Zero Energy Construction

2011 was ninth-warmest year since 1880: NASA

2012-02-02T10:39:00.000-05:00

(Reuters) - The global average temperature last year was the ninth-warmest in the modern meteorological record, continuing a trend linked to greenhouse gases that saw nine of the 10 hottest years occurring since the year 2000, NASA scientists said on Thursday.

A separate report from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the average temperature for the United States in 2011 as the 23rd warmest year on record.

The global average surface temperature for 2011 was 0.92 degrees F (0.51 degrees C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline temperature, researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies said in a statement. The institute's temperature record began in 1880.

The first 11 years of the new century were notably hotter than the middle and late 20th century, according to institute director James Hansen. The only year from the 20th century that was among the top 10 warmest years was 1998.

These high global temperatures come even with the cooling effects of a strong La Nina ocean temperature pattern and low solar activity for the past several years, said Hansen, who has long campaigned against human-spurred climate change.

The NASA statement said the current higher temperatures are largely sustained by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is emitted by various human activities, from coal-fired power plants to fossil-fueled vehicles to human breath.

Current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceed 390 parts per million, compared with 285 ppm in 1880 and 315 by 1960, NASA said.

No Comment Necessary

2012-02-01T06:21:00.000-05:00

There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.—Aldous Huxley

One of my Heros

2012-01-31T06:19:00.000-05:00

Great quote - Name that movie

2012-01-30T05:01:00.000-05:00

i'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague

Chris is Right on Point!

2012-01-29T09:57:00.000-05:00

No Comment Necessary

2012-01-28T09:55:00.000-05:00

2012-01-27T09:52:00.000-05:00

Reposted from Jobsanger

Back during the Bush administration, this nation's power plants were excluded from many of the Environmental Protection Agency's pollution regulations. And even though auto pollution was significantly reduced and other industries had to clean up their act, there really wasn't much of a dent put into the pollution being released into the air -- especially as it relates to the pollutants that cause global climate change (commonly referred to as "global warming").

Even though Bush is no longer in power, the Republicans have continued their efforts to protect their buddies in the power production industry. Recently, they even tried to put an amendment on the payroll tax bill that would delay for another five years making the power plants abide by EPA regulations. Maybe they knew what the rest of us suspected -- that the power plants, especially those using coal, were producing far more than their share of the nation's pollution.

On Wednesday, the United States government released the most detailed report yet on just where most global warming pollution was coming from. And there was one industry that produced far more pollution than any other. According to the report, the power plants in America produce an amazing 72% of all the pollution reported to the EPA in 2010. Can you believe that? Only one industry, the power plants, produce nearly three-quarters of all the pollution causing global climate change.

It is time we stop letting the power producers off the hook, especially those who still use coal to fire their plants. And don't even talk to me about "clean coal" -- that is a myth created by the coal industry and simply does not exist. As a country, we must demand action from the power industry to clean up their act. And we must demand the government do more to help the nation move to clean and renewable sources of energy production.

The states with the dirtiest power plants are Georgia, Alabama, Indiana, West Virginia, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wyoming, North Carolina, Kansas, and Kentucky.

Trickle Down = Piss on you!

2012-01-26T09:49:00.000-05:00

The graphic above (from Think Progress) shows what has been happening to the American middle class in the last 40 years. To put it bluntly, it is disappearing. While the rich continue to get much richer (with their income growing by over 240% since 1980), the loss of millions of jobs and the stagnant non-growth of wages for most Americans has shrunk the middle class and thrown many more American into working class status (if they're lucky) or even worse, into abject poverty.

The Republican "trickle-down" economic policies, instituted by Ronald Reagan and accelerated by George W. Bush, deregulated financial institutions and encouraged Wall Street to play dangerous games with investor funds -- culminating in the loss of trillions of dollars, many millions of jobs, and the start of the most serious recession since the Great Depression. In addition, these same politicians encouraged corporations to outsource millions more American jobs by rewarding them with tax breaks to do so.

The idea was that when the rich and corporations had a lot of money they would use that money to create jobs and the growing wealth would be shared by everyone. It didn't work, because the wealthy aren't the real job creators -- no matter how much money they have. This is clearly illustrated by our current situation -- where the rich have a larger share of the country's wealth and income since before the Great Depression and American corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash. And yet only a pitiful handful of jobs are being created.

There is only one thing that creates jobs -- demand for goods and services. When the working and middle classes have money to spend demand is created, and jobs are created to meet that demand -- and all classes in society benefit (including the rich). But Republican policies have taken money from the working and middle classes and given it to the rich. Since the mass of our society no longer has much money to spend, demand is depressed and the recession continues with little or no job creation.

The chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, Alan Krueger, says the shift in income over the last three decades is the equivalent of moving $1.1 trillion from the 99% to the 1% every single year of those three decades. Is it any wonder that the middle class is disappearing, and we look more like a banana republic every day?

TREASON!

2012-01-25T09:28:00.000-05:00

Best Country In The World ? Really now!

2012-01-24T09:26:00.000-05:00

Progression of US Cities Reaching Solar Grid Parity

2012-01-23T09:14:00.000-05:00

Grid parity in cost between solar power and grid-supplied electricity is likely to begin being reached in the US in as little as 2 years, and within the next 25 years, many of the largest metropolitan areas will reach the point where solar is less expensive. An animated map from Energy Self Reliant States shows the picture.

This timeline includes no government subsidies in the calculations. It uses a baseine cost of solar power in 2011 at $4.00 per watt, installed. Using the average residential grid supplied electricity price for each metro area, it makes the two assumptions based on present trends to determine when the price of solar drops below grid: the cost of solar decreases by 7% per year, and the grid electricity price increases by 2% per year.

Based on these assumptions, the San Diego CA metropolitan area will be at solar parity in 2013, and within the next 25 years, many of the largest metropolitan areas will reach the point where solar is less expensive.

Extremely Dangerous Americans

2012-01-22T09:50:00.000-05:00

Subsidy 101

2012-01-21T09:43:00.000-05:00

Dr. Feist on Passivhaus

2012-01-20T09:40:00.002-05:00

Higher Efficiency with Quantum Dot Solar Cells

2012-01-19T02:39:00.000-05:00

Photovoltaic technology has taken another step forward as researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have demonstrated a photocell with an external quantum efficiency over 100 percent using quantum dots. The new cell uses a process called Multiple Exciton Generation (MEG) that produces more than one electron-hole pair per absorbed photon, and reached a level of 114 percent.

This development offers the possibility of increased efficiency in solar panels, and the technology is able to be manufactured using high-throughput roll-to-roll manufacturing. With the use of quantum dots, photocells could theoretically see as much as a 35 percent increase in power conversion efficiency above contemporary cells. The research cell was constructed as a "layered cell consisting of antireflection-coated glass with a thin layer of a transparent conductor, a nanostructured zinc oxide layer, a quantum dot layer of lead selenide treated with ethanedithol and hydrazine, and a thin layer of gold for the top electrode."

Note that this does not mean that the entire panel would have a total efficiency above 100% (which would be thermodynamically impossible). The quantum efficiency means only that the number of electron-hole pairs created in the cell is greater than the number of photons that are absorbed. Nonetheless, the advance provided by MEG could lead to the next generation of even more efficient solar energy collectors.

Stealing From Social Security

2012-01-18T08:38:00.000-05:00

The above quote from Senator Bernie Sanders is the truth. Social Security is not in immediate trouble, and the problems that might pop up 25 years down the road could be easily fixed for generations by simply having the rich pay the same percentage in FICA taxes that working and middle class people have to pay. So why do the Republicans (and blue dogs) keep whining about how Social Security is going broke?

It's because they have been raiding the Social Security fund for years to give tax cuts to the rich, subsidies to the corporations, more bloated contracts for military toys, and to fund unnecessary wars. Now they don't want to pay that money back, and if they cut benefits and raise the retirement age they won't have to. The Republicans want to use money workers have paid in to the Social Security program to pay for their own proliferate spending.

Don't let the Republicans (and blue dogs) steal retirement money from hard-working Americans! It's the big-spending Republicans' giveaways to the rich that must be cut -- not Social Security!

And for those of you who still doubt that it's the Republicans who are the biggest spenders, view the following graphic:

Reposted from Jobsanger

No Comment Necessary

2012-01-17T08:35:00.000-05:00

No Comment Necessary

2012-01-16T08:34:00.000-05:00

Can We Stop The Next Fukushima Times 10,000?

2012-01-15T08:33:00.000-05:00

The horrible news from Japan continues to be ignored by the western corporate media.

Fukushima's radioactive fallout continues to spread throughout the archipelago, deep into the ocean and around the globe---including the US. It will ultimately impact millions, including many here in North America.

The potentially thankful news is that Fukushima's three melting cores may have not have melted deep into the earth, thus barely avoiding an unimaginably worse apocalyptic reality.

But it's a horror that humankind has yet to fully comprehend.

As Fukushima's owners now claim its three melted reactors approach cold shutdown, think of this:

At numerous sites worldwide---including several in the US---three or more reactors could simultaneously melt, side-by-side. At two sites in California---Diablo Canyon and San Onofre---two reactors each sit very close to major earthquake faults, in coastal tsunami zones.
Should one or more such cores melt through their reactor pressure vessels (as happened at Fukushima) and then through the bottoms of the containments (which, thankfully, may not have happened at Fukushima), thousands of tons of molten radioactive lava would burn into the Earth.
The molten mass(es) would be further fed by thousands of tons of intensely radioactive spent fuel rods stored on site that could melt into the molten masses or be otherwise compromised.
All that lava would soon hit groundwater, causing steam and hydrogen explosions of enormous power.
Those explosions would blow untold quantities of radioactive particles into the global environment, causing apocalyptic damage to all living beings and life support systems on this planet. The unmeasurable clouds would do unimaginable, inescapable injury to all human life.
Fukushima is far from over. There is much at the site still fraught with peril, far from the public eye. Among other things, Unit Four's compromised spent fuel pool is perched high in the air. The building is sinking and tilting. Seismic aftershocks could send that whole complex---and much more---tumbling down, with apocalyptic consequences.

Fukushima's three meltowns and at least four explosions have thus far yielded general radioactive fallout at least 25 times greater than what was released at Hiroshima, involving more than 160 times the cesium, an extremely deadly isotope.

Reuters reports that fallout into the oceans is at least triple what Tokyo Electric has claimed. Airborne cesium and other deadly isotopes have been pouring over the United States since a few scant days after the disaster.

Overall the fallout is far in excess of Chernobyl, which has killed more than a million people since its 1986 explosion.

Within Japan, radioactive hotspots and unexpectedly high levels of falloutcontinue to surface throughout the archipelago. The toll there and worldwide through the coming centuries will certainly be in the millions.

And yet....it could have been far worse.

In the US, in the past few months, an earthquake has shaken two Virginia reactors beyond their design specifications. Two reactors in Nebraska have been seriously threatened by flooding. Now a lethal explosion has struck a radioactive waste site in France.

We have also just commemorated a 9/11/2001 terror attack that could easily have caused full melt-downs to reactors in areas so heavily populated that millions could have been killed and trillions of dollars in damage could have permanently destroyed the American economy.

The only thing we now know for certain is that there will be more earthquakes, more tsunamis, more floods, hurricanes and tornadoes....and more terror attacks.

Horrifying as Fukushima may be, we also know for certain that the next reactor catastrophe could make even this one pale by comparison.

Japan will never fully recover from Fukushima. Millions of people will be impacted worldwide from its lethal fallout.

But the next time could be worse---MUCH worse.

The only good news is that Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden and others are dumping atomic power. They are committing to Solartopian technologies---solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, ocean thermal, sustainable bio-fuels, increased efficiency and conservation---that will put their energy supplies in harmony with Mother Earth rather than at war with her.

The rest of humankind must do the same---and fast. Our species can't survive on this planet---ecologically, economically or in terms of our biological realities---without winning this transtion.

The only question is whether we do it before the next Fukushima times ten thousand makes the whole issue moot.

Original Source

Learning From China: Why The Existing Economic Model Will Fail By Lester Brown

2012-01-14T08:31:00.000-05:00

For almost as long as I can remember we have been saying that the United States, with 5 percent of the world's people, consumes a third or more of the earth's resources. That was true. It is no longer true. Today China consumes more basic resources than the United States does.

Among the key commodities such as grain, meat, oil, coal, and steel, China consumes more of each than the United States except for oil, where the United States still has a wide (though narrowing) lead. China uses a quarter more grain than the United States. Its meat consumption is double that of the United States. It uses three times as much coal and four times as much steel.

These numbers reflect national consumption, but what would happen if consumption per person in China were to catch up to that of the United States? If we assume conservatively that China's economy slows from the 11 percent annual growth of recent years to 8 percent, then in 2035 income per person in China will reach the current U.S. level.

If we also assume that the Chinese will spend their income more or less as Americans do today, then we can translate their income into consumption. If, for example, each person in China consumes paper at the current American rate, then in 2035 China's 1.38 billion people will use four fifths as much paper as is produced worldwide today. There go the world's forests.

If Chinese grain consumption per person in 2035 were to equal the current U.S. level, China would need 1.5 billion tons of grain, nearly 70 percent of the 2.2 billion tons the world's farmers now harvest each year.

If we assume that in 2035 there are three cars for every four people in China, as there now are in the United States, China will have 1.1 billion cars. The entire world currently has just over one billion. To provide the needed roads, highways, and parking lots, China would have to pave an area equivalent to more than two thirds the land it currently has in rice.

By 2035 China would need 85 million barrels of oil a day. The world is currently producing 86 million barrels a day and may never produce much more than that. There go the world's oil reserves.

What China is teaching us is that the western economic model—the fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy—will not work for the world. If it does not work for China, it will not work for India, which by 2035 is projected to have an even larger population than China. Nor will it work for the other 3 billion people in developing countries who are also dreaming the "American dream." And in an increasingly integrated global economy, where we all depend on the same grain, oil, and steel, the western economic model will no longer work for the industrial countries either.

The overriding challenge for our generation is to build a new economy—one that is powered largely by renewable sources of energy, that has a much more diversified transport system, and that reuses and recycles everything. We have the technology to build this new economy, an economy that will allow us to sustain economic progress. But can we muster the political will to translate this potential into reality?

Original article

Melting Arctic Ice Is Releasing Massive Amounts Of Methane

2012-01-13T08:24:00.000-05:00

By Richard Matthews

The melting Arctic ice is causing huge quantities of methane gas to be released into the atmosphere. Concerns about climate change-inducing greenhouse gases are often centered on carbon dioxide (CO2), but methane is a greenhouse gas that is 20-30 times more potent than CO2. Each methane molecule is actually about 70 times more potent in terms of trapping heat than a molecule of carbon dioxide, however, methane breaks down more quickly in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

The sub-sea layer of permafrost traps methane, preventing it from escaping, but as it melts it allows the methane to rise from underground deposits. According to scientists, large releases of methane gas can cause rapid climate changes.

There are historical precedents to back-up this assertion. Scientists believe that long ago, sudden releases of methane were responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species.

The Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum (55.5 Million years ago) is a period with drastic climate change due to massive releases of methane. It has also been suggested that large temperature swings during the last glacial period have been caused by abrupt releases of methane.

Hundreds of millions of tons of methane gas are locked beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.

Researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences, the University of Alaska and Stockholm University have been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years. Early in December, they reported dramatic and unprecedented volumes of methane being released from the Arctic seabed. They estimate that eight million tons of methane is currently leaking into the atmosphere every year.

Vast amounts of methane have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean. There are fields in the Arctic where the release is so intense that the methane does not have time to dissolve into the seawater but rises to the surface as large bubbles.

In an exclusive interview with the Independent, lead scientist Igor Semiletov said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed. Dr Semiletov made his findings public early in December at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr. Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."

Recent observations suggest that previous surveys may have significantly underestimated the amount of methane being released into the atmosphere from the Arctic seabed.

This new information was recorded in late summer 2011 by Dr. Semiletov and his team of researchers. The scientists onboard the vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted an extensive survey of 10,000 square miles of sea off the East Siberian coast. The scientists made their observations with the help of four highly sensitive seismic and acoustic instruments that monitor the methane seeping from the ocean floor.

"In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed," Dr. Semiletov said. "We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere."

Expeditions in the Laptev Sea in 1994 did not detect elevated methane levels. However, since 2003 a rising number of methane "hotspots" have been detected.

Research prepared for publication by the American Geophysical Union in 2008 by Dr. Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University in Sweden indicated that anomalies were recorded in the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea. These preliminary findings were uncovered by scientists aboard the research vessel Jacob Smirnitskyi. At the time, Gustafsson was quoted as saying:

"The conventional thought has been that the permafrost 'lid' on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place. The growing evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leak methane… The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed."

In 2011, the scientists aboard the vessel Academician Lavrentiev revealed much higher concentrations of methane covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf. These researchers found Arctic seabed methane up to 100 times background levels.

According to Natalia Shakhova, of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, "The concentration of atmospheric methane increased three times in the past two centuries from 0.7 parts per million to 1.7ppm, and in the Arctic to 1.9ppm. That's a huge increase, between two and three times, and this has never happened in the history of the planet."

The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on earth. As a whole, the Arctic has experienced an average temperature increase of 4C over recent decades. The World Meteorological Organization said that northern areas like the Russian Arctic experienced the greatest increases in temperature in 2011. They also report that since 1970, the Arctic has warmed at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the globe.

Scientists predict that over the next thirty years 45 billion metric tons of carbon from methane and carbon dioxide will seep into the atmosphere as the permafrost thaws. By the end of the century it is expected that about 300 billion metric tons of carbon will be released from the thawing Earth.

Adding in that gas means that warming would happen "20 to 30 percent faster than from fossil fuel emissions alone," said Edward Schuur of the University of Florida. "You are significantly speeding things up by releasing this carbon."

The release of trapped methane will cause higher temperatures, leading to even more melting of the permafrost and the release of yet more methane. This troubling trend of melting permafrost on the floor of the Arctic Ocean is accompanied by a dramatic decline in summer sea ice covering the surface. The loss of sea ice will further accelerate the warming trend because open ocean absorbs more heat from the sun than a reflective ice surface. This represents a strong positive feedback that amplifies anthropogenic warming.

Scientists have estimated the amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves. Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap and models suggest that if even only one percent of the methane were released from the ocean floor, it would radically accelerate global warming.

——————-

Dominion's Energy Tyranny: Where's the Outrage from the Tea Party & Ken Cuccinelli?

2012-01-12T08:16:00.000-05:00

Reposted from Green Miles

Virginia's 2007 energy re-regulation bill was a terrible idea from the start. It was essentially written by Dominion Virginia Power and rubber-stamped into law by the Virginia General Assembly & Gov. Tim Kaine, who showed no interest in challenging one of Virginia's top sources of money in politics.

Five years later, as Virginia Sierra Club Vice Chair Ivy Main writes in the Washington Post, Virginia taxpayers are seeing huge costs and little benefit:
Yes, the Dominion family owns some wind farms, one just across the state line in West Virginia. But we aren’t getting a single electron of that energy, because Dominion sells it to other states that have much tougher standards for what counts as renewable energy. For us in Virginia, Dominion buys cheap certificates that no one else wants.

That’s a great deal for Dominion. According to the Southern Environmental Law Center, $1.7 million could buy enough of these certificates to satisfy Dominion’s 2010 RPS targets, qualifying the company to collect an extra $76 million over two years from its ratepayers.
Worse yet, Dominion is aggressively using its monopoly power to target any small businesses who try to sell clean energy to customers in Virginia:
The State Corporation Commission recently granted Dominion’s request to impose a “standby” charge of up to $60 per month on customers who install solar projects in the 10- to 20-kilowatt range (about twice the size of an average home’s usage). It’s enough to make these projects uneconomic and destroy the market for them. At a time when Dominion claims we need to build more power to meet demand, it is doing its best to keep small businesses from doing precisely that.

Even worse is its treatment of a Staunton-based solar company called Secure Futures, which has stepped up to the plate to put solar installations on university campuses, using a third-party power purchase agreement to ease financing. This summer, Dominion hit Secure Futures with “cease and desist” letters, claiming it can’t legally sell solar power to Washington and Lee University within Dominion’s exclusive service territory under Virginia law. Dominion, you understand, will not sell solar power to Washington and Lee, but it seems determined to make sure no one else does, either.
Where are Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli & his Tea Party friends as Dominion treads on the rights of small businesses and Virginia energy customers? Shouldn't they be screaming about activist judges and goverment stifling liberty? Or does Tea Party outrage not cover regulations that enrich its polluting benefactors?

Want to tell Dominion to create jobs and clean our air by investing in wind power? Sign the Virginia Sierra Club's petition to Dominion CEO Tom Farrell.

Hey, America! The 1% Has A Brown Job For YOU!

2012-01-11T08:14:00.000-05:00

Reposted from Green Miles

Are you ready for a risky life of hard labor digging up dirty fuels the 1% can sell to make billions in profit? Get excited for the brown jobs revolution!

No, really. An editorial in today's Wall Street Journal calls for More Brown Jobs. Even though American oil use is declining and what's being produced isn't lowering gas or home heating oil prices here - it's just being sold overseas.

So get excited! From drilling for oil shale to fracking for methane gas to digging for uranium to building pipelines that bring Canadian tar sands to Chinese oil tankers, corporate polluters are eager to exploit the crushing economic crisis their Wall Street friends created to make unemployed workers think they have to sell out their children's health to put food on the table now!

What's that? Worried your community will be turned into an industrial wasteland? That you'll be able to light your tap water on fire? That soon you too will be saying things like, "Just about anybody I talk to that's a neighbor — and some of them are getting wealthy — are sick of it"?

Come on - corporate America wouldn't lie to you! Right?

Almost

2012-01-10T05:39:00.000-05:00

Four painful years after the Great Recession struck and wiped out 8.7 million jobs, the United States may finally be in an elusive pattern known as the virtuous cycle — an escalating loop of robust job growth, healthier spending and higher demand.
The nation added 200,000 jobs in December in a burst of hiring that drove the unemployment rate down two ticks to 8.5 percent, its lowest in almost three years, and led economists to conclude that the improvement in the job market might just last.
“There is more horsepower to this economy than most believe,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, Channel Islands. “The stars are aligned right for a meaningful economic recovery.”
It was the sixth month in a row that the economy added at least 100,000 jobs, the longest streak since 2006. The economy added jobs every month last year, the first time that has happened since 2005.
And the unemployment rate, which peaked at 10.1 percent in October 2009 and stood at 9.1 percent at the start of last year, has fallen four months straight.

Economic Hitmen

2012-01-09T09:33:00.000-05:00

No Comment Necessary

2012-01-08T10:44:00.000-05:00

No Comment Necessary

2012-01-07T10:43:00.000-05:00

Good News For Progressives

2012-01-06T10:41:00.001-05:00

Reposted from Jobsanger

This graphic is from a poll done by the Pew Research Center earlier this month, and I have to say it sort of surprises me a bit. The poll was to find whether the public had a positive or negative perception of different political terms.

It comes as no surprise that the term "socialism" is still viewed negatively by most Americans -- the word has been demonized for decades in this country even as we institute more and more socialist programs (such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, Pell grants, public education, etc.). Americans don't seem to mind socialist programs -- as long as we don't call them socialist.

It's also no surprise that the term "conservative" is viewed positively by most Americans. Since the Reagan administration, it has been very popular for most Americans to describe themselves as conservatives (even though they may support many liberal and even socialist policies).

The real surprises come with the terms "liberal" and "progressive". The Republicans have done their best to demonize the term liberal in the last few years (and continue to do so). But only 39% of the population have bought into that demonization, while half of the population (50%) views the term positively. I imagine this comes as a surprise to many liberals, since many of them were so convinced the word had been demonized that most, including myself, are now calling themselves progressives.

But the biggest surprise of all (and a very pleasant surprise) is that the term "progressive" (which is defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as "favoring or implementing rapid progress or social reform") is viewed positively by 67% of all Americans -- that's five percentage points better than "conservative". And this positive view of "progressive" crosses all political lines, including 55% of Republicans, 68% of Independents, and 76% of Democrats.

It's starting to look like most Americans are ready for progress and social change. Maybe that shouldn't surprise us considering the continuing recession, joblessness, wealth & income inequality, and growing corporate power.

2012-01-05T10:39:00.000-05:00

Reposted from Jobsanger

Does the above sign bother you because it gives the same information in two different languages? It does bother some people. These people want the United States to adopt an "official" language, English, and mandate that only that language be used on all signs, official paperwork, and in government offices. That would mean anyone in this country, whether visiting or living here, would just be out of luck if they could not speak fluent English.

And one of those people who want the United States to adopt an "English only" law is presidential candidate and current governor of Texas, Rick Perry (which is kind of weird since Spanish was spoken in Texas for a couple of hundred years before English was). In an Iowa campaign stop the other day, Rick Perry agreed with a teabagger who complained about other languages being used in this country.

I must admit that I have never understood this viewpoint. For one thing, even when immigrants come to this country without a knowledge of English their children and further generations are English-speakers. The inability to speak and write English never extends beyond a single generation. So even if this is a problem, it is a problem that corrects itself within a generation.

Second, how fair is it to cut off new immigrants from basic knowledge that everyone should be privy to? If a sign warns of danger or prohibits some kind of behavior (like the sign above), shouldn't as many people as possible be able to understand it? If a person has business in a government office, or must go to court, is it fair that the business be conducted in a language they don't understand? Of course not. Any American in a foreign country would expect a translator if they had to go to a government office or court, and we should do the same.

Third, just how does it hurt any English-speaking American to have signs, ballots, or other things in more than one language? The answer of course is that it doesn't hurt anyone. If English is your only language (which is sadly true of most Americans), then ignore the parts of the sign or document that aren't in English. Nobody is hurt by bi-lingual signs or documents, and some people are helped. That in itself is reason enough to continue doing it.

The only reason I can think of for wanting an English-only law is to force other people to be just like you. And trying to force others to be like you is not freedom -- it is just old-fashioned bigotry. It takes a pretty small-minded and bigoted person to think that their language or customs are better than those of other people.

Frankly, I love living in a country where a variety of languages are spoken and customs honored. And as a Texan, I believe the Spanish language, customs, and heritage (which were here long before any other) give a rich sub-text to the Texas experience -- and I wouldn't have it any other way.

We are lucky to live in the most interesting country in the world. It's time to set aside the bigotry and enjoy the rich texture of our modern America. Diversity is not a curse -- it's a treasure.

President Signs Defense Bill (With Reservations)

2012-01-04T10:37:00.000-05:00

Reposted from Jobsanger

President Obama has signed the new Defense Authorization Bill into law. Frankly, I find that very disappointing. I wish he had vetoed the bill and sent it back to Congress. I don't say that because the bill contains far too much military spending, although I believe that is true. I say it because of a provision which would allow the indefinite detaining of an American citizen in a military prison without a trial -- as long as the government labeled that person as a "terrorist". And applying such a label to a person is very easy, especially since it would not have to be proven in a court of law.

That provision in the bill also made the president uncomfortable. He said:

The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it. In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists.

But he went on to assure Americans that he would not use the provision against American citizens, saying:

I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law.

I believe the president. I don't believe he wants to destroy the constitutional rule of law that has been established in this country -- a rule of law that protects American citizens against their own government (and for freedom to exist, there must be established limits beyond which government cannot go, because even a democratically-elected government can go to far in denying rights if there are no established limits).

But President Obama is not going to be president forever, and who's to say that the person who inhabits the White House next (or down the road a way) will have the same respect for the Constitution and rule of law that President Obama has. Is there any doubt that the Bush/Cheney administration would have jumped on the opportunity to abuse such a provision, even against American citizens? How can we know that such an administration will not be elected in the future (especially after viewing the caliber of Republican presidential hopefuls)?

This was a bad bill that never should have passed Congress or been signed into law, but it has been. All we can hope for now is to elect better men and women to Congress -- people who respect the Constitution and will overturn this ridiculous new provision of law.

The Massacre Everyone Ignored: More Blood For Oil

2012-01-03T04:44:00.001-05:00

(SOURCE: Exiled Online) With violence and government crackdowns making headlines from so many familiar parts of the world, there’s hardly been a peep in the media about the biggest and ugliest massacre of all: Last Friday in Kazakhstan, riot police slaughtered up 70 striking oil workers, wounding somewhere between 500 and 800, and arresting scores. Almost as soon as the massacre went down in the western regional city of Zhanaozen, the Kazakh authorities cut off access to twitter and cell phone coverage – effectively cutting the region off from the rest of the world, relegating the massacre into the small news wire print.

But not before someone was able to get a video out to YouTube last Friday, showing the moment when the striking oil workers rushed the barricades. They’ve had to have put up with inhuman, medieval abuse for months now, culminating with the murders a few months back of a striking oil worker and the 18-year-old-daughter of another union organizer, as well as the jailing of a labor lawyer working with the striking oil workers.

Keep in mind, the oil company whose workers are striking for better pay and union recognition, KazMunaiGaz, is “owned” by the billionaire son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s Western-backed president-for-life. Among Kazakhstan’s leading American partners are Chevron, whose website boasts, “Chevron is Kazakhstan’s largest private oil producer” – adding this bit of unintentional black humor:

“In Kazakhstan, as in any country where Chevron does business, we are a strong supporter of programs that help the country"

Reposted from Thurman's Notebook

2011's Ten Dumbest Economic Ideas

2012-01-02T01:18:00.000-05:00

Reposted from Jobsanger

Since the advent of Republican "trickle-down" economics, this country has been on a downhill slide economically -- and it resulted in our current recession and massive job loss. Unfortunately, these ideas have also infected other developed nations, most notably in Europe, and they have followed us down that economic hill.

One would think with the serious consequences of the recession, these people would have learned their lesson and returned to a more sensible economic policy. Sadly, that has not happened. They keep proposing the same old failed policies, and assuring us that someday they will work. All we have to do is just look at the really dumb economic ideas currently being proposed and pursued.

Jeff Madrick, over at the blog New Deal 2.0, has compiled a list of what he considers the ten worst economic ideas proposed and pursued in 2011. It's hard to argue with his list, because these are some incredibly stupid ideas. Unfortunately, too many people are still buying into them. Here is his list:

1. Taxes should be more regressive.
At the top of the list for sheer scandalous insensitivity are Herman Cain’s and New Gingrich’s tax plans for America. Cain and Gingrich are both flat tax advocates. Cain proposes “9-9-9″ — a 9 percent sales tax, 9 percent income tax, and 9 percent corporate tax. He would also eliminate most deductions. Would this raise more or less money? The romantic conservatives claim the lower income tax rate would mean more growth. Never mind that the evidence to support that claim has been found profoundly lacking time and again.

2. Austerity works.
Is it conceivable that we have learned nothing from history — or from economic theory, for that matter? It is hard to believe that after a year or so of the momentary return of Keynesianism in the wake of the deep recession of 2007-2009, it has been utterly renounced in practice in most rich nations around the world. The U.S. refuses to adopt a new fiscal stimulus as fears of a long-term deficit now determine short-term policy. The eurozone’s decision makers are even more obtuse and dangerous. . . IMF economists have recently produced solid research putting the lie to claims that austerity has led to rapid growth in some countries in the past. It almost never has, and in the couple of cases it has, it was because the countries devalued their currencies sharply to promote exports.

3. Export growth models are sustainable.
Germany is especially proud that it has exported its way to becoming the strong man of Europe. It has suppressed wage growth, used subsidies to make its products more competitive, and taken advantage of the fixed euro, set at too low a rate to maintain trade balances. It is determined to remain oblivious to the fact that such a model requires countries that buy its products to run deficits and therefore borrow lots of money. This is why export models are known as beggar-thy-neighbor models, and it is why Germany has a moral obligation to help bail out nations like Greece, Italy, and Spain. Export models are really debt models on a global scale.

4. Fannie and Freddie did it.
The crisis was created by the highly risky mortgages bought and sold by the private sector between 2003 and 2006, when Fannie and Freddie were cutting back their activities. They became big buyers when the damage was already done. And even now, their mortgage defaults as a percentage of their portfolios, despite the devastation in the housing market, are much lower than defaults in the private sector. Those who want to blame the government for the crisis keep coming back to this stale and very misleading issue. Get over it. And as for the SEC, can it be that the only case they can drum up against high-level executives is at Fannie and Freddie? You mean there were no bad big-time execs at Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman, Goldman, and so on?

5. Cutting Social Security benefits is a priority.
We have a very long-term deficit problem, not a short-term one. Social Security did not contribute to the short-term deficit — the Bush tax cuts, the recession, and the slow recovery are the main culprits over the next 10 years. But even in the longer run, Social Security benefits will rise from a little under 5 percent of GDP to 6 percent of GDP. Cutting these benefits is not a priority and any deficit can be fixed with affordable tax increases.

6. Inflation is just around the corner.
Remember the claims by the right wing that all that Federal Reserve stimulus in 2008 and 2009, not to mention the Obama spending bill, would lead to big-time inflation? Nothing would be better than a little inflation in the U.S. right now, but the economy has been too weak to deliver it. Bring on some inflation, please.

7. The Medicare eligibility age should be raised.
Reports had it that President Obama had momentarily agreed to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. Indeed, a New York Times editorial recently seemed (a little less than wholeheartedly) to endorse the idea. Yes, this might reduce Medicare expenditures, but it would raise the total amount Americans spend on health care. In fact, the Kaiser Family Foundation figures it would increase private health care costsfor most of the seniors leaving Medicare by more than $2,000 a year on average. There would be other cost-raising effects, as, for example, healthier seniors left Medicare. Kaiser figures the increase in total health spending by Americans would be twice the amount of savings to Medicare. And of course some seniors would simply give up coverage. Call it triage.

8. Competition between Medicare and private health insurance will reform the health care system and reduce costs.
Say it ain’t so, Ron Wyden. The Democratic senator from Oregon has teamed up with Congressman Paul Ryan to propose an option for Medicare recipients to buy private plans. They would be offered a flat payment to buy private plans if they so chose. Competition for these dollars will supposedly make Medicare and the health insurance companies more efficient. More likely, however, it will result in misleading claims by the health insurance companies or reduced coverage plans. It will raise costs for Medicare as healthy seniors are induced to take cheaper private plans with healthier individuals. . . But that’s not even the big rub. It is that Medicare payments will be limited to growing just 1 percent faster than GDP. Health care costs have risen considerably faster than that for a long time. Somehow Wyden thinks that such a limit will force reforms. In sum, it will simply lead to less coverage and more expense for beneficiaries.

9. Federal spending should be capped at 21 percent of GDP.
The president’s Simpson-Bowles budget balancing commission proposed this capbecause it is the average for the last 40 years. How’s that for reasoning? With fast-rising health care costs and an aging population, such a limit is patent nonsense. For a nation that needs significant investment in infrastructure, energy savings, and education, it is especially damaging. There is no evidence to support the claim that such a cap would promote economic growth.

10. Balancing the budget should involve equal parts tax hikes and government spending cuts.

This is not economics; it is politics. But economists argue for it all the time as if it is good economics, not admitting their conservative bias that high taxes are bad for growth and government social and investment spending never helps.
Most of the major budget balancing plans of 2010 and 2011 argued for more spending cuts than revenue increases. The Bowles-Simpson plan is comprised of two-thirds spending cuts, one-third revenue increases. Obama’s budget plan last spring also had much more in spending cuts than tax increases. Only the Rivlin-Domenici plan was balanced. The one conspicuous exception was the plan from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which of course got short shrift in the press. It was about two-thirds tax increases to one-third program cuts.

Happy 2012

2012-01-01T01:12:00.000-05:00

“Of course I believe in free enterprise, but in my system of free enterprise, the democratic principle is that there never was, never has been, never will be, room for the ruthless exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few.”- Harry S Truman –

“The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.”- Clarence Darrow –

“We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant work ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. –

“Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most – that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.”
_ Eugene V. Debs –

“Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate. “
- Bertrand Russell –

“The forces of a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.”
- Jawaharlal Nehru –

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. ..”
- Abraham Lincoln –

“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of what dictatorships are made.”
- Franklin D. Roosevelt –

“The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not both you and I.”
- Karl Liebknecht -

Finally something to like about Virginia Repubes

2011-12-31T01:09:00.000-05:00

Many times during this campaign the GOP race for the presidential nomination has resembled a clown car crash in the middle of a B-rated one-ring circus -- and that was never more so than this last week in Virginia. I'm starting to wonder if any of the Republican candidates are serious about getting the Republican nomination -- except, that is, for "Wall Street" Romney (who the party's base hates) and "Crazy old Coot" Paul (who scares even the right-wing nuts).

Thanks to a multi-candidate comedy of errors, the only candidates who will be on the March 6th Virginia primary ballot are Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. That means those two will be splitting up the Virginia delegates, and all the other candidates will be out in the cold.

To get on the Virginia ballot a candidate needed to get at least 10,000 voter signatures (with at least 400 signatures in each of the 11 congressional districts), and those signatures had to be submitted by 5pm last Thursday. Romney turned in 16,026 signatures on Tuesday, and Paul beat the deadline on Thursday with 14,361.

Perry and Gingrich also turned in signatures by the deadline -- with Perry submitting 11,911 and Gingrich submitting 11,050. But evidently either too many were not registered voters or they didn't meet the 400 level for every congressional district, because the state Republican Party said they had both failed to qualify for the ballot.

The Perry campaign hasn't said much, but Newt Gingrich blew a gasket. He called the Virginia requirement "a failed system" and said he would be working hard to get write-in votes. That was obviously just another example of him talking without knowing what he's talking about, because the rules prohibit any write-in votes in Virginia's primary.

But as ridiculous as the Perry and Gingrich campaigns look after this fiasco, there are four other Republican presidential campaigns that look even worse. The campaigns of Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman, and Buddy Roemer didn't even bother to submit any signatures at all. That's pretty pathetic. Out of a population of more than 8 million people, they couldn't even scrape up a paltry 10,000 signatures? How is anyone in that state (and elsewhere) supposed to take their candidacies seriously?

Ford Focus Electric to Boast 100 Mpg Equivalency

2011-12-30T01:05:00.000-05:00

Environmental Leader December 15, 2011

Ford says that its Ford Focus Electric is to be the first five-passenger electric vehicle to achieve a 100 mpg equivalent rating. The automaker announced this week that production of the car is to begin at a Michigan assembly plant.
The Focus Electric should also be able to fully recharge in three-to-four hours – half the time of Nissan Leaf, according to Ford. This technology can help double the car’s range during a busy day of driving and recharging multiple times, Ford says. Ford announced a solar powered home charging option for the car in August. http://www.environmentalleader.com/2011/08/11/ford-sunpower-offer-solar-offset-system-for-focus-electric/
The company began taking orders for the 2012 Focus Electric in November through dealers in the California and New York/New Jersey markets. Deliveries to other U.S. markets are expected later in the year as production ramps up.

Comment:
Neither the automakers nor the EPA factors in source efficiency or transmission losses when calculating mpg equivalency of EVs, which would bring “100 mpgs” down to more like 30-40. I’d take clean diesel over an EV any day.

Response:
Source efficiency, as in how much resource or energy it took to produce the electricity for supply? Neither does a gas vehicle or diesel, if you want to talk about that, talk about the energy it takes to find the oil-Crude oil is extracted from underground reservoirs, transported to refineries and refined into a range of petroleum products- MPG for a gas guzzling SUV or clean diesel does not take into account these factors for the energy to bring the product to diesel either. EV emits 0 tail pipe emissions, and I live in California and offset my house and EV charging with Solar PV. California does not use coal either when I charge at night, mostly low emission natural gas turbines to products. It’s the cleanest solution without a doubt, and least energy intensive.

FRAK!!

2011-12-29T08:38:00.000-05:00

A Revelation- The Fed Grants $7.77 Trillion in Secret Bank Loans

2011-12-28T07:30:00.000-05:00

Millionaire Job Creators Are Like Unicorns

2011-12-27T07:27:00.000-05:00

Some Millionaires Made A Video And This Is What They Said

2011-12-26T07:25:00.000-05:00

Bill Maher:Democrats Have Moved To The Right and The Right Has Moved To The Mental Hospital

2011-12-25T07:14:00.000-05:00

Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas

2011-12-24T08:02:00.000-05:00

MERRY FRIKIN CHRIST MASS

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.

"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."

Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.

Dr Semiletov's team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were about eight million tonnes a year, but the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the phenomenon.

In late summer, the Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted an extensive survey of about 10,000 square miles of sea off the East Siberian coast. Scientists deployed four highly sensitive instruments, both seismic and acoustic, to monitor the "fountains" or plumes of methane bubbles rising to the sea surface from beneath the seabed.

"In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed," Dr Semiletov said. "We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal."

Dr Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco

Passivhaus

2011-12-23T01:35:00.000-05:00

Koch-Fueled Americans for Prosperity Takes Credit for Bullying GOP Lawmakers into Climate Denial

2011-12-22T10:20:00.000-05:00

Cross posted from Think Progress

The cover story of this week’s National Journal takes a deeper dive into a question we’ve explored before: What happened to the Republican consensus on climate change?
Three years ago, prominent Republicans including Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), Tim Pawlenty, and Sarah Palin all expressed belief in human-caused climate change. Several even voiced strong support for policies to cap and reduce carbon pollution. Today, all six of these leaders have joined the rest of the Republican Party in a sudden and near-unified retreat to silence or denial.
When contacted by the National Journal, only 65 out of all 289 GOP lawmakers in Congress would agree to be interviewed on the topic. Of those interviewed, only 19 said they believed that human activities are at least partly responsible for climate change. Of the 19, only five (or fewer than 2 percent of GOP lawmakers) attributed a “significant amount” of climate change to human activity.
So, what happened?
It’s not the science that has changed — it’s only gotten stronger. As Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences and chair of the National Research Council, said: The level of scientific certainty that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change is comparable to the strength of our understanding that vaccines prevent measles and polio.
What have changed, according to the National Journal, are the types and relative strengths of pressures on GOP lawmakers. Namely, “the rise of the Tea Party, its crusade against regulations, and the influx of vast sums of money into electoral politics from energy companies and sympathetic interest groups.”
Among those groups is Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which is backed by fossil fuel magnates Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, Inc. Several reports have highlighted AFP’s role in promoting fossil-fuel-friendly candidates and policies. Others have accused the organization of “astroturfing.”
Surprisingly, AFP isn’t shy about discussing its influence on electoral politics. In fact, in the National Journal article, AFP’s president, Tim Phillips, openly takes credit for bullying — literally threatening — GOP lawmakers with “political peril” should they chose to “play footsie” on climate change and clean energy:
“If you look where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there’s been a dramatic turnaround. … We’ve made great headway. What it means for the candidates on the Republican side, is if you … buy into green energy or you play footsie on this issue, you do so at your political peril. … And that’s our influence. Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it.”
A sudden and unified flip flop by almost an entire political party, from acceptance of climate change to silence and outright rejection, is suspect on its own. (Especially given that, to date, no scientific body of national or international standing has offered a dissenting opinion on the fundamentals of manmade warming). But here we have the president of a fossil-fuel-funded interest group flaunting his role in sparking and enforcing the GOP’s about-face on climate change and clean energy.
One has to wonder: At what point will we stop hearing about serial climate change flip flopping and start hearing about a party-wide bow to industry demands?
– Emilee Pierce, in a Political Correction (Media Matters) crosspost

OCCUPY

2011-12-21T10:09:00.000-05:00

No Comment Necessary

2011-12-20T10:06:00.000-05:00

No Comment Necessary

2011-12-20T04:48:00.000-05:00

Occupy Sesame Street

2011-12-19T04:44:00.000-05:00

Reposted from jobsanger

Amazingly, there are still some people who claim not to know why the Occupy Wall Street movement is necessary. Well this comment at AV Club, from a person calling him/her self Cookie Monster, puts it in the words of the famous Sesame Street character. It is the simplest explanation I have seen (and it is funny). Here is how "Cookie Monster" explains it:

Yes, there always going to be rich and poor. But we used to live in country where rich owned factory and make 30 times what factory worker make. Now we live in country where rich make money by lying about value of derivative bonds and make 3000 times what factory worker would make if factories hadn't all moved to China.
Capitalism great system. We won Cold War because people behind Iron Curtain look over wall, and see how much more plentiful and delicious cookies are in West, and how we have choice of different bakeries, not just state-owned one. It great system. It got us out of Depression, won WWII, built middle class, built country's infrastructure from highways to Hoover Dam to Oreo factory to electrifying rural South. It system that reward hard work and fair play, and everyone do fair share and everyone benefit. Rich get richer, poor get richer, everyone happy. It great system.
Then after Reagan, Republicans decide to make number one priority destroying that system. Now we have system where richest Americans ones who find ways to game system -- your friends on Wall Street -- and poorest Americans ones who thought working hard would get them American dream, when in fact it get them pink slip when job outsourced to 10-year-old in Mumbai slum. And corporations have more influence over government than people (or monsters).
It not about rich people having more money. It about how they got money. It about how they take opportunity away from rest of us, for sake of having more money. It how they willing to take risks that destroy economy -- knowing full well what could and would happen -- putting millions out of work, while creating nothing of value, and all the while crowing that they John Galt, creating wealth for everyone.
That what the soul-searching about. When Liberals run country for 30 years following New Deal, American economy double in size, and wages double along with it. That fair. When Conservatives run country for 30 years following Reagan, American economy double again, and wages stay flat. What happen to our share of money? All of it go to richest 1%. That not "there always going to be rich people". That unfair system. That why we upset. That what Occupy Sesame Street about.

This will make your blood boil!

2011-12-18T04:41:00.000-05:00

Truth is a Bitch!

2011-12-17T07:49:00.000-05:00

From the Brilliant L. David Roper

Zach Wahls Speaks About Family

2011-12-16T10:22:00.000-05:00

No Comment Necessary

2011-12-15T05:26:00.000-05:00

Major General Smedley Butler & The Fascist Takeover Of The USA - A Warning From History

2011-12-14T11:45:00.000-05:00

Why Iceland Should Be in the News, But Is Not

2011-12-13T11:40:00.000-05:00

An Italian radio program's story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world. Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion.

As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here's why:

Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country’s banks were privatized, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called IceSave, attracted many English and Dutch small investors. But as investments grew, so did the banks’ foreign debt. In 2003 Iceland’s debt was equal to 200 times its GNP, but in 2007, it was 900 percent. The 2008 world financial crisis was the coup de grace. The three main Icelandic banks, Landbanki, Kapthing and Glitnir, went belly up and were nationalized, while the Kroner lost 85% of its value with respect to the Euro. At the end of the year Iceland declared bankruptcy.

Contrary to what could be expected, the crisis resulted in Icelanders recovering their sovereign rights, through a process of direct participatory democracy that eventually led to a new Constitution. But only after much pain.

Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister of a Social Democratic coalition government, negotiated a two million one hundred thousand dollar loan, to which the Nordic countries added another two and a half million. But the foreign financial community pressured Iceland to impose drastic measures. The FMI and the European Union wanted to take over its debt, claiming this was the only way for the country to pay back Holland and Great Britain, who had promised to reimburse their citizens.

Protests and riots continued, eventually forcing the government to resign. Elections were brought forward to April 2009, resulting in a left-wing coalition which condemned the neoliberal economic system, but immediately gave in to its demands that Iceland pay off a total of three and a half million Euros. This required each Icelandic citizen to pay 100 Euros a month (or about $130) for fifteen years, at 5.5% interest, to pay off a debt incurred by private parties vis a vis other private parties. It was the straw that broke the reindeer’s back.

What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents. The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.

Of course the international community only increased the pressure on Iceland. Great Britain and Holland threatened dire reprisals that would isolate the country. As Icelanders went to vote, foreign bankers threatened to block any aid from the IMF. The British government threatened to freeze Icelander savings and checking accounts. As Grimsson said: “We were told that if we refused the international community’s conditions, we would become the Cuba of the North. But if we had accepted, we would have become the Haiti of the North.” (How many times have I written that when Cubans see the dire state of their neighbor, Haiti, they count themselves lucky.)

In the March 2010 referendum, 93% voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution (though not televised in the United States), would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country.

But Icelanders didn't stop there: they decided to draft a new constitution that would free the country from the exaggerated power of international finance and virtual money. (The one in use had been written when Iceland gained its independence from Denmark, in 1918, the only difference with the Danish constitution being that the word ‘president’ replaced the word ‘king’.)

To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the internet. The constituent’s meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape. The constitution that eventually emerges from this participatory democratic process will be submitted to parliament for approval after the next elections.

Some readers will remember that Iceland’s ninth century agrarian collapse was featured in Jared Diamond’s book by the same name. Today, that country is recovering from its financial collapse in ways just the opposite of those generally considered unavoidable, as confirmed yesterday by the new head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde to Fareed Zakaria. The people of Greece have been told that the privatization of their public sector is the only solution. And those of Italy, Spain and Portugal are facing the same threat.

They should look to Iceland. Refusing to bow to foreign interests, that small country stated loud and clear that the people are sovereign.

That’s why it is not in the news anymore.

Do we really need reminding?

2011-12-12T11:36:00.000-05:00

Stop Congressional "Insider Trading"

2011-12-11T11:33:00.000-05:00

Reposted from Jobsanger

Last week it was revealed that Congress is commonly doing something that, if done by any other American, would be considered a criminal act. It is "insider trading". This is when someone uses information not available to the general public to make trades in the stock market, thereby giving themselves an unfair advantage in the market. An example of this would be when a corporate insider knows something will soon happen that will affect the market price of that company's stock. It would be illegal for him/her to use that knowledge to buy or sell that company's stock until that information is released publicly.

But the members of Congress and their aides routinely have that kind of information available to them (such as the knowledge that a new law or regulation will soon be imposed that will significantly affect a certain industry, or the knowledge that a lucrative government contract will soon be given to a certain corporation). While it would be illegal for an American citizen to use this secret information to enrich themselves by buying or selling stock, that illegality does not extend to members of Congress or their aides. And many members of Congress and their employees (of both political parties) have used "insider trading" to fill their own personal banks accounts with cold hard cash (and lots of it).

Of course this isn't the only example of Congress giving themselves perks that ordinary Americans don't enjoy. How many ordinary workers do you know that can vote themselves a raise without permission of their bosses, even in the midst of a recession? Congress can, and they don't seem to care what their bosses (the people of this country) think about it. But in spite of their usual arrogance, this insider trading story seems to have embarrassed at least some members of Congress.

Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minnesota) and Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-New York) have introduced a new bill in the House of Representatives. It is called the "Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (STOCK Act), and it would ban any member of Congress or their aides from buying or selling stocks or commodities if they have "material nonpublic information" that relates to a company or commodity. The bill would eliminate the insider trading advantage that Congress currently enjoys over all other Americans.

But while the bill makes a lot of sense and would be supported by a large majority of Americans, don't start celebrating its passage yet. For a lot of the members of Congress this is akin to killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, and you can bet that many of them will fight tooth-and-nail to kill this bill. In fact, they are already coming up with reasons why the bill "wouldn't work", and might even be a bad idea.

These naysayers tell us that it would be very hard to prove that a member of Congress or their aides had used insider information in making trades. And they say that Congress might just make many more things secret from the public to cover their tracks after making insider trades. These are actually fairly good arguments. We already know that many Wall Street executives engage in insider trading but are rarely caught, and authorities would be even more reluctant to make an accusation against a member of Congress. And the government already keeps too many things secret that should be public knowledge.

But even if both of those things are true, they are nothing more than excuses for failing to address the problem. Insider trading is wrong and should be outlawed no matter how hard it is to prove. And it is just as wrong for Congress as it is for everyone else. While not all insider trades are caught, some are and that acts as a deterrent to other who would consider it. As for Congress trying to cover their illegal acts with government secrecy, there are ways to expose that (remember WikiLeaks?).

The truth is that there is an easy way to overcome both of those arguments. Just amend the STOCK Act to outlaw all trading of stocks and commodities by members of Congress and their aides and immediate family members (whether insider trading is used or not). I know there will be some that will say this would be unfair, and that members of Congress should have the right to make money by honest trading just like other Americans. I disagree.

These men and women were not sent to Congress to make themselves rich. They were sent there because they told the voters they wanted to serve their country, and they are well-paid for that service. A member of Congress is paid nearly $170,000 a year (plus expenses, perks, and benefits). The salary alone is three times the average wage of the bottom 99% of Americans. If this is not sufficient remuneration for their service to their country, then I question if their running for office was really a desire to serve -- and they should resign (and then they could trade to their hearts desire).

Government service should not be the path to riches, and for millions of government workers at all levels it isn't. They work for salaries lower than they could get in private industry because they have a desire to serve their country and their fellow citizens -- and they retire on a modest income after that life of service. Why should it be different for members of Congress (or their aides)?

The Teabagger Pledge

2011-12-10T11:30:00.000-05:00

When camping on public / private property is okay

2011-12-09T11:26:00.000-05:00

The thought leaders of the conservative alternative knowledge system

2011-12-08T11:25:00.000-05:00

“But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama—whatever his policy errors—is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) “the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.” — David Frum

America can’t handle the truth

2011-12-07T11:22:00.000-05:00

Time Magazine, Dec 5, 2011

OCCUPY

2011-12-06T02:37:00.000-05:00

OCCUPY

2011-12-05T02:35:00.000-05:00

2011-12-04T02:29:00.000-05:00

Reposted from No Corporate Rule

"The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second."
------ Chris Hedges, from 2011: A Brave New Dystopia, Truthdig 12/27/10

By now, you've probably seen the video of the obviously intentional and grotesque behavior by campus police at the University of California in Davis.This video, originally only available through fringe progressive blogs and websites, has finally seen the light of day within the corporate-owned mainstream media -- mainly because it has gone viral on the Internet. As with anything accusatory or demeaning of the corporate-state, unless there's no further chance of ignoring or omitting the obvious (as in the case of the Occupy movement), the corporate media is forced to undraw the curtain and reveal the events -- although, not necessarily, and often not, the truth and reasons behind them.

The question I want to ask is this: When this kind of despicable behavior is conducted by those entrusted to serve and protect us from criminal activities, and equally important, is condoned and approved by their superiors and those we supposedly elect, when and where is the line drawn that separates us from the inhumane and state-sanctioned slippery slope toward totalitarianism and demagoguery?

The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains

2011-12-03T09:01:00.000-05:00

Capital gains are the key ingredient of income disparity in the US-- and the force behind the winner takes all mantra of our economic system. If you want even out earning power in the U.S, you have to raise the 15% capital gains tax.
Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation's earners-- rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%-- about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million-- are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.
It's crystal clear that the Bush tax reduction on capital gains and dividend income in 2003 was the cutting edge policy that has created the immense increase in net worth of corporate executives, Wall St. professionals and other entrepreneurs.
The reduction in the tax from 20% to 15% continued the step-by-step tradition of cutting this tax to create more wealth. It had first been reduced from 35% in 1978 at a time of stock market and economic stagnation to 28% . Again 1981, at the start of the Reagan era, it was reduced again to 20%-- raised back to 28% in 1987, on the eve of the October 19 232% crash in the market. In 1997 Clinton agreed to reduce it back to 20%, which move was an inducement for the explosion of hedge funds and private equity firms-- the most "rapidly rising cohort within the top 1 per cent."
Make no mistake; the battle that is to be fought over the coming attempt to reverse this reduction in capital gains will be bloody and intense. The facts are clear according to the Congressional Budget Office more than 80% of the increase in income inequality was the result of an increase in the share of household income from capital gains. In fact, you can go so far as to claim that "Capital Gains income is the most unevenly distributed-- and volatile-- source of household income," according to Laura D'Andrea Tyson, University of California business professor and former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton.
No wonder the super wealthy plutocrats obtained the largest share of national income-- 25% of the nation's wealth- greater than any other industrial nation in the the period of 1979 to 2005. Make no mistake; after unemployment-- this disparity between the 1%-- 3 million-- or the 0.1%-- the 300,000-- and the other 312 million citizens of the U.S. has become the major theme of the Occupy Wall Street movement-- and an important national debate.
I commend you to the late Justice Louis Brandeis warning to the nation that " We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." We have to make up our minds to restore a higher, fairer capital gains tax to the wealthiest investor class-- or ultimately face increased social unrest.

Timeline of a mass extinction

2011-12-02T08:40:00.000-05:00

Since the first organisms appeared on Earth approximately 3.8 billion years ago, life on the planet has had some close calls. In the last 500 million years, Earth has undergone five mass extinctions, including the event 66 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs. And while most scientists agree that a giant asteroid was responsible for that extinction, there’s much less consensus on what caused an even more devastating extinction more than 185 million years earlier.

The end-Permian extinction occurred 252.2 million years ago, decimating 90 percent of marine and terrestrial species, from snails and small crustaceans to early forms of lizards and amphibians. c Possible causes include immense volcanic eruptions, rapid depletion of oxygen in the oceans, and — an unlikely option — an asteroid collision.

While the causes of this global catastrophe are unknown, an MIT-led team of researchers has now established that the end-Permian extinction was extremely rapid, triggering massive die-outs both in the oceans and on land in less than 20,000 years — the blink of an eye in geologic time. The researchers also found that this time period coincides with a massive buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which likely triggered the simultaneous collapse of species in the oceans and on land.

With further calculations, the group found that the average rate at which carbon dioxide entered the atmosphere during the end-Permian extinction was slightly below today’s rate of carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere due to fossil fuel emissions. Over tens of thousands of years, increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide during the Permian period likely triggered severe global warming, accelerating species extinctions.

The researchers also discovered evidence of simultaneous and widespread wildfires that may have added to end-Permian global warming, triggering what they deem “catastrophic” soil erosion and making environments extremely arid and inhospitable.

The researchers present their findings this week in Science, and say the new timescale may help scientists home in on the end-Permian extinction’s likely causes.

“People have never known how long extinctions lasted,” says Sam Bowring, the Robert R. Schrock Professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at MIT. “Many people think maybe millions of years, but this is tens of thousands of years. There’s a lot of controversy about what caused [the end-Permian extinction], but whatever caused it, this is a fundamental constraint on it. It had to have been something that happened very quickly.”

Rocks in a hard place

Bowring worked with a group of American and Chinese researchers to pinpoint the extinction’s duration. The group analyzed volcanic ash beds from Meishan, a region in southern China where an old limestone quarry exposes rocks containing abundant fossils from the Permian period, as well as the very first fossils that signified a recovery from extinction, during the Triassic period. The rocks of the region have been widely studied as the best global example of the Permian-Triassic Boundary (PTB).

The group collected clay samples from ash beds both above and below rock layers from the PTB. In the lab, they separated out zircon, a robust mineral that can survive intense geological processes. Zircon contains trace amounts of uranium, which can be used to date the rocks in which it is found. Bowring and his colleagues analyzed 300 of the “best-looking” grains of zircon, and found the rocks above and below the mass-extinction period spanned only a 20,000-year phase.

Bowring says now that researchers are able to precisely date the end-Permian extinction, scientists will have to re-examine old theories. For example, many believe the extinction may have been triggered by large volcanic eruptions in Siberia that covered 2 million square kilometers of Earth — an area roughly three times the size of Texas.

“In the old days you could say, ‘Oh, it’s about the same time, therefore it’s cause and effect,’” Bowring says. “But now that we can date [the extinction] to plus or minus 20,000 years, you can’t just say ‘about the same.’ You have to demonstrate it’s exactly the same.”

‘Something unusual going on’

The group also analyzed carbon-isotope data from rocks in southern China and found that within the same period, the oceans and atmosphere experienced a large influx of carbon dioxide. Dan Rothman, a professor of geophysics in EAPS, calculated the average rate at which carbon dioxide entered the oceans and atmosphere at the time, finding it to be somewhat less than today’s influx due to fossil fuel emissions.

“The rate of injection of CO2 into the late Permian system is probably similar to the anthropogenic rate of injection of CO2 now,” Rothman says. “It’s just that it went on for … 10,000 years.”

Rothman says the total amount of CO2 pumped into Earth over this time period was so immense that it’s not immediately clear where it all came from.

“It’s just not easy to imagine,” Rothman says. “Even if you put all the world’s known coal deposits on top of a volcano, you still wouldn’t come close. So something unusual was going on.”

David Bottjer, professor of earth sciences and biological sciences at the University of Southern California, views the group’s results as strong evidence for one of the extinction’s most likely causes.

“This is the most precise set of dates that have been produced for analysis of the end-Permian mass extinction,” Bottjer says. “Because these dates are analyzed in conjunction with geochemical and fossil information they provide unique evidence … that this mass extinction was probably caused by an enormous input of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and oceans caused by volcanic eruptions.”

WAKE UP SHEEPLE

2011-12-01T01:05:00.000-05:00

By Ted McLaughlin

Republican congressmen/women like to talk a lot about class warfare. Their talk is really code for keeping the rich in the advantageous position they have, and preventing any new laws that might distribute income and wealth more evenly throughout the population. After years of funneling the nation's riches into the pockets of the rich, the very idea of "economic justice" is anathema to them.

But the truth is that there is a class warfare going on, and it has been happening for the last thirty years -- a war directed by Republicans on behalf of the 1% and waged against American workers. It started with Reagan's initiation of trickle-down economics about 1980, and was kicked into high gear in the presidency of George W. Bush. Over that thirty year period the income of the 1% of richest Americans has increased by over 270%, while the wages of the bottom 80% of Americans has been stagnant (and has actually dropped in the power of what those wages will purchase).

Republicans now want to blame the recession for the economic hurt that is being felt by far too many Americans. And in a way, that is partially true. But the truth is that the recession (brought on by the Republican economic policies) just hastened a process that was already well under way before the recession hit in late 2007. A report by the Economic Policy Institute tells us that during the period between 2000 and 2007 (before the recession hit), the real median income of working-age households fell by $2,114. That's a drop of over $176 a month, and that is a drop in real dollars, not purchasing power.

But while the Republican policies were making the rich richer and lowering the wages of workers, perhaps the most insidious and tragic effect of these policies has been to swell the ranks of the poor. We now have more than 46 million people who depend on the government food stamp program to put food on the table, and more than 15% of the total United States population now lives below the poverty line.

President Johnson's War on Poverty had been reducing the number and percentage of people living in poverty in America since the 1960's. Poverty hadn't been wiped out, but the country was starting to get a handle on it. Now, thanks to the Republican economic policies, all of those gains have been wiped out and we are now once again at record levels of poverty in America.

And most tragic of all is the number of children who are being forced into poverty. Thanks to Republicans blocking job creation, denying extensions of unemployment benefits, and slashing the funding of many social programs, the number of children being thrown into poverty is reaching disastrous proportions. In just one year more than a million children were added to poverty rolls -- from 14.7 million children in 2009 to 15.7 million children in 2010.

This means that currently more than 20% (or one in every five) of all American children now live in poverty. In some states, like Texas, that rate is 25% (one in every four) or 1.8 million children -- and Texas is a state the Republicans hail as being the beneficiary of a Republican economic "miracle". The fact is that in Texas and in the nation the Republican policies may be good for the corporations and the rich, but they have been an economic disaster for everyone else.

The Republicans have driven the American economy into a deep ditch. How much longer will we allow them to force our economy to stay in that ditch? Can we really afford to let them retain even a semblance of power?

WAKE UP SHEEPLE

2011-11-30T01:04:00.000-05:00

No Comment Necessary

2011-11-29T01:02:00.001-05:00

No Comment Necessary

2011-11-28T01:01:00.000-05:00

A Coal Region's Quest to Switch to Renewables

2011-11-27T07:56:00.000-05:00

By Frank Dohmen and Barbara Schmid

Germany's bituminous coal mines are soon to lose their subsidies. But one Ruhr Valley company is looking to transform its mines into sources of renewable energy. Along the way, they could solve one of Germany's largest challenges as it attempts to switch over to green energy.

Shortly before 2 p.m., tiny, twinkling lights become visible at the end of the long, dark tunnel on the seventh level of the Prosper-Haniel mine in Bottrop, a city in west-central Germany. The lights slowly begin to take shape, as miners with mine lamps on their white helmets make their way back to the surface. It has been a difficult shift, and the men have covered several kilometers through an intricate labyrinth of tunnels and shafts.

In just a few years' time, an entirely different scenario could be unfolding in the mine, one that has little to do with Ruhrkohle AG's classic coal-mining business. But it is one which could very well have a promising future.

The German government and the European Commission passed a resolution in 2010 that by 2018, the billions in subsidies which have kept the coal mining industry in Germany's Saarland and Ruhr regions afloat over the past few decades will expire. When that happens, the last mines belonging to Ruhrkohle AG (RAG) will be closed for good. "Every day takes us a little closer to saying goodbye," a miner says bitterly.

But on level seven in Bottrop, a small revolution is underway, one that remains largely invisible to the miners. There, at exactly 1,159 meters (3,802 feet) beneath the surface of the earth, in giant transfer halls directly in front of the mine's steep shaft, RAG plans to generate large amounts of environmentally friendly power in the future.

It may sound utopian, but the plan is not all that far-fetched. The underground chambers are large enough to easily accommodate one or two large, hydroelectric turbines. Through giant pipes placed in the mineshaft, water is to plunge up to 1,000 meters from the surface into the mine, where it would then power the turbine rotors.

A Serious Challenge

The machines could eventually generate about 600 megawatts of electricity, which -- in theory -- is enough to supply a medium-sized city with clean energy. More importantly, the turbines fit perfectly into Germany's new energy strategy. They would be an elementary building block of the country's planned clean-energy -- and nuclear-free -- future.

In the wake of the disastrous accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan in March of this year, the German government decided to shut down eight of the country's 17 nuclear reactors immediately, and to massively expand renewable sources of energy, like wind and solar.

Germany now plans to derive 35 percent of its power supply from renewable energy sources by 2020, and 80 percent by 2050. But this also presents a serious challenge: The wind and the sun are extremely unreliable as sources of energy in Germany. Under certain conditions -- a cloudy day with no wind -- the production of green energy could sink to almost zero. On days that are sunny and windy, on the other hand, the facilities already installed today are sometimes capable of covering Germany's entire electricity needs.

Sometimes -- for hours or even days at a time -- there is even a surplus. With a lack of sufficient storage capacity, however, some of the expensive green energy is simply given away to neighboring European countries.

This will change in the future, once energy storage systems have been built throughout Germany. Many different technologies, such as storing energy with the help of compressed air, gas or hydrogen, are being tested. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity plants, like the ones RAG plans to build in its Ruhr region coalmines, would seem to be the most promising for storing large amounts of energy.

Significant Intervention

The principle is simple. When a large amount of wind and solar energy is available, it is used to pump water out of the mine tunnels into an artificial lake on the former mine grounds. When there is an electricity shortfall or if the energy supply begins to fluctuate, the floodgates are opened and the water drops through the giant pipes to drive the turbines 1,000 meters below the surface. The entire output becomes available to the grid within a very short amount of time.

These types of systems have long required significant intervention in nature. In facilities like the Schluchsee plant in the Black Forest, operated by utilities EnBW and RWE, pumped-storage systems normally take advantage of differences in altitude in mountainous regions. Installing power lines and turbines often requires expensive blasting, while new reservoirs need to be created at high altitudes.

At RAG, the engineers say enthusiastically, none of this will be necessary. Large amounts of groundwater are already pumped out of the deep shafts today to keep the tunnels dry. The infrastructure -- kilometers of shafts to hold the pipes, large halls for the turbines and the power supply -- already exists. And even the creation of man-made lakes on the decommissioned mine sites will improve the landscape -- and won't likely trigger protests.

It would be possible to build pumped-storage hydroelectricity plants in three locations in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia and two in the southwestern state of Saarland in the next few years, says RAG Director Peter Fischer. They could produce about as much power as two medium-sized nuclear power plants.

The plans, which are being developed in collaboration with the University of Duisburg-Essen, are not entirely new, having sat idle in the drawers of RAG executives for the last few years. But they were long overshadowed by the hope that the German bituminous coal industry, and with it RAG, could be on the verge of a comeback. They hoped that the political decision to phase out coal might be reversed.

Vision of the Future

Now, though, RAG executives have come to see such a change in fortunes as unrealistic. In addition to winding down operations, closing mines and selling parts of the company, they are trying to develop new prospects for RAG and the 24,000 employees it still has today.

The pumped-storage hydroelectricity plants are only part of the company's vision of the future. Powerful wind turbines will be erected on top of the tall waste heaps, known as spoil tips, on the mine grounds. Engineers also plan to install solar panels on the southern slopes of the spoil tips.

Even the mine water -- which has to be pumped out for decades after mine closures to prevent landslides -- will be used to generate energy in the future. At a depth of 1,000 meters, the water is up to 40 degree Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), explains Professor Ulrich Schreiber of the University of Duisburg. That means it is warm enough to heat buildings, residential areas and industrial plants. Initial pilot projects in the Ruhr region cities of Essen, Bottrop and Bochum, where RAG has already connected a few apartment buildings, schools and an outdoor swimming pool to hot water pipes, have apparently been successful.

Using the simplest of methods, says RAG executive Fischer, the company could generate another 600 to 700 megawatts of renewable electricity at its former mine sites. This corresponds to the output of a medium-sized coal power plant, and it doesn't even include the output that would come from the pumped-storage plants.

The company officially unveiled its green vision to the broader public on Monday in Essen, to coincide with the traditional local holiday of Coal Day. RAG has also hired an outside firm to prepare a funding application for a pilot power plant designed to demonstrate that the technology in the depths of coal mines actually works. "It's an ambitious project," says geologist Schreiber. "But the problems are solvable."

The only thing that would still be needed before the project can move ahead on a large scale is the approval of RAG's shareholders, particularly the federal government and the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland.

But in contrast to the difficult negotiations over new coal subsidies in the past, RAG management isn't in the least bit concerned about securing the necessary approval. Even the Greens, the company's biggest critics in the past, have had nothing but praise for the company's new direction.

No Comment Necessary

2011-11-26T07:20:00.000-05:00

Walking on the beach, a mother and daughter observed thousands of starfish, stranded on the beach after a storm that had just ended. They felt bad for all the starfish, doomed to suffocate on dry land. Finally the daughter picked up one of the starfish, walked up to the water, and threw the starfish as deeply into the ocean as she could.

Her mother thought for a few moments, and then asked her daughter, "Dear, what difference does that make? Look how many starfish there are still stuck on the beach!". Her daughter replied, "It made a difference for that starfish!"

Learning From China: Why The Existing Economic Model Will Fail By Lester Brown

2011-11-25T07:18:00.000-05:00

Can We Stop The Next Fukushima Times 10,000?

2011-11-24T07:16:00.000-05:00

OCCUPY

2011-11-23T07:11:00.000-05:00

"They Call it the "American Dream" because you have to be asleep to believe it."

-George Carlin

The Jungle
by Upton Sinclair

The problem with the American people is the fact that there is no one left alive who remembers what life for ordinary working people was like in this country when this book was published in 1905, in the days before unions and workplace regulations. When Upton Sinclair died on November 25 1968, both he and his most famous book were pretty much forgotten. Recent years have seen a resurrection. Do you want to understand where the right wing wants to bring us back to? Read "The Jungle".

Bob McDonnell's Transportation Plans Serve Developers, Not Commuters

2011-11-22T07:08:00.000-05:00

Reposted from The Green Miles

The Coalition for Smarter Growth warns Gov. Bob McDonnell's transportation plans will only add more cars from sprawling new developments to Virginia's existing traffic problems:
The state is borrowing $3 billion in state and federal funds on top of their normal annual spending for transportation, and we'll be paying this back for years. We should be setting smart priorities, but instead, VDOT is:
Reviving the controversial Outer Beltway through historic landscapes at Manassas Battlefield -- the first ten miles of which could cost $250 million to $475 million -- instead of focusing on fixing existing commuter routes in Northern Virginia.
Shifting $200 million in statewide money to a bypass in Charlottesville that won't fix major local traffic problems.
Giving $750 million of our tax dollars to subsidize a private toll road (Route 460) through empty farmland southeast of Richmond.
Meanwhile, when asked to help fund critical Tysons Corner transportation needs, the Examiner reports that "Virginia's Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton warned Fairfax to look elsewhere for cash."
It's not surprising Bob McDonnell's pandering to developers - he's gotten more than $5 million in campaign cash from developers, real estate & construction, by a wide margin his biggest source of private sector contributions. The Coalition for Smarter Growth has a 10-step transportation agenda for Northern Virginia - really radical stuff, like "Bring our local elected officials back to the table in transportation decision making."

OCCUPY

2011-11-21T05:53:00.002-05:00

No Comment Necessary

2011-11-20T02:37:00.000-05:00

World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns

2011-11-19T09:14:00.003-05:00

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.

Anything built from now on that produces carbon will do so for decades, and this "lock-in" effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world's foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.

"The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."

for the rest of the article click here

How Wall Street Occupied America

2011-11-18T11:42:00.000-05:00

by Bill Moyers
The Nation, November 4, 2011

During the prairie revolt that swept the Great Plains in 1890, populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease exclaimed, “Wall Street owns the country…. Money rules…. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us."

She should see us now. John Boehner calls on the bankers, holds out his cup and offers them total obeisance from the House majority if only they fill it. Barack Obama criticizes bankers as “fat cats,” then invites them to dine at a pricey New York restaurant where the tasting menu runs to $195 a person.

That’s now the norm, and they get away with it. The president has raised more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and private equity managers than any Republican candidate, including Mitt Romney. Inch by inch he has conceded ground to them while espousing populist rhetoric that his very actions betray.

Let’s name this for what it is: hypocrisy made worse, the further perversion of democracy. Our politicians are little more than money launderers in the trafficking of power and policy—fewer than six degrees of separation from the spirit and tactics of Tony Soprano.

Why New York’s Zuccotti Park is filled with people is no mystery. Reporters keep scratching their heads and asking, “Why are you here?” But it’s clear they are occupying Wall Street because Wall Street has occupied the country. And that’s why in public places across the nation workaday Americans are standing up in solidarity. Did you see the sign a woman was carrying at a fraternal march in Iowa the other day? It read, I Can’t Afford to Buy a Politician So I Bought This Sign. Americans have learned the hard way that when rich organizations and wealthy individuals shower Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they get what they want.

In his Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, historian Gordon Wood says that our nation discovered its greatness “by creating a prosperous free society belonging to obscure people with their workaday concerns and pecuniary pursuits of happiness.” This democracy, he said, changed the lives of “hitherto neglected and despised masses of common laboring people.”

Those words moved me when I read them. They moved me because Henry and Ruby Moyers were “common laboring people.” My father dropped out of the fourth grade and never returned to school because his family needed him to pick cotton to help make ends meet. Mother managed to finish the eighth grade before she followed him into the fields. They were tenant farmers when the Great Depression knocked them down and almost out. The year I was born my father was making $2 a day working on the highway to Oklahoma City. He never took home more than $100 a week in his working life, and he made that only when he joined the union in the last job he held. I was one of the poorest white kids in town, but in many respects I was the equal of my friend who was the daughter of the richest man in town. I went to good public schools, had the use of a good public library, played sandlot baseball in a good public park and traveled far on good public roads with good public facilities to a good public university. Because these public goods were there for us, I never thought of myself as poor. When I began to piece the story together years later, I came to realize that people like the Moyerses had been included in the American deal. “We, the People” included us.

* * *

It’s heartbreaking to see what has become of that bargain. Nowadays it’s every man for himself. How did this happen? The rise of the money power in our time goes back forty years. We can pinpoint the date. On August 23, 1971, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell—a board member of the death-dealing tobacco giant Philip Morris and a future justice of the Supreme Court—released a confidential memorandum for his friends at the US Chamber of Commerce. We look back on it now as a call to arms for class war waged from the top down.

Recall the context of Powell’s memo. Big business was being forced to clean up its act. Even Republicans had signed on. In 1970 President Nixon put his signature on the National Environmental Policy Act and named a White House Council to promote environmental quality. A few months later millions of Americans turned out for Earth Day. Nixon then agreed to create the Environmental Protection Agency. Congress acted swiftly to pass tough amendments to the Clean Air Act, and the EPA announced the first air pollution standards. There were new regulations directed at lead paint and pesticides. Corporations were no longer getting away with murder.

Powell was shocked by what he called an “attack on the American free enterprise system.” Not just from a few “extremists of the left” but also from “perfectly respectable elements of society,” including the media, politicians and leading intellectuals. Fight back and fight back hard, he urged his compatriots. Build a movement. Set speakers loose across the country. Take on prominent institutions of public opinion—especially the universities, the media and the courts. Keep television programs “monitored the same way textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance.” And above all, recognize that political power must be “assiduously [sic] cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination” and “without embarrassment.”

Powell imagined the Chamber of Commerce as a council of war. Since business executives had “little stomach for hard-nosed contest with their critics” and “little skill in effective intellectual and philosophical debate,” they should create think tanks, legal foundations and front groups of every stripe. These groups could, he said, be aligned into a united front through “careful long-range planning and implementation…consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and united organizations.”

The public wouldn’t learn of the memo until after Nixon appointed Powell to the Supreme Court that same year, 1971. By then his document had circulated widely in corporate suites. Within two years the board of the Chamber of Commerce had formed a task force of forty business executives—from US Steel, GE, GM, Phillips Petroleum, 3M, Amway, and ABC and CBS (two media companies, we should note). Their assignment was to coordinate the crusade, put Powell’s recommendations into effect and push the corporate agenda. Powell had set in motion a revolt of the rich. As historian Kim Phillips-Fein subsequently wrote, “Many who read the memo cited it afterward as inspiration for their political choices.”

They chose swiftly. The National Association of Manufacturers announced that it was moving its main offices to Washington. In 1971 only 175 firms had registered lobbyists in the capital; by 1982 nearly 2,500 did. Corporate PACs increased from fewer than 300 in 1976 to more than 1,200 by the mid-’80s. From Powell’s impetus came the Business Roundtable, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy (precursor to what we now know as Americans for Prosperity) and other organizations united in pushing back against political equality and shared prosperity. They triggered an economic transformation that would in time touch every aspect of our lives.

The Chamber of Commerce, in response to the memo, doubled its membership, tripled its budget and stepped up its lobbying efforts. It’s going stronger than ever. Most recently, it called in its agents in Congress to kill a bill to provide healthcare to 9/11 first responders for illnesses linked to their duty on that day. The bill would have paid for their medical care by ending a special tax loophole exploited by foreign corporations with business interests in America. The Chamber, along with nearly 1,300 business and trade groups, urged Congress to pass the new tax bill, signed into law just before this past Christmas and filled with all kinds of stocking stuffers, including about fifty tax breaks for businesses. The bill gave some of our biggest banks, financial companies and insurance firms another year’s exemption to shield their foreign profits from being taxed here in the United States; among the beneficiaries were giants Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, all of which survived the financial debacle of their own making because taxpayers bailed them out in 2008.

The coalition got another powerful jolt of adrenaline in the late ’70s from the wealthy right-winger who had served as Nixon’s treasury secretary, William Simon. His book A Time for Truth argued that “funds generated by business” must “rush by multimillions” into conservative causes to uproot the institutions and the “heretical strategy” of the New Deal. He called on “men of action in the capitalist world” to mount “a veritable crusade” against progressive America. BusinessWeek (October 12, 1974) somberly explained that “it will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more.”

Those “men of action in the capitalist world” were not content with their wealth just to buy more homes, more cars, more planes, more vacations and more gizmos than anyone else. They were determined to buy more democracy than anyone else. And they succeeded beyond their expectations. After their forty-year “veritable crusade” against our institutions, laws and regulations—against the ideas, norms and beliefs that helped to create America’s iconic middle class—the Gilded Age is back with a vengeance.

If you want to see the story pulled together in one compelling narrative, read Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, by political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. They wanted to know how America had turned into a society starkly divided into winners and losers. They found the culprit: the revolt triggered by Lewis Powell, fired up by William Simon and fueled by rich corporations and wealthy individuals. “Step by step,” they write, “and debate by debate America’s public officials have rewritten the rules of American politics and the American economy in ways that have benefited the few at the expense of the many."

There you have it. They bought off the gatekeeper, got inside and gamed the system. As the rich and powerful got richer and more powerful, they owned and operated the government, “saddling Americans with greater debt, tearing new holes in the safety net, and imposing broad financial risks on Americans as workers, investors, and taxpayers.” Now, write Hacker and Pierson, the United States is looking more and more like “the capitalist oligarchies, like Brazil, Mexico, and Russia,” where most of the wealth is concentrated at the top while the bottom grows larger and larger with everyone in between just barely getting by.

The revolt of the plutocrats was ratified by the Supreme Court in its notorious Citizens United decision last year. Rarely have so few imposed such damage on so many. When five pro-corporate conservative justices gave “artificial legal entities” the same rights of “free speech” as humans, they told our corporate sovereigns that the sky’s the limit when it comes to their pouring money into political campaigns.

The ink was hardly dry on the Citizens United decision when the Chamber of Commerce organized a covertly funded front and rained cash into the 2010 campaigns. According to the Sunlight Foundation, corporate front groups spent $126 million in the fall of 2010 while hiding the identities of the donors. Another corporate cover group—the American Action Network—spent more than $26 million of undisclosed corporate money in just six Senate races and twenty-six House elections. And Karl Rove’s groups, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, seized on Citizens United to raise and spend at least $38 million, which NBC News said came from “a small circle of extremely wealthy Wall Street hedge fund and private equity moguls”—all determined to water down financial reforms that might prevent another collapse of the financial system. Jim Hightower has said it well: today’s proponents of corporate plutocracy “have simply elevated money itself above votes, establishing cold, hard cash as the real coin of political power.”

No wonder so many Americans have felt that sense of political impotence that historian Lawrence Goodwyn described as “the mass resignation” of people who believe in the “dogma of democracy” on a superficial public level but whose hearts no longer burn with the conviction that they are part of the deal. Against such odds, discouragement comes easily. But if the generations before us had given up, slaves would still be waiting on their masters, women would still be turned away from the voting booths on election day and workers would still be committing a crime if they organized.

* * *

So take heart from the past, and don’t ever count the people out. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution created extraordinary wealth at the top and excruciating misery at the bottom. Embattled citizens rose up. Into their hearts, wrote the progressive Kansas journalist William Allen White, “had come a sense that their civilization needed recasting, that their government had fallen into the hands of self-seekers, that a new relation should be established between the haves and have-nots.” Not content to wring their hands and cry “Woe is us,” everyday citizens researched the issues, organized to educate their neighbors, held rallies, made speeches, petitioned and canvassed, marched and marched again. They plowed the fields and planted the seeds—sometimes on bloody ground—that twentieth-century leaders used to restore “the general welfare” as a pillar of American democracy. They laid down the now-endangered markers of a civilized society: legally ordained minimum wages, child labor laws, workers’ safety and compensation laws, pure foods and safe drugs, Social Security, Medicare and rules that promote competitive markets over monopolies and cartels.

The lesson is clear: Democracy doesn’t begin at the top; it begins at the bottom, when flesh-and-blood human beings fight to rekindle what Arlo Guthrie calls “The Patriot’s Dream.”

No Comment Necessary

2011-11-17T11:34:00.000-05:00

OCCUPY

2011-11-16T10:22:00.000-05:00

Actr now, or React later

2011-11-15T08:07:00.000-05:00

The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide has jumped by a record amount, according to the US department of energy, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

"The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," said John Reilly, the co-director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

The world pumped about 564m more tons (512m metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009, an increase of 6%. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries, China, the US and India, the world's top producers of greenhouse gases.

It is a "monster" increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate department of energy figures in the past.

Extra pollution in China and the US account for more than half the increase in emissions last year, Marland said.

"It's a big jump," said Tom Boden, the director of the energy department's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Lab. "From an emissions standpoint, the global financial crisis seems to be over."

Boden said that in 2010 people were travelling, and manufacturing was back up worldwide, spurring the use of fossil fuels, the chief contributor of man-made climate change.

India and China are huge users of coal. Burning coal is the biggest carbon source worldwide and emissions from that jumped nearly 8% in 2010.

"The good news is that these economies are growing rapidly so everyone ought to be for that, right?" Reilly said. "Broader economic improvements in poor countries has been bringing living improvements to people. Doing it with increasing reliance on coal is imperiling the world."

In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its last large report on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. Boden said the latest figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel. Those forecast global temperatures rising between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4-6.4 Celsius) by the end of the century with the best estimate at 7.5 degrees (4 Celsius).

Even though global warming sceptics have criticised the climate change panel as being too alarmist, scientists have generally found their predictions too conservative, Reilly said. He said his university worked on emissions scenarios, their likelihood, and what would happen. The IPCC's worst case scenario was only about in the middle of what MIT calculated are likely scenarios.

Chris Field of Stanford University, head of one of the IPCC's working groups, said the panel's emissions scenarios are intended to be more accurate in the long term and are less so in earlier years. He said the question now among scientists is whether the future is the panel's worst case scenario "or something more extreme".

"Really dismaying," Granger Morgan, head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University, said of the new figures. "We are building up a horrible legacy for our children and grandchildren."

But Reilly and University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver found something good in recent emissions figures. The developed countries that ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas limiting treaty have reduced their emissions overall since then and have achieved their goals of cutting emissions to about 8% below 1990 levels. The US did not ratify the agreement.

In 1990, developed countries produced about 60% of the world's greenhouse gases, now it's probably less than 50%, Reilly said.

"We really need to get the developing world because if we don't, the problem is going to be running away from us," Weaver said. "And the problem is pretty close from running away from us."

OCCUPY

2011-11-14T09:38:00.000-05:00

OCCUPY

2011-11-13T09:37:00.000-05:00

OCCUPY

2011-11-12T09:33:00.000-05:00

No wonder the 1% are winning!

2011-11-11T06:19:00.000-05:00

Beyond the Financial Crisis Germany’s Plan to Regrow the Global Economy

2011-11-10T08:09:00.000-05:00

At the moment, Germany is embroiled in a fierce debate over how to save the Eurozone and, with it, the future of the European Union. Although stringent austerity programs will have to be enacted in the member countries to reduce government debt, and new regulatory mechanisms put in place to oversee European financial institutions and markets, there is a dawning realization that these measures alone will be insufficient to assure the future of Europe and its member states. What's required, above all else, is a new sustainable economic growth plan that can take Europe into the future. That's beginning to happen.

While the rest of the world is in a near panic over the prospect of a second collapse of the global economy, a fresh new economic wind is blowing across Germany. In discussions with German business leaders over the past several months, and in recent conversations with Chancellor Angela Merkel and key political leaders in Berlin, it has become clear that Germany is embarking on a journey into a new economic era. The German plan is based on the historical understanding that the great economic paradigm shifts in history occur when new communications revolutions converge and merge with new energy regimes. New energy revolutions make possible more expansive and integrated trade. Accompanying communication revolutions manage the speed and complexity of commercial activity made possible by the new flow of energy. Today, the distributed Internet communication revolution is converging with distributed renewable energies, giving birth to a powerful Third Industrial Revolution that is going to fundamentally change German society.

The Merkel administration has launched an ambitious effort to transition the West's leading exporting power into a Third Industrial Revolution (TIR). The federal government has teamed up with six regions across Germany to test the introduction of an "energy Internet" that will allow tens of thousands of German businesses and millions of home owners to collect renewable energies onsite, store them in the form of hydrogen, and share green electricity across Germany in a smart utility network, just like we now share information online. Entire communities are in the process of transforming their commercial and residential buildings into green micro-power plants, and companies like Siemens and Bosch are creating sophisticated new IT software, hardware, and appliances that will merge distributed Internet communications with distributed energy to create the smart buildings, infrastructure, and cities of the future.

The transition into the new Industrial Revolution is quickly picking up momentum. In May, the government announced that the country's 17 nuclear power plants would be shut down by 2022. Then, in late summer, the German Association of Energy and Water Companies reported for the first time that renewable energy sources now account for nearly 20% of the country's electricity, putting Germany ahead of schedule in its goal of producing 35% of its electricity from green energy by 2022. On September 12th, Dr. Dieter Zetsche, the Chairman of Daimler, unveiled the company's hydrogen fuel-cell car at the opening of the Frankfurt International Auto Show. The company that launched the Second Industrial Revolution 125 years ago with the invention of the gasoline-powered automobile has joined with seven industrial partners -- EnBW, Linde, OMV, Shell, Total, Vattenfall, and the National Organization of Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology -- in a partnership to establish hydrogen fueling stations across Germany in preparation for the mass production of zero-emission fuel cell vehicles in 2015, signaling the beginning of the post-carbon auto era and a Third Industrial Revolution.

The creation of a renewable energy regime, loaded by buildings, partially stored in the form of hydrogen, distributed via an energy internet, and connected to plug-in zero-emission transport, establishes the essential 5-Pillars of a Third Industrial Revolution. The forty year build out will create thousands of businesses and millions of sustainable jobs and position Germany as the leader in the next industrial revolution.

Germany's ability to export the new model throughout the European Union and in its partnership regions in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and beyond, will set the framework for the next great stage of European integration, and ultimately determine whether the European political experiment and the European Dream succeeds or fails.

The opportunity is clear. The European Union has 500 million consumers and an additional 500 million potential consumers in its partnership regions, giving it the prospect of becoming the largest and wealthiest internal commercial market in the world. The key is creating a seamless green energy infrastructure, electricity grid, and communication and transport network that will allow one billion people to engage in "sustainable" commerce and trade across the European continent and its periphery. This represents the next stage of European integration as a political union.

In May 2007, the European Parliament issued a formal written declaration endorsing the Third Industrial Revolution (TIR) vision as the long-term economic road map for the European Union. The Third Industrial Revolution is currently being implemented by the various agencies within the European Commission as well as in the member states.

Now, Germany, the economic engine of the European Union, has set out on a course to quickly transform its economy into the new economic paradigm and serve as a lighthouse for moving the Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure across the European space. To the extent that Germany can effectively create a sustainable and prosperous post-carbon Europe and transform the continent into the largest integrated market space in the world, Germany will prosper, and the European Union will come of age. Other continental markets and continental unions in Asia, Africa, and the Americas will likely follow suit.

The world community will be watching the German experiment closely to see whether this new economic model can serve as a template for ushering in a new economic era. Germany's future, as well as Europe's and the world, depends on its success.

No Comment Necessary

2011-11-09T11:02:00.000-05:00

A U.S. Government Loan To Create Foreign Jobs

2011-11-08T11:01:00.000-05:00

There are some people who claim they don't understand why the Occupy Wall Street movement has become so popular with the public. After all they say, don't corporations have the right to make money. Perhaps the following story will give them a clue.

The car shown above is an electric car being built by a company called Fisker Automotive. A couple of years ago this company needed money to proceed with designing and building their electric car, but they couldn't find the financing. So they went to the American government. The United States government guaranteed a $529 million loan, and praised the company as being an example of a new company creating new jobs.

So what happened? Well, the company has hired 500 workers and they are currently hard at work building the new electric car. The only problem is that those 500 new jobs are in Finland. That's right, the corporation took the money and went to Finland to build their car -- which I'm sure they would be happy to sell to Americans (if any Americans could afford it since it costs about $97,000).

Now this wasn't money that the government pulled out of thin air. It was the hard-earned money of American taxpayers, and those taxpayers certainly didn't want to spend over $500 million to create new jobs in Finland. If this corporate mogul wanted to build cars in Finland, he should have asked the Finnish government to loan him the money -- except the Finnish government spends the bulk of its money on the Finnish people, not corporate giveaways.

It would be bad enough if this was a one-time deal, a rare occurrence -- but it isn't. This kind of corporate greed happens every day in this country. All kinds of corporations get tax breaks, loans, bailouts, and subsidies. Then they either put that money into executive bonuses or they create jobs in other countries (usually countries where they can underpay and abuse the workers). The one thing they don't do with that money is create jobs in America. And those corporations don't even need the giveaways, since they are already making record profits.

And to pay for those giveaways to the giant corporations, the government slashes social programs which are needed to help hurting Americans (and are even talking about abolishing or severely cutting Medicare and Social Security). The government, which is supposed to protect and defend the American people, has become little more than a conduit for funneling money to the corporations and the super-rich. And the politicians, especially the Republicans and Blue Dogs, just don't seem to care. They get too much money from the rich and the corporations for their campaign chests to bother with caring about ordinary Americans.

This has gone on for too long, and the people are angry. They want change and an economic system that is fairer to all Americans. They want the government to spend its money wisely helping people who need it -- not corporations who don't need it or appreciate it. That's why Occupy Wall Street has struck a chord with people all over this country -- and that's why it will continue to grow.

No Comment Necessary

2011-11-07T10:56:00.000-05:00

I have spent enough time in Kentucky to know firsthand that it is populated by good, decent, hard working people. So why do they keep sending a despicable, corrupt little thug like Mitch McConnell to Washington? This I'm dying to know.

In fact, the same question would apply to the people of Ohio and Virginia with respect to John Boehner and Eric Cantor. What were they thinking when they chose this axis of reaction to represent them in Washington? Before Barack Obama had a chance to find the location of the White House linen closet, McConnell was telling the world that his main objective would be to ensure that this would be a one-term administration. In fact that has been the policy of the GOP since January 20, 2009. Early this year when the numbers of unemployed people in this country began to go down, Republican governors - in Republican-controlled states - began slashing-to-ribbons public sector jobs in order to make sure that those numbers went right back up.

BREAKING NEWS: THEY DON"T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!!! Film at eleven.

Folks, that is not a political party. That's an organized criminal enterprise. Those aren't statesmen. Those are the plutocracy's hired goons. This isn't America any longer. This is something else entirely; something dark and ominous. That's why what is happening down on Wall Street - indeed all across the land - is so important. We are now into the second month of the occupation. It won't be going away any time soon. This is only the beginning of something really, really big, baby! A hard rain's a'gonna fall. Forgive me if I seem giddy.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

OCCUPY

2011-11-06T10:52:00.000-05:00

Protesters Against Wall Street
As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions.

The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.

The protests, though, are more than a youth uprising. The protesters’ own problems are only one illustration of the ways in which the economy is not working for most Americans. They are exactly right when they say that the financial sector, with regulators and elected officials in collusion, inflated and profited from a credit bubble that burst, costing millions of Americans their jobs, incomes, savings and home equity. As the bad times have endured, Americans have also lost their belief in redress and recovery.

The initial outrage has been compounded by bailouts and by elected officials’ hunger for campaign cash from Wall Street, a toxic combination that has reaffirmed the economic and political power of banks and bankers, while ordinary Americans suffer.

Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government backing as by productive investment.

No Comment Necessary

2011-11-05T10:50:00.000-04:00

Which Bank Is the Worst for America? 5 Behemoths That Hold Our Political System Hostage

2011-11-04T10:41:00.000-04:00

The economic crash led to the loss of 9 million jobs and the biggest drop in American home-ownership since the Great Depression.

Long-term unemployment, poverty and hunger have increased dramatically. People are angry. The Occupy Wall Street movement, a stand against Wall Street's greed, excess and criminality, has captured the imagination and participation of millions across the nation and the globe.

The giant mortgage bubble and the irresponsible and corrupt practices that caused the catastrophic economic crash didn't emerge out of thin air. They were a consequence of decades of pay-to-play politics rife with conflicts of interest; a political system awash in cash and legal pay-offs, designed to undermine the checks and balances that could have prevented the meltdown.

Many of these checks and balances were implemented during the Great Depression. How they were eroded and eventually abandoned is the story of a small group of banks, financial companies and elites involved in major conflicts of interest, revolving-door politics and backroom deal-making -- all to protect the interests of the global elite at the expense of the American public.

For the rest of the article Click Here

10 Ways to Support the Occupy Movement

2011-11-03T10:36:00.000-04:00

1. Show up at the occupied space near you.
2. Start your own occupation.
3. Support those who are occupying.
4. Speak out. Get into the debates and the teach-ins.
5. Share your story.
6. Be the media.
7. Name the meaning of this moment.
8. Insist that public officials treat the occupations with respect.
9. Study and teach nonviolent techniques.
10. Be resilient.

Click Here for Details

No Comment Necessary

2011-11-02T10:17:00.000-04:00

Building in Harare, Zimbabwe mimics termite mounds to maintain nearly constant temperature.

2011-11-01T09:55:00.000-04:00

Biomimicry’s Cool Alternative: Eastgate Centre in Zimbabwe The Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, typifies the best of green architecture and ecologically sensitive adaptation. The country’s largest office and shopping complex is an architectural marvel in its use of biomimicry principles. The mid-rise building, designed by architect Mick Pearce in conjunction with engineers at Arup Associates, has no conventional air-conditioning or heating, yet stays regulated year round with dramatically less energy consumption using design methods inspired by indigenous Zimbabwean masonry and the self-cooling mounds of African termites!

Termites in Zimbabwe build gigantic mounds inside of which they farm a fungus that is their primary food source. The fungus must be kept at exactly 87 degrees F, while the temperatures outside range from 35 degrees F at night to 104 degrees F during the day. The termites achieve this remarkable feat by constantly opening and closing a series of heating and cooling vents throughout the mound over the course of the day. With a system of carefully adjusted convection currents, air is sucked in at the lower part of the mound, down into enclosures with muddy walls, and up through a channel to the peak of the termite mound. The industrious termites constantly dig new vents and plug up old ones in order to regulate the temperature.

The Eastgate Centre, largely made of concrete, has a ventilation system which operates in a similar way. Outside air that is drawn in is either warmed or cooled by the building mass depending on which is hotter, the building concrete or the air. It is then vented into the building’s floors and offices before exiting via chimneys at the top. The complex also consists of two buildings side by side that are separated by an open space that is covered by glass and open to the local breezes.

Air is continuously drawn from this open space by fans on the first floor. It is then pushed up vertical supply sections of ducts that are located in the central spine of each of the two buildings. The fresh air replaces stale air that rises and exits through exhaust ports in the ceilings of each floor. Ultimately it enters the exhaust section of the vertical ducts before it is flushed out of the building through chimneys.

The Eastgate Centre uses less than 10% of the energy of a conventional building its size. These efficiencies translate directly to the bottom line: Eastgate’s owners have saved $3.5 million alone because of an air-conditioning system that did not have to be implemented. Outside of being eco-efficient and better for the environment, these savings also trickle down to the tenants whose rents are 20 percent lower than those of occupants in the surrounding buildings.

Who would have guessed that the replication of designs created by termites would not only provide for a sound climate control solution but also be the most cost-effective way for humans to function in an otherwise challenging context?

Read more: Green Building in Zimbabwe Modeled After Termite Mounds Eastgate Center Harare Zimbabwe Africa sustainable architecture biomimicry termite mound construction natural cooling ventilation – Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

Renewable Energy Fosters a Boom in Depressed German State

2011-10-31T08:01:00.000-04:00

ROSTOCK, GERMANY — Renewable energy has created a gold rush atmosphere in northeastern Germany, the country’s poorhouse, giving the region good jobs and great promise.

The natural resources attracting investors and industry are of a simple variety: wind, sunshine, agricultural products and farm waste like liquid manure.

The rush to tap green resources in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is reminiscent of the frenzies that came with gold or oil discoveries in past centuries. The buzz can be felt in towns and sparkling new factories across the state, which is on the shores of the Baltic.

“Renewable energy has become extremely valuable for our state,” its premier, Erwin Sellering, said during an interview. “It’s just a great opportunity — producing renewable energy and creating manufacturing jobs.”

“From an industrial point of view, we’d been one of Germany’s weaker areas,” he continued. “But the country is abandoning nuclear power. That will work only if there’s a corresponding — and substantial — increase in renewables. It’ll be one of Germany’s most important sectors in the future. We want to be up there leading the way.”

The national government did an about-face on nuclear power after the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan, set off by the earthquake and tsunami on March 11. Germany shut eight nuclear plants and plans to close the remaining nine by 2022.

The country is a world leader in renewable energy and wants an even larger share of the $211 billion global market. A fifth of its electricity comes from renewables, up from 6 percent in 2000, and it aims to increase that to 35 percent in 2020.

There are some clouds on the horizon. State-mandated incentives, which fueled a private investment boom, have been cut, squeezing profit margins in sectors like solar energy.

There have also been delays in expanding and improving the national grid of high-voltage transmission lines from sparsely populated coastal regions like Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to areas where the power is needed, in the west and south. The German government is working to remove infrastructure bottlenecks, but if the grid is not expanded soon, there could be problems later, when more power from offshore wind starts being produced.

Renewable energies, especially wind energy, are injecting new optimism into Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, reflected in a word that often comes up in conversations with business and political leaders: reindustrialization.

In a state with a seafaring heritage, there are now more jobs in renewable energy than in shipyards: 6,000 jobs at 704 companies, a number expected to reach 22,000 by 2020.

Companies are building, designing, maintaining and operating wind turbines and photovoltaic plants, as well as biomass plants, for which farmers are growing crops and collecting animal waste. There are more than 1,200 wind turbines on land, and a new push into offshore wind energy in the Baltic will further fuel that growth.

Many new jobs are at companies like Nordex, which employs 1,000 in Rostock making lightweight rotor blades — as long as 65 meters, or 215 feet — for wind turbines. Nordex has invested €100 million, or $139 million, in expanding its plant and exports 95 percent of its output.

These are sorely needed, highly skilled jobs in a sparsely populated state whose industrial base was devastated by the economic upheaval that accompanied reunification in 1990.

There were 32,800 jobs in the once bustling shipyards around the port city of Rostock when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. But most were wiped out when the shipbuilding industry in eastern Germany collapsed in the face of surging labor costs and fierce competition. There are only 3,300 shipyard jobs left, and the industry’s demise epitomized the east’s decline.

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania became one of the poorest regions in Germany. The jobless rate soared to 20 percent in 2004, double the national average, and the population fell 250,000 to 1.6 million, as many young, well-educated people moved to the more prosperous west in search of jobs. More than 8,000 left the state in 2008, but only 3,500 moved away in 2010.

The prospect that some areas could turn into ghost towns was an explosive issue, but the gloom is lifting, as unemployment has nearly been halved. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which had the worst jobless rate among Germany’s 16 states in 2007, now has a lower rate than the states of Berlin and Bremen.

“There’s a new sense of optimism, thanks to sectors such as renewable energy, and the migration westwards was slowed if not completely stopped,” said Edeltraud Günther, a professor of environmental management at the Technical University of Dresden.

Jürgen Trittin, a leader of the Greens in Berlin, said a renewables law drafted by his party in 2000 had proved unexpectedly successful in creating jobs across the east. “All of the east is benefiting from that,” he said. “The jobs growth is going to continue with the push into offshore.”

Germany’s first commercial offshore wind park, Baltic 1 — a €48 million project with 21 turbines made by Siemens and operated by EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg — began pumping enough power for 53,000 households into the grid in May from 16 kilometers, or 10 miles, north of the coast. By 2013, EnBW aims to complete 80 more offshore wind turbines in the Baltic 2 development, 32 kilometers offshore.

Germany expects to have 25 megawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030, produced by 4,000 wind turbines.

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania already gets half of its electricity from regenerative sources — nearly four gigawatt-hours, a fivefold increase since 2000. It aims to cover its entire electricity needs by 2017 and then export the surplus to other states. By 2020, it expects to have 12 gigawatt-hours of renewable energy, enough for three million households. The state will then produce enough power for itself and two neighboring states.

“The natural conditions for renewable energy here are good,” said Mr. Sellering, the state’s premier. “The first goal is to cover our own electricity requirements. Then we want to be an energy-exporting state.”

Warren Buffett – How to Fix Congress

2011-10-30T05:35:00.000-04:00

Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best
quotes about the debt ceiling:

“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes,” he told CNBC. “You just pass a law
that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all
sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only
3 months &8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That
was in 1971…before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less
to become the law of the land…all because of public pressure.

Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum
of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do
likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the
message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.

Congressional Reform Act of 2011
1. No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when
they are out of office.

2. Congress (past, present &future) participates in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security
system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system,
and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for
any other purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans
do.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay
will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the
same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American
people.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective
1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen.
Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress
is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen
legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to
work.

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take
three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. Maybe it
is time.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!!

If you agree with the above, pass it on. If not, just delete.

Must Watch

2011-10-29T09:34:00.000-04:00

Watch This

2011-10-28T05:01:00.000-04:00

Time to Restart this!

2011-10-27T07:39:00.000-04:00