Fukushima Causing Thyroid Disease in CA Children

  Fukushima nuclear meltdown causes thyroid condition in California babies 

 

Photo: EPA

American scientists believe that the Fukushima nuclear fallout has impacted the health of babies born in California around the time of the Japanese power plant disaster. An upcoming review has revealed an increase in the number of newborns with congenital hypothyroidism, a rare but serious condition normally affecting about one child in 2,000.

Hypothyroidism is a condition in which the thyroid gland does not make enough thyroid hormone. 

The researchers believe the condition was triggered by the radioactive contamination traveling 5,000 miles across the Pacific.

In their study, which is to be published next week in peer-reviewed Open Journal of Pediatrics, the scientists examined congenital hypothyroidism rates in newborns and compared data for babies exposed to radioactive Iodine-131 and born between March 17 and December 31, 2011 with unexposed newborns delivered before the meltdown plus those born in 2012.

The results have been revealed in a paper titled “Changes in confirmed plus borderline cases of congenital hypothyroidism in California as a function of environmental fallout from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown.”

It showed that hypothyroidism increased by 21% in the group of babies that were exposed to excess radioactive Iodine in the womb, while “borderline cases” in the same group surged by 27%.

After the Fukushima Daiichi explosion, the winds blew the toxic iodine and other volatile radio nuclides out to sea and to the Pacific. Although much of the toxic waste dispersed on its way to the US West Coast, small amounts of I-131 were measured in milk and led to widespread concern.

One of the reasons for this is that radio-Iodine is associated with thyroid cancer in children. According to the Global Research Center, which studies the effects of globalization, the past six months saw an increase in thyroid cancer among children aged 0-18 from the affected prefecture following the Fukushima catastrophe, with up to 53 cases confirmed.

Meanwhile, the Japanese authority has been repetitively dismissing the catastrophe as a potential cause of health effects in Japan, let alone California, citing the official estimates that claim the “dose” was too “low” for unborn babies to be affected.

Global Research

Europe Near Wall St Financial Tax

European Progress Toward a Financial Transactions Tax

Monday, 18 November 2013 09:16 By Salvatore Babones, Truthout | News Analysis

The Europeans for financial reform, a coalition of progressive forces, support a Financial Transaction Tax. Picture taken during the first seminar of the Europeans for Financial Reform initiative, Brussels, 15 March 2010. (Photo: Thomas Delsoi / PES PSE )Germany's major political parties have agreed on the need to impose a financial transactions tax (FTT) as part of a broad package of economic reforms to be undertaken by a coalition government.

The German federal elections in September 2013 gave the conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel 311 seats in the German Parliament, just short of a majority. As a result, Merkel is negotiating with other parties to form a governing coalition.

The FTT is very popular in Germany. Eighty-two percent of Germans support an FTT, according to the latest Eurobarometer poll, compared with 64 percent of Europeans as a whole.   If Europeans could vote on financial regulation, they would vote for an FTT.
For details on the implications of financial transactions taxes and how they work, see the answers to these Frequently Asked Questions on FTTs.

For good or for bad, Germany is the economic and political heart of the European Union. Europe's largest country and largest economy has an even larger influence on European politics. In many ways, as goes Germany so goes Europe.

In recent years, this has sometimes been a problem, as when Germany demanded harsh austerity measures in response to the Eurozone banking crises of 2008-12.

At other times, German leadership has been a blessing. Germany has consistently used its influence to promote peace and good governance. And since the NSA was caught tapping Merkel's phone, Germany has come out strongly in favor of Internet privacy.

Now, Germany is leading the way toward a European FTT. Until the German coalition negotiations, the FTT had faded from the European agenda in the face of determined opposition from big banks and other business interests.

The popularity of the FTT in Germany made it one of the first planks to be agreed upon in the ongoing coalition negotiations. It may take several weeks or months for Germany's political parties to reach a final agreement. When the new German government takes office, a European FTT likely will be one of its top priorities.

The European Union began moving toward an FTT at the June 2013 Eurozone summit. At that event, European leaders agreed in principle to impose a tax on financial transactions. Their stated goal was to raise money to support European financial institutions.

The main opposition to a European FTT comes from the United Kingdom. The UK government is closely aligned with London's banks and financial firms. These businesses would bear the brunt of any FTT, because it would make them pay tax every time they traded financial instruments like stocks, bonds and derivatives.

Despite its fierce resistance to a European FTT, the UK has had a tax on stock market transactions since 1808. All industrialized countries have or used to have some form of tax on financial transactions. The difference is that a European FTT would be explicitly designed to slow trading in some of the most profitable - but riskiest - areas of finance.

The UK is a member of the European Union but is not a member of the Euro currency group, the so-called Eurozone. Germany is the most important member of the Eurozone, and the European Central Bank is based in Germany's financial capital, Frankfurt. If the new German government pushes for an FTT, the Eurozone is likely to follow.

A European FTT would have an important demonstration effect for the rest of the world, including the United States. To date, global financial regulation has been very weak. Pundits who are opposed to financial regulation claim that globalization makes it impossible to tax and regulate banks across borders.

If Europe successfully implements an FTT, it will demonstrate that it is possible to make banks pay for the privilege of trading financial instruments like stocks, bonds and derivatives. This could be an important first step toward creating a more stable global financial system that better serves the interests of the peoples of the world.

System Needs Unemployment - Wolff

Capitalism and Unemployment

Friday, 15 November 2013 10:25 By Richard D Wolff, Truthout | News Analysis'''

Jaime Rodriguez, who said he interviewed unsuccessfully with at least eight companies since being laid off, volunteers with Alba Davila, right, at a community resource center in New York, February 6, 2013. (Photo: Karsten Moran / The New York Times)Capitalism as a system seems incapable of solving its unemployment problem. It keeps generating long-term joblessness, punctuated by spikes of recurring short-term extreme joblessness. The system's leaders cannot solve or overcome the problem. Before the latest capitalist crisis hit in 2007, the unemployment rate was near 5 percent. In 2013, it is near 7.5 percent. That is 50 percent higher despite the last six years of so-called "effective policies to address unemployment."
Capitalism makes employment depend chiefly on capitalists' decisions to undertake production, and those decisions depend on profits. If capitalists expect profits high enough to satisfy them, they hire. If capitalists don't, we get unemployment. Capitalism requires the unemployed, their families and their communities to live with firing decisions made by capitalists even though they are excluded from participating in those decisions. The United States revolted against Britain partly because it rejected being victimized by tax decisions from which it was excluded. Yet employment decisions are at least as important as tax decisions.

Unemployment has three dimensions that often escape public discussion, perhaps because they raise such fundamental questions about the capitalist system. The first dimension concerns the immense losses for society from the kind of unemployment capitalism reproduces and that we suffer today. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the sum of unemployed people, "marginal" workers (those who stopped looking for work), and involuntarily part-time workers (the "underemployed") is roughly 14 per cent of the labor force. That is 20 million of our fellow citizens. Alongside that statistic, the Federal Reserve reports that 20 percent of our "industrial capacity" (tools, equipment, raw materials, floor space in factories, offices and stores, etc.) is sitting idle, wasted, not being used to produce goods and services. Capitalists make the decisions to not hire those millions of workers and to not buy, lease, or use all that industrial capacity.

Capitalists make those decisions based on what is privately profitable for them, not on what is lost to society. And that loss is huge. A simple calculation based on the numbers above proves the point. We as a nation forego about 15 percent of extra output of goods and services because of unemployed people and idled tools, equipment, etc. That comes to roughly $2 trillion per year. Yes, you read that correctly. We could produce an annual extra output far greater than the government's budget deficit ever was. We could use that extra to reduce global poverty by more than what has been done by all advanced industrial nations for decades. In short, we have taken staggering losses for our planet from being entrapped within an economic system that permits employment decisions to be held hostage to capitalists' profit calculations.

The second dimension of unemployment is the actual costs it imposes on society, costs not borne entirely, or even chiefly, by the capitalists whose decisions determine unemployment. A partial list of such costs includes additional government expenditures for unemployment compensation, food stamps, welfare supports and stimulus programs. Since the current capitalist crisis began in 2007, these costs are already in the trillions of dollars. It is also well known and documented that rising unemployment is positively correlated with rising physical and mental health problems, alcoholism, family disintegration, urban decline and so on. Public and private resources are expended to cope with these problems aggravated by unemployment. These resources come from the public much more than from the capitalists whose private decisions produced most of the unemployment. Capitalism socializes unemployment's immense costs.

The third dimension of unemployment concerns how capitalism distributes unemployment among workers. In the United States, when capitalists decide to reduce employment because that is the most profitable decision for their individual, private enterprises, the question is: How will that unemployment be managed? The answer we see most often is that individual capitalists choose which individual employees they will fire. Thus in today's United States, capitalists have selected most of the 7.5 percent of our people who are unemployed or underemployed. These they have condemned to full-time unemployment or reduced to unwanted part-time work.

An alternative option would manage unemployment by reducing everyone's work week by 7.5 per cent, or roughly 3 hours out of a week's 40 hours. Every worker would then have 3 hours of extra leisure for which no pay would be received. Instead, the saved money would be used to hire the 7.5 percent of workers who no longer need to be fired. Their work would substitute for the 3 hours lost from every other worker's week. In this way, unemployment would be shared by everyone and not imposed on a minority selected by capitalists.

Of course, capitalists oppose this alternative option. It costs them the benefits that have to be provided to all workers - more than if they could withhold benefits from fired workers (the usual practice). More importantly, if unemployment were shared, the injustice and waste of it would be driven home personally to every worker by his/her reduced hours and reduced pay. Right-wing ideologies would then find it harder to blame the unemployed for their joblessness. It would also make it easier to persuade and mobilize all workers to fight unemployment as their common enemy. Finally, it could help to spark the long-overdue debate over the social benefits and costs of more work and output versus more leisure and less pressure on our natural resources and environment.

Capitalists defend their "right" to hire and fire as an "entitlement" that cannot be questioned. Yet it surely should be challenged on grounds of its undemocratic nature and its perverse social results. Employing people in socially useful work (however a democratic society might define that) is more humane to the individuals, families and communities involved, and more productive and less costly than rendering them unemployed. Yet a private profit-driven capitalist system yields the endless unemployment, spiking repeatedly, that society does not want. Except, of course, capitalists want it because it keeps them at the top of capitalist society.

Progressive Mayor Wins in NYC

Tom Hayden on Bill de Blasio's Win: A Harbinger of a New Populist Left in America?

Bold stances on inequality and overzealous policing propelled a progressive victory. If he holds true, can De Blasio shift the national debate?

November 6, 2013  |  

The overwhelming support of  New York City voters for  Bill de Blasio is the latest sign of the shift towards a new populist left in America. De Blasio owes his unexpected tailwind to campaigning on issues considered by insiders to be too polarizing for winning politics.

One is De Blasio's promise to redress the " tale of two cities" inequalities among New Yorkers, an issue forced into mainstream discourse by the 2011  Occupy Wall Street movement – not by New York  Democratsaligned with Wall Street. The other is De Blasio's pledge to sharply curb police stop-and-frisk policies directed against young people of color – aggressive tactics  favored by a majority of white voters and overwhelmingly criticized by African Americans, Latinos and Asian-American voters.

Despite its Democratic voter majority, New York in recent decades has been the political stronghold of the plutocratic Mayor  Michael Bloombergand, before him, the abrasive law-and-order Mayor Rudolph Giuliani – both  Republicans with national, even global, reach. Democrats have lacked a progressive voice on the national stage of American politics often provided by the New York mayor's office – until now.

De Blasio will have a mandate for economic and social reform backed by a newly-elected 51-member city council, the most progressive in years. As  Juan Gonzáles of Pacifica's DemocracyNow! put it:

I can't think of a time like this when so many progressives have been elected at once.

With American politics polarized between the Obama center and the thriving Tea Party, the only opening for the left is through state and local federalism serving as "laboratories of reform", to  paraphrase former Justice Louis Brandeis. After the Gilded Age and the Great Crash of the 1920s, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1934-47) and legislators like Robert Wagner created the first pillars of the New Deal before it become the national platform of the Democrats. They successfully fought not only Wall Street bankers, but a virulent and racist American right.

De Blasio is positioned to similarly shift the nation's dialogue, policies and priorities in a progressive direction – assuming he delivers on his campaign pledges. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the federal government has passed a  loophole-ridden Dodd-Frank reform law, which failed even to regulate the trillions floating in the derivatives industry. Wall Street investors have been richly rewarded since then, while  middle-class incomes stagnate and the numbers of poor Americans reach the highest in 50 years. A report last week from the respected  American Community Survey noted:

No other major American city has such income inequality when it comes to rich and poor when it comes to New York.

Among De Blasio's first challenges will be prodding Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature in Albany to permit local tax increases to fund universal pre-kindergarten in New York City. Cuomo and most pundits say the De Blasio proposal is going nowhere, but seasoned reporters like Gonzales are not so sure. "It's hard but doable. I'm not sure that Albany will resist the home rule message from a new mayor with a large mandate."

De Blasio has direct power over New York City's $70bn budget and re-zoning policies, which, under Bloomberg, showered favors on a real estate industry bent on  competing with London and Hong Kong at the expense of residential neighborhoods. An early test for De Blasio will be the  Midtown East re-zoning project left unfinished by Bloomberg, which would erect Empire State Building skyscrapers from the East River to downtown. De Blasio wants to "fix" the proposal, while community groups are 100% opposed, saying they would be left in permanent shadows.

Bold stances on inequality and overzealous policing propelled a progressive victory. If he holds true, can De Blasio shift the national debate?

De Blasio also can tackle income inequality by signing the living wage ordinance on city contracts, or by preventing Wall Street developers getting special city abatements – measures that Bloomberg vetoed. De Blasio didn't flinch on the issue when confronted in closed meetings with developers during the campaign.

When De Blasio first  raised his opposition to the police stop-and-frisk policies, according to  Vincent Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the candidate began rising in the polls against other contenders in the Democratic primary. The stop-and-frisk policy, a variation of racial profiling against black and brown young people, is generally supported by white and worried New Yorkers and overwhelmingly opposed by communities of color.

De Blasio and his African-American wife have a teenager, named Dante, whose  Afro style even caught the attention of President Obama. As Dante leafleted with his father at subway turnstiles, emotional memories of the murdered Florida teenager Trayvon Martin were palpable, if rarely mentioned.

New York under Mayor Giuliani fanned then popular American policies of mass incarceration towards youngsters who resembled Dante de Blasio. From 2008 to 2012, the  NYPD stopped nearly 2.9 million New Yorkers, a majority of them young, about 85% black or brown. On average, 88% of those stopped were  completely innocent of any crime or misdemeanor.

When a federal appeals court  halted a judicial order ordering detailed changes in the NYPD last week, De Blasio expressed "extreme disappointment" and pledged to move forward on police reform from day one. How he will do so is procedurally muddled for the moment, but there is little doubt that another staple of the Bloomberg era is ready for the dustbin.

Will De Blasio adhere to his promises? He is, after all, a mainstream Democratic party operative and policy wonk who once managed Hillary Clinton's centrist campaign for the US Senate. Decades ago, he was deeply involved in the Nicaragua Solidarity Movement against Ronald Reagan's illegal contra war. De Blasio seemed nervous when this past association surfaced earlier in the campaign. But the Republicans could gain no traction on the issue.

It is reassuring that De Blasio has roots in past social movements instead of the usual pedigrees for a political career. If he has veered back to his lefty roots, it is enabled by a popular anger among voters. This anger was fanned by the growing gap between the haves and have-nots, reinforced by heavy-handed policing, in a city whose power brokers are addicted to opulence.

The media widely acknowledges that Occupy Wall Street " changed the conversation" in America. De Blasio won't represent the 99%, but a healthy majority will do. From Wednesday, Bill de Blasio will have the largest megaphone of any conversation-changer on the national scene.

 

Tom Hayden was a leader of the student, civil rights, peace and environmental movements of the 1960s. He served 18 years in the California legislature, where he chaired labor, higher education and natural resources committees. He is the author of ten books, including "Street Wars" (New Press, 2004). He is a professor at Occidental College, Los Angeles, and was a visiting fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics last fall.

GOP Loves to Cut SNAP, but not Corp Welfare

Food Stamps Are Affordable; Corporate Welfare Is Not

Tuesday, 05 November 2013 15:07 By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: SqueakyMarmot, teresia )

Republicans are outraged for all the wrong reasons.
This past Friday, $5 billion was automatically slashed from the federal food stamps program, affecting the lives of 47 million Americans.

The USDA estimates that because of these cuts, a family of four who receives food stamps benefits will lose about 20 meals per month.

But these enormous cuts to food stamps aren't enough for Republicans.
They still want to slash an additional $40 billion from the program in the name of reducing spending and federal debt.

Republicans love to argue that programs like SNAP - the federal food stamps program – and other social safety net programs put an unfair burden on American taxpayers, but if they just took a minute to crunch the numbers, they'd realize that's flat out wrong.

In 2012, the average American taxpayer making $50,000 per year paid just $36 towards the food stamps program.

That's just ten cents a day!
That's less than the cost of a gumball.
But Republicans think that's still too high a price to pay to help the neediest and most vulnerable Americans.
 And when it comes to funding the rest of America's social safety net programs, the average American taxpayer making $50,000 a year pays just over six dollars a year.
Simply put, the American taxpayer isn't paying much for social safety net programs like food stamps and Medicare.

But we are paying a lot for the billions of dollars the U.S. government gives to corporate America each year.

The average American family pays a staggering $6,000 a year in subsidies to Republican-friendly big business.

And that's just the average family. A family making more than $50,000 a year - say $70,000 a year - pays even more to pad the wallets of corporate America.
So where does some of that $6,000 that you and I are paying every year actually go?
For starters, $870 of it goes to direct subsidies and grants for corporations.
This includes money for subsidies to Big Oil companies that are polluting our skies and fueling climate change and global warming. Compare that to the $36 you and I pay for food stamps a year.

An additional $870 goes to corporate tax subsidies.
The Tax Foundation has found that the "special tax provisions" of corporations cost taxpayers over $100 billion per year, or roughly $870 per family.
But in reality, that number is much higher.
Citizens for Tax Justice found that the U.S. Treasury lost $181 billion in corporate tax subsidies, which means the average American family could be out as much as $1,600 per year.
 
Finally, of the $6,000 in corporate subsidies that the average American family pays each year, $1,231 of it goes to making up for revenue losses from corporate tax havens.
This money goes to recouping losses from giant transnational corporations like Apple and GE that hide their money overseas to boost profits and avoid paying taxes to help the American economy.

The bottom-line here is that American families are paying $6,000 or more per year to subsidize giant transnational corporations that are already making billions and billions of dollars in profit each year. In the past decade alone, corporations have doubled their profits.

Republicans on Capitol Hill keep suggesting that we can't afford to help the poor in this country, and they're wrong.

What we really can't afford is doling out $100 billion each year to corporations that don't need it.   That's where the real outrage and the real news coverage should be.

It's time to bring an end to corporate welfare, and to use those dollars to help those Americans who need it the most.

   
This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication. 

Progressives & Tea Party Begin to Rein in NSA

Congressmen Write Landmark Surveillance Reform

Amash, Bipartisan Coalition Introduce Comprehensive Bill to Rein in NSA Snooping

Oct 29, 2013 Issues: Defense and National Security

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                       

October 29, 2013                                                                               

 

Congressmen Write Landmark Surveillance Reform

Amash, Bipartisan Coalition Introduce Comprehensive Bill to Rein in NSA Snooping

Washington, D.C. – Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) and a bipartisan coalition of congressmen this morning introduced comprehensive legislation to rein in the federal government’s unconstitutional surveillance of Americans.

The USA FREEDOM Act, H.R. 3361, reforms parts of the USA PATRIOT Act that have been used to surveil Americans’ telephone records and Internet activity, according to recent leaks.  Amash joined Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and more than 70 cosponsors in the House. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the companion bill in the Senate.

“The days of unfettered spying on the American people are numbered. This is the bill the public has been waiting for. We now have legislation that ceases the government’s unconstitutional surveillance. I am confident that Americans and their representatives will rally behind it,” said Amash.  Amash continued, “I am thrilled to join senior colleagues on the Judiciary Committee such as Subcommittee Chairman Sensenbrenner and Ranking Member Conyers in introducing the bill.  Leading members on the committee of jurisdiction and a diverse group of more than 70 congressmen have signed on as original cosponsors. We have strong momentum.”

The comprehensive bill reforms several provisions in the Patriot Act that reportedly have been used to commit privacy abuses. First, the bill ends the government’s blanket collection of Americans’ records. Second, it increases the transparency of government surveillance. It ends the era of secret law by requiring FISA court opinions to be made available to all congressmen and summaries of the opinions to be made publicly available. Gag orders on telecommunications companies are modified so that the companies can make more information about government surveillance available to customers. Third, the bill increases privacy protections. It installs a Special Advocate to argue on behalf of Americans’ privacy before the FISA court, and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board receives subpoena power to perform its duties.

Introduction of the Freedom Act marks a major acceleration in the movement to reform government surveillance. The Amash-Conyers amendment, which was substantively incorporated into the Freedom Act, failed narrowly on a 205-217 vote in July. Eight of the Freedom Act’s original cosponsors voted against Amash-Conyers. Sensenbrenner and Leahy are the primary authors of the Patriot Act, which the Freedom Act reforms.

 

CONTACT

Will Adams

(202) 225-3849

will.adams@mail.house.gov