Economy Tyson Need Second Stimulus NYT Aug 28, 2010

Tags: Economy Stimulus Needed Laura Tyson, Financial Deregulation by Bush, Poor Economy Larger Deficits, Republicans President Hoover's Solution Cut Spending and The Great Depression

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Why We Need a Second Stimulus

By LAURA TYSON

Published: August 28, 2010

Laura Tyson, the Chairperson in Clinton's Council of Economic advisors, is a flexible, straight forward and very likable top-notch economist. She presents a clear and strong reasons that a strong second stimulus program will result in a lower deficit and because a stronger economy will bring in more tax dollars.

Stock Market bubbles as well as crashes result from our inherently human behavior of going with the crowd based on our emotional makeup. Unfortunately the crowd is more wrong than right about just about everything as many of us has experienced including myself. Logic and reality fails us when panic sets in and kept us out of the stock market when it went up sharply. Don't watch the stock market daily!

It is not an economic recession for corporations which is a good thing where the economic measurement called Gross Domestic Product or GDP is close to even before the recession started. Technically we are out of the recession because corporations are making plenty of money with record profits.

However, the loss of jobs, especially among Blue collar workers, is especially horrible if we count everyone not only out of work, but those working part-time, or are no longer looking for work and are not counted in the 9.5% unemployment. The corporations are relying on overworked domestic and overseas workers to keep their products supply going. The Reagan administration started importing jobs across borders and overseas with abandon . Unemployment among college graduates is 4.5%, the potential major source of excess consumer spending.

Bush's incompetent, greedy, and corrupt administration sent 50,000 corporations overseas during his terms, by giving many manufacturing plants with his tax breaks allowing them to keep money tax-free overseas and gave them one year to bring back the money to the USA for one year without any tax! If Obama makes the tax cuts permanent, it will increase the deficits by 1.3 Trillion Dollars!

Regulatory Agencies including the Securities Exchange Commission who are supposed to protect our investments and banks was like having Foxes to Defend the Hen House which led to the final collapse our lifetime savings, our jobs, and led to huge deficits. Remember, Bush and Paulson designed the bailout bill and submitted it to congress. It was passed during the Bush Administration with many congresspersons and Senators from both parties opposing the bailout including one of my Senators, Wyden (D-OR).

Bush's Republican congress passed the two financial bank bills in 1999 and 2,000 which led to our collapse, by keeping Bill Clinton busy with the overblown and unproven accusations of murder, financial fraud, and a whole list of Troopergate where lies went far. Clinton also made the mistake of believing Greenspan, Rubin, and Larry Summers who deviated from his longtime belief about how economies work instead of his wife Hillary Clinton. Not many know that she actually ran the governorship in Arkansas for four years and ran the campaign for Bill Clinton so he "won" 5 elections. Hillary should have been the President instead of Obama! She has more balls! She should have a strong Vice Presidential role and Make Joseph Biden Secretary of Defense!

Jim Kawakami, August 30, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Economic Stimulus (Jobs Bills)

Excerpts: … The situation would be even worse without the $787 billion fiscal stimulus package passed in 2009. The conventional wisdom about the stimulus package is wrong: it has not failed. It is working as intended. Its spending increases and tax cuts have boosted demand and added about three million more jobs than the economy otherwise would have. Without it, the unemployment rate would be about 11.5 percent. Because about 36 percent of the money remains to be spent, more jobs will be created — about 500,000 by the end of the year. …

Federal aid to the states is especially important because they finance education. Although the jobs crisis is primarily a crisis of demand, it also reflects a mismatch between the education of the work force and the education required for jobs in today’s economy. Consider how the unemployment rate varies by education level: it’s more than 14 percent for those without a high school degree, under 10 percent for those with one, only about 5 percent for those with a college degree and even lower for those with advanced degrees. …

An increase in government investment in roads, airports and other kinds of public infrastructure would be cost-effective, too, as measured by the number of jobs created per dollar of spending. And it would help reduce the road congestion, airport delays and freight bottlenecks that reduce productivity and make the United States a less attractive place to do business. The American Society of Engineers has identified more than $2.2 trillion in public infrastructure needs nationwide, and a 2008 study by the Congressional Budget Office found that, on strict cost-benefit grounds, it would make sense to increase annual spending on transportation projects alone by 74 percent. …

But can the government afford this additional spending? The answer is yes. Despite the large federal deficit, global savers, including savings-hungry American households, are snapping up United States government securities at very low interest rates. And they will continue to do so as long as there is ample slack in the economy and inflation remains subdued. Over the next few years, there is little risk that federal deficits will crowd out private investment or precipitate a crisis of confidence in the American government, a spike in American interest rates or a sudden drop in the dollar.

On the other hand, as long as private demand remains weak, the risk is uncomfortably high that trying to reduce the deficit — by cutting spending or increasing taxes — will tip the economy back into recession or condemn it to years of faltering growth and debilitating unemployment. In fact, either outcome would depress tax revenue and could mean larger deficits. … End Excerpts

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Why We Need a Second Stimulus NY Times Op-Ed Laura Tyson, UCB School of Business, Aug 28, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29tyson.html?_r=1&sq=Tyson&st=cse&scp=3&pagewanted=all

OUR national debate about fiscal policy has become skewed, with far too much focus on the deficit and far too little on unemployment. There is too much worry about the size of government, and too little appreciation for how stimulus spending has helped stabilize the economy and how more of the right kind of government spending could boost job creation and economic growth. By focusing on the wrong things, we are in serious danger of failing to do the right things to help the economy recover from its worst labor market crisis since the Great Depression.

The primary cause of the labor market crisis is a collapse in private demand — the same problem that bedeviled the economy in the 1930s. In the wake of the financial shocks at the end of 2008, spending by American households and businesses plummeted, and companies responded by curbing production and shedding workers. By late 2009, in response to unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus, household and business spending began to recover. But by the second quarter of this year, economic growth had slowed to 1.6 percent, according to a government estimate issued Friday. Clearly, the pace of recovery is far slower than what is needed to restore the millions of jobs that have been lost.

Households and businesses are on a saving spree to rebuild their balance sheets. Their spending relative to income has fallen more than at any time since the end of World War II. So there is now a substantial gap between the supply of goods and services the economy is capable of producing and the demand for them. This gap is starkly reflected by the 23 million Americans who are looking for full-time jobs and the millions more who have left the labor force because they could not find one. … http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29tyson.html?_r=1&sq=Tyson&st=cse&scp=3&pagewanted=all

Health Safety Misinformation Blood Transfusions Eggs Climate Change Immigrant Sexual Assaults by Guards

Tags: Health Safety Misinformation Blood Transfusions Eggs Climate Change Immigrants and Nannies Assaults Rape,

I found that the PBS program Need to Know at 10:00 PM on Friday’s is quite good. It tackles 3-4 important news for you not covered by the Corporate Media and not often enough by the New York Times. I normally tape it.

Watching the program Saturday morning brought out details on many topics I did not know such as:

The CDC for the first time since Republicans either controlled the Presidency or Congress to allow necessary government oversight over problems with blood transfusions including many toxic organisms and viruses not covered now.

I did know that blood transfusions often have effects on the recipient not noticed immediately. For example the effect of the White Blood Cells which sees a foreign body could damage their organs. I usually refuse blood transfusions unless they remove the White Blood Cells which increases the expense of blood so it is not widely practiced.

The Democratic House run by Nancy Pelosi passed one year ago was precisely on a bill to make clearer the responsibility of the FDA for egg safety including how chickens are raised and fed, the latter passed on to the Department of Agriculture which is an arm of Big Business Agriculture for a long time. The Republicans on the Senate are still trying to stop its passage. Garner Harris of the New York Times talked about the problems. I have not read his article yet.

Climate Change has been widely reported in the New York Times, but its conceptual and measured reality is not penetrating the distracted brain of the average American. I see the problem of reporting scientific certainties is that the layperson reporters who report it do not understand it well enough to report it in clearly in layperson’s language. Yes, the floods in Pakistan and Fires in Russia are likely related. A single incident is not a prediction, but it sure correlates with the Climate Models.

Recently I read an article on Ocean oscillation, normally not for lay readers. It tries to address why the Central Pacific is now getting warm which now causes weaker El Ninos.

The East Pacific Ocean off the western coast of Ecuador and Peru gets warmer from El Nino’s which tends to make fishing poor and even causes droughts and kills sea life off the Galapagos Islands because the cold water nutrients such as plankton from Antarctica waters no longer get to the surface. The warm waters also prevent the natural mixing of cold and warm water bringing nutrients to the surface and oxygen to the cold water.

When Oregon gets warm current from the equatorial pacific, it creates a dead zone hundreds of square miles in area which kills off fish life and forces them to migrate.

The warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico produce the Gulf Current which goes north along our eastern coast and then normally sinks in the North Atlantic in a convection manner to send warm waters to Western Europe. The Gulf waters normally sink in the North Atlantic which is necessary for flow to occur.

Both the melting of the sea and land ice (no salt) in Greenland and Arctic have diluted the salty water and its increased warmth has caused the flow of this current to Europe by One-Third. About a year also it did not slow much up our eastern coast. Looking at temperature gradients obtained by satellites, we can see that waters near the coast is quite warm in spots.

The consequence may be that the right hurricane may be able to travel further in warmer waters and reach further north. The warmer waters also cause an updraft so the Northeast may experience the same problem to a lesser extent with drought observed in our Southeastern states not too long ago.

Since Americans think with our emotions too strongly, the message must be emotion packed even though it can be a flawed way of thinking for everything we learn. Emotion is necessary for learning because it forms a chemical which helps in our memory saving process.

About 30 years ago, only half of the college students were able to think abstractly well. It think it is a lot worse now. So abstract ideas must always be explained with concrete examples and stories. I am afraid this malady has even infected the best of schools. In recent years, half of the Ivy school seniors failed to place the time of the Civil War within a ten year time slot in a multiple choice test which could be passed with some thinking! I loved multiple choice tests because it allowed me not to read books for some of my courses and still do well.

To think, we must know facts, mucho facts. It has been proven that reading online means skimming everything instead of slow reading so we can remember things. The first place new information goes is the working memory which is small in capacity and stays there for about 4 seconds to about a minute depending on our genetics before transferring to the more permanent memory store, the hippocampus. The memory is strengthened in the hippocampus by repetition which results in extra synaptic connections the neurons. It may take years for it to go to permanent memory in the cortex.

To think, facts from the permanent memory must be retrieved into the working memory bank. Ideas worth considering do not normally come from a blank brain.

Having a quick brain and practising SAT exams helps enormously in making up for educational deficiencies. It normally does not help Private School students as much as less demanding public ones. One Chinese immigrant, at great sacrifice by her parents, took the SAT course and improved her score by 1,000 points!

Finally, Need to Know, has also reported on sexual assaults on Nannies and temporarily detained women immigrants. Attack of the strong on the weak reflects a lot about our degrading morality no matter our level of education. A Rat is a Rat no matter how much money they make as we have seen during the Wall Street forced Financial Crisis.

On Bloomberg television, a CEO said that the Financial Crisis has given us the excuse to fire employees who reduce our bottom-line. She means those who are older and due to get pensions and healthcare and have higher salaries need to be fired. Not reported very often is that the GDP, our economic indicator, shows that our economy has recovered as far as corporations are concerned and are now making record profits and GDP close to that before the crisis, while the exploited employed workers live only to work and sleep a little.

I think Americans are going crazy with some closer to this state than others because people thrive on social interactions with like minded people, something largely missing in our society shown in the popularity of FACE BOOK where people are hungry for connections.

See link for Need to Know Stories at my blog link below.

Jim Kawakami, August 28, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Blood test: What you don’t know about blood

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/video-blood-test-what-you-dont-know-about-blood/3036/ August 20th, 2010

For decades, blood has been called “the gift of life.” And while its image was tarnished in the 1980s when HIV and hepatitis contaminated the blood supply, better screening tests have made donated blood the safest it’s ever been. Each year, close to five million Americans receive a blood transfusion. ...

Vaccines Flu Over 65 Lower Antibody Titers Safe Clinical Trials Influenza CA A-H1N1, A-Perth H3N2, and B-Brisbane Standard and High Dose 4X Higher Mus

Tags: Vaccines 2010, CA H1N1, A-Perth H3N2, B-Brisbane, Standard, Fluzone-High Dose Seniors,

… Persons aged ≥65 years are at greater risk for hospitalization and death from seasonal influenza compared with other age groups,[1,2] and they respond to vaccination with lower antibody titers to influenza hemagglutinin (an established correlate of protection against influenza) compared with younger adults.[3] …

The H1N1 Swine Bird Flu first appeared in 1918 and again in 1958. Luckily for the world, the H1N1 virus has been around for some time before the declared Pandemic. The virus attacked adults and young who were not six or older in 1958 and those who were not exposed in some form from the mother or any substance that causes our immune system to develop resistance to the virus.

In 1918 the Bird Flu Pandemic killed babies and young adults. During the current epidemic the H1N1 virus mutated at least 300 times. A careful study of these mutations showed that even though the virus guts mutated extensively, the attachment point structure remained largely the same so future mutations, unless we are unlucky will not kill many people. Our immune response is to the attachment structure. The Flu Death gene resides inside the whole structure present in the 1918 flu, but not the current H1N1 virus.

Not often mentioned or appreciated is that the immune response of younger children and adults is often quite strong which produces lots of Cytokines which causes inflammation at the infection site. It is especially bad in the lungs because cytokines also bring lots of water with it. Many die from bacterial pneumonia, a form of drowning.

The reason that so many young children infected with H1N1 e-coli in hamburgers have their kidneys shut down is that cytokines in large amounts damage organs too. When the SARS virus was killing essentially everyone who got infected in Hong Kong, the nurses and doctors were dying too! Someone realized that patients had to be treated with massive doses of Prednisone to ramp down the immune response of the patients.

Luckily about half of the critical patients with H1N1 got Prednisone or more would have died. How about the other half? They must have read the "smart" Harvard article analyzing the Chinese doctors use of Prednisone and declared the results invalid! These smart guys forgot that the doctors were not doing a research study, they were trying and did save their patients!

For the first time in many years, influenza B has been added to the seasonal vaccine, and also another mutant form of influenza A-Perth H3N2. I am now not aware of the history of these flu viruses so I cannot advise you how dangerous they may be.

Incompetence of those running the CDC and its political head did not realize that seniors died from seasonal flu because the vaccine did not work well because an older person’s immune system may have been too weak to develop resistance to the flu virus. This is seen often in young children younger than six and so the Obama administration clinically tested the new vaccines on both young children, pregnant mothers, and was extended to seniors for this year to determine dose in recommendations.

This led to the High Dose Vaccine which is four times the dose previously used. Side effects increased to 1.1 percent may produce fevers as high as 102 degrees and rarely over this. Side Effects will be monitored very close as the early vaccinations start in September instead of the usual October. I plan to get the vaccine in late September when I see my doctor for other tests. It will be injected into the muscles for slower release.

Let logic and information influence whether you get vaccinated or not. I strongly recommend the former no matter what the fear mongering crowd does.

Jim Kawakami, August 27, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Abstract and Introduction

Introduction

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/721317?sssdmh=dm1.634157&src=journalnl&uac=26057PR Persons aged ≥65 years are at greater risk for hospitalization and death from seasonal influenza compared with other age groups,[1,2] and they respond to vaccination with lower antibody titers to influenza hemagglutinin (an established correlate of protection against influenza) compared with younger adults.[3]

On December 23, 2009, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licensed an injectable inactivated trivalent influenza vaccine (Fluzone High-Dose, Sanofi-Pasteur) that contains an increased amount of influenza virus hemagglutinin antigen compared with other inactivated influenza vaccines such as Fluzone.

Fluzone High-Dose is licensed as a single dose for use among persons aged ≥65 years and will be available beginning with the 2010–11 influenza season. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) reviewed data from prelicensure clinical trials on the safety and immunogenicity of Fluzone High-Dose and expressed no preference for the new vaccine over other inactivated trivalent influenza vaccines.[4] This report summarizes the FDA-approved indications for Fluzone High-Dose and provides guidance from ACIP for its use.

Standard dose inactivated trivalent influenza vaccines contain a total of 45 µg (15 µg of each of the three recommended strains) of influenza virus hemagglutinin antigen per 0.5mL dose.[5]

In contrast, Fluzone High-Dose is formulated to contain a total of 180 µg (60 µg of each strain) of influenza virus hemagglutinin antigen in each 0.5mL dose. Like other inactivated influenza vaccines, Fluzone High-Dose is administered as an intramuscular injection.[6] Fluzone High-Dose is available as a single-dose prefilled syringe formulation and is distinguished from Fluzone by a gray syringe plunger rod. As with other 2010–11 influenza vaccines, Fluzone High-Dose will contain antigens of the three recommended virus strains: A/California/7/2009 (H1N1)-like, A/Perth/16/2009 (H3N2)-like, and B/Brisbane/60/2008-like.[7]

Immunogenicity data from three studies among persons aged ≥65 years indicated that, compared with standard dose Fluzone, preparations of Fluzone High-Dose elicited significantly higher hemagglutination inhibition (HI) titers against all three influenza virus strains that were included in seasonal influenza vaccines recommended during the study period.[8–10]

In one study, prespecified criteria for superiority, defined as when the lower 95% confidence limit of 1) a ratio of geometric mean HI titers is >1.5 for at least two strains and 2) the difference in fourfold rise of HI titers is >10% for at least two strains, were demonstrated for persons aged ≥65 years who received Fluzone High-Dose compared with Fluzone for influenza A(H1N1) and influenza A(H3N2) antigens.

Prespecified criteria for noninferiority to Fluzone were demonstrated for the influenza B antigen.[6,9] Whether the higher postvaccination immune responses observed among Fluzone High-Dose vaccine recipients will result in greater protection against influenza illness is unknown.

Solicited injection site reactions and systemic adverse events were more frequent after vaccination with Fluzone High-Dose compared with standard Fluzone, but typically were mild and transient.[8–10] In the largest study, 915 (36%) of 2,572 persons who received Fluzone High-Dose, compared with 306 (24%) of 1,275 persons who received Fluzone, reported injection site pain ≤7 days after vaccine administration.

In the same study, significantly more Fluzone High-Dose recipients (1.1%) reported moderate (>100.4°F–≤102.2°F [>38°C–≤39°C]) to severe (>102.2°F [>39°C]) fever, compared with Fluzone recipients (0.3%).[9]

ACIP Guidance for Use of Fluzone High-dose

Fluzone High-Dose may be used for persons aged ≥65 years. All persons aged ≥6 months are recommended for annual influenza vaccination beginning with the 2010–11 influenza season. ACIP has not expressed a preference for any specific licensed inactivated trivalent influenza vaccine, including Fluzone High-Dose, for use in persons aged ≥65 years.[4] Data demonstrating greater protection against influenza illness after vaccination with Fluzone High-Dose are needed to evaluate whether Fluzone High-Dose is a more effective vaccine for persons aged ≥65 years.

A 3-year postlicensure study of the vaccine effectiveness of Fluzone High-Dose compared with standard dose inactivated influenza vaccine (Fluzone) was begun in 2009 and should be completed in 2012. As with other inactivated influenza vaccines, Fluzone High-Dose should not be administered to anyone with a known hypersensitivity to egg proteins or influenza vaccine. Adverse events after receipt of any vaccine should be reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System at http://vaers.hhs.gov.

Financials Koch Brothers Billionaires Hidden Wars Against Obama and Democrats. What Will Happen to Our Investments?

Tags: Stock Market? Cramer CNBC, Koch Funding Tea Party, Roosevelt, Great Depression, Papa Koch Funded Stalin, So Did Bush Family, Boycott Brawny Paper Towels,

The Koch Brothers has funded many conservative Think Tanks and established the Libertarian Think Tank, The Cato Institute. They also fund Americans for Prosperity run by former Republican Senator Dick Army who was responsible for writing the laws passed during the Clinton administration where the Republicans controlled both the Senate and House since 1993 that made it possible for the bank frauds committed to bring our country to the brink of a Great Depression. Hidden Corporate money including Kochs are going to the propaganda arm of the Republican Big Business, The Chamber of Commerce.

On the advice of Hillary Clinton, Bill vetoed the Credit Card bill that made it very difficult for credit card holders to declare bankruptcy to wipe out their credit card debts which was a device used by Republicans in the 1980s to provide easy credit to all Americans so they could still spend money at considerably smaller wages due to the shipment of jobs overseas financed by our tax dollars. They paid companies to leave America!

It also became the major profit center for all banks by charging high interest rates as high as 30% on some pretext so Americans had to carry over debt every month. The new Credit Card bill passed by Obama will help the average Americans greatly. Competition will lower interest rates which now must be held for one year and old loan money cannot be charged increased interest rates. Don't invest in credit card companies and banks.

After the huge attack of Bill Clinton by Wealth & Power including the media and New York Times, Clinton had no choice to follow the advice of Rubin and Greenspan, his weekly advisors.

It is time for Obama and the Democrats to Man-Up and be as ruthless as the Republicans in the ads and comments.

Many of you are familiar with Jim Cramer’s Mad Money on CNBC. It is interesting what he says on http://www.bloomberg.com/ , a website for professionals verses CNBC, a website for the average investor. On Bloomberg today Cramer said that Geithner and the Obama financial team did a marvelous job in preventing the next Great Depression.

He also said we really need of a stimulus for the economy and cutting back will have the same result the Roosevelt was forced to do in 1937. The economy dropped like a stone in 1937 and 1938. Of course largest deficits in history developed during World War II which unlike the Republican predictions today led to prosperity. Jim Cramer said don’t worry about the deficit now because of low tax revenues. Grow the economy by stimulating the economy.

As I said before, it is not the unemployment that is hurting the economy directly, but what we all are afraid of happening in the future. So people who can spend are not spending. Well, not completely. For example the upscale shopping center in Eugene, Oregon is so filled with cars that it is difficult to find parking spaces. As a famous Magellan marvelous fund investor for Fidelity said, look at what is happening locally and don’t get information from the media!

http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Covert Operations: Third Richest Billionaires Koch Brothers Waging Hidden Wars Against Obama and Democrats New Yorker Jane Mayer August 30, 2010 (Jane Mayer is a great reporter. She and Abramson who is now on the editorial board of the New York Times, wrote the only honest book on how Justice Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court. Senator Spector's behavior towards Anita Hill who told the truth was so unfair that I never liked him. I am glad that a true Democrat is now running a tough race for Senator.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

Products to Boycott: Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. …

In April, 2009, Melissa Cohlmia, a company spokesperson, denied that the Kochs had direct links to the Tea Party, saying that Americans for Prosperity is “an independent organization and Koch companies do not in any way direct their activities.” Later, she issued a statement: “No funding has been provided by Koch companies, the Koch foundations, or Charles Koch or David Koch specifically to support the tea parties.” David Koch told New York, “I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.”

At the lectern in Austin, however, Venable—a longtime political operative who draws a salary from Americans for Prosperity, and who has worked for Koch-funded political groups since 1994—spoke less warily. “We love what the Tea Parties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back America!” she declared, as the crowd cheered. In a subsequent interview, she described herself as an early member of the movement, joking, “I was part of the Tea Party before it was cool!”

She explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channelled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Kochs, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.” …

Americans for Prosperity has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception. In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests, in April, 2009, Americans for Prosperity hosted a Web site offering supporters “Tea Party Talking Points.” The Arizona branch urged people to send tea bags to Obama; the Missouri branch urged members to sign up for “Taxpayer Tea Party Registration” and provided directions to nine protests. The group continues to stoke the rebellion. The North Carolina branch recently launched a “Tea Party Finder” Web site, advertised as “a hub for all the Tea Parties in North Carolina.”

The antigovernment fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and a historian, who once worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank that the Kochs fund, said, “The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.” With the emergence of the Tea Party, he said, “everyone suddenly sees that for the first time there are Indians out there—people who can provide real ideological power.” The Kochs, he said, are “trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.”

A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!” …

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests.

In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.

In a statement, Koch Industries said that the Greenpeace report “distorts the environmental record of our companies.” And David Koch, in a recent, admiring article about him in New York, protested that the “radical press” had turned his family into “whipping boys,” and had exaggerated its influence on American politics.

But Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.” …

Oddly enough, the fiercely capitalist Koch family owes part of its fortune to Joseph Stalin. Fred Koch was the son of a Dutch printer who settled in Texas and ran a weekly newspaper. Fred attended M.I.T., where he earned a degree in chemical engineering. In 1927, he invented a more efficient process for converting oil into gasoline, but, according to family lore, America’s major oil companies regarded him as a threat and shut him out of the industry. Unable to succeed at home, Koch found work in the Soviet Union.

In the nineteen-thirties, his company trained Bolshevik engineers and helped Stalin’s regime set up fifteen modern oil refineries. Over time, however, Stalin brutally purged several of Koch’s Soviet colleagues. Koch was deeply affected by the experience, and regretted his collaboration. He returned to the U.S. In the headquarters of his company, Rock Island Oil & Refining, in Wichita, he kept photographs aimed at proving that some of those Soviet refineries had been destroyed in the Second World War.

Gus diZerega, a former friend of Charles Koch, recalled, “As the Soviets became a stronger military power, Fred felt a certain amount of guilt at having helped build them up. I think it bothered him a lot.”

In 1958, Fred Koch became one of the original members of the John Birch Society, the arch-conservative group known, in part, for a highly skeptical view of governance and for spreading fears of a Communist takeover. Members considered President Dwight D. Eisenhower to be a Communist agent.

In a self-published broadside, Koch claimed that “the Communists have infiltrated both the Democrat and Republican Parties.” He wrote admiringly of Benito Mussolini’s suppression of Communists in Italy, and disparagingly of the American civil-rights movement.

“The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America,” he warned. Welfare was a secret plot to attract rural blacks to cities, where they would foment “a vicious race war.” In a 1963 speech that prefigures the Tea Party’s talk of a secret socialist plot, Koch predicted that Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.” … Read More http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all

Democracy Now Egg Recall, Human Threat Factory Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms

Tags: Egg Recall, Danger of Factory Farms, Safety in Foods, Myth All Organic Foods Safe, Profits Trumps All

I thought today’s Democracy Now with Amy Goodman www.democracynow.org is of concern to all of us. It is hard to tell where the eggs come from now because one owner controls so much of egg production in Iowa. The eggs go into foods such as Mayonnaise and many food products. I spent a week trying to find out the cause of my diarrhea which I determined to be the food I was eating. It was the organic mayonnaise!

Salmonella, like most bacteria, has different levels of deadliness. We have e-coli in our system all the time, but the e-coli produced by cows fed corn which changes the acidity of their stomachs, and allows them to survive and poison us. If you can change your diet so you won’t get heartburn or reflux, it is better not to buy the over-the-counter drugs such as Prilosec to reduce acidity and just change your diet by trial and error. This allows bacteria to die in your stomach. The acid toughened e-coli and other organism may survive reduced acidity.

It is a myth that all foods labeled organic is really organic. Crooks do just about anything to improve profits. The criteria they use is whether they can get away with it. The bigger the manufacturer, the more profitable it is to do this. That is why buying local food is much safer whether organic or not.

I read Kirby’s book on Factory Farms and the real danger it poses to all of us. Sure they are more efficient, but the wastes of antibiotics, hormones, and bacteria they spew into our water and into our food, air and drinking water, and vegetables washing waters make even organic foods more dangerous.

What has escaped much of our corporate press/media highlights of repeated showings is that there is now a deadly e-coli organism not as easily detected as H7-157 e-coli because of a difference in their biology. A quick test for H7-157 has been easy to develop, but so for this new deadly e-coli.

Salmonella in eggs and many other foods is a lot more common than most of us realize. We all get our bouts of diarrhea which normally goes away after a day or two. When I do eat manufactured foods, I try to buy organic foods which don't contain, I hope, genetically changed corn, soy beans, and canola oil used now for cooking fast foods.

As we have experienced, organic foods such as lettuce which are often washed at factory farms “washing facilities” did result in deadly e-coli organic contaminated lettuce and cheeses in places like Trader Joe’s. I keep changing brands until I find one that is the purest. I don’t buy pre-washed organic vegetables and buy fresh whole lettuce and wash it myself in generous salt solutions and water rinse.

Chickens always contain the most deadly organisms so should be well cooked.

Old milk cows are the source of most hamburger which are put in small stalls where they stand in shit and urine. The antibiotics and hormones used in their feed of corn gives us unwanted growth hormones from BST used to accelerate milk production. One Florida Fox TV news station tried to broadcast this fact years ago. The reporters refused to downplay these facts and were fired. They sued, but we already know the Bush appointed judges are bought by corporations. Luckily many dairy farmers are weaning themselves away from this BST treatment. Small dairy farms with cows grazing on grass is just a myth, especially in California.

With 500 cows being processed each day, it is very difficult to prevent contamination completely. For Fast Foods hamburgers, MacDonalds is probably the safest because it has its own inspectors at these factories and they have a more discipline manner of cooking all foods. Not so safe is all the high fructose corn syrup put into their sauces and dips. Why consume a food that causes obesity, cancer, heart attacks, high blood pressure, high low density lipoproteins, triglycerides, and the deadly uric acid.

Once we get addicted to this sugar, the high fructose levels forces all your cells to develop high levels of fructose enzymes to metabolize fructose which uses up our energy factory ATP which is eventually metabolized to uric acid which inflames our blood vessels, increases blood pressure, and increases our over eating during meals because it also suppresses Leptin which suppresses our appetite when we have eaten enough.

Read The Sugar Fix by Richard J. Johnson, MD, a kidney researcher who wanted to reduce diabetes 2 which leads to kidney failure by reducing the use of High Fructose Corn Syrup. He found that it also causes significant weight loss too!

Reagan’s passing a bill to make corn dirt cheap allowed the massive increase in the production of High Fructose Corn Syrup which could be used at higher levels in colas and processed foods without crystallizing out on freezing or standing which does not happen with Cane Sugar imported cheaply if we did not have taxes on it. This past week congress lowered the tariff because more manufacturers have decided to get away from HFCS and change by some to use Cane Sugar including Gatorade and one of the ketchup makers. Consumer complaints and a prominent website made this possible. Talk to MacDonalds!

Even the NY Times had to be careful how they reported on HFCS which is used by many corporations to boost their profits. That is why reading deep into the article is necessary to find the most important news. Hint, it is not on the front page write-up. When Noam Chomsky was able to go to Harvard, he educated students who were confused with the Times front page news stories not comporting to what they experienced personally.

Jim Kawakami, August 24, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com (Note, I now publish most of my e-mails here instead of sending them.)

TODAY'S DEMOCRACY NOW!:

* Largest Egg Recall in US History Brings Renewed Attention to Dangers of Industrial Farming *

The largest egg recall in US history is bringing renewed attention to the dangers of factory farming and to growing consolidation in the industries responsible for the food many Americans eat. Over half a billion eggs have been pulled off US shelves in the past two weeks following an outbreak of salmonella in the Midwest. Nearly 1,300 cases of people sickened by the eggs have been reported. Despite the size of the recall, responsibility falls on just two factory farms: Hillandale Farms and Wright County Egg, both from Iowa.

Listen/Watch/Read

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/24/largest_egg_recall_in_us_history

* David Kirby on "The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms on Humans and the Environment" *

We speak with David Kirby about his book Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms on Humans and the Environment. "We need more regulations, and we need enforcement of the regulations," Kirby says. "These [food] companies are self-policing, and they are operating on the honor system. And consumers are obviously paying the price."

Listen/Watch/Read

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/24/david_kirby_on_the_looming_threat

Anti-Vaccine Groups Don't Have Verifiable Facts Supporting Their Fears

Tags: Anti-vaccine Groups Misinform Fearful Americans in the Same Way Politicians Do, NY Times, Dr. Mercola

Too many well educated and intelligent Americans have a fear of all vaccines, especially the flu vaccines based on misinformed and misinterpreted incidents in their lives. Many of these people are not evil or unintelligent. In one upscale town full of retired professors in Ashland, Oregon, fear of vaccines has led to some tragic deaths from common childhood diseases. Preventing deaths is the purpose and result of vaccines. Some people and children are more susceptible than others to disease and epidemics. Luckily the H1N1 virus has always been in our environment, but we could not wait to see if only a relative few were infected and died.

Take at least 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 with meals. That will give you about 12 days of stored vitamin D3. Take more if you don't get enough sun without sunscreen during the high sun hours. Only 5-10 minutes a day with little clothes is enough. Sunscreen on your face, ears, and neck with a hat for longer exposures is prudent. When you skin starts to burn without being in the water, it is time to get some shade or clothes.

Also the seasonal flu vaccine was the same as it was the last year so fewer people died, especially older people. Children six and below and the elderly have weakened immune systems so the vaccine does not take as easily. The vaccines work by eliciting a body response to the dead or weakened virus. Finally we have a thinking administration who used logic to determine that vaccines did not work as well as necessary for seniors for the above reason. So the dose is double that of the typical flu vaccines which has been found safe.

Most of what they believe is based on emotions and a selective search of the internet to support their fears. The fears are justified when the powerful have a long record of screwing us. So it takes a effort and time to get the truth. Just because someone says it with much emotion and selective facts, follow the Reagan system of Trust but Verify.

The universally “believed” Autism study could not be verified by other researchers, but we seem to always believe what came out first! The autism cure truth may be as simple as mother’s not having enough vitamin D in their blood and skin to support brain and synaptic development in the fetus and baby from breast feeding.

Fear of microwave ovens as far as I have determined is based on no verifiable and repeated research done and published in reputable journals. Obviously we fear that special interests may have fudged the data as we have seen in both the Reagan and Bush administrations and by Big Pharma on medicines such as Vioxx by Merck or Avandia, the Glaxo Welcome Type II diabetes drug.

Even with well proven side effects our dear FDA panel of special interests allowed it to stay on the market recently. Big Pharma pays for the research done by the FDA, something that Bush put into place with disastrous results. It is similar to the Wall Street theft of our investments when the regulator was paid by the company that wanted approval ratings. Another Bush innovation. Don’t want you family member or friend to put back the crooks. Learn and remember the facts by not skimming what you read and tell them the truth.

The baby drugs Autism scare was based on fraudulent reporting of research results and was only recently the fake research report was removed from the prestigious Lancet journal. But people still keep talking about the same study as proof that Autism is caused by this study although no other researcher was able to duplicate the results.

The other fraud rarely reported now is the drugs to stop hot flashes study used by Rumsfeld’s firm in Illinois was also faked and only recently not recommended after many women died from breast cancer. The fake researcher’s wife who used this pill died of breast cancer, but never reported when it mattered.

When many women stopped using the estrogen progestin hot flash cure, the rate of breast cancer started to go down almost immediately instead of up. Not enough has been done by the media publicizing this fact because they depend on ads from Big Pharma. Always ask, what is their record of telling the truth whether Big Pharma, Republican and Democratic politicians and especially the corporate press/media.

Remember when we watch the news, many of us are already tired from overwork, so tend not to think. Ask questions of what you hear when you hear them. People turn off their thinking brain when the watch all television on average. Even the most intelligent people!

Unless it is crucial and much evidence for its safe use, don’t use a new drug for seven years. It takes that long to find out what is happening with our current inadequate reporting system.

One of the criteria of good science is that the experiment is able to be reproduced by an independent researcher. This is not done in test Big Pharma drugs, or political ads on television. Republicans are well versed in propaganda by having scary music when telling us how bad the Democrats are in spite of the evidence that the Republicans are always worse now.

Dr. Mercola, an osteopath, generally does a good job giving us the newest medical findings. However, it is obvious that he does not think scientifically and has fallen into the logic trap of believing the comments of persons such as Barbara Fisher heading an impressive sounding organization. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/08/21/barbara-loe-fisher-on-flu-vaccine-changes.aspx

Dr. Mercola makes the mistake that Fisher reads all the literature that is relevant to her statements. She does not. I read the long article and know a lot more than she does and saw many distortions and mistakes in her article which I will not take the time to delineate. Just read the NY Times article below about Fisher.

NY Times Jennifer Steinhauer Swine Flu Shots Revive a Debate About Vaccines October 15, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/health/16vaccine.html?_r=1 . Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, an advocacy group that questions the safety of vaccines, said the swine flu has “breathed new life” into the cause. “People who have never asked questions before about vaccines are looking at this one,” Ms. Fisher said.

The increased interest is frustrating to health officials, who are struggling to persuade an already wary public to line up for shots and prevent the spread of the pandemic. According to a CBS News poll conducted last week, only 46 percent said they were likely to get the vaccine. The nationwide poll, which has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points, found that while 6 in 10 parents were likely to have their children vaccinated, less than half said they were “very likely to.”

“I wonder if the people disseminating this false information about this vaccine realize that what they are doing could result in some people losing their lives,” said Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, the director of the Department of Public Health for Los Angeles County. The comments of vaccine dissenters, which he said “politically come from the left and the right,” were frequently “not just counterproductive,” he said, “but downright disgraceful.”

Web sites, Twitter feeds, talk radio and even elevator chatter are awash with skeptics criticizing the vaccine, largely with no factual or scientific basis. The most common complaint is that the vaccine has been newly formed and quickly distributed without the benefit of clinical trials; in fact, the swine flu vaccine was made using the same techniques as seasonal flu shots over the last two decades, and a small number of clinical trials were conducted this year to determine the adequate dose.

There are also claims that the vaccine contains adjuvants — sometimes added to make vaccines more effective — although they have not been used in this one. In addition, there is fear that the vaccine could lead to Guillain-Barré syndrome, as was suspected the last time a swine flu vaccine was distributed, in 1976; flu vaccines are now much purer than they were, minimizing the risk, and Guillain-Barré is far rarer.

In measuring the risk of the vaccine, there is general consensus among doctors that serious adverse reactions are rare and that pregnant women and young people, in particular, are better off with the vaccine than without it. While most people who get H1N1 experience mild symptoms, a recent New England Journal of Medicine study showed that among Americans hospitalized with swine flu last spring, one in four ended up in intensive care and 7 percent of them died.

The illness, unlike other flu strains, has been particularly tough on children and young adults and appears to have a disproportionately high fatality rate in pregnant women.

Health care officials are concerned that some groups, especially pregnant women, are potentially swayed by the large-scale efforts of vaccine opponents.

“One of the things they are focusing on now is immunization and pregnancy,” said Saad B. Omer, assistant professor of global health at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, “and their perceptions of the vaccine in use of pregnant women. It is not a benign perception in this case, and could have serious impacts, because pregnant women have high risk of complication if they get the swine flu.”

The anti-vaccine movement, largely comprising activists and a handful of doctors and researchers who connect a variety of health problems — particularly autism spectrum disorders — to vaccines, has failed to find large-scale traction in the United States, where more than 90 percent of children are vaccinated.

But at a conference this month of National Vaccine Information Center, Ms. Fisher said, there were 675 people, more than double the number at the group’s last conference, and half said they were there to discuss swine flu. Unlike most people associated with the center, who have longstanding objections to vaccines or have a connection to the issue because of an autistic child, the newcomers were not traditional skeptics, Ms. Fisher said. “They came not knowing much,” she said, “and left galvanized.”

Further, vitamin vendors — who in some cases operate blogs, with postings by people who claim to be doctors finding fault with vaccines — are reporting an increase in sales related to swine flu. Michael Angelo, chief research and information officer for eVitamins.com, said sales in September for flu-related products had tripled from last September. The company, he said, has sold 17,565 vitamins that it says protects against the H1N1 virus.

Some anti-vaccine groups are also highly organized and quick to respond to openings to promote their message. For instance, this week, an 8-year-old boy from Long Island died roughly a week after receiving a seasonal flu vaccine, though officials from the New York State Department of Health denied a connection.

Almost instantly, on a memorial page on Newsday’s Web site for the boy, Sean Weisse, a message from an anti-vaccine advocacy group appeared: “We are so sorry to hear about Sean. My understanding, and forgive me if I’m wrong, is that this was a vaccine-related injury. If so, we would like to help you. Best regards, Stan Kurtz, Generation Rescue, Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy’s Organization.”...

Republicans Using 527 Groups to Buy Governorships to Gerrymander States

Tags: Republicans Get Millions from Individuals to Gerrymander Districts to Insure Republicans Win

Republicans used the governorships in many states to gerrymander districts to favor Republicans. In Texas they bought the Supreme Court using illegal money to gerrymander districts without a census. Their bought Supreme Court allowed this to happen. They have no shame and will do anything legal or not to win power in spite of their professed loved for Jesus and Christianity while at the same time violating almost every one of its commands.

Jim Kawakami, August 20, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS ASSOCIATION RAISES BIG MONEY: The Republican Governors Association received more than

$19 million in contributions during the second quarter, far exceeding those of the Democratic Governors Association, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis. Although the Democratic Governors Association had a 12 percent increase in donations from the first quarter, the increase is paltry compared to the 109 percent increase by the Republican Governors Association -- $9 million to $19 million.

In the second quarter, the Republican Governors Association received three donations more than a million dollars: $1,480,000 from the Michigan Chamber of Congress, $1,000,000 from David Koch of Koch Industries and $1,000,000 from News America Inc., a subsidiary ofNews Corp. The largest donation to the Democratic Governors Association was $500,000 which came from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Both organizations have donors that continually show up at the top of the contribution reports. The Republican Governors Association’s top donors are often Bob Perry -- chief executive officer of Perry Homes, who has also given millions to 527 groups such as the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- and Paul Singer, chief executive officer of Elliot Management. The Democratic Governors Association is most popular with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the American Federation of Teachers. GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceutical company, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, a New York based private equity firm and AT&T, tend to show up in the top donors list of both governors associations.

The graphs below show the recent quarterly disparity as well as mid-year contribution totals going back to 2008. The Republican Governors Association has out-raised its democratic counterpart in every mid-year report in the time period shown. Click on the graphs for a full size image: See http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/08/republican-governors-association-ra.html