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From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

By GARY TAUBES
Published: April 13, 2011

On May 26, 2009, Robert Lustig gave a lecture called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” which was posted on YouTube the following July. Since then, it has been viewed well over 800,000 times, gaining new viewers at a rate of about 50,000 per month, fairly remarkable numbers for a 90-minute discussion of the nuances of fructose biochemistry and human physiology.

Lustig is a specialist on pediatric hormone disorders and the leading expert in childhood obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, which is one of the best medical schools in the country. He published his first paper on childhood obesity a dozen years ago, and he has been treating patients and doing research on the disorder ever since.

The viral success of his lecture, though, has little to do with Lustig’s impressive credentials and far more with the persuasive case he makes that sugar is a “toxin” or a “poison,” terms he uses together 13 times through the course of the lecture, in addition to the five references to sugar as merely “evil.” And by “sugar,” Lustig means not only the white granulated stuff that we put in coffee and sprinkle on cereal — technically known as sucrose — but also high-fructose corn syrup, which has already become without Lustig’s help what he calls “the most demonized additive known to man.”

It doesn’t hurt Lustig’s cause that he is a compelling public speaker. His critics argue that what makes him compelling is his practice of taking suggestive evidence and insisting that it’s incontrovertible. Lustig certainly doesn’t dabble in shades of gray. Sugar is not just an empty calorie, he says; its effect on us is much more insidious. “It’s not about the calories,” he says. “It has nothing to do with the calories. It’s a poison by itself.”

If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.

Continue reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

From Robert Reich: http://robertreich.org/post/4559031328

Robert Reich
April 12, 2011

I hope when he tells America how he aims to tame future budget deficits the President doesn’t accept conventional Washington wisdom that the biggest problem in the federal budget is Medicare (and its poor cousin Medicaid).

Medicare isn’t the problem. It’s the solution.

The real problem is the soaring costs of health care that lie beneath Medicare. They’re costs all of us are bearing in the form of soaring premiums, co-payments, and deductibles.

Americans spend more on health care per person than any other advanced nation and get less for our money. Yearly public and private healthcare spending is $7,538 per person. That’s almost two and a half times the average of other advanced nations.

Yet the typical American lives 77.9 years – less than the average 79.4 years in other advanced nations. And we have the highest rate of infant mortality of all advanced nations.

Medical costs are soaring because our health-care system is totally screwed up. Doctors and hospitals have every incentive to spend on unnecessary tests, drugs, and procedures.

Continue reading at: http://robertreich.org/post/4559031328

From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/economy/150570/hedge_fund_gamblers_earn_the_same_in_one_hour_as_a_middle-class_household_makes_in_over_47_years/

How do they make so much money? Where does it come from? How can hedge fund firms with fewer than 100 employees make as much profit as firms with thousands of employees?

By Les Leopold
April 13, 2011

We live in a very, very rich country. Yet we seem to be utterly consumed by a collective hysteria that we’re about to go broke. Historians are certain to look back at this period and wonder why the richest country in history consumed itself in a struggle over how many teachers to fire.

How rich are we?

Just take a look at the latest reports on what the top hedge fund managers haul in. In 2010 John Paulson led the list with a record $4.9 billion in personal earnings. That’s a whopping $2.4 million an HOUR. Here’s a factoid to make you wretch: It would take the median US household over 47 years to earn as much as Paulson pocketed in just 60 minutes. And, every hedge fund manager pays a lower tax rate than the average family.

The top 25 hedge fund earners took in $22.07 billion in 2010. Thanks to a generous tax loophole these billionaires will pay a top tax rate of 15 percent instead of 35 percent. Closing that loophole on just those 25 individuals – just 25 guys who wouldn’t miss a penny of it — would raise $4.4 billion, which is enough to rehire 126,000 laid-off teachers.

Wait a sec. This is America, not Russia. Don’t we want our entrepreneurs to go out there and earn as much as possible? We don’t want to punish the successful who are building up our economy, do we?

Maybe that’s a strong argument when you’re talking about the CEO billionaires of Apple and Google and other successful companies that make products we use. But when it comes to financial billionaires, we don’t even know what they do for a living.

Continue reading at: a href=”</strong> http://www.alternet.org/economy/150570/hedge_fund_gamblers_earn_the_same_in_one_hour_as_a_middle-class_household_makes_in_over_47_years/”&gt; http://www.alternet.org/economy/150570/hedge_fund_gamblers_earn_the_same_in_one_hour_as_a_middle-class_household_makes_in_over_47_years/

From Truthdig: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_false_debate_on_the_debt_20110412/

Robert Scheer
April 12, 2011

In the ever-so-smug company of the rich and powerful it is a given that there is never to be any expression of remorse or other acknowledgement of the pain they have inflicted on the lesser mortals they so cavalierly plunder. It’s convenient for them that the media and the politicians, which they happen to own, rarely connect the dots between the scams that made the rich so rich and the alarming rise in the federal debt that is crushing this nation.

The result of this purchased public myopia is that we are left with an absurd debate over how deeply to cut teachers’ pensions and seniors’ medical benefits while preserving tax breaks for the superrich and their large corporations. At a time when 10 million American families will have lost their homes by year’s end, when $5.6 trillion in home equity has been wiped out, when most Americans face steep unemployment rates and stagnant wages, a Democratic president is likely to compromise with Republican ideologues who insist that further cuts in taxes for the rich is the way to bring back jobs.

Let’s deal right off with that canard. There is currently no shortage of corporate profits or excessive executive compensation to explain away the failure of the private sector to create jobs. On the contrary, as The New York Times reports, “In the fourth quarter, profits at American businesses were up an astounding 29.2 percent, the fastest growth in more than 60 years. Collectively, American corporations logged profits at an annual rate of $1.678 trillion.” And to add insult to injury, the top executives, who seem unable or unwilling to create jobs or adequately reward their workers, have increased their own compensation by a whopping 12 percent over the previous year, setting the median pay at $9.6 million per year for those in control of the leading 200 companies. The Times adds that “C.E.O. pay is also on the rise again at companies like Capital One and Goldman Sachs, which survived the economic storm with the help of all of those taxpayer-financed bailouts.”

Lost in this faux debate is the reality that our debt now looms so large because the government had to bail out many of those same corporations, quite a few of which, like General Electric and AIG, pay no taxes and have no problem paying truly obscene amounts to their top executives. GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, whom President Barack Obama named chairman of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, is making as much as he did before the recession hit, a recession that his GE Capital division did much to cause with its reckless loans. AIG, saved with a government infusion of $170 billion, has just lavishly rewarded its top executives but has providing no relief for the homeowners ripped off by its phony credit default swaps.

Continue reading at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_false_debate_on_the_debt_20110412/

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/12/madison-activists-push-resolution-to-deny-constitutional-rights-to-corporations/

By Sahil Kapur
Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

Wisconsin activists are promoting a symbolic resolution in the city of Madison to build support for the belief that corporations don’t deserve constitutional rights like people.

“Only human beings, not corporations, are entitled to constitutional rights,” reads the terse resolution offered by the group Move To Amend. “Money is not speech, and therefore regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech.”

The Supreme Court’s decision last year in Citizens United vs. FEC granted corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections — federal law would legally override attempts by cities and states to reverse it.

The move was covered by the local Isthmus newspaper and heralded in a letter to the editor published in another Madison paper. “It’s time to say ‘no’ to the court’s decision,” wrote Jacqueline Kelley. “On April 5, we can vote ‘yes’ twice for the amendment as residents of both Madison and Dane County. Our future could depend upon a proper outcome.”

The full text of the resolution follows.

Continue reading at: a href=”http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/12/madison-activists-push-resolution-to-deny-constitutional-rights-to-corporations/”>http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/12/madison-activists-push-resolution-to-deny-constitutional-rights-to-corporations/