COTW: Plutographics

Instead of attempting to foist the myopic Dow Jones on the public as a measure of the health of their society, the corporate mass media (CMM) ought to be displaying an index such as this, from the Institute of Innovation in Social Policy, on their nightly propaganda blasts:

As a discerning reader can see, its been fairly flat since 1970.  It pales in comparison with the nation's growth in GDP over the same time period:

Only in the United States is societal health equated with capitalistic expansion that in realty only truly benefits the upper 1% of citizens in terms of income and net worth.  Here, in stark comparison with the rest of the developed world the top quintile make eleven times more money than those 'Mericans in the poorest fifth. In Japan, for example the top quintile only earns 4 times as much.  Concentration of wealth is at a level not experience since the Gilded Age at the turn of the last century.  The technological boom of the '80s and '90s benefited the already rich the most, leaving a shrunken middle class scrambling for jobs being eliminated or transferred overseas to low-wage zones.  Consequently, working people are mired in increasing debt, increased cost for necessities, and with fewer and fewer health benefits provided by their employers.  What the rich got was a massive tax break from successive administrations of both parties.

The Economic Policy Institute said of the 90's decade: "An average middle class family's income rose 9.2% after inflation...but they also spent 6.8% more time at work to reap it. Without increased earnings from wives, the average middle-class family's income would have risen only 3.8% over the decade.  Middle class families held 2.8% of the total growth in stock-market holdings...but accounted for 38.8% of the rise in household debt."  Downhill since Nixon, indeed.  A fundamental shift in national policies favoring the "Money Power" is long overdue.  It can begin with a wealth tax to fund Medicare for All, restore fiscal sustainability to Social Security, and provide subsidized higher education or skill training for those who want it.  Socialism?  You betcha!

When Your Boss Makes You Hated

credit: Sandy Huffaker
BC Idonwanna sez: Orange man speak with forked tongue!

Sarah Huckabee Sanders may actually be a nice person outside of work, US Person prefers to think. But fronting for one of the most unpopular Presidents in modern history has its hazards. One of those is being refused service in a DC metro restaurant.  Of course 'Merican incivility to fellow 'Mericans are stories of history, but this president seems to bring out the worst in people. Perhaps it is his penchant for insulting his detractors via world-wide social media, in which he constantly indulges with impunity. A single example: In Iowa during the 2016 campaign the future president told a large rally, “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK?”  Too bad his staff have to suffer for his rampant arrogance and lies. US Person's advice: don't take your family to a restaurant named, "Red Hen"; try take-out next time, Ms Sanders!  This is what happens when the mob embraces a crass, populist demagogue with fascist inclinations:

Wackydoodle sez:  Buy two, its good for the 'conomy!

Saws Go Silent in Bialoweiza

Bialoweiza Forest is what remains of a primeval forest straddling the border of Poland and Belarus.  A European court halted logging in the forest, home to wildlife that has disappeared from the rest of Europe, in May.  But before the saws were silenced, loggers cut 190,000 cubic meters of wood in 2017; equal to around 160,000-180,000 trees affecting an area of about 1,900 hectares. The harvest was 400% of the planned amount. It is noteworthy that this more downed timber in any year since Poland emerged from Soviet communism.  The forest will take decades to recover from the onslaught. [photo: Greenpeace Poland]

Activists are now demanding that the national park status that protects part of the forest be dramatically expanded to include the entire forest.  They are concerned that the government, strapped for cash, will again approve logging especially in areas that are no longer pristine old growth forest.  Europe's highest tribunal found that the government's own documents showed that logging was a bigger threat to the forest existence than that posed by infesting beetles.  The bark beetle outbreak is cyclical and probably exacerbated by climate warming.  Bialoweiza is the last old-growth lowland forest in Europe.  Its scale, pristine areas and rare wildlife such as lynx, wolves and bison (bears were wiped out decades ago) make it exceptionally qualified for complete conservation. [below: Bison bonasus bonasus]

Currently the national park in Poland only covers around 10,500 hectares.  Belarus protects 20 times more than that in a biosphere reserve covering 216,200 hectares.  150,069 hectares is protected as a national park.  The Minister of Forestry who authored the logging policy was sacked shortly after the adverse ruling from the EU.  But his replacement appears to also be pro-logging, after a meeting with timber representatives in which he promised park status would not be extended.  Biologists were not invited to the meeting according to Greenpeace.  Poland's forest management agency appears to be another victim of regulatory capture.

New Candidates for Malaria Vaccine

One of the world's major killer disease that strikes mostly children living in tropical regions, malaria, is not controlled by an effective vaccine.  An estimated 400,000 humans die annually of malaria--mostly in the tropics.  Giant international drug companies are loath to spend the same amount as they do on cancer research or developing new analgesics to fund the development of an effective anti-malarial vaccine.  The reason may be the potential market for such a drug: mostly developing nations whose citizens are poor.

Social Darwinism aside, there is some progress being made on finding an anti-malarial vaccine. Researchers from Australia have shown that children in Papua, New Guinea who have higher levels of Plasmodium falciparum antibodies specific to a short amino acid sequence of the parasite are protected against clinical or severe malaria.  This antigen would be a good target for further vaccine  say the study authors in the journal of the American Society for Microbiology, Infection and Immunity.  The amino acid sequence known as ICAM1 is critical to P. falciparum's toxicity since it allows the parasite to bind to the brain's tiniest blood vessels, called microvasculature.  There it remains undetected by the immune system causing cerebral damage by blocking blood flow and inflammation eventually leading to death of the host. [photo of P. falciparum gametocyte stages] The study followed 187 children 1-3 years old, measuring antibody responses to the ICAM sequence for sixteen months.  Children with antibody responses were 37 less likely to develop severe malaria.

The most effective vaccine currently undergoing trials is RTS,S/ASO1.  Third stage trials began in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2009.  In children 5-17 months old four doses of the drug reduced malaria cases by 39%; severe cases were reduced by 31%.  The European Medicines Agency issued a positive opinion on the drug's risk/benefit balance in 2015.  Despite trial efforts in multiple countries including the US, there is currently no licensed malaria vaccine.

Unethical Pruitt Leaves EPA

In a gift to the nation and the world, Hair Further announced on his personal media platform, Twitter, that Scott Pruitt will be leaving the EPA.  Pruitt cited the "sizable toll" that the controversy over his unethical behavior in office has taken on himself and his family. He was being investigated for his use of government funds for personal travel and office improvements. He also raised eyebrows when he used obscure provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act to give pay raises to two of his aides. By the UK Guardian's count, Pruitt was under fourteen separate federal investigations.  Earlier this week a whistle blower revealed that Pruitt kept a secret calendar of his meetings with industry representatives, and asked staff members to use their personal credit cards for his hotel bookings.  Several staff members have resigned in protest against Pruitt's malfeasance.  The government's personnel office that protects whistle blowers, Office of Special Counsel launched its own investigation of EPA staff complaints of retaliation by the agency's chief.

Mr. Yuge, ethically challenged himself, continued to praise his appointment's performance after the resignation. However, other party members expressed their relief at Pruitt's departure, one congressman opining, "He [Pruitt] was a disaster and an embarrassment from day one, and the country is far better off without him.” One EPA official expressed privately, “People are so done with these folks. We wanted and waited for some adults to show up. But the relentless tide of bullshit from Pruitt and his cronies is tough to deal with.” US Person thinks whether the agency will depart from Pruitt's extremist brand of anti-regulation is questionable. Pruitt's Washington insider deputy will take over the agency on an interim basis. In the first six months of Trump's 'administration' the lead enforcement agency for the protection of the environment has collected 60% less in civil fines from polluters than in the same time frame under Presidents Bush and Obama.  It has also initiated fewer civil and criminal cases.

COTW: The Party of Non-Voters

Contrary to popular belief 'Merica has a viable third political party: the party of non-voters, and its growing. This condition has led pundits to remark on the legitimacy of elected officials and the rise in power of unelected office holders such as judges, central bankers or transnational bureaucracies. In 2001, we watched the Supreme Court determine the outcome of a presidential election despite a popular vote count to the contrary. The "democracy deficit" worsens when a disillusioned segment of the population stops participating.* According to statistics these are the less educated and less affluent.  The chart [above] shows that  voter participation in the last century hovered between 50-60%, substantially below the participation levels of the 19th century. No coincidence that some of the lowest participation rates occurred during the Depression era.  In 1996 the 38.7% of the bottom fifth voted versus 72.6% of the top fifth. In the hung election of 2000 only 49% of eligible 'Mericans voted. Non college-educated white males constitute 55% of the electorate. They are substantially those who voted for billionaire Donald Trump and against feminist Hillary Clinton.

Comparison of US voter participation with that in other developed republics is not flattering.  It is among the lowest. [chart below] What has taken the place of politics in the US is a idolatrous belief in the marketplace as the efficient means of human governance.   Absurd as it sounds, oil tycoon H.L Hunt published a book in the 50's advocating that citizens' voting power be measured by the amount of taxes they paid.  This conflation of democracy with markets--the descendant of medieval carnivals--is dangerous in the extreme.  As Senator Bill Bradley said during his candidacy for President, "failure to understand that democracy and capitalism are separate parts of the American dream, and keeping that dream depends on preventing one from corrupting the other."  It would do well for 'Mericans to reflect on their decaying democracy and the rise of plutocracy as they celebrate their nation's founding this July 4, 2018, Anno Domini.

*Phillips K., Wealth & Democracy 2002, pp 413-417.

Toontime: 'Merica, Love It or Leave It

There is something inherently undemocratic about a powerful court--they are not called "the Supremes" for nothing--in which the judges are not elected but appointed for life terms, and absent extreme malfeasance in office, are beyond removal from office.  The Repugnants have successfully altered the ideological bias of the court through successive conservative administrations making appointments; something that has not been accomplished since FDR's unsuccessful effort to "pack" the court with justice sympathetic to his New Deal legislation.  The court's conservative ideology will be on display perhaps for the majority of this century.  The plutocracy's creation of a legal bulwark against progressive mass movements goes a long way to explain why there is so little fundamental change in the course of this nation.

Land of the Free?