Many school administrators reportedly feel they now have a monster problem with students drinking highly-caffeinated energy drinks — and that’s no (red) bull.
Previous generations got their caffeine fix via coffee, tea or cola — but energy drinks are now big business with 20 somethings, teens and even students in middle schools. The Oregonian reports:
The rising popularity of so-called energy drinks is drawing concern among school administrators around the nation, with principals in other states also urging parents not to send their students to school with energy drinks. In mid-March, four eighth-graders in Broward County, Fla., were hospitalized after sipping energy drinks and then complaining of sweating and racing hearts. Read the rest of this entry »
April 28th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
You’ve head about the rice shortage, when it comes to food supplies. And you’ve read about the wisdom shortage, when it comes to Presidential candidates…
But now — in an unprecedented development being experienced from coast-to-coast — Jewish Americans seeking those unleavened crackers (often oversized) so central to Passover and so delicious when you spread cream cheese on them (delicious enough to make you plotz..) have faced a horrific situation: The Great Matzah Shortage of 2008.
But unlike food shortages this can’t be blamed on economic trends or political ineptness.
Some of it’s due to a factory glitch and some of it’s due to big chains having decided to no longer to carry the stuff that my father always insisted “tastes like library paste.”
Shortages have been reported across Southern California, but the problem isn’t confined to the Southland. The Bay Area and Reno have also reported shortages, and supplies are limited in Portland, Ore.
Ralphs did not return calls seeking comment. A Vons and Pavilions representative said the chain hadn’t been affected, but calls to several area stores found no stock at press time Tuesday. Trader Joe’s and some Costco stores did not carry matzah this year, and representatives from Gelson’s and Whole Foods say their supplies are dwindling.
“Unfortunately, due to a manufacturer issue, there has been a shortage on matzah this year, which has impacted our stores,” Whole Foods spokesperson Shawn Glasser said.
Construction issues and problems with a new state-of-the-art oven at Manischewitz’s only plant in Newark led the company to announce it wouldn’t produce Tam Tams and other kosher-for-Passover products this year, including its flavored matzah lines. Instead, the company focused on unsalted, whole wheat and egg matzah. In late January, R.A.B. Foods Group, Manischewitz’s parent company, sent a memo out to distributors listing which products would not be available, adding that its plant would work around the clock to produce Passover products.
“The last few months have been difficult; we are now heading in the right direction. We appreciate your patience and support, look forward to serving all of our customers with our full line of quality products and will work very hard to win your confidence back with improved service in the future,” the memo stated.
And, indeed, a search for matzah proved fruitless at many stores in San Diego. Some carried big cases costing over $10 — but only one or two or those were left. Most didn’t have the standard unsalted kind (or even the more controversial egg kind) — only a few exotic varieties that would have given my grandfather Abraham Ravinsky cardiac arrest if he had seen it on our seder table.
The San Francisco Weekly blames part of the matzah famine on CostCo, but investigative reporting done by this writer (a telephone chat with my mother Helen Gandelman from her home in Connecticut) reveals the situation is the same in some parts of the East Coast:
The wholesale giant began stocking up on the Bread of Affliction by the container-full — and a container is 40 feet long, 10 feet wide and 12 feet high.
Of course, the consumers’ gain was the supermarket and shopkeepers’ loss. The matzah they bought at high cost and sold at astronomical costs suddenly lost 75 percent of its value. In many instances, merchants literally couldn’t give the stuff away.
Fast-forwarding to the present day, Costco deduced that, quite possibly, hawking matzah for a buck a pound was not a money-maker and abruptly opted not to stock any in the Bay Area. While the Chronicle’s Matthai Kuruvila creatively speculates that “a jubilee year in Israel when some fields lie fallow” or “increased Jewish observance” may explain the shortage — and let’s give him an Aleph for Effort — I think the explanation lies closer to home.
With local retailers anticipating Costco selling boatloads of matzah at prices they could never hope to match, they stocked at normal low levels apropos for a smattering of kosher consumers. But with Costco out of the game, smaller stores sold out quickly and last-minute shoppers were up the creek (anecdotally, stories abounded of luckless Jews traipsing to a dozen or so stores in search of a box of matzah. And, believe you me, some gouging occurred: One lady told me that the five-pound box that was $11.99 when she called a San Francisco store on the phone was suddenly $14.99 when she got there).
For those who traditionally eat matzah in the place of bread during the Passover holiday (which ends Sunday, April 27), these are the times that try Jews’ souls. After all, how many potatoes and incredibly fatty kosher macaroons can you stand?
And, indeed, matzah is also great for weight control (put tuna fish on it instead of on bread).
The question: come Passover 2009 will matzah be on the list of foods such as rice and corn that are in short supply?
SPECIAL BONUS: Here’s my favorite joke about matzah.
A Jewish family decided to invite a gentile blind man over for Passover.
They handed the blind man a big piece of matzah. He ran his fingers over it and said:
April 19th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Here is another Guest Voice by Joel S. Hirschhorn who is highly critical of both parties.. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
The Most Powerful People in America
by Joel S. Hirschhorn
They are not the rich and superrich, nor the politically powerful running the two-party plutocracy, nor the greedy heads of banking and finance companies, and certainly not the media moguls and bloviating pundits.
The most powerful people are US, American consumers that account for over 70 percent of the economy. It is exactly now, when the economy is in the toilet, that consumers hold the maximum power. So why are we the people still deluding ourselves that the path to a better future rests on electing a new president?
We are suckers, conditioned by decades of clever marketing and advertising to believe the lies of politicians, and worst of all to believe that elections and our votes provide us with power. Wrong. Our real power can only be manifest through our spending dollars.
The overwhelming majority of Americans have been severely damaged by economic oppression by government policies that have produced historic economic inequality. Yet, despite revolting conditions, Americans seem unwilling to revolt by using their remaining economic power. They have let themselves become economic slaves.
What is amazing and depressing is that there are no national leaders from the worlds of politics, religion, education, media or public interest that are attempting to harness consumer power at this critical time. No one is capturing the public’s attention by making it crystal clear that consumers could obtain any political or economic reform in the public interest by joining together to withhold their discretionary spending. Read the rest of this entry »
Hearts aching for millions of Americans in danger of losing their homes, the Senate has been working hard on the Foreclosure Prevention Act, which will provide billions of dollars in tax breaks for airlines, automakers, alternative energy producers and home builders.
As they always do, lobbyists have been hijacking the bill that has bipartisan support in an economic crisis to lard it with help for their clients, everybody but homeowners…
April 16th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
India lives at two levels. Urban India is enthusiastically chasing a mirage that Western style consumerism holds the key to happiness. But nearly 70 per cent Indians still live in villages or small towns where contentment, and living within one’s means, is still the prevalent traditional mantra. What is best option for an average person with limited means? The debate goes on…
Many people in big “rich” Western consumeristic societies have now begun to tear their hair as the big bubble seems about to burst. Says The Times of London: “Almost 600,000 people (in Britain) will be unable to refinance their debts this year after finding their usual lines of credit cut off, forcing them to go bust or sign expensive ‘bankruptcy-lite’ agreements.
“About one million Britons are struggling with £25 billion of unsecured borrowings that they cannot repay – ‘problem debt’ averaging £25,000 each - according to a report by TDX Group, which provides detailed debt-collection information to banks. TDX said that last year 400,000 people remortgaged or applied for new credit cards or personal loans to pay off old loans.
“A further 300,000 people took more dramatic options to escape their debts, such as bankruptcy, debt management plans or individual voluntary agreements (IVAs). IVAs are called bankruptcy-lite because they involve the creditor, usually a bank, accepting a reduced sum to be paid off over a set period. Debt management plans are a higher-risk, unregulated form of IVA.”
And then there is the prospect of looming unemployment…click here…
Asks a reader of The Times: “Whilst every bankruptcy or IVA is a personal story, there is a bigger question for society to ask: What are the social implications for a society that has grown fat and complacent on unfettered consumerism?
“Could it be strikes, lawlessness and general disorder in our neighbourhoods. We have a whole generation that have never had to be content with less and able to value things by saving for them.” — Steve Marchant, Broadhempston, UK
“Mrs. Pelosi has gotten her way. With her repeated rejection of the Free Trade Agreement, congressional Democrats are favoring the economic interests of a few U.S. unions and are sacrificing the general interests of Colombia under the pretext of protecting a union minority - the alleged victims of a State that has abandoned them. Read the rest of this entry »
While the Bush administration’s stewardship of the economy and that pesky war, among other areas of vital concern to the national interest, have been seriously lacking, its ability to make significant policy changes without bothering to tell anyone — let alone come clean about their implications – has been nothing short of masterful.
In one of the more insidious examples of this, the Justice (sic) Department, in the service of an administration allergic to regulating the corporate fat cats who bankroll Republican causes (and Democratic, too), is no longer regularly threatening wrongdoers with criminal charges and penalties and instead is offering settlements.
At first blush, this might not seem like such a big deal.
Not every case of corporate crime should result in a CEO or CFO frog-walking to the nearest federal penitentiary for a turn in the laundry room and a few rounds of tennis. But removing that threat and substituting it with a cash settlement also removes a pretty big disincentive to not behave badly if the consequence of doing so is no more than a wrist slap in the form of a one-time accounting charge.
During the last three years, the department headed by the sycophantically corrupt Alberto Gonzales and now by the despicable Michael Mukasey has deferred on the prosecutions of more than 50 corporations on charges ranging from bribery to fraud. Instead, these corporations have been invited to enter into what are euphemistically called “deferred prosecution agreements” and “nonprosecution agreements.”
Is there a hidden hand behind the anti-China protesting of recent weeks, other than of course the much maligned ‘Dalai Clique?’ Indeed there is, according to Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry. According to a statement, in part published in Venezuela’s El Universal, “The manipulation of the media in regard to the protest of violent groups in the Tibet Autonomous Region is an ingredient of a formula from the psychological warfare laboratories of the United States, that is applied to permanently destabilize countries that refuse to meekly submit to the mandates of imperial rule.”
Translated by Miguel Guttierez
April 8, 2008
Venezuela - El Universal - Original Article (Spanish)
Caracas: Today, the National Government has denounced a campaign of “infamies” launched from the United States against China over the Tibet incident and said that it anticipates the success of the Olympic Games in Beijing.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Venezuela will give its absolute support to realizing the event in Beijing, and will be sending its largest delegation ever to an Olympic Games.
“Consistent with the principle of brotherhood among peoples in their battle against all forms of imperialism, the government expresses its full and unreserved solidarity with the government and people of the People’s Republic of China as they confront the relentless and systematic campaign of infamies they have been victimized by during the past few weeks through the major mass media companies,” it said.
The “manipulation of the media in regard to the protest of violent groups in the Tibet Autonomous Region is an ingredient of a formula from the psychological warfare laboratories of the United States that is applied to permanently destabilize countries that refuse to meekly submit to the mandates of imperial rule,” it added.
There is an old saying that Americans have to live with the decisions of the Supreme Court for the rest of their lives and then some, but that takes on a perverse new meaning for those who are maimed or their lives cut short by shoddily researched and falsely advertised medications that are inadequately vetted by the Food and Drug Administration and let slide by President Bush’s activist Supreme Court.
It is deeply troubling that it is likely that the top court will soon rule the FDA — which has been co-opted by Big Pharma and politicized by the White House to a shocking extent — is the only agency with enough expertise to regulate drug makers and that its decisions should not be second-guessed by the courts.
A blood pressure medication and a cancer drug that is effective in controlling rheumatoid arthritis are coursing through my body as I write this. All have been long proven to be effective, have few side effects of consequence and are reasonably inexpensive when purchased in bulk through my employer’s prescription drug plan.
So I come not to knock all drug makers and all drugs, but to point out that some people have not been so lucky as myself because of an unfortunate confluence of events: Big Pharma’s capacity to be deceitful, its lust for profitable new drugs as opposed to new drugs that may be profitable, and an FDA that has proven time and again in the Age of Bush that it can be co-opted.
The New York Times, in a story that anticipates the Supreme Court ruling, cites the collusion between Johnson & Johnson and the FDA over a life-threatening problem with its once popular Ortho Evra birth control patch.
It turns out that Ortho Evra delivered much more estrogen than standard birth control pills, potentially increasing the risk of blood clots and strokes, according to the company’s own internal documents.
But because the FDA approved the patch, Johnson & Johnson is arguing in court that it cannot be sued by women or their families who claim that they were injured or killed by the product — even though its old label inaccurately described the amount of estrogen it released.
Yet another bad sign of the times on the economic front: Washington Mutual has lost $1 billion in the first quarter and the bank is going to slash 3,000 jobs nationwide:
Seattle-based WaMu (NYSE: WM), the nation’s largest thrift, has been hit hard by the mortgage turmoil, leading to speculation that its days as an independent financial institution are numbered.
A company spokeswoman said Tuesday that the majority of layoffs will be in its home loan operations, including sales and underwriting staff. She said some layoffs could occur in Texas but said regional numbers for affected employees were not yet available.
WaMu also said it was closing its 186 remaining freestanding home loan offices and exiting wholesale lending by the end of June. The bank instead will focus its mortgage business at its retail bank branches and expand its call center operations.
With the Olympic torch bound for San Francisco, what is the significance of the protesting that beset the torch’s route in Europe? Olivier Picard writes for France’s Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace, “It’s an absolute disaster. A symbolic defeat, politically, ’sportively,’ diplomatically and historically. During this black Monday of the Olympic adventure, everyone lost! The legend, the athletes, China, France, the government, the police, the protesters and even Tibetans. The route if the Olympic flame has become the Way of the Cross for the players and spectators of this event that was meant to be festive.”
Picard concludes, ‘It is a spectacular humiliation for the athletes which alone summarizes the spirit of the host country, which is concerned only with its own prestige. Far from being moved by the protests in the West, it will now reinforce its iron fist over a competition that from the outset, it sought to manipulate. The trap door is closing again.’
Last week was filled with awful reports about the state of the U.S. economy. But the stock market went up three percent. Why?
The stock market is supposed to be a barometer of the overall economy. It’s supposed to go up when economic times are good and fall when they aren’t. This barometer has never been perfect in this regard, of course. Market-specific quirks such as the recent leverage buyout craze can skew that relationship for awhile. These days, however, the schism between market direction and overall economy has a more fundamental and perhaps more long lasting cause. Manipulation by the Fed.
The manipulation at work here isn’t the Bear Stearns variety. It has to do with interest rates. Something almost unprecedented is happening with these rates today. Government securities, and the many fixed income ones (bonds, CDs, etc.) liked to Federal rate setting, are paying less than the inflation rate. (I speak here of the real world inflation rate, not the phony one favored by the Fed that excludes the costs of food and energy.)
What this means for investors large and small is that they can’t buy safe interest-paying securities as a defensive measure to protect their capital. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s yet another bit of bad economic news about an economy President George Bush insists is still really robust, just slowed down and — bite your tongue — certainly NOT in a recession:
Employers in the U.S. cut the most workers in five years last month, signaling that the economic contraction is deepening and that the Federal Reserve will continue to lower interest rates.
Payrolls shrank by 80,000, more than forecast and the third monthly decline, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The jobless rate rose to 5.1 percent, the highest level since September 2005, from 4.8 percent.
“This is the final blow,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. “It’s clear the U.S. economy is in a recession. That’s going to shake the confidence of investors and companies across the world and cause people to curtail spending in other countries.”
This isn’t quite Bush’s interpretation (things look different from the White House when you have chef-cooked meals, government insurance and lots of friends who are CEOs and millionaires). He has insisted it isn’t a recession — merely a “slowdown.”
Now that a turning back of the financial deregulation that began under Reagan and continued under Bush I, Clinton and Bush II looks imminent, what U.S. President is most to blame for the current crisis? Patrik Etschmayer writes for Switzerland’s Nachrichten, “Only when regulations were relaxed under Ronald Reagan did the first rather costly banking disaster ensue: The Savings and Loan crisis. This led to the recession of the early 1990s, which helped secure Bill Clinton’s 1992 electoral victory. But Clinton didn’t heed the warning. Even though it is now no longer discussed, and all fingers point toward George W. Bush - his actions alone could not have resulted in today’s disaster. … Clinton worked until almost the end of his term to abolish Glass-Steagal. The Congress fought him for years just as it had under Reagan and Bush the First. But in 1997, the FED Board of Directors under Alan Greenspan eliminated rules that limited securities trading for savings banks.”
In explaining why things have gone so badly that stricter banking rules are now necessary, Etschmayer writes, “Legal regulation seems to be the only way to rein in the apparently boundless greed - because bankers, speculators, hedge-fund managers and other stock market players large and small - and not only in the United States - seem to have lost the capacity to distinguish between freedom and foolishness.”
Health care proposals in Campaign 2008 have often gotten drown out in bitter campaign exchanges — but what about the issue’s specifics? In this Guest Voice post, D. Cupples , co-administrator of the site Buck Naked Politics, takes a stand-back look at Senator Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.
Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Plan: One Way To Help Pay For It
By D. Cupples
The New York Times recently did an extensive interview with Hillary Clinton about her health care policy and how she would make health care affordable for us Americans. Some naysayers believe that there is little room in the budget to pay for affordable health care coverage.
There would be a lot more room in the budget, if our public servants would truly crackdown on health care contractor fraud — more about that after a bit about Sen. Clinton’s interview:
“Mrs. Clinton said she would like to cap health insurance premiums at 5 percent to 10 percentof income.
“The average cost of a family policy bought by an individual in 2006 and 2007 was $5,799, or 10 percent of the median family income of $58,526, according to America’s Health Insurance
Plans, a trade group. Some policies cost up to $9,201, or 16 percent of median income.
“The average out-of-pocket cost for workers who buy family policies through their employers is lower, $3,281, or 6 percent of median income, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a
health research group.
A cap on premiums has been part of Mrs. Clinton’s universal coverage proposal since she announced it in September. (NY Times)
Every tax dollar devoted to waste or fraud is one less dollar for legitimate health care services. And private contractors are necessarily involved in state and federal health care programs.
That doesn’t mean that we taxpayers must settle for overcharging, waste or fraud.
Health care contractor fraud was so rampant that Department of Justice (DoJ) finally started cracking down in the ’90s under Bill Clinton.
In 2003, the DoJ said that health care contractors’ settlements were the lion’s share of fraud-suit settlements from 2000-2003 (larger, even, than defense contractors’ settlements).
Since 2000, America’s two largest for-profit hospital chains (HCA and Tenet) have settled massive DoJ fraud suits over allegedly fraudulent conduct that had occurred for years. Contractors tend to settle fraud suits without admitting guilt, because if contractors are found guilty of fraud, the government can bar them from receiving lucrative contracts.
It’s not just the big fish who’ve been sued, and it’s not just hospitals. Below are more than a dozen examples of healthcare contractors that faced lawsuits, their alleged conduct, and the outcomes. Read the rest of this entry »
DOTTED LINE SHOWS WACKY DELAWARE-NEW JERSEY BORDER
In a huge victory for environmentalists and my fellow First State citizens, Delaware won an historic Supreme Court fight with New Jersey today, probably killing a proposed nearly half-mile-long liquefied natural gas terminal on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River.
The justices, in a surprising 6-2 decision, said Delaware can block the project even though it was proposed by energy giant BP for the other side of the river.
Associates of mine who had attended oral arguments on the case said that a majority of justices, as has been the high court’s wont in recent decisions, seemed to be leaning toward the pro-business arguments proffered by New Jersey.
Delaware, which owns the river bottom most of the way across the waterway, including the land on which a 2,200-foot-long pier would be built, sought to block the massive project because of safety concerns.
The terminal also was a violation of Delaware’s pioneering Coastal Zone Act, which bans new heavy industry along the river.
Both states agreed that Delaware owns the land, but New Jersey argued that a century-old agreement allows each state to control piers on its side of the river.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, said Delaware cannot block ordinary projects from going forward. The proposal at issue, however, “goes well beyond the ordinary or usual,” she said. Read the rest of this entry »
Supposing I were to tell you that financial markets were over-regulated. That the way to ensure endless economic well-being was to lessen the government’s oversight of these markets. That these markets are in fact self-regulating, and that the risk management tools already built into them eliminate the need for growth deadening outside interference.
Hearing this rap today you would immediately think about recent upheavals in world financial markets caused by under-regulation and judge the above arguments quackery.
You would note that regulations of the kind instituted during the New Deal expedited rather than detracted from steady and impressive economic growth for decades. You would also note that the withering away of such regulations since the 1980s, climaxing with the present Bush Administration’s extreme efforts in this realm, brought about the present financial crisis.
Such negative consequences, however, are nothing, utterly nothing, compared to the harm under-regulation could cause when it comes to environmental protection. Economies can recover from mistakes, even very serious mistakes. Natural ecologies, once lost, are lost forever, with potentially devastating impacts on entire civilizations.
With this in mind consider Wall Street’s latest budding cash cow. It’s a market that will trade pollution credits, credits that give companies and other polluting entities who find it inconvenient to meet regulated pollution standards a means to buy emission credits that give them an out from doing so.
The so-called “cap and trade” system to make this possible works like this: Emission caps are set on pollution-emitting entities, the traditional regulation way of controlling these emissions. Polluters who emit less than their assigned caps, however, can trade away these surplus reductions to polluters exceeding their own caps, allowing the latter to meet cap standards in a backhand way. Exceeding polluters can also buy other offsets for their excess emissions from unspoiled natural ecologies such as rainforests, whose owners guarantee they will continue to soak up more pollutants than emission exceeding companies produce over their assigned caps.
What’s the rationale for this convoluted approach to emission reductions? Why is it supposedly better than the straight forward cap on all polluters, which long experience and plain old common sense indicate is the best way to meet the challenge of controlling pollution?
The Wall Street crowd peddling this commish-generating nostrum bill its “counter-intuitive” advantages. They say it is example of “thinking out-of-the-box” when it comes to emission reductions. And the clincher, that it’s “a free market-based solution to pollution.”
The market mechanism that’s supposed to be at work here involves the totally unproved, and indeed, unprovable contention that polluters best able to reduce their own emissions will become even more avid in this regard in order to generate emission trading credits they can then sell in a free market. And that owners of pristine, emission absorbing lands will become better protectors of these properties in order to generate their own saleable emission trading credits.
Move beyond this counter-intuitive, think-outside-the-box, free markets solve everything blather, though, and the real potential of emissions trading becomes apparent. Read the rest of this entry »
Howell Raines, who was executive editor of The New York Times from 2001-2003, is credited with bringing a healthy dose of advocacy journalism to the Gray Lady but was brought down by the Jason Blair scandal. He warns in his new column in Condé Nast’s Portfolio.com that there is no greater threat to American journalism than the possibility that media mogul Rupert Murdoch or some other unwelcome suitor would force its sale.
Money quote:
“He will spend whatever it takes to undermine the Times‘ standing as America’s leading general-interest newspaper. But my real fear is that Murdoch or some other unsuitable purchaser will then buy the Times through a combination of financial and psychological pressures on the strong, but hardly ironclad, Sulzberger family trust that controls the vast majority of the company’s voting stock. There is no more important question in American journalism than the future of the Times, and I don’t think the newspaper or the journalistic profession is taking Murdoch in particular or the takeover issue in general seriously enough.”
It is hard to argue with Raines about the threat, but it is no one’s fault but its own that The Times is not the newspaper that it once was — much improved in some respects but so troubled in many others — and it should be no more immune to the ongoing shakeout in the newspaper biz than any other publication.
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