Nothing personal

This is a comment I posted on Facebook in response to a friend's announcement that his "snake in the grass" employer laid off a 47-year veteran of the company.

"Not a personal decision?" So the manager hopes she can remain friends with the victim? That their families can continue to get together for dinner parties? Well, not now that he can't afford dinner parties.

"Not a personal decision" is an empty, meaningless statement. Pure bullshit, about as sincere as, "it's not you. It's me." But, in this situation, at least that statement's true: He's not the one who failed to perform the duties of his job. It's not his failure that landed the company in its current financial situation. It's not his incompetence, it's hers. But it is he who suffers the consequences of her failure, while she gets to keep her job. With a tidy bonus for taking his job away, I might add.

"Not a personal decision" is simply what corporate scum say to avoid confronting the people they've become and how little money they sold their humanity for. It isn't as if the laid-off party feels better knowing that their new joblessness and financial struggles aren't because they are disliked personally. I am sure that, to the person who has just had his livelihood taken away, whether the manager in question liked him personally was irrelevant before the layoff and even more so after. The statement isn't designed to ease the suffering of the victim. If people who use this statement were to be honest about who is comforted by it, they would have to admit, "it's not you, it's me."

The salve that statement offers these people is so great that they either don't know or don't care that they sound like insufferable assholes when they say it.

And, as if all that isn't galling enough, oftentimes companies kick loyal, long-tenured employees to the curb not because they are actually losing money, but to enhance their profit margin. It's not that they couldn't afford to keep the employee, it's simply that they could make more money if they got rid of him. Companies that are losing money don't usually give bonuses to mid-level management.

p.s. I think you owe snakes an apology.

Stop illegal foreclosures

Sign the online petition here.

Fees for thee, not for me

This is getting even more interesting.

The gigantic mortgage database owned by the nations largest banks may have run afoul of Massachusetts strict property recordation filing laws, according to the elected Recorder of Deeds for the South Essex district of the state.

In an exclusive interview with CNBC, John O’Brien explained why he sent a letter to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley requesting an investigation into Mortgage Electronic Registrations Systems, Inc.

“It’s a basic issue of fairness. MERS says that if you are a member of their club, you can avoid fees on assignments of mortgages forever. Those are fees that everyone else pays,” O’Brien said. “I’ve never before heard of a private company that has attempted to unilaterally take over such a public function as property recordation. Imagine if someone tried to do this with drivers licenses.”

Well, they would do that with drivers licences. That is, they would if they needed a way to make it easier to slice and dice drivers licenses into securities and other "exotic financial instruments" and dump them on unsuspecting investors in pursuit of a quick buck with no regard for the consequences.

O’Brien, who was named “Public Official of the Year in 2000 by the National Association of County Recorders Election Officials and Clerks, is unimpressed by MERS’s official response to his request for an investigation.

“Massachusetts has very clear cut rules. Recordation is not optional. It’s mandatory. It cannot be avoided,” he said.

MERS argues that it is saving recordation offices and homebuyers money by reducing paperwork and fees. It says that homeowners would be “directly or indirectly” responsible for paying the assignment fees if not for MERS.

“Nonsense. There’s no way homebuyers would be responsible for the fees from assigning a mortgage 15 times,” O’Brien said.

He also indicated that his office would be glad to handle the work that MERS says it is doing on his behalf. One of the arguments that proponents like to use in favor of MERS is that local recordation offices are too primitive. But the Essex Country office in Salem has an online electronic property database available free of charge on its website.

So MERS thinks it should be exempt from property recordation fees because of the valuable service nobody asked it to provide.

But before you feel too bad for MERS, keep in mind that we have a GOP-controlled House in the next Congress and Democrats who are too afraid of their own shadows to stand up for the homeowners they pretend to represent.

(Say what you will about the GOP: Sure, they're money-grubbing whores who sell themselves to the highest corporate bidder. But they don't even pretend to give a shit about what is left of the middle class. None other than likely incoming House majority leader and celebrity tanner John Boehner called yesterday's vote for a permanent extension of tax cuts for couples making LESS THAN $250,000 per year (and individuals making less than $200,000 per year) "chicken crap." Yes, that's the same John Boehner who famously handed out checks from tobacco lobbyists to legislators on the House floor while the House was considering a bill to end tobacco subsidies. And yes, this is the same GOP that this week wrote a letter signaling its intent to shut down all activity in the current session of the Senate unless it gets the tax-cut extension for the wealthy that it wants.)

So there's a good chance that this problem that MERS has will simply be legislated away. Is isn't fair or just, but who gives a fuck about that? The bottom line is that there is no way Congress is going to let the rich suffer for the gain of the rest of us.

Speaking of who gives a fuck about fairness or justice as they relate to the housing industry, read this story about how judges in Florida are helping banks forclose on peoples' homes more efficiently (Spolier alert: It involves ignoring a massive amount of fraud perpetrated by the banks). And this postscript to that story.

The best healthcare in the world

This nauseating affront to basic human decency is brought to you by the free-market, for-profit healthcare system.

Kyler Van Nocker’s story shows that even 5-year-old kids are not exempt from this insurance company abuse. Van Nocker has neuroblastoma, which is a very rare form of childhood cancer that targets the nervous system and creates tumors throughout the body.

Due to successful treatment in 2007, Van Nocker’s cancer went into remission, giving him 12 months of pain-free life. Unfortunately, in Sept. 2008, the cancer returned, and Van Nocker was once again in need of treatment. Unfortunately, his health insurer, HealthAmerica, refused to pay for one form of treatment doctors believe could save his life (MIBG treatment) because they consider it “investigational/experimental” since it has yet to be approved by the FDA.

Yet in April 2008, the insurer approved cheaper treatment for Van Nocker that was also “experimental,” prompting Philadelphia Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky to ask, “So why, pray tell, is HealthAmerica playing the ‘experimental therapy’ card in the case of the MIBG treatment Kyler now needs? Gee, money couldn’t have anything to do with the decision, could it?”

And remember: this child has health insurance. But in 21st century America, there is little difference between having and needing to use health insurance and having no coverage at all.

I have a feeling the revolution just got moved up a day, and that Kyler Van Nocker’s family and friends have just been "radicalized."

Cadmium

Corporations manufacture items in China and then ship them to the United States to sell rather than just make and sell them here for a reason: It's cheaper. They can pay the kind of exploitive wages that would get them thrown in prison here, and they can use whatever cheap shit they want in their products. Sure, the American public finally caught on to lead and now manufacturers are being forced to phase it out, but they were selling their lead-laced shit for years. They had a great, extremely profitable run.

Now they've turned to some shit that's so fucking toxic that we may one day look back fondly on the days when they were poisoing us with something as relatively benign as lead. Say hello to cadmium.

Barred from using lead in children's jewelry because of its toxicity, some Chinese manufacturers have been substituting the more dangerous heavy metal cadmium in sparkling charm bracelets and shiny pendants being sold throughout the United States, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The most contaminated piece analyzed in lab testing performed for the AP contained a startling 91 percent cadmium by weight. The cadmium content of other contaminated trinkets, all purchased at national and regional chains or franchises, tested at 89 percent, 86 percent and 84 percent by weight. The testing also showed that some items easily shed the heavy metal, raising additional concerns about the levels of exposure to children.

Cadmium is a known carcinogen. Like lead, it can hinder brain development in the very young, according to recent research. [...]

Some of the most troubling test results were for bracelet charms sold at Walmart, at the jewelry chain Claire's and at a dollar store. High amounts of cadmium also were detected in "The Princess and The Frog" movie-themed pendants.

"There's nothing positive that you can say about this metal. It's a poison," said Bruce A. Fowler, a cadmium specialist and toxicologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On the CDC's priority list of 275 most hazardous substances in the environment, cadmium ranks No. 7.

Jewelry industry veterans in China say cadmium has been used in domestic products there for years. Zinc, the metal most cited as a replacement for lead in imported jewelry being sold in the United States, is a much safer and nontoxic alternative. But the jewelry tests conducted for AP, along with test findings showing a growing presence of cadmium in other children's products, demonstrate that the safety threat from cadmium is being exported.

A patchwork of federal consumer protection regulations does nothing to keep these nuggets of cadmium from U.S. store shelves. If the products were painted toys, they would face a recall. If they were industrial garbage, they could qualify as hazardous waste. But since there are no cadmium restrictions on jewelry, such items are sold legally.

While the agency in charge of regulating children's products, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, has cracked down on the dangers posed by lead and products known to have killed children, such as cribs, it has never recalled an item for cadmium — even though it has received scattered complaints based on private test results for at least the past two years.

There is no definitive explanation for why children's jewelry manufacturers, virtually all from China in the items tested, are turning to cadmium. But a reasonable double whammy looms: Cadmium prices have plummeted as factories grasp for substitutes now that lead is heavily regulated under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

Nope, no definitive explantion. But do you think that "it's cheaper" reason I mentioned above might have something to do with it?

But it looks like federal regulators have taken notice.

Federal and state watchdogs opened a new front Monday in the campaign to
keep poisons out of Chinese imports, warning Asian manufacturers not to
substitute other toxins for lead in children's jewelry and beginning an inquiry
into cadmium found in the products around the United States.

Regulators reacted swiftly to an Associated Press investigation reporting that some Chinese manufacturers have been using cadmium in place of lead in children's charm bracelets and pendants, sometimes at extraordinarily high levels. Congress clamped down on lead in those products in 2008, but cadmium is even more harmful.

I just hope they plan to do more than warn.

Press 1 for English

I came across a group on Facebook called something along the lines of "Why Should I have to Press 1 for English?" and it just pissed me off.

But because there's an entire group of people on Facebook who apparently need an answer to that question so badly that they've organized, I thought I would help them out and tell them the answer.

The reason you have to press 1 for English is because the company, organization or whatever that you are calling has clients, customers or whatever who either don't speak English or prefer to conduct their business in their native language. Now, before you start raging against people wanting to conduct their business in their native language, remember that you want the same thing, so badly that it apparently pisses you off that others don't see the advantages of conducting their business in your language, too.

But maybe that's not why they are pissed off. Maybe the anti-1-dialers simply don't like it when companies provide reasonable service to their customers. If that's the case, why are they even calling?

Or maybe they just plain don't like pressing phone buttons. Well, if that's the new white man's burden, I suppose they should be congratulated for displaying the intestinal fortitude needed to reach the company's automated answering system in the first place. I mean, that requires dialing, like, 10 digits. After that flurry of activity, I can see how pushing one more button must seem like carrying a piano up Mt. Everest. And yet they find the strength to soldier on. It's that kind of dedication and refusal to quit, even in the face of the most daunting of odds, that makes me proud of my fellow Americans.

Or maybe they just don't like automated answering systems. I'm right there with them. And for that unique inconvenience we can thank the executives who decided to buy computer systems to answer their customers' calls instead of paying humans to do it. But I doubt that's what their beef is about, because the Facebook group I saw wasn't called, "Why Should I have to Press 0 to speak with a human?"

Perhaps it's not all that service or all that dialing or all that time wasted listening to a computer pretend to interact with them that has these patriots so salty. Perhaps the real issue is that the "press 1 for English" message is an automated reminder that some God-loving, red-blooded American has lost a job to a God-loving, red-blooded foreigner. Well, to them I say, if you're angry about American jobs being shipped overseas, thank the CEO who decided that he could save a few bucks by laying off Americans and shipping their jobs off to (insert country name here). Don't blame the customer-service rep. for taking a job. She has to eat too, and it wasn't her idea to ship that job overseas.

Besides, when was the last time you declined a job because you felt someone in another country deserves it more?

Blaming foreigners for taking jobs that corporations have shipped to foreign countries makes about as much sense as blaming foreigners for speaking foreign languages in foreign countries.

And maybe that's the real issue here. But I hope not. I can understand anger about jobs being shipped overseas so that a corporation can avoid paying an American a decent, living wage and instead exploit the poor in other countries. (In this coutnry, we have these pesky laws about things like the minimum wage, working conditions and overtime. So companies avoid them by shipping jobs overseas, where they are free to pay their workers almost nothing and treat them essentially as slaves. But Republicans oppose those oppressive laws, so don't worry: One bright, shining day, you too may be able to work 100 hours a week in dangerous, deplorable conditions for poverty-level wages). What I can't understand is baseless, ignorant xenophobia. What I don't understand is buying into the lie that the working class in this country is being exploited and suppressed by those who are even poorer than they are.

Do the homeless have the power to eliminate jobs and slash wages? Are undocumented immigrants living like kings in gated communities, making more money in an hour than most people make in a year? Are families facing foreclosure having their mortgages paid off by the government, or is the government simply handing trillions of dollars to giant banks and getting nothing whatsoever in return? If the poor in this country are exploiting the working class, they are doing a really shitty job at it, because they have almost nothing to show for it.

Know your real oppressor, people.

The best healthcare in the world

 

Meet six-year-old Madison Leuchtmann. Madison was born with bilateral artesia, meaning she was born without ear canals. She needs a hearing implant in order to recognize sounds. Without it, she could lose her hearing.

Madison's family has health insurance, but their insurer, Cigna, refuses to cover the $20,000 cost of the implant. The company claims that the device is not medically necessary. Madison's pediatrician, Dr. Randall Clary, disagrees, saying, “This is obviously medically necessary. You have a child that has no ear canals!”

In addition, as reported by Think Progress, Cigna said in a written statement to the local news station Fox 2, “It is not unusual for commercial benefit plans to exclude hearing assisted devices.” Get it? There's nothing unusual about this situation. This is standard operating procedure.

But there is a silver lining in this horrible mess: At least it's an employee of a for-profit health insurance company -- and not a government bureaucrat -- coming between this six-year-old girl and her doctor.

It seems that if you need to use your health insurance, having health insurance is not much different than not having it. And remember, Cigna is doing this while the nation's attention is focused on the for-profit health insurance industry, and while legislation that could put them out of business is being crafted in Congress.

Imagine what Cigna and other for-profit insurance companies will do when no one is looking.

Why do we always have to shame these amoral scumfucks into doing the right thing? That this is a necessary and oft-repeated step in the process of getting healthcare is evidence that the for-profit health insurance system Just. Doesn't. Work.

Haven't gotten the lead out

Just in case you thought this wasn't happening anymore.

Children's toys carrying the Barbie and Disney logos have turned up with high levels of lead in them, according to a California-based advocacy group — a finding that may give consumers pause as they shop for the holiday season.

The Center for Environmental Health tested about 250 children's products bought at major retailers and found lead levels that exceeded federal limits in seven of them. Lead can cause irreversible brain damage.

Among those with high lead levels: a Barbie Bike Flair Accessory Kit and a Disney Tinkerbell Water Lily necklace. The group said it also found excessive lead in a Dora the Explorer Activity Tote, two pairs of children's shoes, a boys belt and a kids' poncho.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has sent letters to Target, Wal-Mart and the other retailers who sold the seven products, warning that children's goods on their store shelves were found to contain illegal levels of lead and should be pulled immediately.

The findings released Tuesday come about a year after a product safety law that ushered in strict limits on the amounts of lead and chemicals allowed in products made for children 12 years and younger. Congress passed the law after a slew of recalls of lead-tainted toys in 2007, including several Mattel-related recalls that involved more than 2 million toys.

If you ever found yourself in a store wondering how they can make something so inexpensive, now you know.

When you get tired of reading reports about unsafe lead levels in toys and wondering about the toys your children are playing with, click here.

Game of chance

Eat ground beef and roll the dice.

Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes.

Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.

Ms. Smith, 22, was found to have a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to the hamburger that her mother had grilled for their Sunday dinner in early fall 2007.

“I ask myself every day, ‘Why me?’ and ‘Why from a hamburger?’ ” Ms. Smith said. In the simplest terms, she ran out of luck in a food-safety game of chance whose rules and risks are not widely known.

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.

Ms. Smith’s reaction to the virulent strain of E. coli was extreme, but tracing the story of her burger, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe.

See, the trouble is, testing the beef supply to make sure it's safe and won't kill people who eat it is just so darn expensive. And you know that we like our money more than life itself.

Don't kid yourself: The beef supply isn't monitored closely enough and isn't safe.

Benefits cut

You can't make this shit up.

WellPoint Inc., the largest U.S. insurer, dismissed a "small number" of workers last week and announced cuts to employee health benefits Friday, in its latest attempt to deal with the recession's toll on enrollment.

I wonder if that "small number of workers" included those who excelled at saving the company money through recissions, that is, retroactively canceling people's coverage after they filed expensive claims. As noted in a previous post, one criterion used by WellPoint to evaluate employees' job performance was how well they condemned people by canceling their insurance at the moment they get sick and really need it. In other words, for some WellPoint employees, condemning people by canceling their insurance at the moment they get sick and really need it was part of the job.

The investigation has also found that at least one insurance company, WellPoint, evaluated employee performance based in part on the amount of money its employees saved the company through retroactive rescissions of health insurance policies. According to documents obtained by the committee, one WellPoint official was awarded a perfect score of five for exceptional performance based on having saved the company nearly $10 million through rescissions.

These practices reveal that when an insurance company receives a claim for an expensive, life-saving treatment, some of them will look for a way, any way, to avoid having to pay for it.

And if the company is cutting benefits for its own employees, what do you think it's doing to other policyholders?

Water

Hey all you stupid small-government idiots: Check out the results of relieving polluters of the heavy burden of government regulation.

Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va.

In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system.

“How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” said Mrs. Hall-Massey, a senior accountant at one of the state’s largest banks.

She and her husband, Charles, do not live in some remote corner of Appalachia. Charleston, the state capital, is less than 17 miles from her home.

“How is this still happening today?” she asked.

When Mrs. Hall-Massey and 264 neighbors sued nine nearby coal companies, accusing them of putting dangerous waste into local water supplies, their lawyer did not have to look far for evidence. As required by state law, some of the companies had disclosed in reports to regulators that they were pumping into the ground illegal concentrations of chemicals — the same pollutants that flowed from residents’ taps.

But state regulators never fined or punished those companies for breaking those pollution laws.

This pattern is not limited to West Virginia. Almost four decades ago, Congress passed the Clean Water Act to force polluters to disclose the toxins they dump into waterways and to give regulators the power to fine or jail offenders. States have passed pollution statutes of their own. But in recent years, violations of the Clean Water Act have risen steadily across the nation, an extensive review of water pollution records by The New York Times found.

In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.

However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene.

But at least those more than half a million violations of the Clean Water Act have led to cost savings that have created thousands of jobs and stimulated the shit out of the economy.

Oh, right.

For a list of the polluters near you and the number of times they have violated the Clean Water Act without having to worry about the burden of fines, prison or any penalties whatsoever because government has wised up and gotten out of the way of free enterprise, click here. And I'm glad that the same government that looks the other way while corporations pollute our water is working hard to deny affordable healthcare to people sickened by filthy, toxic water. And to everyone else, for that matter.

And, in what I'm sure is a completely unrelated story:

Dangerous staph bacteria have been found in sand and water for the first time at five public beaches along the coast of Washington, and scientists think the state is not the only one with this problem.

The germ is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — a hard-to-treat bug once rarely seen outside of hospitals but that increasingly is spreading in ordinary community settings such as schools, locker rooms and gyms.

I read the news yesterday and came away so depressed by the boundless greed in this country that is completely untempered by even the slightest grain of human decency and compassion. The health insurance industry is spending millions and working tirelessly to deny Americans access to affordable health insurance that won't be canceled the moment they need it, the Supreme Court is about to make it even easier for corporations to tighten their grip on elected officials, and polluters are poisioning our fucking water to save a few bucks while regulators yawn.

With everything that's going on, I am starting to think that raising a family in these conditions is simply irresponsible. And it pisses me off that I might have to leave my fucking country -- MY country -- in order to raise my family in a secure, healthful environment. People who used to say, "If that happens, I'm moving to Canada" used to sound like crackpots. Now they sound like pragmatists.

With all due respect to the late President Kennedy, when is it OK to ask what your country can do for you?

Blue dogs

Seeing a lot of green.

As the Obama administration and Democrats wrangled over the timing, shape and cost of health care overhaul efforts during the first half of the year, more than half the $1.1 million in campaign contributions the Democratic Party's Blue Dog Coalition received came from the pharmaceutical, health care and health insurance industries, according to watchdog organizations.

The amount outstrips contributions to other congressional political action committees during the same period, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit watchdog organization. The Blue Dogs, a group of fiscally conservative lawmakers, successfully delayed the vote on health care overhaul proposals until the fall.

"The business community realizes that (the Blue Dogs) are the linchpin and will become much more so as time goes on," former Mississippi congressman turned lobbyist Mike Parker told the organization's researchers.

On average, Blue Dog Democrats net $62,650 more from the health sector than other Democrats, while hospitals and nursing homes also favor them, giving, respectively, $5,680 and $5,550 more, according to the Center for Responsive Politics , a nonprofit organization that tracks the influence of money in politics.

The contributions came at a time when health care and pharmaceutical companies were mounting a campaign against a government-run public health insurance option, fearing cost controls and an impact on business. The Blue Dogs' windfall also came at a time when the 52-member coalition flexed its muscle with both the White House and the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives as an increasingly influential bloc in the health care overhaul debate.

At the same time, many Blue Dogs were also rubbing shoulders with health care and insurance industry executives and their lobbyists at fundraising breakfasts and cocktail receptions that cost upward of $1,000 a plate, according to public information compiled by the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, which advocates greater government transparency. Since 2008, more than half the Blue Dogs have either attended health care industry fundraising receptions or similar functions co-sponsored by lobbyists representing the health care and insurance industries.

In June, as Rep. Mike Ross, D- Ark., who heads the coalition's task force on health care, publicly expressed the Blue Dogs' misgivings about the Democratic leadership's efforts, the former pharmacy owner was feted at a series of health care industry receptions. Ross has received nearly $1 million in campaign contributions from the insurance and health care industries over his five-term career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Calls to Ross' office weren't returned.

And we are supposed to believe that blue dogs are fighting the meaningful healthcare reform that so many Americans need so badly based on some selfless, genuine concern about costs. I guess the fact that they are protecting the interests and profits of health industries at the exact same time they are receiving piles of money from those industries is just a coincidence.

It appears the only costs they are concerned about are the costs of their next campaign.

Politicians putting self-interest ahead of the national interest. Who'da thunk it?

Don't shit where you eat

Or this happens.

A federal study of mercury contamination released Wednesday found the toxic substance in every fish tested at nearly 300 streams across the country, a finding that underscores how widespread mercury pollution has become.

The study by the U.S. Geological Survey is the most comprehensive look to date at mercury in the nation's streams. From 1998 to 2005, scientists collected and tested more than a thousand fish from 291 streams nationwide. While all fish had traces of mercury contamination, only about a quarter had levels exceeding what the Environmental Protection Agency says is safe for people eating average amounts of fish.

How much mercury do you consider safe to eat?

"This science sends a clear message that our country must continue to confront pollution, restore our nation's waterways, and protect the public from potential health dangers," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.

Mercury can damage the nervous system and cause learning disabilities in developing fetuses and young children. The main source of mercury to most of the streams tested, according to the researchers, is emissions from coal-fired power plants. The mercury released from smokestacks rains down into waterways, where natural processes convert it into methylmercury — a form that allows the toxin to wind its way up the food chain into fish.

Clean coal: The gift that keeps on giving ... mercury poisoning.

This is why I don't eat fish anymore, although I would like to. Some people say to me, "You can't worry about that, you have to live your life." But I find that the best way to live my life is to avoid eating poison. So I'd no sooner eat fish than I would drink from a thermometer.

H/t Mrs. S.

An insider speaks

On Bill Moyers Journal, Wendell Potter, former head of corporate communications for CIGNA, spells out exactly what the for-profit healthcare industry is up to. HINT: It has to do with protecting their profits at the expense of our health.





Click here to read the transcript.

Lead on your lips

Lead in lipstick. This article mentions a couple of brands that do (and do not) contain detectable amounts of lead. For a list of lead-free lipsticks, click here.

Lipstick is hardly the only offender in the cosmetics world. Click here to check other kinds of makeup, including mascara. Some manufacturers add mercury to mascara and other kinds of eye makeup. Minnesota banned these products last year.

It's so exhausting keeping up with all the hidden toxins in products that we put in and on our bodies, but what choice do we have? Because it's unlikely that learning or behavioral problems, or even eventual cancers, would ever be definitively traced back to a specific company's plastic bottle, or to a specific company's BPA-lined alunimum can, or to a specific brand of cosmetics (and that's due in large part that there are so many sources of exposure to these toxins), there's little chance that these companies are ever going to face any kind of financial penalty for cutting costs by using cheap, dangerous chemicals in their products.

"Sure, it makes people sick or causes learning disabilities, but it does it so gradually that it's extremely unlikely that the cause of the problem would ever be traced back to us." That's what's called an acceptable level of risk. When corporations talk about an acceptable level of risk, they're talking about the likelihood of having to pay huge sums of precious, precious money in fines and punitive damages. But when people talk about an acceptable level of risk, they're talking about their families' health.

Clearly we and they do not share the same primary concerns, so it is up to us to be vigilant, no matter how exhausting it can be to learn of a new risk in a product about which we previously were unconcerned. We can't afford to put our heads in the sand and give up. The only way to encourage companies to offer more healthful products is to vote with our wallets and stop buying products that pose health risks. For example, contrary to the commercial, Snapple didn't just recently discover sugar. It started making iced tea with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup for a very obvious reason: to make money. The company recognized a demand for products with less "shit" in them, and responded.

The sugared iced tea, by the way, is excellent.

On the rise

Gee, didn't see this coming during the summer driving season.

The price of crude oil once again seems to be defying the economic forces of gravity.

There's plenty of evidence to suggest prices should be falling. In industrialized countries, storage tanks are overflowing, with enough supplies to cover 62 days of use, about 10 days more than usual. Economic weakness continues to depress world demand, which is on track to fall for the second consecutive year. And oil-producing countries, while restraining output, are adding to production capacity. New Saudi Arabian wells coming on line this year will exceed the entire production capacity of Texas.

But instead of dropping, the price of crude oil rose to more than $65 a barrel yesterday, the highest in more than six months. And some analysts said it could rise even higher as the summer driving season arrives. Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said this week that a $75-a-barrel price was within reach.

I'm no expert of economics, but it seems to me that the so-called forces of the marketplace can be manipulated by the super rich. If that's the case, then aren't the only people who face any real risk in the market the nonrich and unconnected people who are foolish enough to wander into the market and hand their money over to the super rich? And isn't "playing the market" just a matter of trying to guess what the super-rich are going to do next?

Take a look at the following charts, from the Energy Information Administration. Together, they cover the past three years, including the 2006 midterms and the 2008 presidential election (click the charts to enlarge).



Look at what happened to the retail price of gasoline right before November 2006 and November 2008: It dropped dramatically, only to go back up in time for the summer driving season. To be sure, I've made this point before (here, here, here and probably other times as well), but I wanted to post an updated chart that showed what has happened to prices since the election. Sure enough, they're on their way back up. And the Post article referenced above cites analysts who think the price of oil is going to keep climbing. You can track the retail price of gasoline here.

One other, unrelated, thing from the Post article to note: It seems that Ocean City, Md., has an interesting way of tracking the number people who visit the town.

In the Washington area, more people appeared to have taken to the road for the Memorial Day weekend; the beach resort of Ocean City, using wastewater use to track the volume of toilets flushed, estimated that it received more Memorial Day weekend visitors than it had since 1993.

Or it could mean that the quality of seafood in the Atlantic isn't what it used to be.

Conspiracy Theory Rock

I posted a link to this a long time ago, but a conversation with a friend reminded me of it, so I thought I'd post an embedded version.

Carcinogens in ...

Drumroll please ... baby toiletries!

More than half the baby shampoo, lotion and other infant care products analyzed by a health advocacy group were found to contain trace amounts of two chemicals that are believed to cause cancer, the organization said yesterday.

Some of the biggest names on the market, including Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo and Baby Magic lotion, tested positive for 1,4-dioxane or formaldehyde, or both, the nonprofit Campaign for Safe Cosmetics reported.

The chemicals, which the Environmental Protection Agency has characterized as probable carcinogens, are not intentionally added to the products and are not listed among ingredients on labels. Instead, they appear to be byproducts of the manufacturing process. Formaldehyde is created when other chemicals in the product break down over time, while 1,4-dioxane is formed when foaming agents are combined with ethylene oxide or similar petrochemicals.

The organization tested 48 baby bath products such as bubble bath and shampoo. Of those, 32 contained trace amounts of 1,4-dioxane and 23 contained small amounts of formaldehyde. Seventeen tested positive for both chemicals.

I am so fucking weary of this all-to-frequent song and dance. An advocacy group -- not a government regulatory agency, mind you. They are too busy staying out big business' way -- discovers harmful chemicals in (insert product here) that have been shown to cause (fill in serious fucking disease here). A mouthpiece for the company or industry, depending on how widespread the contamination is, points out that the amounts of the offending chemicals are "trace," "pose no threat to public health" and are "well within the FDA's accepted limits."

Eventually, if people can avoid being distracted by the Jen-Angelina fued or the current equivalent of must-see Thursday long enough, or -- more importantly -- if sales numbers start to fall, the companies in question will announce that they are removing these chemicals from their products because of their "concern for the health and welfare of each and every one of our valued customers" (no word, of course, on where that concern had been for all these years). This will be followed by some new commercials that point out that the product is now (fill in chemical here)-free.

If only we had a regulatory agency with some fucking teeth, we wouldn't have to go through this shit every couple of months. If only the Bush administration (and the GOP. Make no mistake, George Bush was NOT the abberation Republicans would like you to believe he was. He was a garden-variety conservative, typical of the breed.) hadn't pulled the FDA's teeth in the name of increasing the profits of already rich and powerful corporations, we wouldn't be needlessly exposed to dangerous chemicals in everyday products, or ignorant of those to which we were being exposed.

H/T to Mrs. S.

Liquid cigarettes

Soft drinks. They can contain benzene, mercury, BPA and reactive carbonyls, which have been linked to diabetes. And a stimulating, possibly addictive, drug is thrown in for good measure.

I once had a job in which we were given a 15-minute break at around 10:15 a.m. I usually drank a can of Mountain Dew during this break, and I soon found that I began feeling anxious at around 10 a.m., as though I had forgotten to do something important. I would feel nervous, with that sinking of the stomach that one experiences just before remembering that super important but forgotten thing. Being at work, I worried that there was some job-related task that I had overlooked, and thought backwards in search of something I might have forgotten to do. That never turned up anything, so I started scanning my personal file to see if I had dropped a ball there. Nothing.

I finally connected the anxious feeling to the caffeine jolt my body was anticipating. I stopped drinking that yellow, syrupy piss and the feeling went away.

Do yourself a favor and drink apple juice. Or any fruit juice not contaminated with high fructose corn syrup. Read the labels and know what you're putting into your body.

Clean coal