Prison Nation - New York Times

Prison Nation - New York TimesMarch 10, 2008

Editorial

After three decades of explosive growth, the nation’s prison population has reached some grim milestones: More than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars. One in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, are serving time, as are 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men. Nationwide, the prison population hovers at almost 1.6 million, which surpasses all other countries for which there are reliable figures. The 50 states last year spent about $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections, up from nearly $11 billion in 1987. Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon devote as much money or more to corrections as they do to higher education.

These statistics, contained in a new report from the Pew Center on the States, point to a terrible waste of money and lives. They underscore the urgent challenge facing the federal government and cash-strapped states to reduce their overreliance on incarceration without sacrificing public safety. The key, as some states are learning, is getting smarter about distinguishing between violent criminals and dangerous repeat offenders, who need a prison cell, and low-risk offenders, who can be handled with effective community supervision, electronic monitoring and mandatory drug treatment programs, combined in some cases with shorter sentences.

Persuading public officials to adopt a more rational, cost-effective approach to prison policy is a daunting prospect, however, not least because building and running jailhouses has become a major industry.

Criminal behavior partly explains the size of the prison population, but incarceration rates have continued to rise while crime rates have fallen. Any effort to reduce the prison population must consider the blunderbuss impact of get-tough sentencing laws adopted across the United States beginning in the 1970’s. Many Americans have come to believe, wrongly, that keeping an outsized chunk of the population locked up is essential for sustaining a historic crime drop since the 1990’s.

In fact, the relationship between imprisonment and crime control is murky. Some portion of the decline is attributable to tough sentencing and release policies. But crime is also affected by things like economic trends and employment and drug-abuse rates. States that lagged behind the national average in rising incarceration rates during the 1990’s actually experienced a steeper decline in crime rates than states above the national average, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group.

A rising number of states are broadening their criminal sanctions with new options for low-risk offenders that are a lot cheaper than incarceration but still protect the public and hold offenders accountable. In New York, the crime rate has continued to drop despite efforts to reduce the number of nonviolent drug offenders in prison.

The Pew report spotlights policy changes in Texas and Kansas that have started to reduce their outsized prison populations and address recidivism by investing in ways to improve the success rates for community supervision, expanding treatment and diversion programs, and increasing use of sanctions other than prison for minor parole and probation violations. Recently, the Supreme Court and the United States Sentencing Commission announced sensible changes in the application of harsh mandatory minimum drug sentences.

These are signs that the country may finally be waking up to the fiscal and moral costs of bulging prisons.

Round-the-world News About Vitamin D

Round-the-world News About Vitamin D

Work & Family Life

03-05-08

Originally Published:20080201.

Research reports keep rolling in on the importance of vitamin D in our diet-beyond its familiar role in helping us to build strong bones. Here are some of the findings:

Periodontal disease, in a dental study of 6,700 people from 13 to 90, the gums of patients with higher blood levels of vitamin D were 20 percent less likely to bleed. “The evidence on gingivitis and tooth loss suggests that vitamin D influences oral health by decreasing inflammation,” said Bess Dawson-Hughes, director of the Bone Metabolism Lab at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.

Cancer. Studies by Reinhold Vieth at the University of Toronto have reported a substantial reduction in the rates of colon cancer as blood levels of vitamin D went up. Dr. Vieth suggests that vitamin D inhibits a mechanism by which cancer cells spread or it may boost the function of blood vessels or the immune system.

Diabetes. A number of studies have found that people with higher blood levels of vitamin D had a lower risk of diabetes than people with lower levels. Researchers have suggested that vitamin D seems to influence responsiveness to insulin.

Fitness. A study at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine found that people with low blood levels of vitamin D scored from 5 to 10 percent lower on tests measuring grip strength, balance and walking speed than those who had higher levels. Apparently vitamin D helps build and repair muscles as well as bones.

Longevity. People who take vitamin D supplements may also live longer, according to Sara Gandini, Ph.D., of the European Institute of Oncology in Italy, and Philippe Autier, M.D., of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France. “The intake of ordinary doses of vitamin D supplements seems to be associated with decreases in total mortality rates,” they reported.

“The results are remarkable,” according to Edward Giovannucci, M.D., ScD., of the Harvard School of Public Health, in an editorial on vitamin D research in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

What to do. Adults should try to get 800 international units (IU) daily of vitamin D-or 1000 IUs a day if you are 70 or older. The average U.S. adult intake of vitamin D is 230 IUs daily, according to a study reported in the journal Nutrition Reviews. Vitamin D is available from sunlight, of course, and from foods such as fatty fish, eggs, fortified milk and fortified cereals as well as supplements.

-Sources: Bottom Line Health, CSPI Nutrition Action Letter, and Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter

(Also, see an earlier article I posted on 21 December, 2007.)

Could Hillary Bequeath Us Our Long-Awaited Third Party?

Could Hillary Bequeath Us Our Long-Awaited Third Party?

By David Michael Green, AlterNet. Posted March 7, 2008.

…

It is almost a mathematical certainty that neither candidate can win the nomination by means of gathering pledged delegates in the months ahead. Under the proportional allocation system Democratic primaries and caucuses tend to use, a candidate has to do exceedingly well in the popular vote to realize a significant shift in delegates. It would appear that Clinton’s got some favorable states ahead, and that Obama has as many or perhaps more, unless momentum has really shifted now, after Tuesday.

…

Anyhow, let’s say we end the primary season about where we are now, with Obama about 100 delegates up, and having won more votes and more states than Clinton, but with neither candidate over the magic nomination-clinching line. It would be fairly outrageous for the Clintons to seize the brass ring at that point, but they will not care in the slightest what the ramifications of their actions might be for the party or the country. The Clintons will do anything - and I mean anything - to get the presidency. This is a sickness that infects the hearts and minds of some people much more than others. Because of their own needs, most prominently a very deep-seated personal insecurity, they simply need the validation of being president, and they go after it like a heat-seeking missile headed toward a power plant.

…

Maybe it goes to the Supreme Court for resolution (you know, those nice people in black robes who gave you the George W. Bush presidency), and they decide in her favor. Most likely she employs a combination of all these gambits, and collectively they could possibly give her enough delegates for a narrow technical (and very Pyrrhic) victory.

If any of these scenarios play out, Obama should leave the Democratic Party and run as a third-party candidate. Simple as that.

It would be the morally proper thing to do, and it just might even be successful, especially in the longer term.

If this seems an improbable quest, remember that Obama’s support is quite passionate - he’s not just your standard-issue marginal political preference for, say, Joe Biden over Chris Dodd. Nor would this be some personal (and absurd) vanity project, like Ross Perot’s. His supporters would be outraged at the stealing of the nomination from its rightful owner, and they’re a motivated bunch. Black voters would feel particularly slighted, and would be likely to follow Obama elsewhere. That alone would be enough to finish off the already badly-damaged Clinton candidacy in the general election. Given this moral high ground, too, I don’t think Obama would be perceived as the Ralph Nader who gave the election to McCain. Perhaps, because of access restrictions, he wouldn’t even be able to get on the ballot in many places, except as a write-in.

In the end, I don’t think it much matters. If he can’t win in 2008, the country will be ripe for the taking after four years of John McSame. And Obama has shown us nothing this last year if not excellence in organizing skills. There’s plenty of time by 2012 to give birth to a real progressive party that has been aching to calve off from the Democrats for three decades now. If the Clintons and the Liebermans of this world want to hang tight with their DLC party of Diet Pepsi Wall Street, let them. If they feel a burning compulsion to become the Whigs of the 21st century, I for one won’t stand in the way.

…

Unfortunately - really, very unfortunately - it’s an almost impossible trick to pull off given the structure of the American political system, and I have joined lots of other smarter people counseling against the effort, suggesting an attempt at hijacking the Democratic Party instead. Not for nothing was the last new major party born in America 150 years ago. It’s not an accident that for about three-fourths of the country’s history it’s been Republicans or Democrats. Period.

…

(Read the whole thing here: http://www.alternet.org/election08/78973/?page=1)

Detox Your Home

PlanetGreen.com has a new room-by-room feature detailing how to replace toxic products with more healthy alternatives, and reduce environmentally hazardous materials and practices.

It’s called Detox Your Home and it includes short videos with Sarah Snow, who has two terrific shows on the Discovery Networks:  Get Fresh and Living Fresh.

(More home health links here:  http://del.icio.us/bobodod/home+health and more home related videos here:  http://del.icio.us/bobodod/home+video)

Mardi Gras: Made in China

Plot synopsis via AllMovie.com:

One of the better known traditions of the annual Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans, LA is the beads — most folks wear lots of cheap plastic beads while they wander the city’s streets in search of fun, and men hoping that women will flash their breasts usually toss ladies their beads in what they hope will be considered a fair exchange. However, while in New Orleans, those beads symbolize a wild party and low-level exhibitionism, on the other side of the world they mean something else. In Fuzhou, China, a man named Roger Wong owns a factory that produces the majority of the beads tossed to strangers during Mardi Gras, and to his employees, the beads mean work days of 14 to 20 hours, for which they are paid less than ten cents an hour. Most of the workers in Wong’s plant are young women, whom he says are less likely to cause trouble or make demands than their male equivalent. The workers live in a dormitory where they can be fined one month’s wages if a member of the opposite sex is found in their room. And most are struggling to support themselves and their families on wages that are low even by the standards of a Chinese sweatshop. Mardi Gras: Made in China is a documentary which explores the dramatic contrast between the conditions under which Mardi Gras beads are made and what happens with them once they arrive in the United States; both American revelers and Chinese workers are given a perspective on how the other half lives, and what can be done to make their circumstances more equitable.

Mardi Gras: Made in China official website

IMDB

RottenTomatoes.com

Michael Pollan “In Defense of Food” (and older stuff, too)

I was lucky enough while commuting to catch an interview with Michael Pollan on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Science Friday (highly recommended) discussing his new book, In Defense of Food. The 35 minute interview can be listened to here or here. This looks like another terrific offering from a wonderful author.

I first learned of Mr. Pollan and his food-based investigative journalism, during another interview with Terri Gross on Fresh Air. He discussed the lengths he went to for a New York Times Sunday Magazine article entitled “Power Steer” on the life of meat cows. He set about to steward a cow through it’s short life-cycle in the meat industry and the results were, well, listen to that fascinating broadcast here (51 minutes).

The United Plant Savers

A blurb promoting the United Plant Savers non-profit organization was on a flap of the verbosely printed box of Golden Ginger tea I recently finished. These folks are doing a wonderful thing. Their mission is to “…preserve, conserve and restore native medicinal plants and their habitats in the U.S. and Canada.” Check out their site for media, articles and links to sources. Very cool.

Dig in del.icio.us for more native plants links: http://del.icio.us/tag/native+plants

(OT: I very highly recommend Traditional Medicinals’ ginger teas, esp. Ginger Aid. Get em at your locally owned health food store or websites such as VitaCost.com which I found through Google’s Product Search.)

Nontoxic Dry Cleaning – The Cool Kids Are Doing It

Years ago, I had a good friend who worked nearly full-time at a cleaners. She would arrive home from work each day with a nasty headache and a very limited ability to concentrate on anything at all for very long.

Around that time, I learned that “dry cleaning” doesn’t mean “dry.” It means “without water.” What is used as a substitute for water and soap (or detergent in this case, which often contains synthetic toxins itself) is a chemical commonly known as PERC. Its full chemical name is percholroethylene, and as its name implies, it’s a highly toxic petroleum distillate.

PERC has been banned in California and the United States is in the process of phasing it out through the rest of the country. It is absorbed both through inhalation and absorption through the skin and can build up in one’s system to contribute to a significantly increased risk of developing cancer.

There are alternatives to PERC (2nd source) and I found when I called cleaners within two miles of my home that there were indeed businesses that had already moved on to safer solutions. Unfortunately, PERC is very soluble in water and has been found in U.S. water supplies and not all water filtration systems are capable of filtering it out.

~ ~ ~

(Are you interested in what real soap is like? Check out this article by my favorite soap maker, Dr. Bronner’s. And here is their dramatic demonstration of an unreliable GHB drug testing kit that turns out to be an effective test of real versus fake soaps.

For more information regarding toxins in general, take a look at these two pages of links I’ve created: http://del.icio.us/bobodod/toxins and http://del.icio.us/bobodod/nontoxic)

Vitamin D: put a little light in your life

Vitamin D is turning up in more and more “Best-Of” lists of nutritive compounds. And the best kind is free from our local star. Getting outside each day is already good for you (unless you live in a high pollution zone). Combine that with some healthy Sun exposure (don’t burn!) and a reasonable walk, and studies show you’re much, much better off.

Al Sears, MD 12794 Forest Hill Blvd., Suite 16 Wellington, FL 33414

December 17, 2007

I recently wrote about a report out of a university in Nebraska showing that vitamin D has the potential to lower the risk of all cancers in women by 77%.1

In the last 15 months, 5 more bombshells exploded showing the power of vitamin D to stop cancer. Here’s the rest of the timeline:

• In February, researchers at UC San Diego released the results of two key studies on breast and colon cancer. They said you can lower your risk of breast cancer by 50%, and colon cancer by more than 65%,simply by boosting your vitamin D levels through sunlight, diet, or supplements.2,3

• In October of last year, scientists published compelling discoveries linking sun exposure and lowered cancer risk in the journal Anticancer Research. They found that plain old sunlight– about 20 minutes a day for fair-skinned folks, and two to four times that much for those with dark skin – can reduce the risk of 16 types of cancer in both men and women.4

• A Harvard-sponsored report published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in September 2006 uncovered a connection between low vitamin D levels and increased cancer risk. It revealed that when men raise their vitamin D intake, they can lower their overall risk of cancer death by 29%, drop rates of “digestive tract” cancers by 43% (throat, stomach, and colon), and reduce death rates from these cancers by 45%.5

The response was tremendous… in Canada. After the Creighton report last summer, the Canadian Cancer Society decided it was time to get the word out. They launched a nationwide campaign recommending that every Canadian citizen start taking 1,000 IEUs of vitamin D every day. (You should, too.) Vitamin D was flying off the shelves all over the country.

On this side of the border, the silence was deafening.

Forget about a national vitamin D awareness campaign in this country, because there isn’t one. Instead, let’s look at a recent report from a relatively small group, the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force. It’s made up of over 100 doctors and nurses. Their goal is to inform black women about the risks of breast cancer and what they can do to prevent it.6

In Chicago, black women die from breast cancer at a rate 68% higher than white women. Yet in its 113-page report, the Task Force doesn’t mention vitamin D once. This is particularly upsetting when you consider that black women are especially vulnerable to vitamin D deficiency.

Think about it: a large, vulnerable segment of the female population in the US is missing out on the biggest, most affordable cancer prevention bonanza to come along in years.

And this is just one small example of mainstream medicine’s handling of cancer prevention, from a “task force” whose stated goal is to help a group especially at risk. So you can see why I think the healthcare industry is doing the American public a major disservice.

To remedy the situation, let’s review what you can do to bolster your vitamin D levels and drive your risk of all kinds of cancer through the floor:

• Eat a “D-rich” diet – fish, eggs, milk (wild-caught, free-range, and organic) all have plenty of vitamin D.
• Take supplements – available on line or in health food stores – at least 1,000 IEUs per day.
• Get 20 minutes of sunlight if you’re fair-skinned, or up to twice that much if you’re dark-skinned.

When it comes to vitamin D and cancer, it’s no exaggeration to say that the American medical establishment’s silence is more than deafening – it’s deadly.

To Your Good Health,

Al Sears, MD

(Update:  More vitamin D news blogged on 11 March, 2008.)

Ellen Page, young Canadian actress extraordinaire

On the 5th of December, I heard this short interview with Ellen Page. Her name was new to my ears, though by the end of the radio spot I vowed to check out everything she’s done. What intrigued me were her discerning comments regarding Hollywood’s climate for young actresses. Her views were refreshing and conveyed strong ethics.

Ellen Page at AllMovie.com