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How Many in Foreclosure Made All Their Payments (and Are Still in Foreclosure)

I've written before about how the housing fiasco required fraud and perjury. Well, there's no end in sight for the damage done by Big Shitpile. The latest chapter involves foreclosing on homeowners who not only are able to make their payments, but have actually done so. How does this Kafkaesque nightmare happen? Yves Smith explains: It's called servicing errors and fraud. And whether by mistake or design, when a borrower gets caught in the servicer hall of mirrors of compounding fees and charges, there is no way to appeal and pretty much no way out. Let's look at how this begins. A…

Obama Might Be Able to Convince Liberals to Say Nice Things About Him If He Didn't Distort What They Say

By way of John Aravosis, we read this statement by President Obama made during a 60 Minutes interview: Obama also expressed impatience with his liberal supporters for not understanding the deep divisions in the country - and that overcoming them was not simply a matter of a better message. "I will say that when it comes to some of-- my supporters-- part of it, I think, is-- the belief that if I just communicated things better, that I'd be able to persuade-- that half of the country that voted for John McCain that we were right and they were wrong. "One of the things that I think is important…

Our Pro-Bank Policies Are Losing the Elite

They're almost there. The NY Times' Joe Nocera on Foreclosuregate: The lawsuit uncovered a raft of similar examples -- case after case where the loan officers not only knew that fraud was being committed, but were actively engaged in committing it. "By about 2006," says the lawsuit, "Countrywide's internal risk assessors knew that in a substantial number of its stated-income loans -- fully a third -- borrowers overstated income by more than 50 percent." And that is just one small subset of what went on at Countrywide. The truth is, any rock you turn over in the Countrywide subprime portfolio…

Movement Conservatives and the Difference Between Opposing Policies and Principles

Terrance at the Republic of T describes what should be obvious about conservative opposition to Social Security, but is not thanks to gormless Democrats and an incompetent political journalist caste (italics original; boldface mine): Maybe that's why they fought so hard to protect bonuses and compensation for Wall Street banksters. They will likely fight as hard to reduce your paycheck and mine as they did to protect Wall Steet's excesses. It's not hard to figure out why. It's not just that conservatives are opposed to minimum wage. It's like with Social Security. It's not that conservatives…

Yes, The Rumors are True: Today is my Birdday

Since I live in Germany, all the stores, shops and pubs are closed today (Sunday), meaning I cannot go out to relieve my birthday depression by spending the day in a state of giggly inebriation with my NYC drinking pals. But, thanks to my beloved spouse (whom I love more with each passing day), I am sitting in a (new) bed in a cool room under a (new) eiderdown duvet with a steaming latte perched next to me, my laptop warming my lap, and a pile of gifts to unwrap. My birdday celebration actually started a few days ago, when my spouse came home from work, carrying a stunningly beautiful…

Brown Bird Blue: Unique, Never-Before-Seen Color Mutation Amazes Experts

tags: Blue House Sparrow, Passer domesticus, birds, blue feather color, plumage color, refraction Blue House Sparrow, Passer domesticus, photographed in Sydney, Australia. I contemplated giving this bird to you as the daily Mystery Bird, but decided that you'd all probably riot, so instead, I am going to identify this bird so we can discuss it. It's a House Sparrow, Passer domesticus. (I have received dozens of emails telling me I'm a dumbshit: this is clearly a Eurasian Tree Sparrow, Passer montanus, thus, my wavering ID). House Sparrows were introduced in various places around the world…

Free Books For My Readers

Everyone loves free books, right? Well, I know I do, and since I've got a huge stack of books in my apartment that are seeking a loving home, I want to share them with you. These books are duplicates of review copies, advance reading copies and uncorrected proofs as well as some books that I purchased or somehow obtained. All books are in excellent (like new) shape, unless otherwise noted. I am offering them to you several times per week for the next few months, free of charge, although I will ask you to pay the cost of the shipping envelope and postage for mailing each book to you. Below the…

Free Books For My Readers

Calvin Borel: The Next Triple Crown Winner in American Horse Racing?

tags: Belmont Stakes, horse racing, race horses, Rachel Alexandra, Mine That Bird, sports Calvin Borel, 2009. Jockey for Mine That Bird (2009 Kentucky Derby winner) and Rachel Alexandra (2009 Preakness Stakes winner). Image: Joe Schneid, Louisville, Kentucky (Wikipedia Commons). Will the next Triple Crown Winner in American Horse Racing have only two legs? Just one week from today In just a few hours, Calvin Borel could make history by becoming the first jockey to ever win the Triple Crown in American horse racing -- riding different horses. He won the Kentucky Derby while riding the 50…

Fight to Protect our Public Libraries from the Zombie Economy!

tags: NYC Life, NYPL, public services, public education, public libraries Let's face it, if you are broke and unemployed in NYC today, you would have nothing constructive to do if Mayor Mike Bloomsberg's proposed budget cuts to the Public library system is enacted. (Although, I suppose you could commit a few crimes, since the police force has also been cut back). Mayor Bloomberg, the eighth richest person in America, is proposing a 22% funding cut to all three New York City public library systems (NYPL, Brooklyn and Queens). These cuts would eliminate 943 employees, end all weekend…

Association of Zoos & Aquariums Speaks out Against HR 669

tags: HR669, pets, exotic animals, invasive species, pet animal trade, pet parrots, Association of Zoos & Aquariums, AZA, politics Those of you who are following the situation with HR669, the Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act [full text : free PDF] know this resolution survived its initial House subcommittee hearing and will be heard again on an as-yet unannounced date. Even though I support the stated purpose of this resolution -- preventing invasive nonnative wildlife from being introduced into the United States -- this bill, as written, will not accomplish that goal. I have…

Awaiting the verdict in the Tripoli 6 case: signs not hopeful

The verdict in the Tripoli 6 case is scheduled to be handed down on December 19. There has been worldwide recognition the science now shows the six defendants arrived in the country after the viral strains were circulating in the hospital and its environs, making the 400+ cases of HIV infection in children in the Benghazi Hospital in Libya most likely the result of poor hospital hygiene. Not that you'd know it from the Libyan news media: Bulgarian nurses are guilty, evidence show 2006-12-14 It's a big crime. More than Libyan 400 children were deliberately infected with HIV at Benghazi…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: the moronic sputterings of Rev. Paget

The Soldiers of God are on the warpath. The initial forays of the godless insurgents Dawkins, Dennett and Harris have provoked the predictable counterattack. The homosexual agenda and Islamic extremism are being displaced by insidious atheist subversion: The Rev Campbell Paget, vicar of All Saints' Church, Brenchley, for the past eight years, believes that influential atheists in the media, commerce and politics are eroding the population's freedom by clamping down on displays of religious devotion and promoting their own politically correct agenda. Former infantry officer Mr Paget, 52, said…

Scaffold spam

Like most computer users I hate spam. But I've gradually gotten used to it. You can get used to anything, I was once told, even a stone in your shoe. Apparently I've gotten used to more than I thought. In a terrific piece in New York Press, Lindsay Beyerstein (aka Majikthise) calls our attention to scaffold spam in New York, the illegal use for advertising of the fabric sheathes on the construction scaffolding over building facades. Vinyl construction wraps loom over sidewalks all over the city--from the towering blue Infiniti ad wrapped around a vacant lot in Soho to the new Equinox Fitness…

The conquest of hunger is in sight

Reader Dylan has brought me the good news that the Bush Administration, with its many failings, has a plan to wipe out hunger in America. Really. And I think they will carry it out. Really. The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security." Every year, the Agriculture Department issues a report that measures Americans' access to food, and it has consistently used the word "hunger" to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table. But not this year. Mark Nord, the lead author of the report, said "hungry" is…

The other election: Director General of WHO

The Lancet is my favorite medical journal. Maybe it's because I've had the privilege of publishing there on occasion, but mainly because they have consistently taken a public health perspective despite the fact they are a medical journal. Often that perspective has been controversial and just as often courageous. Like another of my favorite journals, Nature, The Lancet is published in the UK, which might explain its interest in global issues, compared to US medical publications like The New England Journal of Medicine or The Journal of the American Medical Association. In any event, The…

A public health emergency

Suppose a natural catastrophe like a hurricane or a pandemic were to destroy the water supply and power to 1.4 million people living in a densely populated urban environment at the height of summer heat. Suppose the sewer system were severely damaged. That fuel was fast running out so even emergency generators couldn't operate. That 300,000 of the 1.4 million lived in high rise buildings so no water could reach their households. And assume they couldn't leave the area. They were trapped there. Unfortunately it's not a hypothetical. It's happening at this moment and it's not a natural…

Public Health as Service Industry

Below, Josh Ruxin answers our final question. Hands down, the application of private sector management solutions to health care, particularly in developing countries, is vital, and, almost utterly unfinanced. The focus of public health systems continues to be on training and retraining personnel, and identifying gaps in specific administrative systems.Â There's a raft of research on drug procurement systems, billing systems, and electronic patient medical records. The industry has come to resemble the three blind men each touching a different part of the elephant and trying to describe…

Casey Luskin writes a revealing letter

A while back, two ladies visited the Discovery Institute, and wrote about their experiences afterwards. They admittedly did so under false pretenses, acting as if they were fellow travelers in creationism, but they did get interesting and amusing responses from the inhabitants. They tried to do it again. They wrote a letter and were entirely upfront about their motives this time, and asked to have a real conversation about Intelligent Design creationism. Casey Luskin wrote back. It would have been entirely understandable if he'd simply turned them down, but no … instead, he writes a long…

Mice in Three-Way Relationships

What effect does a constant stream of engaging stimuli have on our relationships? On our social structure as a whole? What percentage of our actions is influenced by others, and how does this translate, at some point, into group behavior? Neurobiologists Prof. Alon Chen and Dr. Elad Schneidman of the Weizmann Institute and their team members have been using mice to investigate these questions. Chen and Schneidman approach the group as a network composed of the joint behavior patterns of mice that had had their fur dyed in bright, glow-in-the-dark colors. Among other things, this enables the…

Getting into the Fray

“The public, blog-fueled controversy over the utilization of arsenate instead of phosphate in bacteria was, in the end, a demonstration of what is truly right with scientific quests,” says Prof. Dan Tawfik. “The original findings (that certain bacteria can use arsenate instead of phosphate) may have been overhyped. The research itself may have been underwhelming. But what ensued is exactly what should have happened: The correcting mechanisms that are intrinsic to science kicked in. Other experimental groups examined the claims in their labs and found them to be unsupported. And new scientific…

The Canadian War on Science: Ottawa’s dangerous unscientific revolution

C. Scott Findlay, associate professor of biology at the University of Ottawa and a visiting research scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, had a sobering article in the Toronto Star a few days ago. It's titled Governing in the dark: Ottawa’s dangerous unscientific revolution and it fits right in with my recent seemingly endless catalogue of how the current Canadian Conservative government is systematically undermining the free inquiry in Canada, scientific and otherwise. In the article Findlay first lays out some of the recent abuses and then gives four reasons why Canadians…

On fake civility

Libraryland is sometimes plagued with a civility problem. We disagree but we want to be nice about it. But sometimes, being nice isn't a great way to express disagreement. Life and the world is messy and unkind and difficult. And sometimes our commitment to our ideas and passionate disagreements need to reflect that. But the temptation for those in power -- those at whom the anger is often directed -- need to keep a lid on the very human anger and resentments that often boil over in what might seem like minor disagreements. It's hard to control those kinds of deep feelings and the best…

An Interview with Craig Hildreth of The Cheerful Oncologist

This time around, we're talking to Craig Hildreth of The Cheerful Oncologist. What's your name? Craig Hildreth What do you do when you're not blogging? I enjoy assassinating cancer cells that have taken nice people hostage. I also read, lift weights, hang out with the family, walk the dog, peruse restaurant menus with a skeptical eye, eat dark chocolate, listen to old songs, drive my boat on the river, shoot skeet, listen for whip-poor-wills, and try to make myself part of the solution, not the problem. (Note the Oxford comma there). What is your blog called? The Cheerful Oncologist What's…

Science and culture, 17th century style

In my former life, long before I had even heard of Seed, I studied 17th century English literature and dipped occasionally into history of science. One of my favorite figures in 17th century science was mad, bad Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, who lived from 1623-1673. Cavendish wrote poems, plays, and novels, as well as scientific tracts. The best and most bizarre thing she wrote was a utopian novel called "The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World," meant to be an addendum to her more serious work, "Observations on Experimental Philosphy," a critique of Robert…

Best Science Books 2016: The Guardian

As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,2014 and 2015. And here we are in 2016! As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, public health, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion. Today's list is The Guardian Robin McKie’s…

Best Science Books 2016: Goodreads Choice Awards

Reading Diary: Data Management for Researchers: Organize, maintain and share your data for research success by Kristin Briney

Kristin Briney's Data Management for Researchers: Organize, maintain and share your data for research success is a book that should be on the shelf (physical or virtual) of every librarian, researcher and research administrator. Scientists, engineers, social scientists, humanists -- anyone who's work involves generating and keeping track of digital data. This is the book for you. Like the title says -- data management for researchers. If you have data and you're a researcher, this is the book for you. Organize, maintain and share, the title says. If you're a researcher that needs to manage…

Reading Diary: Zombies & Calculus by Colin Adams

Colin Adams's Zombies & Calculus is one of the coolest, funniest, most creative science books I've read in a very long time. What's interesting about that statement is that we're not talking a non-fiction book here. We're talking a novel. Yes, a novel. Zombies & Calculus is pure fiction. Fortunately. Now I'm a big fan of the Walking Dead tv show and the comics too (though I'm a bit behind on the trade paperback collections) so I"m quite glad it's fiction. Basically, the premise of this novel is, "What if Rick Grimes had been a university math prof instead of a police officer." The…

Reading Diary: The Incredible Plate Tectonics Comic: The Adventures of Geo, Vol. 1 by by Kanani K. M. Lee & Adam Wallenta

This amusing book, Kanani K. M. Lee and Adam Wallenta's The Incredible Plate Tectonics Comic: The Adventures of Geo, Vol. 1, is brought to us by the same people as the Survive! Inside the Human Body graphic novel series. As a result it has many of the same strengths but it also suffered from some of the weaknesses that the Survive! series was able to avoid. The strengths are easy to see: engaging and diverse characters, clear and clean artwork, lively narration and great attention to scientific detail outside the main narrative. The weaknesses of the Plate Techtonics version which should…

Megafaunal extinction, methane and monkeying with the climate

A paper in Nature Geoscience published early this month was much derided by the usual suspects in the pseudoskeptic community. Contrary to what many critics of "Methane emissions from extinct megafauna" claim, the research does not lead to the conclusion that humans are solely responsible for a global cooling event known as the Younger Dryas, which saw a brief reversal in the warming trend that brought the last ice age to an end. But it does remind us of just how interconnected are all the elements of the planetary ecosystem, and how dangerous it is to tinker with one of them. The authors,…

Plants and Bacteria 'Talk' to Thwart Disease

In plant and animal innate immunity, like many of the dances of life, it takes two to tango. A receptor molecule in the plant pairs up with a specific molecule on the invading bacteria and, presto, the immune system swings into action to defend against the invasion of the disease-causing microbe. Unwrapping some of the mystery from how plants and bacteria communicate in this dance of immunity, hardworking scientists in my laboratory here at the University of California, Davis, have identified the bacterial molecule that matches up with a specific receptor in rice plants to ward off a…

Futurist Michio Kaku Headlines Book Fair at USA Science & Engineering Festival

By Shawn Flaherty Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist and author of New York Times’ list topping “The Future of the Mind,” is one of 31 best-selling science-related and children’s book authors (and characters) who will be signing books during the USA Science & Engineering Festival’s Book Fair, hosted by Anderson’s Bookshops. The Book Fair is part of the 3rd USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo, hosted by founding and presenting sponsor Lockheed Martin, taking place April 26 and 27 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in D.C. from 9am to 6pm daily. Designed to inspire…

Chevron's "STEM Zone" at the Expo this April

Chevron, the global energy company known for its commitment to "finding newer, cleaner ways to power the world," has joined the USA Science & Engineering Festival as a major sponsor, bringing with it a proven history of hands-on corporate outreach initiatives that ignite student motivation and interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). And true to the company's innovative approach to outreach, students and others at the Festival Expo this April in Washington, D.C. can expect to experience a special Chevron exhibit that they won't soon forget: a smorgasbord of…

Role Models in Science & Engineering Achievement: Fazlur R. Khan -- Bangladeshi structural engineer and architect

One of the most influential structural engineers of the 20th Century You may readily recognize some his most famous works as a structural design engineer: the John Hancock Center building in Chicago; Chicago's Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower); the Hajj Terminal in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; and King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. In his short lifetime, Fazlur Khan, perhaps more than any other individual, combined his love for structural engineering, architecture and art to usher in a revolution in skyscraper construction during the second half of the twentieth century, making it possible…

Michigan Tech Exhibit at USA Science and Engineering Expo Reveals the Science Behind the Mystery

Ohhh...you might even get to WALK on some ooblek. THAT would be cool! Check out what this MIchigan Tech Exhibit has in store at the Expo. WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Michigan Technological University's MindTrekkers are taking STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) to the heart of the nation--the National Mall in Washington, DC. And they're making it so much fun that it might just turn casual onlookers into science geeks. "We want people of all ages to have fun learning the science behind the mystery" MindTrekkers, a traveling science road show produced by Youth Programs at…

Yes...YOU can help the USA Science and Engineering Festival! Wanna know HOW?

I am going to make a little confession here, I love science and I really love working for the USA Science and Engineering festival. Why? I am passionate about getting science into our culture in a hands-on way and making people say: wow...science is cool AND fun.But one thing I have found about working for the Festival in its inaugural year, not everyone is aware of the festival and I want to change that. Do YOU love science? Do YOU use social media? Are YOU interested in helping the USA Science and Engineering festival? You CAN in a variety of different ways. Check this video out first. As…

The banana man thinks he's got atheists on the run

Ray Comfort has a new site, Pull the plug on atheism. It's a series of short pages which consist mainly of plugs for some bad books he is peddling, with a few paragraphs in which he announces a few of his misconceptions about atheism, with the air of one who has trounced every objection. It really is as bad as his pathetic blog. For instance, the first thing he does is define what he means by atheist. An atheist is someone who believes that nothing made everything. Then he goes on and on with fallacious analogies: "Imagine if I said my latest book came from nothing." Imagine if I say that I…

Hunting for huntingtin, part II: In which we're reminded that database searches are experiments

In which we're reminded that database searches are experiments, too. One of the trickiest things with bioinformatics experiments is repeating them. This challenge isn't related to the validity of the original results, the challenge is that, unless you made your own database and kept it in the same state, the database that you'll be using at a later time, sometimes even a day later, is a different database. And, if you query a different database, you may get a different result. The series that I'm currently posting is one that I started working on a couple of years ago. Originally, I was…

ScienceBloggers in Second Life

This morning Bora and I both gave talks in Second Life. Since this was a pretty new experience for me, I thought I'd share my thoughts on it. Ever since the days when I watched cartoons on Saturday mornings, I thought it might be fun to be in one. But when I tried it this morning, truthfully, it was a bit scary. I haven't experienced stage fright like that for quite awhile. Perhaps it was the setting. I was really nervous and I hadn't practiced with Second Life enough to know what to do. Watching a talk in Second Life Moving around in my avatar felt awkward. It was strange not to be…

Digital Biology Friday: hot plants and viruses V

tags: plants, bioinformatics, sequence analysis, viruses, fungi How does grass grow in the extremely hot soils of Yellowstone National Park? The quest continues. Read part I, part II, part III, and part IV to see how we got here. And read onward to see where will we go. In our last episode, I discovered a new tab in the protein database (well, new to me anyway). Related structures If you select this tab, you get a list of protein sequences that are similar, by blastp, to the amino sequences in protein structures. Naturally, I clicked the tab, and then the Links link, to see…

Antibiotic resistance: taking the bypass

The wind storms and heavy rains that hit Seattle recently, demonstrated why a bypass mechanism can be a helpful thing - for both bacteria and motorists. Under the bridge on Mercer, from the Seattle Times When the weather is nice, I bike to work. But when the weather gets bad, (I consider rain and 69 mph winds to be BAD), I take the easy way out. On the day of the big windstorm though, driving home was not so easy. A mudslide covered one of my usual paths, blocked two lanes on a very busy street, and stopped traffic well into the depths of the city. Since we had to get to a soccer…

Why I won't contribute to the DCCC

I usually vote Democrat. That's because where I live they are much more likely to uphold democratic values -- including the value of personal liberties guaranteed in the US Constitution. The current Republican Party is hopeless on civil liberties, being such cowards they are ready to throw personal freedoms under the bus whenever George W. shouts "terrorist." Upholding personal liberties is not the sole property of Democrats. Many Libertarians also hold this position strongly, although not all do. And unfortunately, not all Democrats do either. I will not support any Democrat whose regard for…

Cut the panflu patent Gordian Knot

The intellectual property issues surrounding H5N1 and pandemic influenza in general continue to deepen and ramify into uncharted territory. Currently the usual suspects are meeting in Singapore to try to resolve issues that have arisen when some developing countries, led by Indonesia, have upset the international flu applecart by refusing to provide viral isolates to the WHO laboratory network, asserting that the practice of supplying "their" isolates to pharmaceutical companies who then make vaccines the originating country can't afford was inequitable and intolerable. I have waded into…

West Nile policy: nothing changes

It's mid summer, so it's time to drag out what we say each summer about spraying for West Nile Virus. First, why we have to say it: Sacramento County authorities plan to launch a mass aerial-spraying campaign to combat the West Nile virus on Monday. Mosquito control officials will spray insecticide over 55,000 acres of urban neighborhoods north of the American River. About 375,000 people live in the area. Last week, county health officials announced that two people have contracted the virus, and West Nile had reached an epidemic rate in the region's mosquitoes. "We are seeing infected…

CDC halts research at biodefense lab in Texas

A year may not seem like a long time, but everything's relative. For Texas A&M University a year was 51 weeks too long since they were required to report potential breaches of laboratory safety protections in the federally financed biodefense lab they ran within seven days. This "failure to communicate" happened twice, once when researchers got ill with brucellosis and almost at the same time when it was found other lab workers had become infected with Q fever (see our posts here and here). We know about this because of The Sunshine Project, a citizen watchdog group that discovered the…

Border security, TB and pandemic flu

I'm just about done with the TB incident. I've said what I had to say (here, here, here and here) about the incident itself and TB on a plane in general. The one thing left is the significance for pandemic flu prevention. I don't think there is any significance for pandemic prevention because at the moment we have no way to prevent a pandemic. We don't know what will make a pandemic happen or not happen, but if the biology will let it happen and a strain arises with easy transmissibility between people, then that's the ball game. Even if it burns out in one place it will happen again. And…

Failed promises and the Director General

WHO's Director General is talking tough, but is she talking tough to the right people? We don't know, but we can keep our eye open for results: Addressing concerns raised by developing countries such as Indonesia, Chan said she was committed to finding ways of distributing potentially life-saving vaccines in the event of a human influenza pandemic. "WHO recognises the concern of many developing countries and I am fully behind you. That's why we are taking a series of actions to make sure that developing countries have equitable access to affordable pandemic vaccines," she said. Chan also…

Kuwait, Bangladesh and the Rock of Gibralter

Bird flu is spreading in poultry in Bangladesh. And Kuwait has had bird flu in its poultry but is hoping its cull of 1.7 million birds has stopped it. But not until four Bangladeshis working on the cull were hospitalized with possible bird flu infection. Isolation was undertaken because of blood tests. The Kuwaiti cullers are said to have received prophylactic Tamiflu and these workers were not reporting symptoms, but "preliminary tests" were positive (via crof's blog). More definitive tests are to come: Preliminary tests for bird flu were positive on four Bangladeshi workers who had been…

New food safety policy, part II

A follow up (of sorts) to yesterday's post on the "new" strategy for preventing foodborne illness at the US Department of Agriculture. This one's about the new policy at the Food and Drug Administration: The federal agency that's been front and center in warning the public about tainted spinach and contaminated peanut butter is conducting just half the food safety inspections it did three years ago. The cuts by the Food and Drug Administration come despite a barrage of high-profile food recalls. "We have a food safety crisis on the horizon," said Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food…

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