When Peter Hart Associates asked registered voters recently who they felt was benefiting from the government’s economic policies, the resounding answer was that the hundreds of billions poured into the economy have done far more to help those at the top of the economic food chain than those on the bottom. A paltry 13 percent of those interviewed for the September 2009 survey said that the average Joe and Jill have been ‘helped a lot or a fair amount’ — compared to 65 percent who think regular folks have gotten little or no assistance from the government. Fully 54 percent of respondents said Wall Street investment companies have been helped – and nearly two-thirds said the large banks have been taken care of. The voters seem to have gotten it about right. ‘In relative terms, the perceptions are dead-on: the big winners so far are the bailed-out bankers. Meanwhile on the jobs and housing front, things get worse,’ says University of Texas economist James Galbraith. ‘You can make an argument that everyone has been helped by the fact that the economy hasn’t collapsed even more completely,’ Galbraith added, but that does not ‘cut any ice with the […]
When Dave Boileau was out on a walk Monday evening near his home in Iqaluit’s Happy Valley, he saw a sign of spring that’s usually reserved for the South: a pair of chubby, red-breasted robins. Boileau, who always brings a camera with him on his walks, snapped photos of the birds before they flew off singing. ‘It was kind of neat,’ Bouleau said. ‘I thought they were snow buntings – before I noticed the red.’ This isn’t the first time that robins have been spotted in Iqaluit. During the summer of 1999, robins nested near the beach below Happy Valley. These robins, numbering at least two adults and a juvenile, were seen several times near the Iqaluit cemetery and along the walking trail to Apex. Since then, robin sightings have come from as far away as Baker Lake, Kugluktuk, Arviat and Rankin Inlet. Robins have also been sighted along the Ungava Bay coast of Nunavik, where they are known as ‘ikkariliit’ (a name that echoes the sound of the robin’s song). Robins generally migrate north along with average temperatures of 2.2 C. Thanks to warming temperatures in south Baffin, this means robins can […]
When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan. A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed. But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency. ‘I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,’ he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department’s head of personnel. ‘I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.’ The reaction to Hoh’s letter was immediate. Senior U.S. officials, concerned that they […]
Around the world Saturday, environmental activists touted the number ‘350’ as a way to recognize the seriousness of global climate change. It’s not a secret code. The number refers to the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere – meeting a goal of 350 parts per million (ppm), which is considerably less than the current level of 387 ppm. The ‘International Day of Climate Action’ includes more than 4,500 events in 173 countries. Everything from skiers in New Zealand spelling out ‘350’ on a snowy slope to a mass bike ride in Canada to tree planting in Ghana. Here’s an interactive map of the day’s activities. ‘It seems far-fetched that you could get this many people to rally around a scientific data point, but the number just keeps climbing,’ says Bill McKibben, author, activist, and founder of 350.0rg. ‘It shows just how scared of global warming much of the planet really is, and how fed up at the inaction of our leaders.’ Environmentalists see today’s events as a call to action – in the US Congress and at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December. ‘The Arctic is already melting, sea level […]
Over at WalletPop, they’ve looked closer into a big recent auction of foreclosed properties in Detroit, and it’s an even bleaker situation than first reported. The Wayne County auction of some 9,000 repossessed properties last week resulted in more than 80 percent of them failing to draw a single bid. And that’s even with the minimum bid starting at just $500. The fact that Rust Belt cities such as Detroit and Cleveland are plagued with foreclosed properties isn’t a new development. But what happened at that Detroit auction gives a glimpse into how acute the problem is. WalletPop explains: The auction didn’t go smoothly, however. Out-of-town speculators cherry-picked prime properties in areas such as the Boston-Edison district, while locals who showed up too late for registration weren’t permitted to take part. That’s the scandal. One of the reasons distressed communities have begun fighting for tools such as land banks - public enterprises that allow a community to quickly acquire abandoned and foreclosed properties, so they can be cleaned up and put to use – is to prevent speculators from playing games with foreclosed properties, while local officials watch helplessly. But as we’ve […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
