers, though. Whole Foods announced today that, by 2018, it will require genetically modified foods be labeled as such.

“We are as excited about this announcement as we are dedicated to supporting transparency and our customers’ right to know what’s in their food,” read the statement from Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb and COO A.C. Gallo. “By 2018, we will require our supplier partners to label products containing GMO ingredients, and we will work in collaboration with them as they transition to sourcing non-GMO ingredients or to clearly labeling products with ingredients containing GMOs.”

Here’s Robb reading more Whole Foods PR off a teleprompter. (Also, when I think Whole Foods offices I think earth tones, not hot pink, but that’s not a judgment.)

“We are the first national grocery chain to set a deadline for full GMO transparency,” the statement reads. But the announcement comes on the heels of rumblings that its food culture foil and market dominator Walmart has been kind of on the same trip. Lately even Monsanto is kind of open to the idea of GMO labels. Are these really proactive policies, or are companies just seeing the writing on the wall and the legislation to come?

Either way, cool moves, Whole Foods. But I still kind of hate you, John “Crazy Eyes” “What’s the Big Deal About Climate Change?” “Unchecked Capitalism Rocks” Mackey.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Whole Foods to label frankenfoods by 2018

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The Last Fish

by gt67dx1 Posted on March 3, 2013

Monica May

on

Heavenly Sweet Potatoes

1 minute ago

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The Last Fish

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