The front line in the fight to save the Louisiana coast could be found an hour’s boat ride offshore from the fishing town of Venice, where the fingerling tributaries of the Mississippi dump into the Gulf of Mexico. About a mile from the turbulent waters of the Gulf Thursday morning, in a waterway called the South Pass, a pair of 30-foot work boats were sidled up behind larger crew boats. Workers in hard hats were passing long lengths of boom, or floating barriers, to the smaller boats, which would then ferry them out to the gulf. The workers did their job quickly and quietly; the only noise at times was from the idling engines and the sound of strong southerly winds whipping through the cane-covered wetlands. The lengths of boom resembled long strips of lifejackets: safety-orange colored, filled with buoyant foam, and covered in orange waterproof material. When a work boat was filled to groaning with boom, it would head out toward the Gulf of Mexico, where workers were laying it out. A number of boom lines were visible around the mouth of the pass: one long line paralleled the south-facing coast of a small island. It looked […]
The Pentagon has already made it well known that it considers climate change a grave national security threat, and recently the US military already pointed out that the world may face severe oil shortages as soon as 2015. But now, in what’s being hailed as an ‘unprecedented’ show of support for climate action, 33 retired US military generals and admirals have united to alert the public and our legislators that ‘climate change is making the world a more dangerous place.’ They should know — they’ve seen its effects firsthand. Here’s their full announcement: Dear Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Climate change is threatening America’s security. The Pentagon and security leaders of both parties consider climate disruption to be a ‘threat multiplier’ – it exacerbates existing problems by decreasing stability, increasing conflict, and incubating the socioeconomic conditions that foster terrorist recruitment. The State Department, the National Intelligence Council and the CIA all agree, and all are planning for future climate-based threats. America’s billion-dollar-a-day dependence on oil makes us vulnerable to unstable and unfriendly regimes. A substantial amount of that oil […]
Anthem Blue Cross used deeply flawed math and assumptions when it announced plans to hike premiums by as much as 39 percent for thousands of California subscribers, the Department of Insurance announced Thursday. Acknowledging that it had made ‘inadvertent miscalculations,’ the state’s largest for-profit health insurer said it would withdraw its controversial rate filing. The company said it is considering re-submitting its filing as soon as next month but did not disclose specifics. The decision to withdraw its original proposal brings relief to more than 700,000 Blue Cross subscribers in California who buy health policies on their own. The proposed rate hikes caused an uproar not only among cash-strapped consumers, but also among elected officials in Sacramento and on Capitol Hill. They summoned company executives for hearings that served as a sideshow to the unfolding political spectacle over a massive health care overhaul. Some considered the health care legislation all but dead in January, when the rate hikes stoked public anger and rekindled passion among advocates for change. Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, a Republican running for governor, hired an outside actuary in February to investigate the proposed rate hike. ‘We found substantial mistakes,’ Poizner […]
WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy grew at a slightly slower-than-expected pace in the first quarter, held back by inventories and exports, but resurgent consumer spending offered evidence of a sustainable recovery, a government report showed on Friday. Global Markets Gross domestic product expanded at a 3.2 percent pace, the Commerce Department said in its first estimate — marking three straight quarters of growth as the economy climbs out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast GDP, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, growing at a 3.4 percent rate in the first three months of 2010 after a 5.6 percent growth pace in the fourth quarter. Despite the slowdown from the prior quarter, details of the report were fairly upbeat, with consumer spending accelerating at a 3.6 percent rate, more than double the 1.6 percent pace in the fourth quarter. The first-quarter rise was the largest since the first quarter of 2007. Consumer spending, which normally accounts for 70 percent of U.S. economic activity, added 2.55 percentage points to GDP last quarter, the biggest percentage contribution since the fourth quarter of 2006. Business inventories increased […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
