Bits n’ pieces from east, west and beyond

East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact. A recent sampling:

A review of foreign studies, released by Health and Human Services’ National Toxicology Program, says intake of fluoride, at twice the recommended dose, is linked to lower IQ in kids. Fluoride is found naturally in water and soil, ABC says.

Water fluoridation began when it was discovered that people drinking from water with more fluoride had fewer cavities. But the EPA has encouraged fluoride limitations to prevent skeletal fluorosis which can cause weaker bones, stiffness, pain and crippling.

A major slip-up was behind the assassination attempt on Donald Trump July 13: CNN reported local police had set aside radios for communications with the Secret Service, but the SS did not pick them up. Just before shots were fired, local police radioed a futile alert about the shooter to the SS.

Gaza reports an unvaccinated baby has been partially paralyzed from poliovirus, United Nations officials reported. The highly infectious virus mostly impacts children, and can cause disfigurement and paralysis, or be fatal. BBC said humanitarians blame polio’s re-emergence on aggression from Israel, which has damaged water and sanitation systems, and interrupted polio vaccination programs.

The UN says evacuations ordered by Israel in Gaza have displaced 90% of the region’s residents. People run from one destroyed place to another, rendering them unable to access medical care, water and other humanitarian supplies, Newsweek reported.

The average American household has paid $12,000 in higher prices due to corporate greed-flation -- AKA price-gouging -- that began during the Covid pandemic, The New Republic relayed. 

Some neoliberal pundits call price-gouging a myth, and say presidential candidate Kamala Harris is a “communist” for wanting to battle greed-flation. Other Harris proposals include: tax incentives for affordable starter homes and rentals and capping annual drug expenses at $2,000.

The Guardian: At the recent Democratic National Convention Trump’s former press secretary, speaker Stephanie Grisham said she’d been one of Trump’s closest and most devoted advisors. But, “Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers. I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people and she has my vote.”

Retired federal appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, appointed by George H. W. Bush, has joined the list of Republicans endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris for president, Newsweek wrote. He explained that Trump instigated a war on democracy on Jan. 6, 2021 and all voters need to “affirm their belief in American Democracy, the Constitution and the Rule of Law” via voting for Harris.

Robert Kennedy Jr. says he’s abandoned his campaign for president and endorses Trump. He and former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard have been named to Trump’s transition team.

Observations of the recent Democratic Convention, from historian Heather C. Richardson: “Democrats have returned to the economic ideology of the New Deal coalition of the 1930’s…Biden set out to prove that democracy can work for ordinary people by ditching the neo-liberalism that had been in place for 40 years” that facilitated unfettered markets and promises of widespread prosperity. 

But instead, that neo-liberalism “transferred more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.” She said Franklin D. Roosevelt’s shift from economic relationships to emphasizing community “changed the entire fabric of the country,” and opponents have worked since to destroy that.

Tariffs imposed while Trump was in office did not raise prices for Americans and brought jobs back to the U.S., Republican VP nominee JD Vance said recently on NBC. While the tariffs were a “political success,” they were an economic failure, according to an MIT economics analysis. Labor Dept. data showed Trump’s tariffs did not protect employment and off-shoring of U.S. jobs continued.

If elected Trump has pledged to impose 10% across-the-board levies on all imported products. The Center for American Progress predicts $1,500 in extra costs annually for a typical household.

The U.S. economy is the only G-20 economy whose GDP level now exceeds the pre-Pandemic level, according to the UN’s International Monetary Fund.

Blast from the (recent) past: At the Democrats’ national convention Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders recalled history, when the Biden-Harris Administration quickly rebuilt a Covid-shattered economy. Sanders said they accomplished more than any other administration since President Franklin D. Roosevelt by addressing business shutdowns, home evictions, high unemployment, closed schools, loss of health insurance and 3,000 daily Americans deaths in overwhelmed hospitals. 

To turn things around Sanders said the Biden-Harris team, within two months, passed the American Rescue Plan, rent relief, mortgage assistance, emergency help for small businesses, Medicaid expansion, emergency food programs, pension protections and expansion of the Child Tax Credit, (that cut childhood poverty by 40%). 

While some may call that radical, Sanders said the opposition’s plans are radical: tax breaks for the wealthy; cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; and “letting polluters destroy our planet.”