Monday, February 21st, 2011
Stephan: We are now entering a kind of Dickensian nightmare. Drug treatment and counseling is one the reasons violent crime involving drugs has dropped in recent years. This will now reverse, at least in Illinois. There will also be a sharp increase in the use of emergency rooms around the state, as those previously served by the drug centers revert to hospitals. The death rate will also go up, as will crime, as desperate addicts also revert. In the end this will probably end up costing the state most of what it saves, and will significantly coarsen life, particularly in large cities like Chicago. This is social policy driven by ideological 'values' instead of facts. It is no less hair-brained than communism; indeed it is its antipode.
The harsh reality of the budget cuts proposed by Illinois governor Pat Quinn will become very real for tens of thousands of residents, as the state prepares to kill all funding for its drug treatment and prevention programs.
Only federal Medicaid dollars will fund drug treatment centers starting March 15, meaning that services at centers statewide will face drastic cuts.
Sara Howe, CEO of the Illinois Alcoholism and Drug Dependence Association told the News-Gazette that ’80 percent of our clients on March 15 would be thrown out of care.’ That adds up to around 55,000 people who will lose their help battling drugs.
‘It’s the most devastating picture possible,’ Howe said.
According to Eric Foster, also of IADDA, that includes up to 32,000 youth who will lose access to prevention programs, with disastrous possible ramifications, The Telegraph reports.
With a mounting budget crisis over the past several years, funding for treatment and prevention programs has already been seriously eroded, as a separate News-Gazette piece reads:
Prairie [Treatment] Center’s funding was cut by $900,000 in 2008, forcing it to close its detoxification program and lay off 22 employees. The detox program reopened after some of the money was restored and six nurses were […]
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Sunday, February 20th, 2011
STEVE CONNOR, Science Editor - The Independent (U.K.)
Stephan: Further evidence showing the gathering momentum of the collapse of American society.
China is in pole position to overtake the United States as the premier nation for scientific and technological innovation, and will do so if Americans fail to raise their game, President Barrack Obama’s own science adviser has told The Independent on Sunday.
John Holdren, the director of the White House office of science and technology policy, explained that the US faces a similar technological challenge to the one it faced half a century ago when the USSR launched the world’s first satellite – to the surprise of the Americans.
He warned that the United States faces another ‘Sputnik moment’, but this time the adversary is China, which is investing heavily in scientific research and development. Chinese schoolchildren are now consistently outperforming USpupils in science and mathematics.
‘Everybody is looking at China and saying, if we don’t lift our game, China is going to eat our lunch economically because the amount they are investing in science, technology and innovation, while it has not yet reached anything like our level, is rising very quickly,’ Dr Holdren said.
President Obama said in his State of the Union address last month that Americans today face their own ‘Sputnik moment’ and that the US needs to reach a level […]
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Sunday, February 20th, 2011
Stephan: There is nothing really surprising about this; it is pretty much what I expected they would find in the gulf. BP killed it for a generation. What amazes me is the sheeplike complacency of so much of the American population. The Right, obsessed with attacking women, seems completely indifferent to any of the real issues we face. The Left cannot seem to get its act together to make a serious response to the massive corruption of our political system by the corporatocracy.
WASHINGTON — Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a scientist’s video and slides that demonstrate the oil isn’t degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.
At a science conference in Washington, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn’t.
‘There’s some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn’t seem to be degrading,’ Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook about the health of the gulf, saying microbes did great work munching the oil.
‘Magic microbes consumed maybe 10 percent of the total discharge, the rest of it we don’t know,’ Joye said, later adding: ‘there’s a lot of it out there.’
The head of the agency in charge of the health of the Gulf said Saturday […]
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Sunday, February 20th, 2011
TERRY BARRETT, - National Weather Service
Stephan: Very soon water supply forecasts are going to be a regular staple of weather reports. While the deniers chant their mantras the world is changing before our eyes.
Following is the text of the U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook as released by the National Weather Service in Camp Springs, Maryland:
Latest Seasonal Assessment – The drought outlook for Spring (March-May) 2011, made on February 17, was based largely upon climate anomalies associated with an ongoing, mature La Ni? that has begun to weaken, with ENSO-neutral or La Nina conditions equally likely by May-June. The CPC monthly and seasonal outlooks indicate enhanced odds for below median precipitation and above median temperatures across the southern tier of the Nation and in the central Plains which favors drought persistence from southern Arizona eastward into the southern and central Plains, along the Gulf Coast States, and northward into the Carolina Piedmont. Similarly, drought development is forecast across much of the rest of the southern U.S., from southwestern Arizona eastward into the southern and central Plains, northern and southeastern Texas, and along parts of the Gulf and southern and middle Atlantic Coasts. Although there were some concerns in the Northwest that spring drought development was possible after a mild and very dry January, a good start to their wet season plus ongoing storms and enhanced odds of above median March precipitation suppresses any notion of […]
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Sunday, February 20th, 2011
, - United Business media
Stephan: Even the business press can see what is happening.
WASHINGTON — Even as a fierce debate rages in Congress today about whether or not to handcuff the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to deal with coal-fired power plant pollution, a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants in the U.S. rose 5.56 percent in 2010 over the year before, the biggest annual increase since the EPA began tracking emissions in 1995. The report is based on data from the EPA’s ‘Clean Air Markets’ website, which tallies emission reports from electric generators.
Texas power plants led the pack in 2010, with nearly 257 million ton of CO2 emissions, as much as the next two states combined (Florida and Ohio), and more than seven times the total CO2 emissions from power plants in California. Despite a favorable climate for wind energy and falling natural gas prices, Texas opened three new coal plants toward the end of 2010, with a combined capacity of 2,156 megawatts. The 10 worst states for CO2 pollution identified in the report are Texas, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, and Missouri.
Commenting on the report, EIP Director Eric Schaeffer said: […]
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