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POPSHow to Eat for $15 a Week Go read the whole article and the comments. You might not want to do all the things suggested, but most of them are sensible ways of saving money and eating better.
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POPSThe 10 Worst Corporations of 2008 I would pick Monsanto. No contest. On March 11 a new documentary was aired on French television - a documentary that Americans won’t ever see. The gigantic bio-tech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844 The list: AIG: Money for Nothing Cargill: Food Profiteers Chevron: "We can't let little countries screw around with big companies" Constellation Energy: Nuclear Operators CNPC: Fueling Violence in Darfur Dole: The Sour Taste of Pineapple GE: Creative Accounting Imperial Sugar: 13 Dead Philip Morris International: Unshackled Roche: "Saving Lives is Not Our Business"
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POPSEliminate poverty consciousness
I remember in one of my first economics lessons, the Teacher said: "People have needs, and wants. It is the job of Advertising to convince people their wants are needs." That was in my first year of high school, and it stuck. One of the biggest problems can be the number of things we are certain we need when we only want them. In todays world we are told we need so many useless things- more than we can ever afford. So we go into debt. A loan is a millstone. When I take stock of what I need I'm not short. Not wanting something until you can afford it can take practice and patience, but then you own it. The bank doesn't own you. There is a lot more space in the cupboard. Saving for something gives time to consider the value of the purchase. These days if you save up for computer equipment, in the time it takes to save, the price is likely to have come down a few hundred dollars. We don't need everything 5 minutes ago. Forget the words 'Everyone else can afford it.' It isn'
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POPSThe CFL's downside Wow, think I will be a lot more careful with my CFL bulbs in the future. Just wonder what to do when the time comes to replace them. I definitely won't be putting them in a location where they are likely to be broken. This really makes the movement to outlaw incandescent bulbs in some countries look even more insane.
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POPSWhy we SHOULD give illegal immigrants health care coverage What's more important? Posturing over "no coverage for illegals!!!" or actually saving money and improving health care for all? More: What's more, employers currently have a clear economic incentive to hire undocumented immigrants: they don't require coverage. A plan that mandates insurance for native workers but not their illegal counterparts actually makes life harder on the blue-collar Americans competing for jobs (and railing against immigrants) because it means that hiring them will cost more than hiring a recent transplant from Mexico City…. But despite the potential economic upside, the right shouldn't stress: America won't insure its illegal immigrants any time soon. "The hard thing here is that the current state of perception on immigration is eroding our sense of social solidarity… People simply don't want money going to people on the other side of the tracks."
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POPSExplanations for the Palin spending spree "I saw the RNC statement on Gov. Palin’s $150,000 clothing bender on the RNC's tab. This caper is gonna make for a long day at the office for the good folks at the RNC/McCain press operation. Thought I’d offer a little help in a humorous vein; some other possible spin lines for the RNC."
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POPSEnd Of The Wicked The documentary "Saving Africa's Witch Children" was only available online on BBC4 for Britain and Ireland. Here it is, so all can see. (6 parts) The last video clipped is called "The End of the Wicked", mentioned in the videos. It's put out by the "prophetess" Helen Ukpabio, who makes these films designed to brainwash people into believing that child witches exist. We CAN help end the wicked. Send an email to the "Christian" pastor and tell her how you feel. Parents in places such as Nigeria actually believe their children could be witches as a direct result of such videos and do the cruelest things such as burn, kill, bury, maim. Helen Ukpabio is a fraud and needs to be brought to justice. She makes money of the back of child suffering. Please email Helen Ukpabio and tell her what she is doing is wrong and children deserve to be loved and protected against people like her helenukpai@yahoo.com
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POPSInside Puppy Mills I think people who are willing to pay big bucks for a certain breed of puppy...are enabling this kind of mass production... Somebody needs to call Paris Hilton...put your money to good works for a change. Maybe she and Nicole need to get a job in a Puppy Mill..and get a little taste of reality for the life of the animals they love...
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POPSCorporate Medicine Is Bad Medicine
71% of physicians believe managed care compromises patient care. 80% of Americans believe profit considerations compromise quality of care. The Health Care Finance Administration calculates that the United States would save enough money administering our health care system through a single payer to provide health care for the 44 million uninsured, while avoiding managed care and allowing free choice of providers. The result of this government-business agreement is that corporations make large profits, recipients get poorer care, for-profits appear to be able to offer services for less than the private sector, and politicians can claim they are saving money by "privatizing" (read "corporatizing"). This serves politicians and corporations, but people pay the price. The root ethical problem with corporate medicine is its abandonment of the ethos of traditional medicine, in which the needs of the patient are placed above the needs of the caregiver, in favor of an ethos of profit.
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POPSNew Stresses On Libraries "Ms. Jones instructed her staff to tread carefully. “You don’t want to upset people,” she said. “You don’t know what might set somebody off.”
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POPSHow the Grinch Stole Health Care There's a scene from the animated version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" that fits George W. Bush to a tee. The lines from the poem read: And the one speck of food that he left in the house was a crumb that was even too small for a mouse. Then he did the same thing to the other Whos' houses, leaving crumbs much too small for the other Whos' mouses! But in the 1966 televised adaptation of Dr. Seuss' classic, the Grinch actually goes back for that final crumb, leaving the family with... nothing. This scene is remindful of yet another last-minute move by our president to inflict hardship on those less fortunate than he is. (And what an appropriate time of year for Bush to demonstrate his aptitude for misgovernance.)
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POPSVirgin or Slut: Pick One The message to young men is more subtle. In this fairy tale written, produced and directed by abstinence-only advocates, teenage guys are both potential villains -- the oversexed, hormone-crazed young men who must be refused continuously by good girls -- or potential knights in shining armor -- saving enough money from their summer jobs to buy sparkling rings that will save their sweeties from the hell of slutdom. In between pornified culture and purity balls, in between the slut and the virgin, the stupid, lascivious dude and the knight in shining armor, in between the messages directed at young women -- your body is your power vs. your body is dangerous -- and young men -- your gaze is your power vs. your gaze is dangerous -- are real young people trying to develop authentic identities and sexual practices. And they are struggling mightily. (L.c.)
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POPSWhy we must ration healthcare More: we should remind ourselves that the U.S. system also results in people going without life-saving treatment — it just does so less visibly. Pharmaceutical manufacturers often charge much more for drugs in the United States than they charge for the same drugs in Britain, where they know that a higher price would put the drug outside the cost-effectiveness limits set by NICE. American patients, even if they are covered by Medicare or Medicaid, often cannot afford the copayments for drugs. That’s rationing too, by ability to pay. Dr. Art Kellermann, associate dean…at Emory School of Medicine…wrote of a woman who came into his emergency room in critical condition because a blood vessel had burst in her brain. She was uninsured and had chosen to buy food for her children instead of spending money on her blood-pressure medicine. In the emergency room, she received excellent high-tech medical care, but by the time she got there, it was too late to save her.
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POPSHow to be an "Energy Star" "I asked the Energy Star people for some recommendations for smart, energy-conscious computing. Let's face it, electricity is getting more expensive, and some common methods used to produce it are contributing to the greenhouse gases that are accelerating global warming. No matter how you slice it, cutting down energy consumption—however small the individual contribution—is worth doing personally, financially, and globally."
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POPSSeeing Through The Lies: The Worst Bill Ever It "pays for" about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that. • Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare"now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to "pay for" universal coverage. While Medicare's price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.
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POPS The California wild fire scam -- Suppressed techology Why did we refuse it then? Did politics and historical animosity get in the way of saving our land, our animals, and our homes? Why was it not called in for this fire? These are questions that the citizens should be asking their Government representatives.
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POPSFaith Based Economics Just forget all of those people who make a living at looking at balance sheets, cost projections, and legislative analysis — trust us! For a party that screeched about returning science to its “rightful place” in policymaking, they seem highly enamored of tarot cards and entrail-reading when it comes to their own fiscal policies. The Obama administration and the Democrats have yet to learn that one cannot spend their way back into solvency. We already have government programs for medical care that don’t work. If Congress wants to overhaul Medicare/Medicaid to make it financially viable, the VA to make it responsive, and Indian Health Service to make it do anything for its consumers, that would be enough for any Congress to do.
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