Friday, August 29, 2003
Suburban spraaaawl
Suburban sprawl appears to be contributing to the nation's obesity epidemic, making people less likely to walk and more likely to be overweight, researchers reported yesterday.
In the first comprehensive examination of whether suburbs spreading across the U.S. landscape are affecting Americans' health, the researchers studied more than 200,000 people in 448 counties, producing the first concrete evidence supporting suspicions that sprawl is aggravating the nation's growing weight crisis.
People who live in the most spread-out areas spend fewer minutes each month walking and weigh about six pounds more on average than those who live in the most densely populated places. Probably as a result, they are almost as prone to high blood pressure as cigarette smokers, the researchers found.
Stay out of the suburbs.
posted by chris at 1:54 PM
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Thursday, August 28, 2003
Where have all the jobs gone?
The US Republican Party now has a band of young and enthusiastic fund-raisers in Noida and Gurgaon [India].
HCL eServe, the business process outsourcing arm of the Shiv Nadar-promoted HCL Technologies, has bagged a project to undertake a fund-raising campaign for the US Republican Party over the telephone.
This is the first time such a project has been handed out to a company outside the US. The market research and public relations companies engaged by the party usually undertake such projects.
Oh, so the Republicans are sending all the jobs to India. Via Tom Tomorrow.
posted by chris at 3:26 PM
Destroying democracy in Iran
Fifty years ago this month, the CIA and British intelligence orchestrated a coup d’etat that toppled the democratically elected government of Iran. It's a fascinating story that shows just how little respect the US government can have for democracy, especially when another country is achieving that democracy in a way the US doesn't like.
In 1951 Prime Minister Mossadegh roused Britain's ire when he nationalized the oil industry. Mossadegh argued that Iran should begin profiting from its vast oil reserves which had been exclusively controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The company later became known as British Petroleum (BP).
After considering military action, Britain opted for a coup d'état. President Harry Truman rejected the idea, but when Dwight Eisenhower took over the White House, he ordered the CIA to embark on one of its first covert operations against a foreign government.
The coup was led by an agent named Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. The CIA leaned on a young, insecure Shah to issue a decree dismissing Mossadegh as prime minister. Kermit Roosevelt had help from Norman Schwarzkopf’s father: Norman Schwarzkopf.
The CIA and the British helped to undermine Mossadegh's government through bribery, libel, and orchestrated riots. Agents posing as communists threatened religious leaders, while the US ambassador lied to the prime minister about alleged attacks on American nationals.
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The crushing of Iran's first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under the Shah, who relied heavily on US aid and arms. The anti-American backlash that toppled the Shah in 1979 shook the whole region and helped spread Islamic militancy.
None of this was publicly acknowledged until about three years ago. Now, author Stephen Kinzer has written a book entitled All the Shah’s Men, An American Coup And The Roots of Middle East Terror, detailing the coup and its repurcussions across the Middle East. There's an interview with him here and the excellent first chapter of his book can be found here. Via Cursor.
posted by chris at 12:37 PM
Halliburton - richer than your wildest dreams!
Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents.
The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than was previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent experts estimate that as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors.
More here.
posted by chris at 12:11 PM
Bush cuts pay raises
Citing the "national emergency" created by the September 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush Wednesday exercised his authority to limit the pay increase for many federal workers next January to 2 percent -- well below the 15 percent some employees would have been entitled to receive.
The president exercised the same authority last year, as have other presidents in the past. In this case, Bush said the country could not afford to give civilian federal employees who are covered by what is known as the General Schedule the full raises they would get had he not invoked his authority.
But he can afford to give huge tax breaks to the rich . . .
posted by chris at 11:44 AM
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Tuesday, August 26, 2003
License to Kill
President Bush defended his policy on Iraq today, declaring that the United States had struck a blow against terrorism in overthrowing the government of Saddam Hussein. And Mr. Bush said the United States might carry out other pre-emptive strikes.
"No nation can be neutral in the struggle between civilization and chaos,'' Mr. Bush told members of the American Legion gathered in St. Louis for the group's convention.
"We've adopted a new strategy for a new kind of war,'' Mr. Bush said, to loud applause. "We will not wait for known enemies to strike us again. We will strike them in their camps or caves or wherever they hide, before they hit more of our cities and kill more of our citizens.''
Sheesh.
posted by chris at 7:40 PM
Ladies and Gentlemen, The President of the United States . . .
"I don't understand how poor people think," [Bush said,] and appealed to [Wallis] for help by calling himself "a white Republican guy who doesn't get it, but I'd like to."
and . . .
"[Bush] often says that life would be a lot easier if it were a dictatorship. But it's not, and he's glad it's a democracy."
Riiiiiight.
posted by chris at 12:11 PM
Bush's game plan
Bush Inc. has said the campaign won’t abide by spending caps during the primary, but will during the general election.
(The Federal Election Commission distributes matching funds for the primary, and a straight-up grant for each eligible major-party candidate in the general election.)
The Bush plan sounds innocuous, since he doesn’t face anyone significant in the primary.
But the trick is the primary period doesn’t end until the candidate is officially nominated.
And the RNC pushed the nomination all the way to Sept. 2, past the traditional August date for the incumbent party.
Since Bush is aiming to raise upwards of $200M for the "primary," he can dump all of that during the winter, spring and summer.
Then, scoop up about $74M of taxpayer cash in the general election grant.
That’s a blatant bastardization of the system (though it produces no dismay, only jaw-dropping awe, from the political press corps.)
Via Atrios.
posted by chris at 11:46 AM
Post war death exceeds combat death
The toll of U.S. troops killed in postwar Iraq surpassed the number killed in major combat on Tuesday, reaching 139 with the death of a soldier in a roadside bombing.
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The incident brought the death toll since May 1, when President Bush declared an end to major combat, to one more than the number of troops who died during heavy fighting before that date. Since the war began March 20, 277 U.S. forces have died.
Not a good thing. Via Daily Kos.
posted by chris at 11:22 AM
Didn't we have a surplus when Bush took office?
The federal government is heading toward a record $480 billion deficit in 2004 and will rack up red ink of almost $1.4 trillion over the next decade, according to the latest analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.
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The CBO put the deficit in 2005 at $341 billion, and predicted that the budget will finally return to a surplus in 2012 and 2013. But it also hedged those predictions, saying they were based on the assumption that Congress will allow several tax cuts enacted in recent years to expire in 2010. That is unlikely to happen.
It also does not predict the cost of the war and reconstruction in Iraq or take into account new spending programs, such as a $400 billion Medicare prescription drug plan Congress is now working on.
This kinda thing always seems to be a big issue round about election time . . .
posted by chris at 11:18 AM
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Monday, August 25, 2003
BIG government
The six-month-old Department of Homeland Security has 40 percent of its 160,000 employees working as "watchers" at airports at average salaries of $29,000 but also pays 324 funeral directors, 128 pharmacists, 55 general anthropologists, 41 fingerprint specialists and 30 chaplains.
In the first public examination of the makeup of the new department, which constituted the largest reorganization of government since World War II, a research group at Syracuse University found that the fledgling bureaucracy already has at least one full-time employee in one of every five of the nation's 3,146 counties.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data gathering, data research and data distribution project at Syracuse, said that DHS, one of 15 Cabinet-level departments, now employs one of every 12 workers in the federal government. (emphasis added)
Funeral directors?? Once a suspected terrorist gets to that point, isn't it a little late? Man, talk about red tape. Thanks, Davin.
posted by chris at 6:49 PM
More lies
At the White House's direction, the Environmental Protection Agency gave New Yorkers misleading assurances that there was no health risk from the debris-laden air after the World Trade Center collapse, according to an internal inquiry.
The White House "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" by having the National Security Council control EPA communications in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to a report issued late Thursday by EPA Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley.
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In all, the EPA issued five press releases within 10 days of the attacks and four more by the end of 2001 reassuring the public about air quality. But it wasn't until June 2002 that the EPA determined that air quality had returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels -- well after respiratory ailments and other problems began to surface in hundreds of workers cleaning dusty offices and apartments.
This should be remembered when the Republicans come crashing into New York City next year for their nominating convention. The Bush administration lied and put New Yorkers at serious risk.
Columnist Jimmy Breslin has a few choice words about the Bush administration.
posted by chris at 2:25 PM
Another in a series of lies
Huddled over a fleet of abandoned Iraqi drones, U.S. weapons experts in Baghdad came to one conclusion: Despite the Bush administration's public assertions, these unmanned aerial vehicles weren't designed to dispense biological or chemical weapons.
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In building its case for war, senior Bush administration officials had said Iraq's drones were intended to deliver unconventional weapons. Secretary of State Colin Powell even raised the alarming prospect that the pilotless aircraft could sneak into the United States to carry out poisonous attacks on American cities.
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The unproven U.S. assertion regarding Iraq's UAV programs is one among many. American weapons hunters, like their U.N. counterparts, haven't reported finding any chemical, biological weapons or nuclear weapons in Iraq so far.
The lack of success in uncovering unconventional weapons, after warnings that Iraq posed an immediate danger, has led critics and some former government analysts to suggest the administration exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam.
More here, via Tom Tomorrow.
posted by chris at 11:11 AM
How do you say "portion size" in French?
Scientists have another solution for the notorious "French paradox" - the riddle of how a nation of alcohol-quaffing, croissant-munching gourmands stays healthy and slim, while a disproportionate number of health-obsessed Americans are obese and at cardiovascular risk.
The answer, after methodical study of brasseries, eateries, pizza parlours, Chinese restaurants and Hard Rock cafes in both countries, is simple: the French eat less of everything. And they eat less because they are served smaller portions. (emphasis added)
Mean portion size across all Paris establishments was 277g (9.8oz), compared with an average in Philadelphia of 346g (12.2oz) - about 25% more. Only in the Hard Rock Cafe chain did the Parisian portions match the US ones.
Philadelphia's Chinese restaurants served 72% more than the Parisian ones. A supermarket soft drink in the US was 52% larger, a hotdog 63% larger, a carton of yoghurt 82% larger.
The lesson is that though the French diet was rich in fat, overall, the Americans consumed more calories. Over the years, this would lead to substantial differences in weight.
Eat less.
posted by chris at 10:26 AM
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