Monday, February 25, 2013

Would You Halve How Much Meat You Eat?

 

Would You Halve How Much Meat You Eat?

by



We need to halve the amount of meat we eat or risk causing even more damage to the natural world than we already have, says a new report from the United Nations Environment Program. Entitled Our Nutrient World: The challenge to produce more food and energy with less pollution, the report underscores the unpleasant truth about how modern farming practices are creating more food, and more meat in particular, at lower cost but at a terrible price to the long-time health of the planet.

Eating less meat is a challenge many may shrink from, but it is one that people in wealthy nations must take up, says Professor Mark Sutton, the lead author of the report. Just a generation or two ago, people ate quite a bit less meat. The U.N. report asks people not to stop eating meat entirely, but presents the case for a more measured approach, urging people to go “demitarian” and cut the amount of meat they consume by half.

Raising Livestock Consumes Precious Natural Resources
Previous studies have underscored how many more resources — water, arable land, grain — are used up in raising livestock rather than in cultivating crops. In addition, to provide plenty of meat at cheap prices, the farming industry has come to rely on an ever-larger arsenal of techniques and tools (pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, fertilizer, cages so small that animals cannot move) that are unethical and inhumane.

Our insatiable demand for meat has actually “caused a web of water and air pollution that is damaging human health.” The numerous chemical substances we have devised to improve the quality of meat has only done so in the short run. Run-off from chemicals has played a role in “dead zones in the seas, causing toxic algal blooms and killing fish, while some are threatening bees, amphibians and sensitive ecosystems,” says the Guardian.

We need look no farther for evidence of what is wrong with the modern meat industry than the ongoing horse meat scandal in Europe. Just this week, Nestle announced that it was withdrawing some of its products over concerns about horse meat, which has turned up in other manufacturers’ frozen meals and “extra value” — cheaply priced — burgers. “The attention this meat scare has drawn [highlights] poor quality meat. It shows society must think about livestock and food choices much more, for the environment and health,” said Sutton in the Guardian.

Can You Be a “Demetarian”?
Nonetheless, billions of people in developing countries should still increase their meat consumption, says Sutton. In order for this to happen, people in wealthy nations need to reduce their consumption of meat, in a sort of global give-and-take with the goal of extending the nutrition benefits of animal protein to those whose diets are insufficient.

The UN report is a wake-up call to take a good, hard look at how our taste for meat, and lots of it, has created a product that is not exactly appetizing and is endangering the world’s food supply. The report’s call to many in richer countries to “do the demetarian thing” is a call to consider what we consume and to ask, do we really need to eat all that?

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The Most Loathsome People in America: The Double Dirty Dozen.

 
     

 


A mix of familiar names we all love to hate, and some new loathsome Americans on the block.
 
 
 
The following is AlterNet's own selections and rankings of two dozen from America's 50 Most Loathsome Americans by Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast.
 
 
 
24. Sean Hannity

Charges: Left the seminary upon realizing he could abuse, manipulate, and molest more people as a conservative broadcaster. The sneering, self-righteous poster boy for every right-wing nontroversy (see Benghazi and Fast & Furious), Hannity’s something of a Piltdown Newsman. One can easily imagine him a 19th century Boston cop, bashing brown folks and loving it. But in this age of media saturation, even bullies like Hannity must prostrate themselves and grovel occasionally at the feet of reality. After hyping Tucker Carlson’s black-cent “bombshell,” and then stubbornly realizing it was nothing, he had Fox’s resident melanin-haver Juan Williams join the panel to flog him. That way, Hannity cleverly avoided looking foolish.

Smoking Gun: Look at his jaw; he always seems like he’s about to bite someone.

23.  Dinesh D’Souza
Charges: An intellectual imposter whose career’s swung casually between vicious conservative think-tank lackey and moronic Christian apologist. He reached a fraudulent low last year with the release of2016: Obama’s America which, through the prism of Potemkin journalism, imagined the fake horrors awaiting America at the end of Obama’s second term–like unstoppable Sharia Law. According to D’Souza’s armchair psychoanalysis and “super serious” scholarship, this impending doom springs from Obama’s need to fulfill the anticolonialist dreams of his father’s ghost with the help of John Edwards and an Ouija board. Or some such.

Smoking Gun: “In a sense, through the earth itself, he communes with his father and receives his father’s spirit.”

22. Sam Harris
Charges: As the former’s confused reason for Fox News dogma, and the latter comedy for cackling, Sam Harris has official overtaken Ricky Gervais as the world’s funniest atheist (they’re tied for most annoying). He recently added Muslim profiling and NRA talking points to a sophist’s portfolio already bulging with hawkish appreciation for war and torture. Populated with more strawmen than a Kansas corn field, Harris’s post-Sandy Hook paean to firearms justified the death of 20 children because, well, Sam Harris is scared of sharp objects, and he’s too dimwitted to imagine a nonlethal knife-deterrent.

Smoking Gun: “Fantasists and zealots can be found on both sides of the debate over guns in America.”

21. Frank VanderSloot
Charges: Overly litigious gay-bashing billionaire Mormon CEO of Melaleuca, Inc., a cultish pyramid-selling “Wellness Company” that promises its “partners” “total financial freedom” for “families trying to get out of debt”–likely incurred from purchasing overpriced Latter-day douche and snake-oil supplements in bulk to pawn off on other pious dupes. The natural grifter to co-chair Romney’s national finance committee, he dumped $1 million into Mitt’s Restore Our Future PAC, and even makes casino creep Sheldon Adelson seem like a nice guy.

Smoking Gun: He ostensibly believes that the Garden of Eden was located in Jackson County, Missouri, and that Native Americans are actually Jews.

20. Penn Jillette
Charges: Humiliating himself as Donald Trump’s dancing business-monkey. Featured on a not-so-secret list of sexist creepers within the skeptic/atheist community. He’s an intolerably smug know-it-all who actually knows very little. A devout Randroid and Glenn Beck fan, he’s to the rationalist movement what John Wayne Gacy was to clowns. His thankfully defunct, eponymously titled show “Bullshit,” operated under the tired formula of dirty hippy debates Cato Institute whore, and we learn that second-hand smoke is as safe as Gerber’s. Magic! The Anti-Lorax, Jillette’s an environment-hating buffoon who denied anthropogenic global warming until as late as 2008–because he was too scared of the “political climate.” At least Teller has the decency to never speak.

Smoking Gun: “Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.”

19. Ghost of Breitbart
Charges: The P.T. Barnum of modern conservatism, he was a traveling hypocrisy circus, a one-man confidence game, who never missed an opportunity to employ the Alinskyite tactics he pretended to deride. Most obviously, smearing your political enemies with your own failings…like calling everyone on the left an Alinskyite. Spent the final months of his life pitching a video–with all the coked-up vigor of the late Billy Mays–that was going to shake up the world. Released posthumously, the Obama-hugs-black-professor video riled few outside of the Klan, and that’s the real tragedy of his death: Andy never did taste the failure. Just sidewalk.

Smoking Gun: “I have videos, this election we’re going to vet him…from his college days to show
you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008.”

18. Alex Jones
Charges: A shower and shave away from doomsaying hobo, Jones makes a decent living off of his borderline schizophrenia. He “KNOWS” that every mass-shooting is staged by a global cabal who wants to steal your guns, global warming is a New World Order hoax, Beyonce flashed an Illuminati symbol which caused the Super Bowl blackout, and every other super-secret, unfalsifiable plot perpetrated by a shifting and shadowy “THEY”–who engineer society based upon the wishes of interdimensional elves with whom “THEY” confer using Satanic hallucinogens. Jones is the very “false flag” propagandist he claims to despise by diluting real concerns, such as drone strikes on American soil, with an endless stream of loonitarian logorrhea that makes David Icke sound like Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Smoking Gun: Ancient cave paintings depict the Illuminati Anti-Christ as a quick-tempered, red-faced psycho with a bad hair cut…WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!

17. David Barton
Charges: Armed with only a BA in religious studies from Oral Roberts University and the integrity of a serial rapist, pseudo-historian David Barton has successfully convinced millions of benighted Americans that the Founding Fathers debunked the theory of evolution a half-century before it was ever proposed, that the Constitution is a “verbatim” copy of Scripture, Jesus opposed a minimum wage, and that the Bible warns against net neutrality. He’s recently taken to defending the Second Amendment with an apocryphal story of armed, 19th century school children protecting their teacher which Barton apparently–not a joke–ripped off from a Louis L’Amour novel.

Smoking Gun: “… life begins before conception…”?

16. Dana Loesch
Charges: The ideological love-troll of Phyllis Schlafly and Grover Norquist, Loesch wants to reduce government to a size where it can drown in your vagina. Whether comparing intrusive, state-mandated transvaginal ultrasounds to consensual intercourse, defending Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, or fabricating a conspiracy over her husband’s temporarily suspended Twitter account, Dana’s a cheap, hyper-partisan squid, squirting a cloud of imagined liberal sins which she thinks nullifies the original criticism because she’s a total fucking moron. And when that invariably fails, she’ll just lie about what she said, or call you a sexist/pedo. Quite possibly still on the CNN payroll only to make Piers Morgan seem slightly more palatable.

Smoking Gun: “Seems to me like Akin was trying to fit medical explanation into a soundbite. Not the best statement, but some are stretching it majorly.”

15. Dick Morris
Charges: Jamming gaydar everywhere with a love of pastels and a lispy slobber-mouth that looks to crave more than toes. As a close Clinton adviser, Morris is as responsible as anyone for transforming Democrats into a moderate wing of the Republican Party, and thereby shifting the GOP toward extremism. During the election, however, it was Morris’s poll-stroking Romney delusions that confirmed he’s a man living in total denial.

Smoking Gun: “We’re gonna win in a landslide.”

14. Marco Rubio
Charges: Bobby Jindal redux whose impending melanin-lite response to the State of the Union will be a handsome, ineffective pander to a demographic most Republicans would most like to mow their lawns, for Pete’s sake. His RNC speech focused on an upward mobility his party has all but made impossible. Every time I see him I hear Phil Collins singing in my head, “Ru-Ru-Ru-Rubio! Whoa-o!” And now you will, too.

Smoking Gun: “There is only one savior, and it is not me. #Jesus”

13. Tucker Carlson
Charges: Trust fund douchebag whose perseverance in the face of consistent “journalistic” failure would be admirable were it not derived from a wholly undeserved sense of entitlement. Fought his impending and absolute irrelevance by rerunning a video clip (with the help of Drudge and Hannity) he first reported on in ’07 while at MSNBC which reveals that Barack Obama–hold on to your motherfucking October surprised genitals!–is a black guy. One of the few American pundits who believes that incredulous squinting qualifies as commentary.

12. Mark Cuban
Charges: Training-jowl billionaire whose first major business venture was a chain letter, and one of his latest is exploiting rubes on reality TV. He’s an alleged inside trader, and cowardly 9/11 truther, who credits his success to Ayn Rand. The ipecac of Übermensch, his anti-worker appetite unsated in the boardroom, he’s now sunk to stealing work from struggling commercial actors because, unlike the rest of us, he can’t get enough of Mark Cuban’s self-satisfied face.

11. Matt Drudge
Charges: The Internet’s answer to William Randolph Hearst, his only credibility comes from one sperm-related scoop 15 years ago, and a surname that makes him sound like an old-timey muckraker. He’s the shamelessly hungry middle segment in the human centipede between GOP operatives and vapid talking heads, constantly swallowing and shitting a stream of propaganda that would make Goebbels cringe.

Smoking Gun: Falsely claimed Obama ditched Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet with a parrot-toting pirate in an eye patch. True.

10. “Papa” John Schnatter
Charges: Infantile Romney-garch who threatened to raise the cost of his shitty pizzas by 15¢ and cut workers’ hours because Obamacare mandates that he provide meager health benefits to his underpaid employees.

Smoking Gun: His 2 million-pizza giveaway marketing strategy cost his company roughly 6 times what Obamacare does.

9. Dan Cathy
Charges: The Fred Phelps of chicken, the Chick-fil-A COO finally revealed what his family’s charitable donations have been screaming for years: “I’m probably gay, and I need the government to keep me from indulging in the gay marriage I so desperately desire!” They gave $5 million to the Family Research Council since ’03 alone. They’re hyper-religious dicks who’re closed on Sundays, and damn them for making decent chicken you can’t eat with a side of conscience.

Smoking Gun: “I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage’. I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.”

8. Jennifer Rubin
Charges: WaPo’s Dershowitz in drag, she’d report you to the Anti Defamation League for so much as disrespecting a bagel, and imagines herself the blogging bulldozer to Palestinian legitimacy. Meant to satisfy conservative Post critics with the even-handed Washington Times Moonacy they crave, Rubin’s occupied literary territory mainly covered histrionic Arab-hating until branching out as Romney’s stenographer–even reposting campaign press releases to counter her own paper’s accurate reporting.

Smoking Gun: “Now wait a minute. Is this an act of anti-long hairism or anti-gay?”

7. Joe Arpaio
Charges: “America’s Sheriff” (in the way rat vomit is “America’s Snack Food”) has a long history of racism, prisoner abuse, and protecting pedophiles, but last year his low-rent Wyatt Earp routine turned overtly cartoonish. In a blatant effort to distract from an investigation into his illegally misspending nearly $100 million on immigrant roundups and spying programs, Arpaio launched the “Cold Case Posse”–meant to finally expose Obama’s Manchurian Presidency. The citizen “posse” determined the President’s birth certificate to be fraudulent, and then, as you remember, Obama was removed from office and Arpaio was given the Golden Key to Fantasy City for not totally wasting everyone’s time.

Smoking Gun: “At the very least, I can tell you this, based on all of the evidence presented and investigated, I cannot in good faith report to you that these documents are authentic.”

6. Lance Armstrong
Charges: Sociopathic, ten-speed Escobar who brazenly lied, ruined lives, and played on our collectively gullible patriotism and misplaced respect for blatantly selfish charity PR, so that he could reap millions, bang Sheryl Crow then drop her like a cancerous testicle, and feast on undeserved fame–only to finally come clean in a venue that granted Oprah 15 more terrifying minutes of relevance.
Smoking Gun: “I have the facts on my side.”

5. Rush Limbaugh
Charges: The hardest-blowing blowhard in a media landscape littered with windbags. And he knows it. Every second of it. Every lie. Every distortion. Every racial and sexual dogwhistle, it’s blown through a smirk connoting he knows he’s the biggest, fattest, carnival-barking swindler of our bilious age, capable of conning millions into believing he possesses any principles beyond self-aggrandizing greed.

Smoking Gun: Just turn on the radio.

4. Karl Rove
Charges: Hubris. A fledgling act of perception management, he cheered on Nixon when he was 9 years-old, and he’s become exponentially more depraved as the years went by. He weaseled out of Watergate investigations, turned Texas red, and crowned a vegetable president with dirty tricks. He sold an illegal war, stole an election, outed Valerie Plame and suffered no consequences save for power and money. Why wouldn’t he think his heavily funded Crossroads GPS–which he basically promised the Koch brothers would win them the election–could possibly fail in convincing Americans to elect a cardboard cutout who thinks he’ll become a god in the afterlife? Hubris. A hubris that unfolded on live TV during his epic election night Fox News meltdown. Incredulous. Shocked. He’d spent all the money. He’d done all the evil. What went wrong? Finally, milk was spilled, and Rove responded like a petulant toddler. And, lo, the schadenfreude was sweet.

Smoking Gun: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” (2004)

3. Paul Ryan
Charges: Compulsively lying, arrested adolescent Muppet whose sheltered mind is still blown byAtlas Shrugged and Stairway to Heaven. The Uri Geller of economics, he managed to bend the will of MSM patsies like Ezra Klein into portraying him as a credible policy wonk, rather than what he truly is: a two-bit illusionist who wants to disappear Grandma’s Medicare and Social Security money and make it reappear in the pockets of the rich wankers he secretly wishes would rape him in a rock quarry.

Smoking Gun: Even Fox News said Ryan’s RNC performance “was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.”

2. Donald Trump
Charges: A convincing argument against the 1st and 5th Amendments, this walking combover needs to just shut the fuck up and die already. The consummate huckster, and sufferer of verbal dysentery, his countless transgressions defy cataloguing. So I’ll spare you everything save for his moronic ploy to gain Obama’s passport and college records in exchange for a $5 million charity donation. Insult to racist injury, the video announcement was so low rent that he looked like an 8mm-shot Boehner/Oompa Loompa with a disgruntled squirrel on his head.

Smoking Gun: So awful he makes Mark Cuban seem awesome.

1. Wayne LaPierre
Charges: As the NRA’s well-paid CEO of death (and thinly veiled fear of brown people), it’s his role to obscure the very basic fact that more guns equals more gun violence–by any cognitively dissonant means necessary. In the ’90s, he called federal agents jack-booted Nazis in a fundraising letter, yet in his preposterous Sandy Hook speech he implored Congress to post armed guards at every school in the nation. In pure Alex Jones fashion, he once accused President Clinton of needing a certain level of gun violence to justify the assault weapons ban–which the NRA was keen to shoot full of holes. Asinine rhetoric about gun-free zones advertising massacre, violent video games, TV and movies aside, it’s the annual multi-million dollar lobbying efforts painting Smith & Wesson as benevolent job creators which cows even alleged democrats like Harry Reid. And with two recent PR blunders–a commercial slamming Obama’s “hypocrisy” for having armed Secret Service agents protect his daughters, and a shoot-’em-up app marketed to 4 year-olds!–LaPierre came off more tone-deaf than the early audition stage of “American Idol.”

Smoking Gun: “There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people through vicious.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ian Murphy is the editor of The Beast.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Why You Should Be Outraged By What Is Being Done to Our Postal Service.

 
By Dave Johnson


Like so many other "crises" imposed on us lately, there is a lot to the Post Office pivatization story that you are not being told.


You are probably hearing that the Post Office is "in crisis" and is cutting back Saturday delivery, laying people off, closing offices, etc. Like so many other "crises" imposed on us lately, there is a lot to the story that you are not hearing from the "mainstream" media. (Please click that link.) The story of the intentional destruction of the U.S. Postal Service is one more piece of the story of crisis-after-crisis, all manufactured to advance the strategic dismantling of our government and handing over the pieces to billionaires.

Here are a few things you need to know about the Postal Service "crisis":
  • The Postal Service is the second largest employer in the United States after Walmart. But unlike Walmart, which gets away with paying so little that employees qualify for government assistance, the Postal Services is unionized, pays reasonable wages and benefits and receives no government subsidies. (Good for them!)
  • Republicans have been pushing schemes to privatize the Postal Service since at least 1996. In 2006 Republicans in the Congress pushed through a requirement that the Postal Service pre-fund 75 years of retiree costs. The Postal Service has to pay now for employees who are not even born yet.No other government agency -- and certainly no company -- has to do this.
  • Unlike other government agencies (like the military) since 1970 the Postal Service is required to break even. Once more: the Department of Defense is not required to break even.
  • While required to break even the Postal Service has to deliver mail to areas that are unprofitable for private companies to operate in. A letter sent from a small town in Alaska is picked up and transported across the country to a farm in Maine for 46 cents. While the internet and recession have eaten into some of the Postal Services letter business, magazines, books, newsletters, prescriptions, advertising, DVD services like Netflix and many other services still depend on the Postal Service for delivery. And many people for one reason or another still send letters. In a democracy these people are supposed to count, too.
  • But along with require the Postal Service to break even, Congress has restricted the Service's ability to raise rates, enter new lines of business or take other steps to help it raise revenue. In fact, while detractors complain that the Postal Service is antiquated, inefficient and burdened by bureaucracy the rules blocking the Postal Service from entering new lines of business do so because the Postal Service would have advantages over private companies.
  • For example, Republicans in Congress forced the Postal Service to remove public-use copiers from Post Offices and even blocked the Postal Service from setting up a secure online system that allowed Americans to make monthly bill payments.
The Postal Service is a public service for We, the People, not a business. The Service is hamstrung by people who pretend it is supposed to compete and then won't let it. They won't help with taxpayer dollars and say it has to compete in the marketplace (again: the Department of Defense is not required to break even.) Then they give it rules that no private company could survive. Then when it gets into trouble, say that government doesn't work, start laying people off, selling off the public assets, and saying it has to be "privatized" (so all the gains will go to a few already-wealthy people instead of to the public).

Manufacturing A Crisis
So Republicans have hamstrung the Postal Service, forcing it into "crisis" and are now "solving" the crisis by working towards dismantling and privatizing it. Here is how it works:
  1. Require the Postal Service to "break even." (Again: the Department of Defense is not required to break even.
  2. Require them to serve all areas of the country. (Which is a service to democracy and should continue.)
  3. Keep them from raising or lowering rates as needed.
  4. Keep them from using their competitive advantages to compete with private businesses.
  5. Require them to pre-fund 75 years of health benefits.
  6. When the Postal Service has the inevitable resulting financial "crisis" complain about government and unions and demand their buildings be sold, employees laid off and the service be dismantled and given to private companies.
If you don't see the pattern yet, try this:
  1. Cut taxes, 
  2. Double military spending, 
  3. Obstruct all efforts to fix things, 
  4. Wait a few years, then scream loudly about a "deficit crisis" and say we have to severely cut back on government -- the things we do to make our lives better.
This is not the way an informed democracy is supposed to operate.

Part Of Bigger Assault On Government
The postal service "crisis" is just one more instance of the ongoing pattern of government by lies, hostage-taking and manufactured crises. This is one more assault on a government service.
The "fiscal cliff" was a manufactured crisis, engineered to force cutbacks in the things We, the People do to make our lives better. The "debt ceiling" was a manufactured crisis, engineered to force cutbacks in the things We, the People do to make our lives better. The 2010 "tax deal" was a manufactured crisis, engineered to force cutbacks in the things We, the People do to make our lives better. Etc., etc., on and on...

And the Postal Service "crisis" is one more manufactured crisis.

Not Governing, But Destroying Government
Republicans don't talk about governing, they talk about killing government, and when they get power they don't govern, they destroy government. They appoint industry lobbyists to agencies that are supposed to oversee their own industries -- and they don't oversee their industries. They appoint polluters to the agencies that are supposed to protect us from pollution -- and they let the companies pollute. And they appoint people who have called for getting government out of areas like education, medical care, etc. to head up and dismantle those departments for the benefit of the companies they came from.

This is not the way our government is supposed to operate. This does not serve We, the People and does not help us make our lives better.

The Push To Privatize Public Assets
Privatization means dismantling government and public assets and turning them over to private companies. It involves "contracting out" or even ending the services that were performed by We, the People (government) to make our lives better. Instead these services are operated for profit, which the citizens (and certainly not the employees) share none of the gains.

To be clear about this: contracting out government services "saves money" by laying off people who have good wages with benefits, and rehiring them at minimum wage with no benefits, while removing the accountability that goes along with a government service. For example, when a city "contracts out" its garbage collection what happens is all the city employees who had government jobs doing this work are laid off. The private company that contracts to do the service "saves money" by hiring employees at a much lower wage with no benefits, doesn't have to meet the standards of government agencies, doesn't have to be transparent, doesn't have to use well-maintained equipment, etc. Obviously the city employees and the places they used to shop are worse off, but their lower wages mean everyone else's wages come under pressure, too. So the "money saved" comes at a great cost to the public.

This same process occurs in all instances of privatizing or "downsizing" government. The public receives less service, wages generally are lowered, but a few people make a bundle at the expense of the rest of us.

Cato Institute Push To Privatize The Postal Service
The Koch brothers' Cato Institute has been pushing to privatize the Postal Service (and the rest of government) for many years. (Note: Frederick W. Smith, Chairman & CEO, FedEx Corporation was on the Board of Directors of Cato Institute. FedEx is also a funder of the Cato Institute.) In 1996, for example, Cato's Edward L. Hudgins testified before Congress on Postal Service Privatization.
Today Cato employees write about "freeing the mail from the government's grip" and " getting the government out of the mail business." (from Cato's Stamp Out the Postal Service.)

While part of Cato's motivation for privatizing the Postal Service is their efforts to transfer all public assets to private hands, Their website Privatizing the U.S. Postal Service explains their reasoning,
The USPS is in deep financial trouble as a result of declining mail volume, bloated operating expenses, a costly and inflexible unionized workforce, and constant congressional meddling. At the same time, electronic communications and other technological advances are making physical mail delivery less relevant.
America's postal system needs a radical overhaul. This essay ... concludes that taxpayers, consumers, and the broader economy would stand to gain with reforms to privatize the USPS and open U.S. mail delivery up to competition.
Cato's funders also oppose unions because they enable working people to bargain for a larger share of the pie, and the Postal Service is unionized -- the largest remaining union. In The Postal Service Can't Afford Unions Cato's Tad DeHaven writes, "A big drag on the USPS's bottom line is the pesky postal unions." DeHaven continues,
The USPS has been able to eliminate thousands of positions through attrition, but it still possesses the second-largest civilian workforce in the country, behind only Wal-Mart. With 85 percent of that workforce protected by collective bargaining agreement, the unions have become a giant anchor on an already sinking ship.
The Postal Service is a PUBLIC service, serving We, the People and our democracy. It is our second-largest employer. Like Social Security it demonstrates that government can and does serve We, the People. You should be outraged by what is being done to our Postal Service! It is time to step up and defend all of our democratic institutions.

Other Voices
Here are a few other voices on this issue:

John Nichols writes in The Nation, Postal Cuts Are Austerity on Steroids,
The austerity agenda that would cut services for working Americans in order to maintain tax breaks for the wealthy -- and promote the privatization of public services--has many faces. 

Most Americans recognize the threats to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as pieces of the austerity plan advanced by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), and the rest of the Ayn Rand-reading wrecking crew that has taken over the Republican Party. But it is important to recognize that the austerity agenda extends in every direction: from threats to Food Stamps and Pell Grants, to education cuts, to the squeezing of transportation funding. 

But the current frontline of the austerity agenda is the assault on the US Postal Service, a vital public service that is older than the country. And it is advancing rapidly.
Dean Baker at CEPR: Killing the Messenger: The Downsizing and Death of the Postal Service
Congress also has to be prepared to allow the Postal Service to win. About a decade ago, the Postal Service had an extremely effective ad campaign highlighting the fact that its express mail service was just a fraction of the price charged for overnight delivery by UPS and FedEx. 

The two companies actually went to court to try to stop the ad campaign. When the court told them to get lost, they went to Congress. Their friends in Congress then leaned on the Postal Service and got it to end the ads.

Sen. Tom Carper of Deleware has a good information page: Postal Reform Myths vs. Facts, (click through for the details)
With all the information floating around about the U.S. Postal Service's financial crisis and the possible Postal Service default at the end of September, it can be difficult to wade through what is fact and what is fiction. Below are 8 Myths about the current crisis and 8 facts explaining what can and must be done to reform this vital American institution and ensure its services remain for generations to come. 
 MYTH #1: The U.S. Postal Service is bankrolled by taxpayers.

MYTH #2: The U.S. Postal Service will inevitably see a total financial collapse in the coming months.

 MYTH #3: Congressional action to save the U.S. Postal Service amounts to yet another government bailout of a failing industry.

MYTH #4: Allowing the U.S. Postal Service to default will simply force much-needed restructuring and reform.

MYTH #5: A new government control board could better take the dramatic steps necessary to fix the U.S. Postal Service.

 MYTH #6: A new government commission -- similar to the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission - could help the U.S. Postal Service close or consolidate unnecessary processing and retail facilities free from political pressure.

MYTH #7: The U.S. Postal Service must raise rates on certain postal products to help cover its losses.

 MYTH #8: Sen. Carper's bill -- the POST Act -- wants to end Saturday mail delivery.

ThinkProgress: Thanks To Congressional Incompetence, Saturday Mail Delivery Is History,
Postal access is, ultimately, a rights issue for rural Americans; since they live in areas where internet coverage is inconsistent, post office closures and slowed-down delivery can mean big limitations on communication. A lack of access to postal services can lead to a growth in economic inequality. The new rules for Saturday delivery, set to take effect on August 1, 2013, will continue delivery of packages, but discontinue basic first-class mail.
From Sept 2011, Brigid OFarrell, writing at the Roosevelt Institute's Next New Deal blog, Ten Reasons That the U.S. Postal Service is Not a Failure -- and is Vital to Our Country,
There is a crisis, but it is not because the Postal Service is inefficient and its workers overpaid. It is because the Postal Service: 1. Receives no taxpayer dollars 2. Is funded by the products and services it sells 3. Working with its unions, has already reduced its workforce by 110,000 employees, improved efficiency, and introduced new products and services 4. Handles more than 40 percent of the world's mail more efficiently and at lower cost than other services 5. Despite the growth of the digital world, continues to support a $1 trillion mailing industry with more than 8 million jobs 6. Has a workforce that is made up of 40 percent women, 40 percent minorities, and 22 percent veterans, many disabled

There is a crisis, but it is not because the Postal Service is inefficient and its workers overpaid. It is because the Postal Service:

7. Is the only federal agency or private company required to pre-fund retiree health benefits for 75 years

8. Is therefore required to pay $5.5 billion annually to the Treasury, an amount not required of any other agency or company

Without these unique requirements, it would have earned a surplus of over $600 million during the last four years. In addition, the USPS:

9. Has over-paid its obligations to the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) by an estimated $50 billion (and this money should be returned)

10. Has overfunded the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) by approximately $6.9 billion (and would be profitable if these funds were returned)
David Morris at AlterNet takes a good look at the history of the Postal Service and the current problems, inWhy We Must Rescue the U.S. Postal Service From the Brink of Death, and concludes,
The Postal Service can still be saved. But the grave has been dug. The coffin has been built. And funeral music is in the air. Only the most aggressive effort by AARP, the NAACP, Consumers Union and other affected constituencies can save this most public of all public institutions.

Coconut Oil Benefits: When Fat Is Good For You.

 


Physician and author

 

You've no doubt noticed that for about the last 60 years, the majority of health care officials and the media have been telling you saturated fats are bad for your health and lead to a host of negative consequences, including high cholesterol, obesity, heart disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Meanwhile during this same 60 years, the American levels of heart disease, obesity, elevated serum cholesterol and Alzheimer's have skyrocketed.

Did you know that multiple studies on Pacific Island populations who get 30-60 percent of their total caloric intake from fully saturated coconut oil have all shown nearly non-existent rates of cardiovascular disease? (1)

The fact is, all saturated fats are not created equal.

The operative word here is "created," because some saturated fats occur naturally, while other fats are artificially manipulated into a saturated state through the man-made process called hydrogenation.

Hydrogenation manipulates vegetable and seed oils by adding hydrogen atoms while heating the oil, producing a rancid, thickened substance that really only benefits processed food shelf life and corporate profits -- just about all experts now agree, hydrogenation does nothing good for your health.

These manipulated saturated fats are also called trans-fats -- and you should avoid them like the plague. But if one form of saturated fat is bad for you, does that mean all saturated fat is bad for you?

Absolutely not!

The Tropics' Best Kept Secret

The truth about coconut oil is obvious to anyone who has studied the health of those who live in native tropical cultures, where coconut has been a primary dietary staple for thousands of years.

Back in the 1930s, Dr. Weston Price found South Pacific Islanders whose diets were high in coconut to be healthy and trim, despite high dietary fat, and heart disease was virtually non-existent. Similarly, in 1981, researchers studying two Polynesian communities for whom coconut was the primary caloric energy source found them to have excellent cardiovascular health and fitness. (2)

Where were all the clogged arteries and heart attacks from eating all of this "evil" saturated fat?

Obviously, coconut oil was doing nothing to harm the health of these islanders.

It may be surprising for you to learn that the naturally occurring saturated fat in coconut oil is actually good for you and provides a number of profound health benefits, such as:

• Improving your heart health.(3)
• Boosting your thyroid. (4)
• Increasing your metabolism.
• Promoting a lean body and weight loss if needed.
• Supporting your immune system. (5)

Coconut oil even benefits your skin when applied topically and has been found to have anti-aging, regenerative effects.

So, what are coconut oil's secrets to success?

How Coconut Oil Works Wonders in Your Body

Nearly 50 percent of the fat in coconut oil is of a type rarely found in nature called lauric acid, a "miracle" compound because of its unique health promoting properties. Your body converts lauric acid into monolaurin, which has anti-viral, anti-bacterial and anti-protozoa properties. (6)

Coconut oil is also nature's richest source of medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs), also called medium-chain triglycerides or MCTs. By contrast, most common vegetable or seed oils are comprised of long chain fatty acids (LCFAs), also known as long-chain triglycerides or LCTs.

LCTs are large molecules, so they are difficult for your body to break down and are predominantly stored as fat.

But MCTs (7) , being smaller, are easily digested and immediately burned by your liver for energy -- like carbohydrates, but without the insulin spike. MCTs actually boost your metabolism and help your body use fat for energy, as opposed to storing it, so it can actually help you become leaner.

Back in the 1940s, farmers discovered this effect accidentally when they tried using inexpensive coconut oil to fatten their livestock.

It didn't work!

Instead, coconut oil made the animals lean, active and hungry.

Coconut oil has actually been shown to help optimize body weight, which can dramatically reduce your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes (8). Besides weight loss, boosting your metabolic rate will improve your energy, accelerate healing and improve your overall immune function.

And several studies have now shown that MCTs can enhance physical or athletic performance.(9)

And finally, as we have already discussed, coconut oil is incedibly good for your heart. The truth is this: it is unsaturated fats that are primarily involved in heart disease and too much sugar and processed foods, not the naturally occurring saturated fats, as you have been led to believe. (10)

Coconut Oil in Your Kitchen

Personally, I use only two oils in my food preparation.

The first, extra-virgin olive oil is the best monounsaturated fat and works great as a salad dressing. However, olive oil should not be used for cooking. Due to its chemical structure, heat makes olive oil susceptible to oxidative damage. So for cooking, I use coconut oil exclusively.

And polyunsaturated fats, which include common vegetable oils such as corn, soy, safflower, sunflower and canola, are absolutely the worst oils to cook with.

Why?

Three primary reasons:

1) Cooking your food in omega-6 vegetable oils produces a variety of very toxic chemicals, as well as forming trans-fats. Frying destroys the antioxidants in oil, actually oxidizing the oil, which causes even worse problems for your body than trans-fats.

2) Most vegetable oils are GM (genetically modified), including more than 90 percent of soy, corn and canola oils.

3) Vegetable oils contribute to the overabundance of damaged omega-6 fats in your diet, throwing offyour omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. Nearly everyone in Western society consumes far too many omega-6 fats -- about 100 times more than a century ago -- and insufficient omega 3 fats, which contributes to numerous chronic degenerative diseases.

There is only one oil that is stable enough to withstand the heat of cooking, and that's coconut oil. So, do yourself a favor and ditch all those "healthy oil wannabes," and replace them with a large jar of fresh, organic, heart-supporting coconut oil.

Dr. Joseph Mercola is the founder and director of Mercola.com. Become a fan of Dr. Mercola on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, and check out Dr. Mercola's report on sun exposure!

Follow Dr. Joseph Mercola on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mercola

----------------------------
(1) Kaunitz H, Dayrit CS. Coconut oil consumption and coronary heart disease. Philippine Journal of Internal Medicine, 1992;30:165-171

(2) Prior IA, Davidson F, Salmond CE, Czochanska Z. Cholesterol, coconuts, and diet on Polynesian atolls: a natural experiment: The Pukapuka and Tokelau Island studies, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1981;34:1552-1561

(3) Raymond Peat Newsletter, Coconut Oil, reprinted at www.heall.com. http://www.heall.com/body/healthupdates/food/coconutoil.html An Interview With Dr. Raymond Peat, A Renowned Nutritional Counselor Offers His Thoughts About Thyroid Disease

(4) Baba, N 1982.Enhanced thermogenesis and diminished deposition of fat in response to overfeeding with diet containing medium-chain triglycerides, Am. J. Clin. Nutr., 35:379

(5) Dr. Mary G. Enig, Ph.D., F.A.C.N. Source: Coconut: In Support of Good Health in the 21st Century
(6) Isaacs CE, Litov RE, Marie P, Thormar H. Addition of lipases to infant formulas produces antiviral and antibacterial activity, Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, 1992;3:304-308.

Isaacs CE, Schneidman K. Enveloped Viruses in Human and Bovine Milk are Inactivated by Added Fatty Acids(FAs) and Monoglycerides(MGs), FASEB Journal, 1991;5: Abstract 5325, p.A1288.

Mitsuto Matsumoto, Takeru Kobayashi, Akio Takenakaand Hisao Itabashi. Defaunation Effects of Medium Chain Fatty Acids and Their Derivatives on Goat Rumen Protozoa, The Journal of General Applied Microbiology, Vol. 37, No. 5 (1991) pp.439-445.

(7) St-Onge MP, Jones PJ. Greater rise in fat oxidation with medium-chain triglyceride consumption relative to long-chain triglyceride is associated with lower initial body weight and greater loss of subcutaneous adipose tissue, International Journal of Obesity & Related Metabolic Disorders, 2003 Dec;27(12):1565-71. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12975635

(8) Geliebter, A 1980. Overfeeding with a diet of medium-chain triglycerides impedes accumulation of body fat, Clinical Nutrition, 28:595

(9) Fushiki, T and Matsumoto, K Swimming endurance capacity of mice is increased by consumption of medium-chain triglycerides, Journal of Nutrition, 1995;125:531. http://www.coconut-connections.com/hypothyroidism.htm
(10) Barry Groves, PhD. Second Opinions: Exposing Dietary Misinformation: The Cholesterol Myth, parts 1 and 2

 

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

The Surprising Connection Between Food and Fracking.

                        
 
A farmer spreads synthetic nitrogen fertilizer on a field.
 
 
 
 
 
In a recent Nation piece, the wonderful Elizabeth Royte teased out the direct links between hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the food supply. In short, extracting natural gas from rock formations by bombarding them with chemical-spiked fluid leaves behind fouled water—and that fouled water can make it into the crops and animals we eat.

But there's another, emerging food/fracking connection that few are aware of. US agriculture is highly reliant on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, and nitrogen fertilizer is synthesized in a process fueled by natural gas. As more and more of the US natural gas supply comes from fracking, more and more of the nitrogen fertilizer farmers use will come from fracked natural gas. If Big Ag becomes hooked on cheap fracked gas to meet its fertilizer needs, then the fossil fuel industry will have gained a powerful ally in its effort to steamroll regulation and fight back opposition to fracking projects.
The potential for the growth of fracked nitrogen (known as "N") fertilizer is immense. During the 2000s, when conventional US natural gas sources were drying up and prices were spiking, the US fertilizer industry largely went offshore, moving operations to places like Trinidad and Tobago, where conventional natural gas was still relatively plentiful. (I told that story in a 2010 Grist piece.) This chart from a 2009 USDA doc illustrates how rapidly the US shifted away from domestically produced nitrogen in the 2000s.


It was the N of the era: In the 2000s, nitrogen production moved offshore as US natural gas prices rose. Source: USDA

Today, Trinidad and Tobago, an island nation off the coast of Venezuela and our leading source of imported N, is in the same position the US found itself in the early 2000s: Its supply of conventional, easy-to-harvest natural gas is wearing thin. In 2012, the International Monetary Fund estimated (PDF) that at current rates of extraction, the nation had sufficient natural gas reserves to last until just 2019.

Meanwhile, the fracking boom has made US natural gas suddenly abundant—and driven prices into the ground. A Btu of US natural gas now now costs 75 percent less than it did in 2008, the New York Times recently reported. Meanwhile, nitrogen fertilizer prices remain stubbornly high, propped up by strong demand driven by high crop prices. Those conditions—low input prices plus elevated prices for the final product—mean a potential profit bonanza for companies that use cheap US natural gas to make pricy N fertilizer for the booming US market.

Not surprisingly, as Kay McDonald of the excellent blog Big Picture Agriculture shows, the industry is starting to move back to the United States to take advantage of the fracking boom. McDonald points to a $1.4 billion project announced in September by the Egyptian company Orascom Construction Industries to build a large new nitrogen fertilizer plant in Iowa close to a natural gas pipeline. According to the Wall Street Journal, "cheap U.S. natural-gas supplies and the nation's role as the world's most important food exporter" drew the Egyptian giant into the US market.

Fertilizer giant CF Industries won more than $70 million in tax incentives from the the state, and $161 million in property taxes over 20 years from the county that houses the plant.
 
That same month, US-owned agribusiness cooperative CHS announced it was investing $1.2 billion to build a nitrogen plant in North Dakota. An Associated Press article gave a taste of the potential profits in such an operation: "Natural gas prices are now at about $2.50 per thousand cubic feet. At those prices, it takes about $82 worth of natural gas to make a ton of anhydrous ammonia, which is selling for about $800 per ton."

And then there's US fertilizer giant CF Industries, which in November announced a $3.8 billion expansion of existing nitrogen fertilizer plants in Louisiana and Iowa, a move designed to "take advantage of low natural gas costs and high grain prices," MarketWatch reported.

Now, it should be noted that it isn't just the promise of windfall profits that are driving these investments. Energy prices are highly volatile, and the industry is wary of the risk involved with plunking down billions in hopes of future gain. Enter the taxpayer: These projects are being underwritten by public money at the national, state, and local levels. As a reward for expanding its Iowa plant, CF Industries won more than $70 million in tax incentives from the the state, and $161 million in property taxes over 20 years from Woodbury County, which houses the plant, the Sioux City Journal reports. Louisiana will chip in several million dollars in tax breaks for the company's expansion there, too.

As for Orascom Construction's Iowa plant, it's being financed through a federal loan program designed to help states recover economically from disasters—in this case, Iowa's 2008 floods. The loan program, which gives Orascom access to an interest rate much lower than it would find in the commercial market, is a de facto subsidy—it will likely save the company $360 million in interest payments on the construction, the Des Moines Register reported. And that's on top of $100 million in tax breaks the state of Iowa has committed to the project.

What are taxpayers getting in exchange for these goodies? In my view, not much. Industrial agriculture's reliance on plentiful synthetic nitrogen brings with it a whole bevy of environmental liabilities: excess nitrogen that seeps into streams and eventually into the Mississippi River, feeding a massive annual algae bloom that blots out sea life; emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon; and the destruction of organic matter in soil.

By adding a "small grain" (oats or wheat) plus nitrogen-fixing cover crops, farmers can reduce their nitrogen needs by upwards of 80 percent.
 
Rather than prop up nitrogen use by subsidizing new megaprojects, public policy could be seeking encouraging farming practices that demand less nitrogen. One obvious strategy is diversification. The most prolific US crop, corn, is also the most nitrogen-intensive among major field crops. In a 2012 paper, researchers from Iowa State University's Leopold Center showed that by extending the typical Midwestern corn-soy crop rotation by adding a "small grain" (e.g., oats or wheat) plus nitrogen-fixing cover crops, farmers can reduce their nitrogen needs by upwards of 80 percent. Investing in policies that encourage such changes would likely, in the long run, be much smarter than subsidizing the fertilizer industry's move toward relying on fracked gas.

As they fight the expansion of fracking and push for tighter regulations on it, concerned citizens can count on an opponent nearly as powerful and monied as Big Oil: Big Ag. Already, the American Farm Bureau Federation, which essentially acts as a lobbyist for Big Ag firms, supports the controversial energy source: "Farm Bureau supports additional access for exploration and production of oil and natural gas, including the use of hydraulic fracturing," the group declared in an October 2012 policy statement (PDF). But the Farm Bureau and its agribiz allies haven't played much of a role in the fight over regulating fracking, yet. As the fertilizer industry becomes reliant on cheap US natural gas, that will likely change.