Stop Being Overweight News

It takes a minimum wage earner 224, 8 hr. days to earn $10,000. It takes the average Standard and Poor's 500 CEO 1.75 hrs. to earn $10,000. Why is America screwed up?

This data comes from YES Magazine, Fall, 2007, p. 23

Is corporate power ruining your community, your state, your nation, and our world? What can be done about it? There is an excellent article in the YES magazine, Fall, 2007, entitled "Who Will Rule: Citizen movements are proving that we can take on corporate power, and together build a future that works for all life." Here is part of what the article says:

With all this happening, why do we not read more about the pervasiveness of corporate power? In large part because even the “Fourth Estate,” our media establishment, is majority owned by a handful of mega-corporations. Big corporations have become de facto governments, and the ethic that dominates corporations has come to dominate society. Maximizing profits, holding down wages, and externalizing costs onto the environment become the central dynamics for the entire economy and virtually the entire society. What gets lost is the public good, the sense that life is about more than consumption, and the understanding that markets cannot manage all aspects of the social order. What gets lost as well is the original purpose of corporations, which was to serve the public good.

You can read the whole article, which is well worth the time and effort, by clicking on the link below. How come our schools are not teaching this stuff in "civics" class? Isn't it time that our children and grandchildren know the truth?

Link: Strategic Corporate Initiative by Michael Marx and Marjorie Kelly.

According to an article in the New York Times on May 9, 2007, the U.S. agreed to pay $2,000.00 to the relatives of Afghans killed by Maries. The U.S. paid an average of 1.7 million to 9/11 victims and victim's families. Are U.S. lives more valuable than Afghan lives?

“I stand before you today, deeply, deeply ashamed and terribly sorry that Americans have killed and wounded innocent Afghan people,” Colonel Nicholson said, recounting to reporters the words he had used in the meetings. In a videoconference to reporters at the Pentagon, he added, “We made official apologies on the part of the U.S. government” and paid $2,000 for each death.

Link: U.S. Pays and Apologizes to Kin of Afghans Killed by Marines - New York Times.

In the Fall, 2007 issue of YES magazine there is a brief article entitled "Signs of life: People we love". One of the people mentioned is Rev. Todd Eklof.

Rev. Todd saved all his junk mail for one year and then on Earth Day in 2007, he pulled a wagon full of more than 50 lbs. of junk mail four miles from his church to the Louisville, Kentucky post office.

Todd wants a "no junk mail" list similar to the "Do Not Call List".

I think it is a great idea. I get my mail out of my mailbox and sort it over the garbage can. Usually I throw about 4/5 of my mail away. Here is the brief article about Todd in YES magazine.

Rev. Todd Eklof Weighing in on waste On Earth Day 2006, Reverend Todd Eklof had something of an epiphany: it was time to make a statement about the excess of garbage in America. His idea: save all his junk mail for one year as a visual symbol of waste. “If I could have saved all my garbage for a year, I would have,” he says, “but I didn’t have anywhere to put it.” On Earth Day 2007, Rev. Elkof loaded a cart with more than 50 pounds of accumulated junk mail and pulled it four miles from his church to the local Louisville post office, where he staged a press conference drawing attention to the wastefulness of junk mail. The press conference included Kentucky state representative Jim Wayne, who proposed a statewide “no junk mail” bill. Modeled after the national “Do Not Call list,” it would prevent everyone except nonprofits and politicial candidates from sending junk mail to people who don’t want it. Rev. Eklof is optimistic about its chances of success. “Everybody hates junk mail.”

Link: People We Love: Kelydra Weckler, Reverend Todd Eklof, Lauren Jacobs, Corbin Harney.

On November 14, 2007, Diane Rehm had an interesting show on some recent research which has been done on disruptive kindergartners. Diane interviewed Sharon Landesman Ramey, Director, Center for Health and Education, Georgetown University, Dr. Philip Shaw, Psychiatry Fellow, National Institutes of Mental Health, and Greg Duncan, Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Education and Social Policy Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

Here is a brief synopsis of the show:

A new study finds children considered troublemakers in kindergarten will do just as well academically as their peers in later school years. There's also new research on children with A.D.H.D. suggesting a possible brain development delay but no long term deficit. New insights on evaluating and educating young children with behavior problems.

In my practice I see many of these kids and every situation is unique and little bit different, but there are also developmental similarities as well. Overall our kids now days are terribly pressured to behave in ways that they are not biologically, biochemically, socially, and emotionally developed enough to comply with. I often suggest to parents that sometimes the best thing they can do for their children is to give them what I call "the gift of time". This can be oversimplistic, but often is exactly the prescription. Now there is research that bears my judgment out.

This show is well worth listening to and you can access it by clicking on the link below.