By UIC

A study of beverage sales in Cook County shows that for four months in 2017 – when the county implemented a penny-per-ounce tax on both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks – purchases of the taxed beverages decreased by 21%, even after an adjustment for cross-border shopping.
The findings of the study, which was conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, were published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
“This study comprehensively assessed the impact, both intended and unintended, of Cook County’s 2017 sweetened beverage tax, and it showed that the tax was an effective method for reducing consumption of many beverages known to contribute to chronic health conditions, like Type II diabetes and obesity,” said UIC’s Lisa Powell, lead author of the study. “It also showed that the potential impact of the county’s tax on public health was dampened by cross-border shopping, an important potential unintended consequence of any local-level tax policy.”

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Posted on February 24, 2020

By Tara Moulson/New America

At a recent CNN town hall, Bernie Sanders was asked how his Jewish identity has affected his outlook and upbringing. Sanders, who is normally restrained when it comes to his heritage, recalled the enormous impact of the Holocaust on his childhood.
“I think at a very early age, before my political thoughts were developed, I was aware of the horrible things that human beings can do to other people in the name of racism or white nationalism, or in this case, Nazism,” he said.
Various journalists have written about the possible links between Sanders’ Jewishness and his politics – from questioning the exact nature of his religious beliefs to investigating whether his time on a kibbutz may have informed his commitment to socialism. But for all the speculation over his heritage, pundits may have overlooked a distinctly Jewish – and socialist – element of his heritage: the bagel, which Sanders enjoys with lox.

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Posted on February 21, 2020

By David Rutter

David Rutter revives his late, great “The Week in WTF” column for this special edition.
WTF Redux No. 1: Oh, hello there. We just awoke from our coma, and now we remember why Guv Blago was the “King Scumbucket” before the Royal Highness Orange Sleazeball showed up to torture the country. Bogey and Bergman will always have Paris, but when we forget why grotesque media pandering makes us hurl large chunks, we’ll always have Blago’s coming home circus this week.
Must we belabor the obvious? Yes, we must, and we will. He’s an unrepentant, arrogant crook. He likes people to genuflect. He’s the essential partner in sleazebucketness that Trump would free on an unsuspecting, ignorant world. They were created for each other. If there is a gawd, he or she has an ironical sense of humor.

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Posted on February 20, 2020

By Laurel Leff/The Conversation

During the Nazi era, roughly 300,000 additional Jewish refugees could have gained entry to the U.S. without exceeding the nation’s existing quotas.
The primary mechanism that kept them out: the immigration law’s “likely to become a public charge” clause. Consular officials with the authority to issue visas denied them to everyone they deemed incapable of supporting themselves in the U.S.
It is not possible to say what happened to these refugees. Some immigrated to other countries that remained outside Germany’s grip, such as Great Britain. But many – perhaps most – were forced into hiding, imprisoned in concentration camps and ghettos, and deported to extermination centers.
In August, the Trump administration resurrected the “the public charge” clause as a way to limit legal immigration without changing the immigration laws. The rules would deny admission to those unable to prove under tough new standards that they won’t claim government benefits.
A lower court had blocked that new rule with a preliminary injunction, but the Supreme Court lifted the injunction on January 27. The court’s decision allows the rules to go into effect everywhere, except Illinois.

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Posted on February 18, 2020

By Andre Perry/The Hechinger Report

Every day educators teach students the adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Many are familiar with the biblical verse, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed that one day we’d live in a nation where children (and their parents) “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” All of these sayings are saying the same thing – yet what does it say about us when we judge someone by the most superficial cover of them all: their wardrobe?
While wearing a respectable suit and tie, Donald Trump announced a policy that separated children from their parents coming across the border; he looked businesslike as he referred to Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as “shithole” countries; he was dressed formally as he signed the largest corporate tax cut in U.S. history into law; and he looked like an upstanding citizen when he likened torch-toting neo-Nazis and Confederate sympathizers to antiracist activists in the aftermath of the Charlottesville riots. Trump may have been appropriately dressed on all those occasions, but his actions betrayed the dignity of the White House.
Still, he wasn’t wearing his pajamas, or exposing his body parts, like some parents do when they take their kids to school, and that’s the important thing, you know.

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Posted on February 14, 2020

By The Center for Inquiry

In Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump crowed that, “In America, we celebrate faith. We cherish religion. We lift our voices in prayer, and we raise our sights to the Glory of God!”
This rhetoric goes far beyond the usual exaltations of faith that are commonplace in political oratory. It is nothing less than a Christian-nationalist declaration of war against our secular constitutional democracy.

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Posted on February 5, 2020

By Gary Sacks, Christina Zorbas and Kathryn Backholer/The Conversation

This year’s Australian of the Year, Dr James Muecke, is an eye specialist with a clear vision. He wants to change the way the world looks at sugar and the debilitating consequences of diabetes, which include blindness.
Muecke is pushing for Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government to enact a tax on sugary drinks to help make that a reality.
Such a tax would increase the price of soft drinks, juices and other sugary drinks by around 20%. The money raised could be used to fund health promotion programs around the country.
The evidence backing his calls is strong.

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Posted on January 30, 2020

By Julia Conley/Common Dreams

Out of the top 10 most under-reported humanitarian crises in the world last year – many of them climate-related – nine were on the African continent, according to a new report.
Madagascar had the least-reported crisis in the study – entitled “Suffering in Silence” – released Tuesday by CARE International, as 2.6 million people in the country are affected by chronic drought which has left more than 900,000 in immediate need of food assistance.

Does a crisis really happen if it is not in the headlines? 📰

YES. In 2019, over 50 million people suffered in silence 🌍

CARE’s new global report on the 10 most underreported #humanitarian crises of 2019 >> https://t.co/Ob8so9i96Y#SufferingInSilence #ForgottenCrisis pic.twitter.com/P1rtANH2RC

— CARE International (@CAREGlobal) January 28, 2020

Out of 24 million online media articles examined by CARE International, just 612 reports were about the humanitarian emergency in Madagascar – and the country was just the most extreme example of the international community’s neglect of the world’s second-most populous continent.

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Posted on January 29, 2020

By The Consumer Federation of America

On Friday the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a policy statement attempting to narrow the federal law that prohibits abusive financial acts and practices by banks, debt collectors, payday lenders, and other consumer finance companies.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis Congress enacted a statute that prohibits abusive acts or practices in consumer finance. Current federal law prohibits taking unreasonable advantage of consumers who do not have the ability to protect themselves or lack an understanding of the risks in complicated financial contracts.
“Today’s policy statement attempts to rewrite federal law without authorization from Congress or a court order,” said Christopher Peterson, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America. “The new policy statement fabricates a ‘good faith’ exception that lets businesses engaging in abusive practices off the hook for financial penalties when they claim violations of the law were unintentional.”
The policy also imposes a new cost-benefit framework on law enforcement that will slow investigations and create an artificial barrier to protecting the public.

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Posted on January 24, 2020

By Helen Norton/The Conversation

When regular people lie, sometimes their lies are detected, sometimes they’re not. Legally speaking, sometimes they’re protected by the First Amendment – and sometimes not, like when they commit fraud or perjury.
But what about when government officials lie?

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Posted on January 14, 2020