Who needs food stamps? We're too fat already

When possible, I like to spend the first hour of my day reading the news, because it really does inform the political work I do.

Mark Bittman in this morning's New York Times asks, What's the difference between eating a cookie for breakfast and having a helping of a sweetened breakfast cereal?  Usually, the cereal has more sugar!  Bittman outlines the lobbying and political pressure that the "breakfast food" industry applies to any attempt to reduce sugar content or marketing to children.  So far, the industry wins every time.

Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is calling for big cutbacks in the federal Food Stamp program.

“If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?” Santorum asked.   ThinkProgress.

Three-quarters of those who live in this country are either overweight or outright obese.  The health problems that accompany obesity are well-documented.  What Santorum doesn't understand is that access to calories does not mean access to nutrition. 

Some few people manage to resist  marketing and the lure of cheap food, but the deck is stacked against us.  Occupy Breakfast? 


Photo from Frapestaartje's photostream at Flickr.

Well, we're really screwed now: corporations given the right to buy elections

"Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."  Abraham Lincoln
 
OK, this is going to be all over the news, but this morning the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations can spend as much as they want to get a candidate elected, and that restraints on their spending are violations of the 1st Amendment right to free speech.

Labor unions and other organizations were also given the right to spend freely, but I do think we'll be a little outclassed, don't you?

I imagine U.S. Chamber of Commerce members will be dancing in the streets.  The chamber recently spent $2.5 million in the state of Maine to oppose federal health care legislation, even though no local ballot question was pending, but that state is represented by moderate Republicans Sens. Olympia Snowe, considered to be possible swing votes in the Senate battle.  ABC.   They're also claiming part of the credit for getting Massachuetts' Scott Brown elected, and plan to spend $100 million more to defeat health care reform.  Think Progress. 

Now, clearly there are lots of Massachusetts folks opposed to the current version of health care reform who voted for Scott Brown, but ask yourself:  do you think you might have been overly influenced?  (You'd never admit it to me, so just be answerable to yourself.) 

The Chamber is also launching a campaign against the creation of a new federal agency to protect consumers from financial abuses. Denver Post. 

I won't continue giving examples about the Chamber of Commerce.  Let's look at some upcoming ballot questions in this November's Massachusetts election.

One question would protect Massachusetts forests from overlogging.  Certainly the timber industry will spend big in on this one.  Another question would eliminate renewable energy credits for biomass incinerators, making it nearly impossible to run profitably.  Which corporations will spend big on that one, I wonder?

 

Corporations are innately conservative, and their charters require them to make profit for their stockholders as their most sacred duty.  What chance will a grassroots candidate who opposes factory farming have when his or her opponent is funded by McDonald's?  How about the candidate who want to promote wind and solar power?  How about the candidate that would like to rein in prescription costs?  Or who promotes bank reform?

 

One core problem is that corporations are considered persons under the law.  Can we act legislatively to prohibit corporations from having as broad free speech rights as you and I by removing their personhood??

For those of us who think big money already plays too large a role in elections, the news couldn't be worse.  Do we really want the U.S. to be a country where you can only have democracy if you can buy it?

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism also known as Economic Imperialism is when the USA takes advantage of cheap labour in third world dictatorships helps poorer countries develop their economies. The United States, along with the IMF and the World Bank gives generous loans to dictators poor people with the only condition of giving America all of their resources access to their economy. Many dictators countries have benefited from American style neoliberalism. These wealthy nations such as Haiti and Colombia have benefited immensly from neoliberalism. In communist nations on the other hand, people have had to endure a free burocratic and state managed healthcare system, free socialist brainwashing propaganda education, and public transit because in communist countries none can afford a car . Neoliberals such as George Bush hope that one day, the entire world will be free from government and all their social programs using your own money for you . George Bush intends to liberate socialist countries that oppose brutal and oppressive democratic principles such as economic subservience to the United States Neoliberalism. George Bush has placed many socialist countries on the axis of evil because their policies interfere with his profit margin they violate fundamental human rights. Any individual or group who disagrees with America attempts to sabotage the American economy will be brutally massacred dealt with accordingly. The United States of America will oppose all forms of marxist reforms tyranny and will unilaterally invade and personally bitch slap all the socialists liberate any country that does not implement neoliberalism respect the rights of its people. The United States believes it has the God-given right duty to steal resources from developing nations oppose human rights abuses all over the world.

See more at Uncyclopedia

Would you kill someone in order to buy a Christmas gift?

Everyone knows about this by now, yet here it is:

5 a.m. on Black Friday at Valley Streams, New York and the doors to Wal-Mart swing open. Within minutes, a 34 year old Wal-Mart employee is knocked down and trampled, and pronounced dead shortly after. Four more people, including a pregnant woman, are also injured. Shoppers had to grab the hands of their children (children? at 5 a.m.?) to keep them from being trampled.

So what do you say to your family when you get home? Don't blame me, I only gave him a little shove, not the big one that drove him to his knees?

I guess the PC thing here would be to blame Wal-Mart, and there's certainly plenty of blame to go around. But tonight I'm thinking about the people, poor and middling, who think they're going to Wal-Mart to buy some happiness for the ones they love, who've absolutely been sold on the definition of celebrating the Holidays being synonymous with spending every penny you can get your hands on.

Here's my reality: Like many other Americans, I've always spent too much around the holidays-- spent, sometimes, when I wasn't sure how I'd pay the rent in January. Spent because so much of the rest of the year was just the bare necessities for me and my family: cheap shoes, generic food, second-hand clothes. So I do understand the impulse.

Yet the monetary poverty of my holidays has made me plan more around giving than buying.

Thanksgiving was never a family-only affair, but included unattached friends and sometimes near-strangers who had nowhere else to go.

Then, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, I'd make regular trips to all the second-hand stores, looking for pretty scarves and blouses, special jewelry, cast iron pans, silver candlesticks, retro pyrex bowls, crystal platters, wicker shelves, classic books, throw pillows and art for the walls. I'd refurbish, paint, polish, embroider and decorate.

I'm creative but not really handy, yet I made picture books, birch bark frames and seashell mirrors, winter weeds spray-painted in silver and white, bookmarks, drawstring pouches and potpourri. With nothing magnificently expensive to compare them to, these presents became treasures to my family and friends!

Then, near the Solstice, we'd wash windows and curtains, dust all the books and polish the woodwork, and invite everyone we knew to our Solstice Open House. We'd encourage people to bring food to share if they could, and we always had bounty.

I live alone now, my children are grown, and I'd like to think I'm better off financially than when I was on public assistance, even though, working full-time, I find I am still right on the edge. My daughters have less job security than they did this time last year and other family members are working only part-time or are laid off and looking for work.

A few weeks ago my daughters proposed that we each voluntarily limit our spending this season to $25 a person. It took me a moment longer than I'd have thought it would to agree to their proposal. A couple of times since then I've practically found myself rubbing my hands with glee at a clever idea or Goodwill find. And I won't have to worry (as much) about January's bills.

So why am I writing this? Certainly not to make anybody else feel bad. I love celebrating the holidays and all my adult life and for a lot of different reasons I've preferred second-hand items to new ones; it's just the way I am. I prefer to celebrate, find, make, grow and gather than to spend and buy.

If there is ever a year in recent history for us to think a little deeper about what it is we really love about the holidays, what the holidays really mean to us, this is it.

This year for the first time in several, I and my sister, who lives downstairs, will have a Solstice Open House. If we know each other, you are invited. If we don't, there's still time to become friends.