Thursday, November 18th, 2010
ERIC DOLEN, - The Raw Story
Stephan: The mainstream media I find increasingly lazy. More and more its practitioners seem to accept pretty much at face value what they are told -- unless there is a sex scandal somewhere in the story. This story doesn't have much sex in it, so it isn't getting much play. It is about attempting to buy an election, and shape a system that impacts each of our lives in the most fundamental way. We don't have universal health care, or single payer because of this.
Health insurance companies gave $86.2 million to the US Chamber of Commerce last year to oppose the health care reform bill, tax records show.
Companies such as UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Cigna Corp. funneled the money into the Chamber of Commerce’s anti-health reform campaign after Democrats began talk of increasing regulations on the insurance industry, Bloomberg reports.
The Chamber of Commerce used the $86.2 million to pay for advertisements, polling, and events to create opposition to the bill.
The funds were used to ‘advance a market-based health care system and advocate for fundamental reform that would improve access to quality care while lowering costs,’ the Chamber of Commerce said in a statement.
Health insurance companies tried to appear as if they supported health care reform while working to defeat in it private, according to the liberal blog ThinkProgress.
‘In public, health insurance lobbyists and executives promised to support reform and work closely with reform advocates,’ said Lee Fang. ‘In private, the health insurance industry worked with conservative think tanks and media, right-wing front groups, and highly ideological trade associations like the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber to kill the bill.’
Wendell Potter, the former vice president of corporate communications for Cigna Corp., told ThinkProgress […]
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Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
Stephan: I supported the bailout of GM because it meant the continuation of thousands of jobs, and I felt new people would have to come into management. If that happened the money would be a good investment. And thus it is proving. We need to make things here. This can be accomplished by changing the tax code which presently rewards moving offshore. Additionally, we need to rebuild our infrastructure, and the money to do this should come out of the defense budget. We spend more than the rest of the world combined on 'defense.' At the same time short of an active combat region, as anyone will tell you who travels aboard, the U.S. is the society with the highest fear factor. What does that tell you?
The US car giant General Motors (GM) says its offer of shares to the public could raise $18bn (£11.3bn), $5bn more than first hoped.
Investor interest in the sale means demand has rocketed and increased the price the company can charge.
The company is currently more than 60% owned by the US government which is keen to return it to the market.
It plans to sell 365 million common shares for up to 18% more than first estimated at a price of $33 each.
It will also now offer $4bn in preferred stock – four times the original value planned.
Preferred stock carries different rights and will help to pay off the company’s pension debt – one of the concerns of potential investors in the share sale.
According to the Reuters news agency, a price for the common stock of $33 per share would give GM a market value of about $63bn – close to the $66bn value that GM needs in order for US taxpayers to break even, based on the US Treasury’s remaining common stock holding and a share price projection by the Treasury’s special inspector general.
The stock is expected to begin trading on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges on Thursday.
The company […]
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Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
FRANCES WHITE, - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Stephan: This is about as measured an explanation of the Himalayan glacial hydrology as one is likely to find, so it is worth paying attention to it. It's almost painfully middle of the road; look how carefully words are chosen. The report, Changing Glaciers and Hydrology in Asia: Addressing Vulnerability to Glacier Melt Impacts, was prepared in collaboration with Battelle and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Battelle operates the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. Malone works from the Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Md., a collaboration between PNNL and the University of Maryland.
The report will be available at online at www.usaid.gov.
WASHINGTON — Though the massive glaciers of the greater Himalayan region are retreating slowly, development agencies can take steps now to help the region’s communities prepare for the many ways glacier melt is expected to impact their lives, according to a new report. Programs that integrate health, education, the environment and social organizations are needed to adequately address these impacts, the report states.
‘The extremely high altitudes and sheer mass of High Asian glaciers mean they couldn’t possibly melt in the next few decades,’ said Elizabeth Malone, a Battelle sociologist and the report’s technical lead. ‘But climate change is still happening and we do need to prepare for it. That’s especially true in this part of the world, where poverty and other concerns make its residents very vulnerable to any change.’
The report, Changing Glaciers and Hydrology in Asia: Addressing Vulnerability to Glacier Melt Impacts, was prepared in collaboration with Battelle and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Battelle operates the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. Malone works from the Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Md., a collaboration between PNNL and the University of Maryland.
Malone will join Mary Melnyk, a USAID natural resource management […]
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Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
JUSTIN GILLIS, - The New York Times
Stephan: For those who want to know more about the Roman tanks and their implications for the global warming debate, this video of a talk by Harvard scientist Jerry X. Mitrovica sheds additional light.
Sea level is rising in relation to many of the world’s shorelines, and has been for decades. The main reason is that the volume of the ocean is increasing as a result of the melting of land ice and the warming of the sea itself. (Warm water expands, just as warm air does.)
Scientists once thought this volume increase had been going on, in fits and starts, for thousands of years. This widespread belief was often used as a debating point by climate-change skeptics, who argued that sea-level rise was nothing to worry about because it had existed throughout the history of human civilization.
But research in recent years has turned that notion on its head. The matter is not entirely settled, but some persuasive evidence points to the conclusion that the volume of the ocean was fairly stable for the last 2,000 years and began rising only recently, more or less in sync with industrialization. This is important because it suggests that sea level might be pretty sensitive to the greenhouse gases that humans are dumping into the atmosphere.
I made a brief mention of this issue in a long article on Sunday on sea-level rise but did not have the […]
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Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
ELIZABETH KOLBERT, - The New Yorker
Stephan: This is why your children, and their children, will live in a world radically different than the one we are living in now. And most of the changes will be unhappy ones that will make their lives much harder.
Darrell Issa, a Republican representative from California, is one of the richest men in Congress. He made his money selling car alarms, which is interesting, because he has twice been accused of auto theft. (Issa has said that he had a ‘colorful youth.
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