Starbucks introduces the “Trenta”

Just in case you thought your Venti wasn’t big enough, staring May 3rd (only in the US, mind you), you will now be able to gorge yourself on a 31 ounce (nearly 1 liter) Trenta iced coffee.

This will be slightly less than the McDonald’s 32 ounce iced drinks. Exactly when Starbucks will also start serving burgers and fries wasn’t announced.

US illegal immigrants and private prison companies

A pretty amazing story from NPR about how the private prison industry was one of the drivers behind Arizona’s tough new anti-immigrant laws:

According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in "a significant portion of our revenues" from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants.

So you have private for-profit companies running prisons. Then they use the money they got from the government to lobby to get more people locked up. Nice.

Cure for American Homesickness

Watch these movies in a row:

• Super Size Me
  While examining the influence of the fast food industry, Morgan Spurlock personally explores the consequences on his health of a diet of solely McDonald's food for one month.
• Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
  When Hurricane Katrina ravaged America's Gulf Coast, it laid bare an uncomfortable reality-America is not only far from the world's wealthiest nation; it is crumbling beneath a staggering burden of individual and government debt. Maxed Out takes us on a journey deep inside the American debt-style, where everything seems okay as long as the minimum monthly payment arrives on time
• The Corporation
  Documentary that looks at the concept of the corporation throughout recent history up to its present-day dominance.
  

Overcrowded Prisons in Spain

Interesting article in Qorreo about Spain’s overpopulated prisons. I was surprised that Spain actually has one of the lowest crime rates in Europe, but has one of the highest per-capital prison populations (166 per 100,000).

About half of the people in prison in Spain are on some kind of drug related charge.

Spain’s crazily inefficient judicial system doesn’t help, with many people waiting in prison for years until their trial (many are foreigners, who rarely get granted bail unless you are a big shot Mafioso).

Of course, this is still nothing compared to the US with a rate of 754 per 100,000.

Security, Texas-style

Texas recently installed metal detectors at the Capitol, subjecting all visitors to inspections of purses, bags, briefcases, etc.

Well, not all, there are some people who are allowed to pass with no inspection:

• Lawmakers
• State employees
• Texans who are carrying a concealed handgun (as long as they have their concealed handgun permit with them)

How hard is it to get a concealed handgun permit?

You need:

1. Proof of having lived in Texas for six month
2. Proof of citizenship, age and identity
3. No violent crimes or felonies in the last ten years
4. Attend a class on gun safety
5. Fill out application, pay $140 fee and wait 60 days

Student loan slaves in the US

Once you get a student loan in the US, you are pretty much stuck paying it off, no matter how bad of a situation you get into, even in bankruptcy.

Of course, there is the undue hardship exception, which allows for the discharge of student loan debt in bankruptcy…

Q. I heard that if you have an unusual hardship you can student loans discharged in bankruptcy, isn’t that true.

A.Yes, there does exist a special exception for “undue hardship” cases.

Imagine if a person with the student loan debt had incurred all of the student loan debt to study ballet at the local university and furthermore had been employed as a professional ballet dancer for several years.

Now imagine if that person got into a car accident and needed both legs amputated.

Q.So a ballet dancer who used the money to study ballet and could no longer pursue both the career for which they had studied been employed in because of a terrible hardship could get the special exception on their student loans?

A.Maybe, they could still teach ballet, which would be working in their field. Now if that person also had their arms cut off so they could not write about ballet and lost their voice box so they could not talk about ballet, that might be a case where the bankruptcy court would allow forgiving the student loan under the undue hardship exception. Note I said cut off and not broken, horrible injuries no matter how bad might not qualify if at some point in the future they might heal and allow the person work once more.

[slightly edited]

The Iceland volcano and American health care

According to our friend Rush Limbaugh, the recent eruption in Iceland is due to God's anger about the passing of health care reform in the US.

Apparently this is not God's first geography mistake, after mistakenly ordering the invasion of Iraq in response to a bunch of Egyptians and Saudis flying planes into buildings.

If anything, maybe the Norse gods are retaliating against the UK for their attempt to impose ruinous debts on Iceland.

I cannot escape the high fructose corn syrup

I hadn't realized how pervasive it had become in the US. It's in the juice, yogurt, ketchup, you name it.

Reading the paper today, it also looks like corn syrup causes high obesity in rats (compared to regular sugar).

Thank God that the EU has a pretty small quota on its use. I heard the quota was more about supporting sugar cane from old colonies than health benefits, but hey, at least they are right for the wrong reason.

I'm starting to feel like a foreigner in the US again:

I had breakfast in a fancy restaurant for breakfast today (surrounded by about 40 catholic priests... some kind of tradition here apparently. I was amazed at how young the priests were compared to the geriatric ones I'm used to seeing in Spain) and they gave me some kind of weird sweet gluey liquid (no doubt consisting mostly of high fructose corn syrup) for my waffles. Strangely enough they told me they had real maple syrup. So I asked them for some real maple syrup, but they brought another container of the same stuff. Finally I told the waiter that I had lived in Canada and knew that this most definitely was not maple syrup.

He said "Oh, okay, I can bring you some real maple syrup. But most customers complain that it isn't sweet enough."

Now I remember why I left

Turning on the TV in my hotel room, I was graced with the reappearance of the wonderful Sarah Palin. Although I've found that right wing politicans are probably just as corrupt in Spain as they are in the US, at least they are not as painfully stupid. (I supposed to me everyone in Spain sounds so terribly smart with their excellent command of Spanish grammar... grrr... )

I remember doing this in highschool during little speech I had to do, but I didn't really expect it of a presidential candidate....

Written on her hand:

• "Energy"
  
• "Budget [crossed out] (Cuts)"
  
• "Tax"
  
• "Lift American spirits"
  

"Guard labor" and social inequality in the US

This is turning into a series of posts about the US.

A very interesting report about Samuel Bowles and his theories around the causes and consequences of the incredibly high levels of social inequality in the US.

Especially interesting I found the idea of "guard labor":

Inequality leads to an excess of what Bowles calls “guard labor.” In a 2007 paper on the subject, he and co-author Arjun Jayadev, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, make an astonishing claim: Roughly 1 in 4 Americans is employed to keep fellow citizens in line and protect private wealth from would-be Robin Hoods.

The job descriptions of guard labor range from “imposing work discipline”—think of the corporate IT spies who keep desk jockeys from slacking off online—to enforcing laws, like the officers in the Santa Fe Police Department paddy wagon parked outside of Walmart.

The greater the inequalities in a society, the more guard labor it requires, Bowles finds. This holds true among US states, with relatively unequal states like New Mexico employing a greater share of guard labor than relatively egalitarian states like Wisconsin.

In case you are wondering, the "Gini index", which measures social inequality (where 0 is totally equal and 100 is where one person has everything) for the US is are 46 (comparable to most 3rd world countries), whereas in Spain it is about 31 (average for EU). Sweden has the lowest in the world at 26.