A Wal-Mart November

I doubt there is a connection but it's kinda ironic.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) on Thursday forecast flat November sales at U.S. stores open at least a year, sounding a sour note for the start of the vital holiday shopping season and sending its stock lower in early electronic trading.

The world's biggest retailer also said October U.S. same-store sales rose a paltry 0.5 percent, its smallest gain in more than two years and below its lowered expectations.

Total sales rose 11.7 percent to $25.71 billion for the four-week period ended October 27.

Good luck to those kids doing the Wal-mart November thing. I hope it picks up for them in the coming years,

Starbucks, O Starbucks

Yeaaaah.... you know ....

The Starbucks Aesthetic

October 22, 2006
By SUSAN DOMINUS

WHEN Bette Gottfried, a 48-year-old regular at a Starbucks in Ardsley, N.Y., saw that her favorite coffeehouse was promoting a film, she wasn’t immediately interested. “At first I was leery,” said Ms. Gottfried, dressed in workout clothes, wearing her hair in a ponytail and sitting near the window with her daily decaf mocha (“low-fat milk, no foam, no whipped”). “I thought, ‘Who are they to get involved in the movies?’ ”

Ultimately, however, she decided to take her 9-year-old daughter to see the film, “Akeelah and the Bee,” precisely because of the involvement of Starbucks. “I trusted seeing the movie, because it was promoted here,” she said. After all, she liked the company’s coffee; she had already bought and liked several CD’s it produced and sold, compilations of music by Carole King, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra. Why wouldn’t she like a Starbucks movie? She did, and now she’s considering picking up its latest cultural sales item: “For One More Day,” a book by Mitch Albom.

But Ms. Gottfried’s question is a valid one. Starbucks is clearly very good at selling coffee, but why should it become involved in the movies — and books and CD’s, for that matter? And why would consumers trust its taste in books and films any more than they’d trust, say, Simon & Schuster’s taste in Ethiopia Gemadro Estate decaf?

Yeaaaah.... you know ....

In an early misstep, Starbucks started offering Joe, a literary magazine that appeared in 1999 and lasted all of six months before Mr. Schultz decided, on the basis of slow sales, that the product “didn’t add any value.” But since then Starbucks has successfully promoted a slew of hits, from the Ray Charles CD “Genius Loves Company,” a joint venture with Concord Records that won several Grammy Awards and sold 800,000 copies at Starbucks alone, to a recent CD of Meryl Streep reading “The Velveteen Rabbit.”

Interestingly enough:

The heart of that audience is a group the company refers to as its “core customers” — educated, with an average age of 42 and an average income of $90,000.

And this part, sigh:

A major player in the company’s music business is Timothy Jones, manager of compilations and music programming. Mr. Jones, 58, ran a small independent record shop in Seattle until 1987, when his business folded and he started managing the Starbucks across the street. Customers there asked if they could buy the mixes of Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis he was playing, and that’s how it all got started.

Mac

Starbucks: An expression of my hypocracy

sent by Tamika who snatched it from Netscape Home Page in the “What’s New” section

The Dirty Little Secret of Starbucks Coffee

That Starbucks coffee you're sipping on the way to work, as a mid-morning pick-me-up and an afternoon treat could be making you fat. Very fat. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a.k.a. "the food police," has issued this startling pronouncement: A 20-ounce Venti banana mocha Frappuccino with whipped cream contains 720 calories and 11 grams of saturated fat, while a banana cream crunch bar chalks up a stunning 630 calories and 25 grams of saturated fat. By comparison, a McDonald's Big Mac has 560 calories and 11 grams of saturated fat.

Look out Starbucks! You may be the next target on CSPI's hit list, reports Reuters. This is the group that made a big name for itself several years ago attacking movie theater popcorn. Just recently they made headlines for suing KFC owner Yum Brands for frying the KFC chicken in oils that are high in trans fats, which are solid fats found in partially hydrogenated oils. Trans fats are known to clog arteries and raise the risk of heart disease and obesity. CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson cleverly said, "Regular consumers of Starbucks products could face Venti-sized health problems."

So what does CSPI want Starbucks to do? List the nutrition information on its menu boards. That information is easily available on the Starbucks Web site, but it's not the same thing as seeing 720 calories right next to the price of that 20-ounce Venti banana mocha Frappuccino with whipped cream you're about to order. "Customers can ask for nutrition information, but when you're talking about a transparent business in a busy world, that's not enough," union organizer and Starbucks barista Daniel Gross told Reuters in an interview. He wants Starbucks to use healthier shortenings that do not contain trans fat and to publicize the smallest size drink. It's called "short," and even though it is available in every Starbucks, you'll never see it on the menu. The union says Starbucks baristas gain weight when they work there since they are given unlimited free beverages and leftover pastries during their shifts.

What does Starbucks have to say? A company spokesman issued a statement saying the firm is "actively researching" alternatives to high-fat products. By this fall, it also plans to eliminate trans fat from seasonal baked goods (but not all baked goods). "In our beverage ingredients, we have reformulated any component that contained significant artificial trans fat content," the spokesman said.

I guess that explains what's happened to my middle....

Treasure Islands

Credit where credit is due.

Op-Ed Contributors
By JOSHUA REICHERT and THEODORE ROOSEVELT IV

June 15, 2006

PRESIDENT Bush is expected to declare the northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument today, thereby creating the largest marine reserve on earth. The president's decision caps a century of protection efforts by both Republican and Democratic presidents beginning with Theodore Roosevelt and including Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. But none ever proposed the sweeping level of protection for these islands that is being put in place by the Bush administration.

While we and others in the conservation community have not always agreed with President Bush's environmental policies, we believe it is important to acknowledge a significant policy achievement when it occurs — and one is about to occur.

Beginning 160 miles northwest of Kauai, and extending roughly 1,200 miles into the Pacific Ocean, the uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals and atolls of this archipelago make up one of the most remote and relatively undisturbed coral reef systems in the world. The area marked for protection covers roughly 140,000 square miles of ocean, larger than all of America's national parks combined.

Almost 70 percent of the tropical, shallow-water coral reefs in American waters are in this one place, together with 7,000 species of marine and terrestrial life, a quarter of which aren't found anywhere else. More than 14 million seabirds make these islands their home for at least a part of the year, along with the last population of the endangered Hawaiian monk seal.

The president's plan for the monument designation has the distinction of receiving broad support from the Hawaiian people and from Hawaii's Republican governor, Linda Lingle, who recently closed state waters in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands — everything up to three miles from shore — to commercial activities, including fishing. Many Native Hawaiians, who consider these islands an important part of their cultural and religious heritage, would also like to see commercial fishing ended in federal waters, which stretch three to 50 miles from shore.

In the plan to be announced by the White House, commercial fishing will be phased out over five years. What's more, the president's action will spur efforts to compensate the few remaining fishermen in the area for surrendering their permits to the government, which would then retire them. While it is still too early to know whether these efforts will be successful, such a buyout package would provide for an early end to fishing in the archipelago and offer reasonable compensation to the fishermen who have earned part of their livelihood there.

Just as we have protected spectacular areas on land from destructive activity, we know it is equally important to do so for the sea. The president's announcement is an important step in what we hope will be greater efforts to safeguard the ocean, while also addressing broader problems of overfishing, pollution and habitat destruction.

There are few opportunities for a president to protect such a large swath of ocean or land at little cost to the government, while garnering strong regional support. This is one, and we applaud Mr. Bush for taking the initiative to preserve one of the world's most spectacular marine environments.

Joshua Reichert directs the environment division of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Theodore Roosevelt IV is an investment banker.

Team Jolie

I can't help but respect her, despite all the celebrity ho-ha.

The actress also acknowledges to Cooper that she gives a third of her income to charity and jokes, "Yeah, well, I had a stupid income for what I do."

<

Like the Constant Gardner, no?

and, why this not a major story?

Panel Faults Pfizer in '96 Clinical Trial In Nigeria
Unapproved Drug Tested on Children

By Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 7, 2006; A01

A panel of Nigerian medical experts has concluded that Pfizer Inc. violated international law during a 1996 epidemic by testing an unapproved drug on children with brain infections at a field hospital.

That finding is detailed in a lengthy Nigerian government report that has remained unreleased for five years, despite inquiries from the children's attorneys and from the media. The Washington Post recently obtained a copy of the confidential report, which is attracting congressional interest. It was provided by a source who asked to remain anonymous because of personal safety concerns.

The report concludes that Pfizer never obtained authorization from the Nigerian government to give the unproven drug to nearly 100 children and infants. Pfizer selected the patients at a field hospital in the city of Kano, where the children had been taken to be treated for an often deadly strain of meningitis. At the time, Doctors Without Borders was dispensing approved antibiotics at the hospital.

Pfizer's experiment was "an illegal trial of an unregistered drug," the Nigerian panel concluded, and a "clear case of exploitation of the ignorant."

The test came to public attention in December 2000, when The Post published the results of a year-long investigation into overseas pharmaceutical testing. The news was met in Nigeria with street demonstrations, lawsuits and demands for reform.

Pfizer contended that its researchers traveled to Kano with a purely philanthropic motive, to help fight the epidemic, which ultimately killed more than 15,000 Africans. The committee rejected that explanation, pointing out that Pfizer physicians completed their trial and left while "the epidemic was still raging."

The panel said an oral form of Trovan, the Pfizer drug used in the test, had apparently never been given to children with meningitis. There are no records documenting that Pfizer told the children or their parents that they were part of an experiment, it said. An approval letter from a Nigerian ethics committee, which Pfizer used to justify its actions had been concocted and backdated by the company's lead researcher in Kano, the report said.

The panel concluded that the experiment violated Nigerian law, the international Declaration of Helsinki that governs ethical medical research and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Five children died after being treated with the experimental antibiotic and others showed signs of arthritis, although there is no evidence the drug played a part. Six children died while taking a comparison drug.

The panel recommended that Pfizer be "sanctioned appropriately" and directed to issue "an unreserved apology to the government and people of Nigeria." The company should also pay an unspecified amount of restitution, the report said. The panel recommended that Nigeria enact reforms to prevent a recurrence.

Aspects of the affair remain mysterious, such as why the report remains confidential. The head of the investigative panel, Abdulsalami Nasidi, said in a brief telephone conversation from Nigeria, "I don't really know myself" why the report was never released.

"I did my job as a civil servant," said Nasidi, who is quoted in the report as saying he has been the target of unspecified death threats.

A New York City attorney for the families of the children, Elaine Kusel of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, said her firm had spent years looking for the report, of which they believed there were only three copies. They tracked one to a Nigerian government safe, but it was reported stolen, she said. Another copy was reported to have been held by an official who died.

"It sounds like a mystery novel here, like John le Carré," Kusel said.

The current Nigerian health minister, Eyitayo Lambo, did not respond to calls and e-mail messages from a reporter. Dora Akunyili, director of the Nigerian drug control agency, said she did not know why the report remained confidential but added that her agency had independently concluded that "these people did not have authority to conduct the trial."

Executives at Pfizer, the world's biggest drug company, said they had not seen the report. After reviewing a copy, they responded in a two-page statement:

"The Nigerian government has neither contacted Pfizer about any of the committee's findings nor are we aware that the committee has approved a final report. Therefore it would be inappropriate for the company to respond to specific points in the document.

"However, as we have stated repeatedly over the past several years, Pfizer conducted this trial with the full knowledge of the Nigerian government and in a responsible way consistent with Nigerian law and Pfizer's abiding commitment to patient safety."

Pfizer said it had previously tested the drug in thousands of patients and found it effective. Local nurses explained the experiment to Nigerian parents, it added, and obtained their "verbal" consent. The company said that Trovan demonstrated the highest survival rate of any treatment at the hospital.

"Trovan unquestionably saved lives, and Pfizer strongly disagrees with any suggestion that the company conducted its study in an unethical manner," the statement said.

At the time of the Nigerian experiment, Pfizer was developing Trovan for release in the United States, where it was expected to gross up to $1 billion a year.

The FDA never approved Trovan for use in treating American children. After being cleared for adult use in 1997, the drug quickly became one of the most prescribed antibiotics in the United States. But Trovan was later associated with reports of liver damage and deaths, leading the FDA to severely restrict its use in 1999. European regulators banned the drug.

After The Post published its report, Nigeria's health minister at the time, Tim Menakaya, appointed a blue-ribbon panel of medical experts to look into Pfizer's actions, saying, "Let me assure you that my ministry will take all necessary steps to obtain details of this incident and make them known to the general public." The committee collected hundreds of documents and interviewed at least 26 people.

Pfizer had told authorities that a Nigerian doctor directed the experiment. The committee, however, found that researchers from Pfizer's U.S. office controlled the trial, and the inexperienced Kano doctor, Abdulhamid Isa Dutse, was the principal investigator "only by name."

Publications listed Dutse as the lead author of articles on Trovan, but the committee found that depiction "did not sufficiently reflect his role." Dutse indicated he was kept in the dark about the experiment's results and said he did not see at least one publication until the committee showed it to him.

"He was shocked that Pfizer could publish such data without showing him or intimating him with details," the report said, concluding that Dutse was "naive and exploited."

The report quoted Dutse as saying that Pfizer's motive was far from philanthropic.

"I have trusted people and am disappointed," Dutse told the committee. "I regret this whole exercise, I wonder why on earth I did this."

Dutse admitted that he created a letter after the experiment purporting to show that the test had been approved in advance by a Nigerian hospital's ethics committee. He then backdated the letter to March 28, 1996 -- a week before Pfizer's experiment began.

Pfizer used the letter as a key justification for the trial in discussions with reporters and submitted it to the FDA. U.S. regulations require the sponsors of foreign medical research seeking FDA approval to show that the tests have been reviewed in advance by an ethics committee.

The Post previously reported that the hospital had no ethics committee in March 1996 and that the letterhead stationery used was not created until months after the experiment's conclusion.

In a statement last week, Pfizer said that after that article appeared, the company investigated and found that the letter was "incorrect."

"Obviously this should not have occurred and the company very much regrets that it did," the statement said. "It is important to point out, though, that Pfizer thought proper procedure had been followed at the time of the clinical study."

The former director of Nigeria's version of the FDA said the agency had been unaware of the experiment. He told the panel that he "viewed the conduct of the trial by Pfizer as an act of deception and misuse of privilege."

The report said the treatment of two children during the experiment represented unspecified "serious deviations" from the trial's protocol and concluded that those deviations compromised their care. One was a 10-year-old girl identified only as Patient No. 0069, who was given the experimental antibiotic for three days as her condition deteriorated. She died without receiving any other antibiotic.

Last week, Rep. Tom Lantos of California, the senior Democrat on the International Relations Committee, described the report's findings as "absolutely appalling" and called on Pfizer to open its records.

"I think it borders on the criminal that the large pharmaceutical companies, both here and in Europe, are using these poor, illiterate and uninformed people as guinea pigs," Lantos said.

Lantos said he expected to introduce a bill requiring U.S. researchers to give regulators details of tests they plan in developing countries.

"It's the only ethical thing to do," Lantos said. The bill is similar to one his committee approved in 2001 that did not make it out of the House. "There should be a lot of bipartisan support for it. This outrages people."

The report's findings also breathe new life into a lawsuit against Pfizer, according to Kusel, who represents 30 Nigerian families. "It's great news, I'm very excited," she said when told of the committee's conclusions.

The families sued Pfizer in federal court in New York in 2001, alleging that the company had exposed the children to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."

A U.S. judge dismissed the suit last summer, saying U.S. courts lacked jurisdiction. Kusel is appealing.

"A report like this does not get suppressed without someone high up being involved," she said.

Disney losing appetite for fast food

( An LATimes tale via the Sun-Sentinel)

Marketing ties with McDonald's hit lean times

By Rachel Abramowitz
Los Angeles Times
Posted May 7 2006

For 10 years Disney and McDonald's appeared to have a beautiful billion-dollar marriage. Happy Meals bore little figurines of Nemo, Mr. Incredible, and Peter Pan.

But no more. This is one relationship that's ending because of the children.

Disney is not renewing its billon-dollar, cross-promotional pact with the fast-food giant, which ends with this summer's release of Cars and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The reason, in part, say multiple high-ranking sources, is the family-friendly entertainment giant wants to distance itself from fast food -- and its links to the epidemic of childhood obesity.

Disney's not the only studio that thinks french fries loaded with trans fats may be too hot to handle.

DreamWorks is working with McDonald's to promote Shrek 3, due out in 2007. But according to one top-level studio source, there is already internal debate about whether the lovable green ogre should steer clear of chicken nuggets and Big Macs in favor of the healthier fare on McDonald's menu, such as salads. Compounding the issue is the fact that Shrek is, after all, overweight.

The ending of the McDonalds-Disney partnership comes at a time when the processed and fast food industries are under fire on a number of fronts because of growing concerns about childhood obesity. Just last week, former President Bill Clinton succeeded in yanking sugary sodas from elementary school campuses.

But some say the more discreet actions of the movie industry could ultimately have a much greater impact, especially if other corporate giants follow suit.

"I think it would have impact in contributing to the cultural change that is necessary," says Dr. J. Michael McGinnis, the chairman of a National Academy of Sciences panel that just released a study showing how food marketing affected children's diets. "The committee thought it was important for the use of cartoon characters that appeal to children only to be used in the marketing of healthy products."

One of the industry's most prominent critics, Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser, said it will be hugely significant if the Hollywood studios don't want to be associated with Happy Meals. "It will put more pressure on McDonald's to change what they sell in Happy Meals. The obesity issue would be irrelevant if the food in the Happy Meals was healthy."

This month Houghton Mifflin releases a new book by Schlosser and co-author Charles Wilson: Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food, that has already put McDonald's on edge.

Animated ambivalence

Disney declined to comment about the end of its arrangement with McDonald's. The company has not signed any new promotional deals with any fast-food providers even though its recent purchase of Pixar Animation Studios gives it an even bigger slate of potential family-oriented blockbusters to market to youngsters.

In a conference call with analysts last August, Steve Jobs, the chairman of Pixar and now Disney's largest shareholder, was asked about the end of the McDonald's deal, and signaled the company's ambivalence about the fast-food sector: "There is value in [fast food tie-ins]. But there are also some concerns, as our society becomes more conscious of some of the implications of fast food."

Skipping the fast-food sector would certainly impact Disney's promotional strategy, says analyst Lowell Singer, from A.C. Cowen. "Fast food has been a very important promotional partner in promoting films to children. As the animated marketplace gets more competition over the next few years, Disney will need to be much more aggressive and creative in reaching children though other promotional outlets."

Restaurant analysts don't expect the Disney decision to affect McDonald's, which is free to work with other movie studios, as well as toy companies as disparate as Lego and Build-a-bear. In fact, while McDonald's relationship with the entertainment giant boasted hit promotions for such films as 101 Dalmatians, and Lilo and Stitch, some franchisees began to chafe when the studio churned out clunkers like Treasure Planet. The company also had to abide by Disney's strict rules regarding use of their characters, which were not allowed to be seen eating McDonald's food.

While even nutritionists caution that fast food isn't the only culprit when it comes to childhood obesity, it's certainly a factor.

Happy Meals are specifically marketed to children between the ages of 3 and 9. A regular six-piece Chicken McNugget Happy Meal with fries and Hi-C contains 620 calories, 28 grams of total fat, and 5 grams of trans fat. In recent years, McDonald's has also added healthy alternatives such as apples and low-fat milk.

All about the toy

At the end of the day, what often sells a Happy Meal is the toy, not the food. A good toy promotion can double or triple the sales of Happy Meals.

Blame impressionable young minds and "the `nag' factor," said Prof. Jerome Williams, an advertising expert at the University of Texas.

"Kids see a movie, and see it's being promoted with a particular product, they'll nag their parents about it," he said. "Studies have shown that, after a while, parents will give into their children. They're not so much expressing a preference for a Happy Meal but for the character the Happy Meal is associated with."

According to study released last month by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Center for Disease Control, 19 percent of children ages 6-11 are overweight, and 17 percent of teenagers are overweight.

Those figures may be conservative, said Prof. James O. Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado. He says the new governmental data suggests that as many as 40 percent of young children are overweight, and about 20 percent fall into the obese category.

But Disney isn't divorcing itself from McDonald's, either. The fast-food giant will continue to be a staple in the theme parks. They're also leaving open the possibility of McDonald's promotions geared towards adults.

"Our relationship was ongoing before the agreement and will continue after," said Dean Barrett, senior vice-president of global marketing for McDonald's.

Other factors contributed to the unraveling of the McDonald's-Disney alliance.

For its part, Disney grew disgruntled with some of McDonald's more recent advertising efforts, and had problems with the fast food giant's toy production schedule, according to a source. The studio had to lock down release dates at least 18 months ahead of time to accommodate McDonald's needs. If the studio moved the date, it had to pay a steep penalty to McDonald's.

Hollywood and fast food have been closely aligned since the 1980s, with almost every major film targeting children boasting a fast food tie-in of some sort.

Crunchy Culture

Thanks to The Friendly Stranger for the story nod

Author Rod Dreher Has Defined A Political Hybrid: The All-Natural, Whole-Grain Conservative

By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 3, 2006; C01

DALLAS

Two succulent, naturally raised chickens with good farm references are in the oven, snuggled up in a roasting pan like doomed lovers. Fat, perfect carrots are peeled, chopped, seasoned and ready to simmer.

"Notice that I am literally barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen," observes Mrs. Crunchy Con, and perhaps, she quips, she should have done her hair for the occasion like Phyllis Schlafly's. The li'l Crunchy Cons, boys ages 2 and 6, are out back in the warm Wednesday afternoon sun, making sculptures out of a bowl of ice cubes -- something constructive and home-schoolish, something very We're Not Watching TV.

In fact, if it weren't for their right-wing politics, the Crunchy Con family could be roasting organic chickens in Berkeley, or Takoma Park. It's that kind of house.

Wearing a faded green henley shirt, jeans and sandals is Mr. Crunchy Con, named Rod Dreher.

By day he is a right-leaning pundit and opinion editor at the Dallas Morning News -- grappling with his disappointment with how the war in Iraq is turning out. At night he comes home in a used 1993 Mercedes sedan with 109,512 miles on it, to live, like Thoreau at Walden, deliberately . (Oh, to hear him spill apologetically on about the car, how he didn't mean to wind up driving something so un-crunchy, so perceptibly fat cat, but really, when you compare it value-wise to a used Honda, and anyhow, please note that the AC is always broken . . . roll down your window and feel that? It's the cool breeze of intentional livin'.)

The Dreher family lives in a smallish, 1914 Craftsman bungalow near downtown Dallas -- a contradiction to the exurb-centric, sprawly-mall Republican ways of the megalopolis that surrounds them.

"A house like this, in a lefty city?" Dreher asks. "We would never be able to afford it. But here? In 'the hood'? We got this so cheap. We like it aesthetically. That's not always valued here."

In his recent book, the grandiloquently titled "Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-Loving Organic Gardeners, Evangelical Free-Range Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-Wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (or At Least the Republican Party)," Dreher, 39, describes his little house as the perfect expression of his politics.

I think Burkean relates to Edmund Burke

Two great quotes from this guy:

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

"And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them."

He and his wife, Julie, 31, put up religious art -- Orthodox icons, prints of divine old paintings. Days after they moved in, he writes of standing at the kitchen window at morning, "wondering what the peaches and figs would taste like later that summer," frozen in a prayer of gratitude to the Lord.

Mmmm, Organic Food

Now is the political season of the marginal, the other, the Odd Fit, and it's a fantastic time to try on new stereotypes. In lulls like these come constructs like Soccer Mom and Patio Man and Bobos in Paradise, and people fight on blogs and in book reviews about whether they really exist. Now is when pollsters and opinionistas seem able to construe any demographic reality you can conceive, calibrating the political nomenclature at will: Anti-war peaceniks and eco-activists are springing up in the swamps and rururbs; evangelicals are preaching green; lefties in Whole Foods aren't so sold on a woman's right to choose anymore.

So perhaps you are a Crunchy Con?

Do you shop organic, live closer in, recycle, hike 'n' bike -- yet oppose things such as abortion and gay marriage, on deeply held, faith-based principles? Did your pastor lose you as soon as he donned low-rise jeans and started getting all Dr. Phil and self-love on the congregation, via his Kelly Clarkson microphone headset? Do you sit in your Chevy Meanderthal, with Dan Zanes on the stereo to lull the toddlers, and really, really wonder WWJD?

Crunchiness, and its potential to both irk and challenge the Republican Party, has become Rod Dreher's central preoccupation: In the summer of 2002 -- not long after he'd discovered that Birkenstock sandals make his achin' dogs feel better and that the stuff from the co-op tastes even better than the No. 2 combo at his beloved Sonic Drive-In -- Dreher wrote a brief essay for National Review's Web site, which grew into a 3,000-word manifesto for the magazine.

"We made fun of our liberal friends," he originally wrote of his newfound love for organic food, "until we actually tasted the vegetables they got from the farm. We're converts now, and since you asked, I don't remember being told when I signed up for the GOP that henceforth, I was required to refuse broccoli that tastes like broccoli because rustic socialist composters think eating it is a good idea."

The essay ran, and though his right-wing friends mostly hated it, he got more positive responses from readers than for anything he'd ever written, all on a variation of "Me, too."

A broader manifesto began to take shape. Crunchy Cons prefer smaller houses, older things, the musty truth of Scripture. "Culture is more important than politics and economics" is a bullet-point, as is "Beauty is more important than efficiency. . . . Small, Local, Old and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New and Abstract." Meanwhile, "The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty and wisdom."

The Dreher family likes its comfy, Ikea living-room sofa and nights spent reading. It's about front porches, not Porsches. They like jazz on (yechh) public radio. They are committed to saving the planet. They closely scrutinize what their kids watch and read, and Dreher brags that his sons routinely ask to hear his old college-radio faves on the stereo, the good stuff -- U2 and XTC. What might strike you as sort of post-hippie strikes them, paradoxically, as intrinsically conservative. It's God, family and Elvis Costello. And speaking of kooky old GOP furnishings, they like Peggy Noonan, too. (And she likes them; she's a godmother to their youngest child.)

Before Texas, Rod and Julie Dreher made a really good stab at being Brooklynites. He was a film critic and later columnist at the New York Post. Dreher says he was always the most conservative person at cocktail parties in Manhattan, "unless someone named Podhoretz was in the room."

Since "Crunchy Cons" was published earlier this year (it has gone back for two additional printings, according to a publicist at Crown publishers), Dreher has also taken a drubbing from his punditry cohort, including National Review's Jonah Goldberg, who views "Crunchy Con" as heretical to the "big tent" ideals of the one true Republican faith. Goldberg bites at "Crunchy Con" with occasional essays and blog entries of his own.

"To Rod's credit, he doesn't claim that 'mainstream conservatives' are racists; but he does claim that they are uptight, blue-blazered, two-dimensional men motivated by greed. They are Godless materialists, unthinking dupes of Madison Avenue, with no connection to spirituality or religion unless, that is, you think being an idolatrous votary of the free market counts as being religious," Goldberg wrote in March.

"Crunchy conservatism strikes me now -- as it did back when I first heard about it -- as a journalistic invention, a confabulation fit for some snarking liberal reporter at the Washington Post 'Style' section."

Breaking Bread

Ding-dong, we're here, a smidge late.

Forgot to bring wine, and we are perfectly okay with the idea that most people don't give the tiniest, insignificant poops about what Jonah Goldberg thinks.

The Drehers are funny; they like to laugh at themselves, and they will talk about their ideas and politics and religion (and yours) long into the night. Their older child, Matthew, buries his nose in automotive magazines; the younger one, Lucas, delightfully smears himself with macaroni and begs for sips of white wine. As the night wears on, both will be relocated to the living room for approved media intake (the original 1974 version of "Benji").

The Drehers are self-conscious and good-natured about living the "sacramental" life described in his book: Dreher writes in a breezy, slightly Southern style that is less dogmatic than a reader of political tracts might expect. He essentially lays out his family's entire domestic process, from their practice of natural family planning over birth control (Julie's expecting their third child in October), to what they eat, to Julie's decision not to work, to how they home-school their boys with help from a parents cooperative.

In the book he goes on at length about their religious beliefs, and what particular strains of conservative Catholicism appeal to their spiritual sensibility, and why. Theologically, they are a few clicks left of Opus Dei, but they are not fans of bland, mainstream parish Masses; nor are they interested in whatever remains of folksy Vatican II reforms and flying-saucer-shaped churches of the 1970s.

"We'll need bread," Julie announces, from the kitchen.

"Just bread?" Rod asks her. "Not water?"

"Just bread," she affirms, and off he goes to a Whole Foods several blocks away.

We find the Whole Foods blessedly empty, almost private, before the 5 o'clock rush. We walk the aisles and Dreher says that even this, the country's most successful crunchy-grocery chain, can unnerve him, makes him think too hard about the surface details of moral value. "There's still something holier-than-thou about this place," he says, passing the homeopathic aisle with its herbs and echinaceas and all-natural Tom's toothpaste. "When I'm sick, I want Sudafed. I'm a skeptic on all this stuff."

On food, however, he speaks with the zeal of a convert -- though he discourages putting gourmet ecstasies up there with religious experience. A good meal is nothing like the way the Virgin Mary acknowledged his 30 days of prayer to her, back when Dreher, raised Methodist, was in his twenties and looking for enlightenment after too much partying and drinking. The Virgin answered, in her way, and he later converted to Catholicism. Julie, raised Baptist, converted too, after the couple met.

Growing up in St. Francisville, La., a town of 1,700 people about an hour north of Baton Rouge, Dreher says he was a chubby, junk-food kid who got to watch as much television as he liked. Despite a world of hunting and fishing, he became (and remains) "an avid indoorsman." He turned his nose up at the vegetables that came out of his mother's garden. A buck-hunting episode with his father was successful, but fills him with existential dread in the retelling. He ached for his town to get its own McDonald's. (It eventually did; as crunchy as Dreher considers himself, he confesses still to an inappropriate but ongoing affair with the snack machine at his office.)

"My God, our moms were all told that it's better for you to open a can!" he says, retrieving a whole-grain Tuscan loaf from the bakery counter. "It would be overstating it to see them as victims, though. The fact is, if you're going to cook a lot at home, it takes time." Which is another benefit, he says, of Julie's decision not to work. In the middle of "Crunchy Cons," apparently with a laptop in bed so he can take notes, Dreher coaxes his wife into what is essentially a verbatim exposition of her take on the Mommy Wars. Short version: She opted out -- way out -- and left her job as a magazine editor and never looked back.

"My folks think we eat the weirdest stuff," Dreher says. "These are people who suck the fat out of the heads of crawfish, but still. . . . People have the strangest class associations on food. It's a difficult conversation to talk about the virtues of certain foods or certain kinds of housing. Pretty quick someone is saying you're an elitist, you're a snob."

He has seen something among the whole-grain muffins:

"Are these, like, the 'organic' Peeps?" he marvels, holding up a purply-green package of awfully correct candy. He squints at them through squarish, thoughtful specs.

'Hurtful' Criticism

"Crunchy Cons" is riven with the careful ambivalence of a seeker.

Dreher will make an argument for the environment or against capitalism and then sugar it with waitaminnit paragraphs that begin with the folksy "now" and "look" (as in Look, don't get me wrong. Or Now, I'm not saying . . . .) He realizes that others have been living politically conservative, back-to-the-land lifestyles years and decades longer than he has, which fascinates him.

In the book, he sets out to find and talk to them. There are farmers and home-schoolers and theological rebels. There are charismatic Catholics living in an "intentional community." There are prayerful, hardworking families that never buy anything. Some of them he finds through people who e-mailed him to huzzah about the original crunchy manifesto; some he finds at the co-op, where they're selling organic meat. The result is an often tangential journey, with a sometimes naive air about it, which Dreher's critics have noticed:

Dreher is "weighed down by self-referentialism and a worrying tendency towards self-congratulation," one reviewer sniffed in the conservative Washington Times. "A somewhat arbitrary launching pad for a variety of fairly tepid critiques against mainstream conservatism and the modern world." (The New York Times, predictably, sorta dug it, man: "Makes a convincing case that there is a market for his brand of half-hippie traditionalism, even if it is not exactly the conservatism we know today.")

Others have decried crunchy conservatism as pure fad, a folly of book marketing. "Some of it was hurtful," Dreher admits, "because it was coming from people I consider to be my friends."

This seeking seems to never end. He was a typical, left-leaning undergrad at Louisiana State in the late '80s. Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman came to campus, and Dreher volunteered to escort him around town. A wigged-out Hoffman demanded to be driven to Jimmy Swaggart Bible College so he could yell obscenities out the car window and maybe pick a fight. There was an arrogance to it. It was a small moment in a Dreher's journey rightward, toward something that seemed more sensible, upstanding.

"Julie said something to me on the same lines not long ago, in response, I seem to recall, to how once I get fixed on a new idea, or set of ideas, I allow them to take up every spare space in my mind as I follow them wherever they lead. My ninth-grade English teacher told me back then that I reminded her of 'The Elephant's Child' in Kipling, full of 'insatiable curiosity,' " Dreher says, later, by e-mail.

Their devotion to Catholicism is strong, but Mr. and Mrs. Crunchy Con have had problems with the church of late, over its handling of its priestly pedophilia scandals. They even considered converting to the Eastern Orthodox church, with its incense and icons. It had a liturgical and communal vibe that "was so much more crunchy than any parish I'd been to," he says. "Though Orthodoxy feels right, the main obstacle for us is the question of capital-T truth. . . . If I come through this and stay Catholic, I'll be a much different Catholic, that's for sure."

Julie took a play-date trip with another home-schooling mom to one of Dallas's megachurches recently, where she discovered "the best food court I've ever been to in my life." Rod says he's never been to a megachurch, and in his book he criticizes what defines the spirituality and politics there: "Almost all on the religious right are Christians -- and in this broad sense, I am on the religious right -- but it's odd how we limit our political concern to sexual issues," Dreher writes. "Jesus had as much or more to say about greed as he did about lust. But you will not find most American religious conservatives worrying overmuch about greed."

Dreher prospered as a film critic at a few papers in the 1990s, but he recalls sitting in a festival screening of indie filmmaker Todd Solondz's 1998 movie "Happiness," in which, among other things, a pedophile rapes his young son's friend at a slumber party. The critics and cineastes around him swooned over and praised it, and Dreher sank into his chair with a growing alienation from the pop machine. Not long after that, he became a conservative op-ed critic of cultural and social mores. He thrived as a pro-Bush, pro-war pundit. (His views on the war now? Changed; and certainly crunchier.)

Jangled by 9/11 and feeling cramped, the Drehers moved in 2003 to Dallas, where she grew up.

It didn't, he sighs, "seem very crunchy."

Soon he was pontificating online against sprawl: "In my part of town, developers are tearing down older houses left and right, and putting up McMansions on small lots. . . . [T]he developers invoke the Free Market, as if it were the Magisterium of the Church. I remember watching on the late local news one night not long ago a developer saying that if people didn't want to buy these kinds of houses, they wouldn't be building them. As if consumer desire was its own justification. . . ."

"Seems the folks in God's Country -- well, now don't git him wrong, they got plenty of them seeds o' faith and virtue, but they jes' don't share ole Rod's sophistercated view of housing preservation," slammed Roy Edroso, a frequent Dreher critic who writes hilariously sharp liberal screed at Alicublog. He has called Dreher "a professional Ned Flanders impersonator," and the Crunchy Con concept a "revival of Jesus Freaks as home-schoolin', homo-hatin' yuppies. . . . I liked hippies better when they had weed.

"You made your bed, hoss," Edroso railed, about Dreher's ooky feelings of dislocation in Dallas. "Now die in it."

One for the Road

The chickens are perfect.

Julie has made a loaf of pumpkin bread with chocolate chunks in it.

Driving away from the house of the Crunchy Cons, go ahead and eat the slice you took along in a paper towel. Eat it before the first stop sign. It is warm and comfortable. It's the bread of the new right. God, we think, merging onto the freeway, those people sure seem happy.

And the Rich Get RIcher

Alternative investments pay off for the very rich

By Deborah Brewster in New York
Published: April 19 2006 19:58 | Last updated: April 19 2006 19:58

The number of very rich people in the US grew last year at the fastest pace in at least a decade as their moves into international stockmarkets, real estate and alternative investments paid off.

The number of households with $5m (€4m) or more in investable assets – excluding the family home – rose by 26 per cent to a record 930,000, according to a study by Spectrem Group. That is the biggest jump since Spectrem began its survey in 1996. The number of millionaires rose by 11 per cent, to a record 8.3m – the second biggest jump in the decade since they were surveyed

from the Financial Times

O'Reilly making sense

Holy.Fucking.Shit.
And if he ain't carry water for these cats...

Then again, who can? Who can?

By: Bill O'Reilly for BillOReilly.com
Thursday, Apr 20, 2006

The next time a gas fill-up costs you 40 bucks or more, consider this: Lee Raymond, the retired CEO of Exxon-Mobil, was paid more than one billion dollars by that company from 1993 to the present. Raymond's retirement package is about $400 million, according to published reports. Does everybody love Raymond? I don't. I think he's a greed-head.

The Exxon-Mobil board of directors approved Raymond's compensation, and guess who appointed most of those well-paid board members to their positions? Does the name Lee Raymond ring a bell?

And guess who is paying all those Exxon-Mobil salaries, including our pal Lee's? The regular folks who must buy gas to go to work and heat their homes. This is called "predatory capitalism."

Let me explain, and please keep in mind that I am a big-time supporter of capitalism. Gasoline supplies are at an eight year high, according to OPEC. There is plenty of gas selling on the open market, more than enough to meet the worldwide demand.

So rising gas prices are not a supply and demand issue.

What the American oil companies are doing is exploiting the uncertainty in the world. Every time the nutty Iranian government threatens to kill the Jews or the Americans or whoever, speculators bid up the paper price of a barrel of oil.

These speculators operate in the so-called commodities markets. They gamble on where the price of oil and other tangible assets will be months from now. These Vegas-type people sit in front of their computers and bid on "futures" contracts.

Every time the oil company executives, guys like Lee Raymond, see these people bidding up oil "futures," they order their retail gas station owners to jack up prices to you. Supply and demand my carburetor—this has nothing to do with the free market.

If you don't believe me, try to start your own oil company. Just try. The government has to approve almost everything these conglomerates do, and there's no room for any "startups."

So everyday Americans are at the mercy of a complicated shell game that is manipulated by a few people playing high risk financial roulette. But it is no game to millions of Americans who have to buy gas. We have no choice.

That's because the U.S. government declined to do what the government of Brazil did. Next year, Brazil, population 188 million, will be totally independent of imported oil. Back in the 1970's, the Brazilian government mandated that all cars sold in that country run on sugar-based ethanol. And now they do.

These are the same cars we drive. But in Brazil, the fuel situation is sweet. Vehicles run on sugar.

Back here in the USA, the federal government rejected ethanol, and all other alternative fuels, because Lee Raymond and his brethren wanted none of that. Raymond is in the oil business, not the sugar business.

In the time of the French Revolution, Lee Raymond and his $400 million pension would be running one step ahead of the guillotine. But today, some in America admire Raymond and support his unbelievable compensation.

But to those of us who really understand what's going on here, Raymond and his ilk are hurting the country and the government is their enabler. Talk about gas pains. There isn't enough Alka-Seltzer in the world.
##

Tax Calculators

Shit...better get moving.

Philanthropy Tax Tips

A gift to a qualified charitable organization may entitle you to a charitable contribution deduction against your income tax if you itemize deductions.

If the gifts are deductible, the actual cost of the donation is reduced by your tax savings.

For example, if you are in the 33% tax bracket, the actual cost of a $100 donation is only $67 ($100 less the $33 tax savings). As your income tax bracket increases, the real cost of your charitable gift decreases, making contributions more attractive for those in higher brackets. The actual cost to a person in the lowest bracket, 15%, for a $100 contribution is $85. For a person in the highest bracket, 35%, the actual cost is only $65. Not only can the wealthy afford to give more, but they receive a larger reward for giving.


A contribution to a qualified charity is deductible in the year in which it is paid. Putting the check in the mail to the charity constitutes payment. A contribution made on a credit card is deductible in the year it is charged to your credit card, even if payment to the credit card company is made in a later year.


Most, but not all, charitable organizations qualify for a charitable contribution deduction. You can deduct contributions only if they are made to or for the use of a qualified recipient. No charitable contribution deduction is allowed for gifts to certain other kinds of organizations, even if those organizations are exempt from income tax. Contributions to foreign governments, foreign charities, and certain private foundations similarly are not deductible. Below, you can view a list of organizations for which your donations can be deducted. All organizations rated by Charity Navigator qualify for charitable status, and you can deduct your donations, subject to certain limitations.

An organization could lose its charity status if it devotes a substantial part of its activities to formulating propaganda or otherwise trying to influence legislation. However, an organization, other than a church, may qualify as a charity and still perform some of these activities by keeping its political expenditures to an "insubstantial" part of its activities. Furthermore, donations to needy individuals are not deductible.

There are limits to how much you can deduct, but they're very high. For most people, the limits on charitable contributions don't apply. Only if you contribute more than 20% of your adjusted gross income to charity is it necessary to be concerned about donation limits. If the contribution is made to a public charity, the deduction is limited to 50% of your contribution base. For example, if you have an adjusted gross income of $100,000, your deduction limit for that year is $50,000.

The rules on 20% limits and 30% limits are way too complicated to delve into in this space. If you are giving to organizations other than those mentioned above, first consult with your tax adviser to determine whether these other ceilings will apply. If you give an amount in excess of the applicable limitation to charity in one year, the excess is carried over for the next five years.

Rules exist for non-cash donations. If you contribute property owned for more than one year, the value of the deduction is normally equal to the property's fair market value. You have an advantage when you contribute appreciated property because you get a deduction for the full fair market value of the property. You are not taxed on any of the appreciation, so, in effect, you receive a deduction for an amount that you never reported as income.

You should clearly contribute, rather than throw out, old clothes, furniture and equipment that you no longer use. If you bring $1,000 in old clothes or furniture to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, make sure that you get a receipt. Never throw such contributions into a bin where no receipt is available. If you are in the 25% bracket, that receipt may be worth $250 in tax savings to you.

Remember to document. No deduction is allowed for a separate contribution of $250 or more unless you have a written confirmation from the charity. A canceled check alone is not enough. If the contribution is to a religious organization solely for an intangible religious benefit (annual dues, for example) written proof is still required. All other contributions of cash require the charity to estimate the fair market value of any goods or services given to you in exchange for your contribution.
Remember, it's always better to give than receive. The glory of charitable donations is that you give and receive at the same time.

Organizations to Which You Can Give and Deduct Your Donation

Your contribution to every organization that Charity Navigator evaluates is tax deductible. If an organization is not evaluated by Charity Navigator, and you still want to support them, you are generally allowed a 50 percent ceiling on your adjusted gross income for contributions if they are any of the following organizations:

Churches and other religious organizations;
Tax exempt educational organizations;
Tax exempt hospitals and certain medical research organizations;
A government unit, such as a state or a political subdivision of a state;
Publicly supported organizations such as a community chest;
Certain private foundations that distribute all contributions they receive to public charities within two-and-a-half months after the end of the foundation's fiscal year;
A private operating foundation which pools all of its donations in a common fund;
Certain membership organizations that rely on the general public for more than a third of their contributions.

Fish sans Mercury

Seriously.

(From LATimes via HuffPo)

A Hook for Landing Mercury-Wary Eaters

A new brand promises levels well below FDA limits in a move to boost sales of fresh fish.

By Jerry Hirsch
Times Staff Writer

February 27, 2006

SACRAMENTO — When shoppers browse the seafood counters at Holiday Quality Foods' 19 grocery stores in rural Northern California today, they will find a new Safe Harbor brand, the nation's first line of low-mercury fresh fish.

The label is part of a market test by the supermarket chain and Pacific Seafood Group, one of the nation's largest fish wholesalers, to see whether customers would buy more fish if they had more information about its mercury content. Holiday is using a new technology, developed by a high-tech company in San Rafael, Calif., that takes just minutes to measure the mercury concentration in fish rather than days.

"This is a way to regain the confidence of consumers who worry about seafood and mercury," said Chuck Holman, retail sales manager for Pacific Seafood, Holiday's supplier. "The technology is available, so we might as well use it."

Studies have found that high concentrations of mercury in pregnant women, nursing mothers and young children are harmful to brain development. Big fish, such as swordfish, shark and tuna, tend to contain more mercury than smaller fish such as salmon.

Federal and state advisories warning women of childbearing age to avoid fish with high levels of mercury, along with other adverse seafood publicity, are starting to eat into Holiday's sales. Over the last two years, the chain's sales of fresh fish have fallen 3% while the number of questions shoppers ask about mercury has risen, said David Parrish, Holiday's director of perishables.

That's a worrying trend for Holiday, as well as for Clackamas, Ore.-based Pacific Seafood. Holman hopes that by providing more information about the mercury in fish, the industry can win back customers such as Tina Kulek of Los Alamitos.

"I think twice before buying swordfish now, and I don't have it very often, maybe once in a while in a restaurant," said Kulek, as she did the family grocery shopping at a Trader Joe's in Long Beach. Kulek said she would be more likely to purchase fish if she knew it had a low mercury level.

"It is something that should be labeled," Kulek said.

Elsewhere, other consumers are changing their eating habits because of mercury warnings.

"I love sushi and we used to eat swordfish and grill big tuna steaks," said Everett Volk, an attorney in Washington. But Volk and his wife, Rebecca, cut those items from their diet several years ago. "We were planning kids and we were worried about mercury crossing the placenta."

Pacific Seafood's efforts to regain customers start in a building the size of two large supermarkets in an industrial park on the north side of Sacramento.

There, the company processes as much as 250,000 pounds of fish and shellfish daily, six days a week. Much of the building is maintained at 34 degrees and machines churn out 45 tons of ice daily to make sure fish stays fresh as it is prepared and shipped to Albertsons supermarkets, Outback Steakhouse, Red Lobster restaurants and other clients.

Fish comes by airplane and truck from throughout the world — 90-pound yellowfin tuna caught near Fiji, giant halibut that ply the icy coast of Alaska and sea bass that swim in the waters between Argentina and the Antarctic.

In the cutting room, workers wield razor-sharp, 16-inch knives as they slice blood-red ahi into quarters for delivery to sushi bars and snowy halibut into pre-packed steaks for grocery stores.

Now, more than 1,000 pounds of seafood a day makes an extra stop at a testing table where a worker uses a syringe and biopsy needle to extract a sample for insertion into the testing device developed by Micro Analytical Systems. The copy-machine-sized system takes about a minute to analyze the sample and signal whether the mercury concentration is low enough to warrant the Safe Harbor label.

"We expect to reject at least half of the fish we test," said Malcolm Wittenberg, chief executive of Micro Analytical.

Food and Drug Administration regulations say that any fish containing a mercury concentration of 1 part per million or more shouldn't be sold.

Safe Harbor brand fish is certified to have mercury concentrations well below that limit. Wittenberg has calibrated the certification to an FDA database derived from a series of random tests, reporting the lowest, median and highest levels of mercury found in different species.

Mercury in Chilean sea bass, for example, ranges from a low of 0.085 part per million to a high of 2.180 parts per million, more than twice the level at which the FDA says the fish isn't fit for human consumption. In most instances, only a fish that tests below the median level on that database — in Chilean sea bass, that's 0.303 ppm — gets the Safe Harbor label, Wittenberg said.

Some species, such as salmon, have consistently low reported mercury levels. For those species, the test will look for aberrations rather than the median, Wittenberg said.

The extra cost of certifying the fish will be absorbed by Holiday for now, Parrish said, "because if we are going to sell more fish, we will make our money on the volume." He expects the wholesale price of a pound of snapper to rise to $3.49 from $3.19, for example, but the chain will continue to sell the fish for $5.69 a pound.

The test by Holiday and Pacific Seafood is attracting the attention of other chains and wholesalers. Wittenberg met with representatives of Albertsons' Bristol Farms chain Friday. An Albertsons Inc. spokeswoman declined to comment.

"If the machine can provide better safety it would be advantageous to the industry," said Chip Mezin, co-general manager of American Fish & Seafood Co. in Los Angeles, which provides fish for many of the large supermarket and restaurant chains in Southern California. A spokeswoman for Pacific American Fish Co., a wholesaler based in Vernon, said some of its Southern California clients have asked whether it could obtain Micro Analytical Systems' Safe Harbor-brand fish.

But Mezin and other wholesalers also want to be sure the testing device works. The FDA also is watching.

"One of the concerns that we would have would be whether it is accurate," said David Acheson, the FDA's chief medical officer.

To ensure the machine's accuracy, technicians at Pacific Seafood will periodically run a National Standards Bureau substance with a known mercury level through the device and make sure that the readings match, Wittenberg said.

The FDA hasn't advocated large-scale testing of fish and doesn't enforce its own regulation limiting mercury levels to less than 1 ppm. For the FDA to take action, the government would have to demonstrate that the particular fish had too much mercury and the consumption of that fish would be harmful, Acheson said.

"That second requirement is going to be hard to prove in a courtroom," Acheson said. "It is questionable whether any individual fish could be removed from the marketplace."

The FDA focuses on testing the average mercury level of different species of fish, Acheson said. The agency will take samples from 12 fish of the same species, mix the flesh together and test the composite.

For example, from 2002 through last month, the agency tested 87 batches of yellowfin tuna, or 1,044 fish. It found that yellowfin, often sold as ahi, averaged 0.325 ppm, but that some of the batches exceeded the 1 ppm limit. Based on that average, a 6-ounce serving would contain the maximum amount of mercury a 180-pound man should consume in a week.

"It's a better use of our resources to inform consumers what to do about fish than spending money and time testing more fish," Acheson said.

What to do about fish is not easy to answer, medical professionals say.

A study published by Harvard Medical School physician Emily Oken and other researchers in the October edition of Environmental Health Perspectives found that the overall effect of fish eaten by pregnant women appeared to be beneficial. But the study did have some contradictory findings, which is why co-author Oken said more research needed to be done.

"Mothers who ate more fish had babies with higher scores on a cognition test. We also found that higher mercury levels in the mom was associated with lower test scores for the babies. The babies that did best were moms who ate fish with low mercury levels," Oken said.

It's also not clear what approach adults should take.

San Francisco physician Jane Hightower said she had seen a correlation between heavy fish consumption by her patients with elevated blood mercury levels and complaints about a variety of ailments, including headaches, depression and memory loss. Yet multiple studies have touted fish as a low-fat protein, full of compounds that are good for the brain and cardiovascular system.

"At the end of the day, this is not about avoiding fish," Acheson said. "It is about paying attention to the types and amount of fish you eat."

Oil, China blamed for record deficit

Instead of murders and mayhew, sharks and missing SWFs, shouldn't we really be learning about all this?
I've also posted about China here.
(AP via Sun-Sentinel)

By Martin Crutsinger
The Associated Press
Posted February 11 2006

WASHINGTON · American appetites for all things foreign, from oil to cars to clothing, pushed the trade deficit to yet another record in 2005.

And the year's $201.6 billion deficit with China, the largest ever recorded with a single country, brought demands for a crackdown on what the United States sees as unfair trade practices.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that the overall trade gap climbed to an all-time high of $725.8 billion last year. The deficit was up 17.5 percent from 2004, marking the fourth straight record.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 35.70 points to close at 10,919.05 Friday after being down as much as 63 points earlier in the session.

The chief culprit in pushing the deficit up last year was record global oil prices and increased U.S. demand because of a loss of Gulf Coast production after Hurricane Katrina. The U.S. foreign oil bill soared to a record $251.6 billion, up 39.4 percent from 2004.

Imports of other consumer goods including foreign autos hit record levels as well, a development that is causing major woes for U.S. automakers.

Analysts predicted that the 2006 trade gap will be even worse, with Global Insight forecasting it could hit $810 billion, reflecting lagging economic growth overseas that could hold back U.S. exports.

"Trade is far and away the largest weight on the U.S. economy at present," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "This is a risky time."

The record amounts of dollars that are flowing into foreign hands to pay for imports are being invested in U.S. stocks, bonds and other investments. Economists worry that if foreigners suddenly decide they want to hold fewer U.S. assets, they could send the value of the dollar, stocks and bonds all plunging.

The record flow of foreign goods into this country has given consumers a wide array of choices at low prices, helping to keep a lid on inflation. But critics contend the trade deficits have contributed to the loss of nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs since mid-2000 as U.S. companies moved production overseas to lower-waged nations. Many economists believe those manufacturing jobs will never come back.

"America's gargantuan trade deficit is a weight around American workers' necks that is pulling them into a cycle of debt, bankruptcy and low-wage service jobs," said Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO.

In an effort to counter economic anxiety, Bush included in his new budget an American Competitiveness Initiative to double government spending on basic research, extend tax breaks for company spending on research and hire thousands of new math and science teachers for the nation's high schools.

Many in Congress want a tougher approach. Legislation with broad support in the House and Senate would impose across-the-board tariffs of 27.5 percent on Chinese imports unless China stops what critics charge is a manipulation of its currency to gain trade advantages.

Other legislation introduced on Thursday by Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., would make China's current low tariffs subject to annual review by Congress to make sure the country is following global trade rules.

Last year, imports rose by 12.9 percent to an all-time high of $2 trillion, swamping a 10.4 percent increase in exports, which reached a record high of $1.27 trillion. For December, the trade deficit edged up a slight 1.5 percent to $65.7 billion, the third highest monthly figure on record.

The $201.6 billion U.S. trade deficit with China was the highest ever recorded with any country.

Average American family income declines

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
Associated Press
February 23, 2006, 10:42 AM EST

WASHINGTON -- The average income of American families, after adjusting for inflation, declined by 2.3 percent in 2004 compared to 2001 while their net worth rose but at a slower pace.

The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that the drop in inflation-adjusted incomes left the average family income at $70,700 in 2004. The median, or point where half the families earned more and half less, did rise slightly in 2004 after adjusting for inflation to $43,200, up 1.6 percent from the 2001 level.

The median, or midpoint for net worth rose by 1.5 percent to $93,100 from 2001 to 2004. That growth was far below the 10.3 percent gain in median net worth from 1998 to 2001, a period when the stock market reached record highs before starting to decline in early 2000.

The Fed's results were published in the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances, a document which provides a comprehensive view of how Americans are faring on such pocketbook issues as incomes and net worth.

Learning from the East

an excerpt from the book Loving Ganesa - Hinduism's Endearing Elephant-Faced God:

The Third Sakti of Lord Ganesa is that of powerful love extended to all persons one has dealings with in the external world: business associates, a casual merchant, and the public at large.

It is honest and harmonious relationships in conducting the business of trade and dealings in goods, finance and the distribution of the wealth of the world. This is the most important vibration to be felt, and constantly felt.

This sakti of the Lord is tenuous to hold onto, for worldly and materialistic forces, as you well know, militate against this kind of harmony. But once these lower powers are conquered, worries cease, concerns are alleviated and heartfelt joy comes.

Such is the grace of loving Ganesa. As the Tirukural declares, "Those businessmen will prosper whose business protects as their own the interests of others."

credit Justice for quote