Yes!....The Oceans Are Getting Ever More Acidic!

Some 6 weeks ago in his regular Weekend WSJ column, 'Mind and Matter', Matt Ridley opined that all the kerfuffle concerning the oceans becoming ever more acidic (pH being dangerously lowered even below 6.9) was a mere "storm in a teacup" and mostly exaggerated. Like all naysayers, the tactic Ridley used to cast doubt was that there was too much "variation" - and hence one could not be sure what specific pH level applied to any one area of the ocean, including those where human regularly fish or rely on.

The variation aspect is valid, but over-hyped by Ridley. It's somewhat like saying 'Well, we don't know how much hail will fall on any particular area ....so it's no big deal to be fretting over it since the average is low". But the point is, given the right cells in storm clouds, regions expecting hail often see major damage ...as we can often attest here in Colo. And just because ALL areas don't receive the same size hail (say golfball v. baseball) doesn't mean all areas escape! In the same way, because some remote areas of the oceans may have relatively normal pH values, that doesn't mean organisms in the oceans where the pH has been lowered aren't affected or that we can claim "no harm, no foul".

Now the evidence has been reinforced that not only is the acidity of Earth's oceans the greatest since the dawn of the Industrial revolution, but in the past 300 million years! Indeed, according to new research our oceans may be acidifying faster than at any point during the last 300 million years due to industrial emissions, endangering marine life from oysters and reefs to sea-going salmon. And we won't even mention the phytoplankton which generate so much of the planet's oxygen!

The scientists from Columbia University, which led the research. have found surging levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that forced down the pH of the ocean by overall 0.1 mean unit in the last century. This is 10 times faster than the closest historical comparison from 56 million years ago. It's deadly serious because - like the margins for ushering in a runaway greenhouse effect, the margins of safety for acidic oceans are extremely low. Hence, one can't tell by the small magnitude of numerical pH that the increment change is nothing to fret over.

As noted in earlier blogs: the seas absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, forming carbonic acid. The particular chemical reaction is:

H2O + CO2 -> H2 CO3

The lower the pH level in the seas ('7' is neutral pH), the more acidic they are. This is also worrisome because mass extinctions of marine creatures in the past have been linked to instances of ocean acidification. Thus the current incremental change could also threaten important species. This according to Baerbel Hoenisch, the paleoceanographer at Columbia who was lead author of the paper that appeared in the journal Science. As he noted:

“If industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about — coral reefs, oysters, salmon,”


Meanwhile, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said ocean pH may fall another 0.3 units this century, according to Columbia.

This could easily bring us into the pH ~ 6.5 range which would be catastrophic, at the same time that we're on the cusp of the runaway Greenhouse effect with temperature increases of nearly 6C since the Industrial Revolution onset.

The closest period change to the current pace occurred during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 56 million years ago, when a doubling of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide may have pushed pH levels down by 0.45 units over 20,000 years, according to the Columbia researchers.

Fossil records of the time indicate as many as half of all species of seabed-dwelling single-celled creatures called benthic foraminifers became extinct, suggesting species higher up the food chain may also have died out, they said.

The Columbia scientists used fossil records including the preservation of calcium carbonate in ocean sediments and the concentrations of various elements to reconstruct past ocean conditions. Two other mass extinctions about 200 million years and 252 million years ago may also be linked to acidification, though there’s less fossil evidence, according to the study.

A major concern issuing from the research is the future projected impact on the balance of ocean carbonate chemistry. This is no small thing! As observed by the authors of the article,''Progress Made in Study of Ocean’s Calcium Carbonate Budget’ (Eos Transactions of the AGU , Vol. 83, No. 34), from August 20, 2002:

"Future decreases in sea water pH (and CO3(-2)) concentration will decrease the saturation state of the waters with respect to Ca CO3”.

This means that spillover effects become much more likely, as the saturation threshold is lowered, with masses of CO2 released additionally into the atmosphere. Melting ice from glaciers, etc. will then surely reduce further the sea water pH and accelerate the release of CO2 from the oceans ultimately triggering catastrophic release of CO2 from sedimentary carbonates, representing the largest reservoir of carbon on Earth.

In terms of the most recent work, researchers based in the United States, Britain, Netherlands, Germany and Spain contributed to the study, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The Bottom Pit Of Capitalism: Grisly "Dahmer Tours"

It is well known that capitalism in its most amped up version in the US of A, aims to deliver to every imaginable service or product desired within the law. Thus, it really ought not surprise us that assorted "entrepeneurs" will come up with services or products that are downright outrageous - including the recent efforts to auction off the paraphernalia of serial killers, as well as "products" which defy imagination and common sense .....such as "porker porno" in which sweating 300- pounders are featured engaging each other like over-sized, snorting rhinos on giant mattresses. Of course, other execrable products precede these, such as the fake vomit used by pranksters, fake dog poop with odor simulators to place on an unwary office worker's desk and "poop cushions" to place on sofas and simulate human flatulence.

But now a new low appears to have arrived in the guise of guided tours (3 per day) over serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's former haunts, in which he picked up dozens of innocent victims before luring them to his apartment, butchering them and eating them. See, e.g.

http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/141320593.html

The saga of Jeffrey Dahmer, make no mistake, is one of the most appalling in the history of Milwaukee (writing as a former resident, also born there). Dahmer redefines what a human beast is, as he not only drugged his hapless victims, but butchered them after sexual congress, then ate selected body parts and often stored the heads in his fridge.

Hence, any revisiting is cause for alarm (never mind the idiots that carp "History is history and we need to own it!" -- sorry, nope!) and indeed has caused a firestorm of outrage in the city, e.g.

http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/140979273.html

The tour begins at Milwaukee's former Club 219 and costs $30 for the one mile walk along with the description of which victims were picked up where, started yesterday on Milwaukee's South 2nd Street. According to Amanda Morden of BAM Marketing and Media:

"We are actually looking at different areas on the tour, where he has actually picked up seven of his 17 victims"

Even as tickets on Groupon already sold out, the doctor who examined Dahmer and testified at his trial says the tour is "in poor taste," and "could cause post-traumatic stress for the victims' families".

Well, uh...DUH!

According to one news item:

"Dahmer Tours hasn't reached out to any of the victims' families.They say they're responding to the curiosity that's already out there."

But of course this is the byword and motto of "anything goes" capitalism! Thus, the manufacturers of artificial dog poop and human vomit are "simply responding to the existing demand and curiosity" for such, even as the sick makers of "porker porno" are only meeting that demand. Well, how about not feeding such demands or curiosity in the first place! Must every skewed, sick desire be met by some capitalist service or product? If another city, say Chicago, expresses an interest in conducting "John Wayne Gacy" tours will another marketing outfit take up that banner - complete with a Gacy imitator dressed as a clown and luring young victims to his rat-infested redoubt?

Give me an effing break!

The truth is that we are seeing manifest what author John Kenneth Galbreath noted in his terrific 1955 book, The Affluent Society, that the entrenched capitalist system has now gone beyond delivering to needs, but is catering to and even feeding an unending vortex of "wants"!

This can't be healthy for any society, and as Buddhism teaches, the only way for the human to possibly approach any kind of happiness in this world is to try to reduce all wants to zero. Every want left festering as well as instantly gratified leads to an even more dire and perverse want which will ultimately acquire a life of its own. The person harboring such wants then becomes a slave to them and is entangled and manacled as his capitalist providers seek to satiate them.

What will be next after these Dahmer tours? Will sick people demand "tours of Hell" after being hooked up to an auto-suicide device such as devised by Jack Kevorkian? One is left to wonder!

Kudos to a Courageous Woman - Caught in the "Culture wars"

Sandra Fluke, testifying before House Democrats when the House GOP turned her down. They couldn't tolerate one woman's voice!


I am referring, of course, to 3rd year Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, an eminently articulate warrior on behalf of all women in this country. Ms. Fluke, some readers may recall, originally volunteered to be the only female voice to testify (on behalf of President Obama’s mandated contraception coverage) at Rep. Darrell Issa’s All-Male Committee hearing... errrr....Inquisition. See, e.g.:http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-are-rabbis-helping-out-vatican-in.html

As I noted therein, even Jewish Rabbis (who ought to have known better given the way the Vatican assisted S.S. butchers to escape on ratlines) agreed to participate in this travesty and kangaroo-clown PR court (made even more degenerate by the fact Issa had the balls to hang an image of JFK in the background - when JFK would have vomited at any such display!)

And yet Issa and his clown brigade couldn't even find it in themselves to allow the voice of one lone courageous female to represent the other side. So, Ms. Fluke then agreed (after the GOP congress critter shut her down) to appear in separate testimony to a sub-Committee sponsored by House Democrats as well as journalists.

Ms. Fluke related the enormous costs imposed on students and other employees because of Georgetown University's practices re: withholding contraception or making it prohibitively expensive (which we will see across the board if any of the Repuke clown candidates get elected). She related how a friend needed contraceptives to treat an ovarian cyst, and when the cost became unaffordable was no longer able to avail herself and had to have her ovary removed.

This simply provoked derision and laughter from über-swine and idiot Rush Limbaugh in a recent talk show. Limbaugh - with his usual bombast and more venom this time (evoking the misogyny emblematic of all Repukes) castigated Ms. Fluke for spending "$3,000 a year" on contraceptives, then derided her as a “slut” and a “prostitute,” and promised to buy Fluke and Georgetown women “as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want".

This fat slobbering pig clearly doesn't grasp the biology of women in conjunction with the use of contraceptives, and that unlike the Viagra El Rushbo is on (and which he was busted with carrying into a Dominican Republic airport some years ago) contraceptives must be taken every day if they are to have their desired effect. One doesn't just pop them before sex, like El Rushbo does his Viagra! But what do you expect? Of course these Gooper Anti-woman swine don't comprehend female reproductive biology and related health issues any more than the Catholic Bishop swine do. (Though yes, I guess the latter did comprehend pederasty when they moved all the padres that molested altar boys from parish to parish!)

The "aspirin between the knees" jabber was echoing the earlier remark of Santorum's Sugar Daddy Foster Freeze, who made a joke of contraceptive practices used in his heyday - which the GOP would like to uniformly return to, if they could. (Yes, there are a number of the Gooper punks issuing feeble reprimands of Rush, but you can be sure that secretly they 100% side with his fulminations and believe his crappola).

Another thing here is Rushbo crossed into new Slimeball territory with his attacks on Sandra, who is not and never has been a politician but is a private citizen working toward a Georgetown University law degree. That was until the Union of Catholic bishops meddled in American politics and in her personal life, and she decided to tell her story.

For telling her story, and showing the importance of this mandate, I nominate Sandra as Cultural warrior heroine of the year. Let us hope her voice continues to speak out and not be intimidated. Kudos also for President Barack Obama for his show of support by phoning her after the Limbaugh incident. I do hope this fires him up even more to maintain his stance in the face of further Gooper fury - which as we all know, the pigs can be expected to unleash (accompanied by squeals) when stuck.

Again, Bravo, Ms. Fluke! You are a model citizen which one hopes all young women would aspire to!

Time To Allow General Irradiation of All Foods?

It's well-known that E. coli. cases continue to erupt in this country and most are traced to consuming ground beef, though other cases have also been found. Perhaps now is the time to initiate approval of irradiation for all foods consumed, just as the FDA has done for lettuce. Lettuce has been known to be consumed in large quantities and used for everything from stand-alone salads to topping burgers and tacos.

Less well known, until an actual electron microscope image was obtained at Texas A &M, was the E. coli. could lurk inside the pores of lettuce. (See graphic attached with scale shown at the 5 micro-meter level, or 5 x 10^-6 m, or 0.005 mm). Hence, people consuming lettuce risked getting E. coli. infection if it wasn't thoroughly washed. In 2008, however, such risks became a non-issue when the FDA approved the use of radiation to kill such bacteria.

The question emerges: Why not also extend approval to more general culprit foods, especially ground beef ?(where E. coli. is often found on account of the slaughtering methods employed at meat plants.) The only plausible reason is the American public's free-floating fear of anything bearing the term "radiation" which then confers negative connotations (and yet most Americans still eat lettuce!)

First, there is no reason for worry as to becoming "irradiated" as the effect of any food radiation is long gone by the time of a consumer purchase. In any case, the effect of radiation on food is related to the quantity of ionizing radiation absorbed. This is measured in Grays (Gy) with 1 Gy defined as an absorbed dose of 1 joule per kilogram = 100 rads. Hence, imparting 2 kGy (kilo-Gray) of radiation to 1.1 lb. (0.5 kg) of ground beef will result in imparting 4000 J/kg of ionizing energy.

Doses administered with less than 1 kGy prevent sprouting in potatoes, and delay ripening of foods. This level of dose can also kill insects in grains and fruits while also inactivating parasites such as tapeworms in meats - also eliminate the worm responsible for trichinosis. A more elevated dose in the range of 1-5 kGy can pasteurize foods, or in other words eliminate micro-organisms such as E. coli. which can reside there. In this guise, irradiation can majorly eliminate from foods: salmonella, listeria and the most common E. Coli strain (O157: H7)

A common myth among the lay public is any irradiated food can effectively last indefinitely. Not so! The truth is that the organisms responsible for food spoilage are not so easily eliminated by radiation, so they need to be properly refrigerated afterwards.

This also skewers a collateral myth of consumers fretting over radiated food: that it can be used to conceal actual spoilage so the person may really be eating "garbage" if he buys it. Again, not so! Since the organisms that cause spoilage aren't so easily removed spoilage bacteria can still operate and hence if irradiation were used to attempt to hide spoiled milk, the consumer would know in an instant. Any store trying to sell it would soon be out of business.

Another myth is that irradiated food "tastes" different or bland. This has also been skewered, as I have had irradiated foods in the U.S. as well as irradiated milk in Barbados. The fact is that any difference in taste is all in the percipient's head.

A more valid concern is nutrient loss in irradiated (radiolytic) foods, especially veggies, since the process definitely reduces nutrients....especially in the B-vitaimin group so essential for proper neural health. As much as 50% of these can be destroyed on irradiation. However, it is critical to note that this occurs in many food processes, and indeed - as I noted in previous blogs, crops are vitamin-denuded today before even being harvested. Broccoli, for example, at the point of harvest jhas 33% or less nutrients than it had in the 1950s.

This is why I have been a staunch advocate for taking vitamin supplements, because the basic truth today (which the vitamin naysayers refuse to concede) is that you'd have to eat bushels of vegetable each week to hit the mark of minimum daily requirements - if you refused to take any vitamins. (Which my then family physician finally agreed with me on in 1999 after numerous arguments!) Yes, you may occasionally have more "expensive urine" but that's a minor price to pay for staying healthy!

Lastly, after 30 years of experiments rigorously conducted, no evidence has been found that food radiating creates harmful byproducts. The World Health Organization itself concluded in its final report on the issue that ('High Dose Irradiation: Wholesomeness of Food Irradiated with Doses Above 10kGy', in WHO Technical Report 890, Geneva (1999):

"the irradiation of any food commodity up to an overall average dose of 10 kGy presents no toxicological hazard."


Maybe now is the time to apply radiolytics to all that ground beef too!

Anxious to Start a War with Iran? See THIS Film FIRST!

Well, you can hear the saber -rattling again just like in the run-up to the Iraq invasion and occupation. You hear over and over either that the Israelis are poised for a strike on Iran's nuclear sites, or the U.S. is considering assisting them - even with massive "30,000 lbs. TNT equivalent" bunker busters, or the U.S. plans its own invasion. Even no less than Pentagon PR pundit Barry McCaffrey has forecast a U.S. initiated war within 90 days, and already "briefed NBC execs" on such, e.g.:

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/gen_mccaffrey_privately_briefs_nbc_execs_on_war_with_iran/singleton/
If there are really and truly so many at the Pentagon or in the Elite punditocracy with a hard-on for war with Iran, I strongly suggest that they back up, cool their sabers off ....and take a good long look at this 1984 movie first:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023790698427111488

This movie, 'Threads', is about 1hr and 47 mins long, Brit-made but if it doesn't scare the bejeezus out of you, you are either already: a) brain dead, or b) a zombie and amongst the walking dead.

'Threads' is set in the industrial city of Sheffield, UK, and to be sure one needs to get adjusted to the peculiar accent. But once one does, he or she will be granted an inside look at a future none of us want to face. (One U.S. reviewer said that "Threads makes 'The Day After' look like a day at the races".) Having seen both I concur.

Threads is not for the squeamish or faint-hearted but I do think all those yammering for war or confrontation with Iran need to see it and let its message soak in. In fact, I think every critically-thinking red blooded citizen ought to see it, if for no other reason to be motivated to let reps know this thing isn't on - not now or ever. If we could contain the Soviet Union with its 12,700 ICBMs for over 40 years, we ought to be able to contain Iran.

Though based on a hypothetical Soviet-Russian invasion of Iran, which possibility is no longer - since the present day Russians have plowed enormous investment monies into Iran and its reactors, the projected invasion of a U.S. and NATO strike force is accurate to any unfolding future scenario. From the initial strikes on a nuke reactor at Isfahan, to the accidential sinking of the Russian ship Kirov in the Straits of Hormuz, to the accidential exchange of 2 tactical nuclear weapons (with radiation blowing over Pakistan) and the escalation to a full scale nuclear war - with 3,000 megatons exchange (210 megatons on the UK alone) this movie will keep you on the edge of your seat.

It should also give you nightmares and motivate you to scream down all the warmongers in this country with a boner to pick a fight. One might also include the Israelis in this as well, since any attacks by them could easily escalate and generate unintended consequences, especially if the current Russians believe their own interests are threatened. (A Russian Defense Minister already warned two months ago that any "extreme actions" would be met with responses in kind).

This plausibly makes all of us wish to hell our political and military leaders had more brains, or at least as much as JFK had, when he resisted the call from the Joint Chiefs in October, 1962 to bomb and invade Cuba when Castro had 93 IRBMs aimed at U.S. cities.

The last segment - following the timeline after the exchange and when nuclear winter occurs, discloses there are some prices that are simply too much to pay. (As if our vast deficits aren't enough already, to go initiating another ruckus for whatever reason.)

Let us hope our vaunted leaders learn those lessons after watching this film! If they need to, maybe re-run the last 30 minutes several times!

"Premium Support" Medicare: Still A Terrible Idea!

The fell plan for Medicare that we thought had long since been interred, evidently is still alive and well. That is, the "premiumn support" Paul Ryan plan for Medicare. According to Fred Barnes WSJ op-ed piece today ('Ryan's Medicare Revolution') we are on the cusp of a change in Medicare which both parties will have no option other than to agree with....given soaring budget deficits (most, I remind readers, traced to wars of choice and a decade plus of unpaid for tax cuts, mainly benefiting the wealthy).

Barnes also gets his facts wrong when he writes:

"The revolution involves Medicare, the health care program for the elderly and the single biggest cause of America's looming debt crisis..."

In fact, it is not Medicare which is the "single biggest cause of the debt crisis" but the combination of ten years of useless, costly and unwinnable military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan - which have already gobbled up over $2.9 trillion combined, and 10-plus years of unjustified tax cuts. Those latter have now taken out nearly $3.6 trillion from revenues and hence, with the military overstretch, created a deficit hole nearly $6.5 trillion wide. And yet, Medicare, in which beneficiaries must pay nearly $1500 a year in premiums plus 80% of all co pays, gets the blame!

Why? Because for knuckle dragging economic Neandertals it's the most convenient way to try to justify taking a sledge hammer to the program.

How does premium support work? Barnes again:

"Beginning in 2022, it would create a marketplace in which seniors have a fixed amount of money to buy health insurance. The amount of 'support' would match the price of the insurance premium."

Is he for real? What kind of a "marketplace" does he think will be created to attend to the medical needs of the mostly sick or infirmity -ridden elderly, who typically have 80-90% more medical demands and needs than the 24-44 year olds?

First, NO health insurance companies are going to compete for senior health care! They only do it now because the Medicare Advantage plans are paid more for their services than the government pays in standard Medicare. Hence, contributing to the standard program’s insolvency (by an excess $12 billion a year according to the GAO).

Barnes is also dishonest about claiming that premium support "matches" insurance pricing! Let us bear in mind here the maximum "premium support" ever suggested for this absurd program has been $15,000/yr. But the current average senior in Medicare requires support (or if you want, assistance) in the vicinity of $30,000/yr and much more post-86 years of age. This means that at the level of only $1,250 a month, most seniors - unless spectacularly healthy - won't get much help.

Let us assume an elderly woman requires hip replacement surgery at an on-paper cost of $30,000. Today, Medicare - standard Medicare, will pay 80% of that or $24,000, leaving her with $6,000 to pay on her own. A goodly amount, but not insuperable. In premium support at the maximum level, however, the woman would use ALL her allottment for one operation and still have $15,000 left to pay, and no more "premium support" for any other needs that may arise.

Worse, why compete for a pool of citizens which is basically going to be sickly most of the time? This is self-evident. Even now health insurance companies factor in the medical loss ratio (the ratio of unhealthy subscribers to the healthy ones that support them via fees, costs) as the most important in getting continued profits. That means they already know that any private plans for seniors on the open market would have vast medical loss ratios meaning the proportion of insurers' profits would be next to nil. Thus, seniors will clearly be shut out, translating to a no win situation for them. (No Medicare, and no private insurer to take them)

Secondly, competition per se doesn’t mean prices coming down. This is a myth that capitalists repeat over and over but there’s precious little evidence to support it. See all those gas stations out there competing with each other, ostensibly? You see any of them lowering their prices significantly more than any others in their vicinity? I don’t! The reason the gas prices stay high is because speculators hidden in their green eyeshades are making bets that oil prices will rise and so they do!

In the same way, look for medical insurance futures to be the next big thing by 2022 so "medical traders" will be speculating on how much inflations sends hip replacement or other operations soaring. Think medical costs are high now? Wait until after the GOP gets in again, assuming they do, and they implement "medical futures markets"! As a recent TIME columnist pointed out (‘The Market Can’t Cure Medicare’, May 2, 2011): “Nowhere in Adam Smith’s rule book does it say prices have to come down every time competitors show up”.


Thus it is egregious nonsense for Barnes to claim "the cost of Medicare will be capped with premium support".

No it won't. What will be "capped" is elderly access to any health care, period. We will then be back to the days...the harsh and savage era....before Medicare, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/05/pre-medicare-era-nasty-brutish-and.html

As Economics Professor Fiona Scott Morton aptly put it (ibid.) Ryan’s plan, and indeed any such premium support plan, is merely a demand shedding plan. As she puts it, “there’s no evidence many companies will be rushing in to provide health coverage to ailing boomers with competition that ought to lower any premiums"

BINGO!

She added:

"The Republican plan is not solving the problem. It’s solving the problem of the cost of government health care. You have people who can’t afford it and they’ll just die. Economists call that demand shedding”.

Thus the “Medicare revolution” proffered by Barnes and Ryan is NOT to engender market competition to "lower health premiums for seniors", but to shed market demand (by seniors) so they'll be unable to enter or access any private health care, period. And since no government help or insurance will be available (other than a meager voucher to try and purchase private insurance in an open market with seniors the only and largest risk pool) the senior will have no choice but to die.

Thus, we have a death policy and there's no gaming it with euphemisms or trying to put any lipstick on this pig.

Apart from that, we know health isn’t like buying a car, or i-pad or TV. The elements of objective and cool rational choice aren’t available mainly because the time when people most need health care is when their lives may be on the line: after a serious auto accident or fall, or appendicitis, or contracting pneumonia. Then, they simply need care and cost may not factor into it given that we know costs vary across large geographical regions, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-cant-colorado-follow-grand-junction.html

As shown in that blog, there is a way to control medical costs, but it doesn't depend on "premium support". It requires a provider network than mandates FIXED pricing for each procedure irrespective of what insurance vehicle one has....or doesn't. In this way, the delivery of care is rendered uniform without wild variations in costs, and in addition, costs can be controlled - especially as unnecessary procedures.

It is based on the compendium of cost-saving data cost-saving was highlighted in The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care . The accumulated data - extracted from billing records compiled from hospitals across the nation, discovered variations from one town to the next in the treatment of the same ailment. This led to massive variation in the cost of treating the same ailment. As a result, some U.S. localities (like Miami) spend $17,000 per year on the average Medicare patient, while others (in Grand Junction, CO) spend less than $7,000 per year with results that are just as good.

All of this was highlighted in a recent PBS program:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2198039605/

In the specific type of system portrayed in Grand Junction, seniors - the elderly - would receive great care and at an economic cost without having to gamble they will be turned down in a premium support market.

It's eminently simple...IF you're out to serve people and not merely rake in profits!

Supporting the Bollocks of Corporate "Free Speech Rights"

Warnings like this are essential. Besides, no smoker is having a gun placed to his head and being forced to read them!


The recent decision of a federal judge to block a U.S. government plan that requires graphic warnings on cigarette packages, is a travesty. According to this misguided and foolish judge (WSJ today, p. A6), Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the "government was violating the free speech rights" of the Tobacco companies "by requiring them to display the images of diseased lungs and a body on an autopsy table".

Are you effing kidding me? "Violating their free speech rights"? THEY are commercial artifacts! They have no free speech rights! Hence, there are no constitutional grounds on which this rests, and never mind the spurious past rulings, such as the 1886 Santa Clara U.S. Surpeme court farce which first found for "corporate personhood" or the 2009 'Citizens United' ruling that allowed for "unlimited infusion of cash into political campaigns" to be treated as "free speech"..

ALL of these rulings are outright abominations, that in effect elevate corporations to super-citizen level, which means the rest of us as flesh and blood citizens must become vassals or slaves.

Consider: Unlike the normal fleshly person-citizen, these legal artifacts are able to live forever, or as close to that sublime state as de-regulating laws allow. They can live in multiple places at once (branch offices), and even transmogrify themselves via mergers, etc. or 'amputate' themselves into smaller companies bearing the same overall identity, and run by a single interlocking directorate.

These 'corporate persons' were (over time) also able to access a host of special rights and privileges - not afforded ordinary flesh and blood citizens. These included: special tax-write offs, government and state subsidies, as well as deductions.

They also use special tax gimmicks, and often the gov't abets these, for example, by not demanding that the profits repatriated from overseas operations are taxed. Meanwhile, while the on-paper tax rate is 35% the actual amount paid by the typical corporation is 12 1/2 percent according to a recent report in TIME (Feb. 20, p. 16).

Part of the reason for this aberration is that Uncle Sam himself "has allowed companies the right to write off 100% of the purchase price of new equipment in 2010 and 2011". This was done to theoretically "spur investment and create jobs". One wonders then how come these companies are still sitting on almost $1.5 trillion while job growth barely ekes in at 240,000 a month or barely double the population replacement level.

Whatever the reason, the engineered corporate tax avoidance has had a dunning effect on our society along with the top 1% escaping their own fair tax assessments. According to TIME, corporations in toto now account for only 9% of the nation's tax bill compared to 40% in 1943. That means citizens are now left to make up that difference, and the ones who are happen to be in the lower quintiles of income - even as the upper 5% have seen their wealth soar.

Corporate tax perks are even more deleterious to our civil society because the money saved from not paying taxes is used to mount specious lobbying efforts, or pay for toxic super PAC political ads, or devise blatantly wrong legal cases....such as those which the Tobacco companies have used to make this federal judge believe there is a "substantial likelihood of winning any case".

Thus, the untaxed corporate money goes to enhance corporate privilege even as it adds another specious veneer to "corporate speech" rights at the expense of the rest of us.

According to this same Judge Leon, the proposed labels (ibid.):

"go beyond purely factual and uncontroversial disclosure"

And:

"The graphic images are designed to neither protect the consumer from confusion or deception, nor to increase consumer awareness of smoking risks, rather they were crafted to effect a stronge emotional response calculated to provoke the viewer to quit or never start smoking."

Of course, the good Judge misses several key points in this faux ruling:

1) No smoker is forced to read any warning! A "consumer" can just purchase his death pack, light up and smoke to his heart's or lung's content and never glance at the warning no matter how garish. No one is putting a .44 magnum to his cranium to force eyeballs to the warning label!

What the Judge is asserting is that people are no more than automatons - even more chattel than the corps believe. If they pick up a pack of cigs, their willpower is overcome and they must focus on the colorful warning just like droog Alex was forced to watch - with eyelids pinned open - the parade of horrors during his special treatments in the flick 'Clockwork Orange'. They have no choice, they MUST read the labels and warnings and start crying and yelping: "Oh ....ooooh....I dare not buy that or this will happen to moi!"

Bollocks!

2) The Judge disses over 3 decades of firm medical support for the variety -severity of diseases that occur to lungs from smoking. If he were to see actual autopsy images of diseased lungs he might not be so cavalier.

3) Obviously, given a 2.5 sq. inch space one cannot produce a reasoned tract with statistics to support the label! (Can you see the eyes closing?) Thus, the only alternative is a much abbreviated, high- impact message ....but what's the big deal?

Such messages are all over our TV's at the behest of corporations! From the latest drug sex aids like Cialis to ....you name it! If those bear intrinsic "high emotional content" then why can't the government use its own forms to offset corporate influence toward a negative end?

4) Legal precedents already established in Europe have no issue with such warnings and have also been successful especially in reducing the smoking -disease rates of the young! But of course, in an established corporatocracy like ours, the citizen has few protections and rights. Thus, even as Europeans protect their citizens with "emotive" warnings allowed on tobacco products, they also protect citizens' rights to privacy - hence prohibit trading on their personal information such as bank accounts, social security numbers and other invasions which are somehow allowed in the US of A.

Why allowed? Obviously because we are vassals to a corporate oligarchy that feels they can do whatever the hell they wish.

Just one question for the Judge:

Will you then stand for Obama's Affordable Health Plan, now that you've approved millions of new lung diseased citizens who likely won't be able to get insurance to treate their lung cancers, COPD and emphesema anyplace else?

If not, and you issue a ruling against the "Nanny state" you are nothing but a flat out hypocrite.