Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
Stephan: Here is some very good Green Transition news -- coming from the UK. If we, in America had been doing this, instead of waging endless war, consider how much better positioned for the future we would be. In the U.K. where gas is about $8 a gallon, this is going to have a tremendous impact on the car industry, and society as a whole. Not least because it will create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
For first time electric vehicles will be able to travel the length and breadth of Britain using the world’s first solar national charging network at motorway service stations across the country.
According to Ecotricity, the company that installed the network, range anxiety has now been removed from the electric vehicle equation in the UK.
Every charging post will be powered with 100% green energy made at Ecotricity’s wind and solar parks across the UK, and means that electric car drivers (and motorcyclists) will be able to drive from London to Edinburgh or Exeter completely free and with vastly reduced emissions.
The first such station has been installed at Welcome Break’s South Mimms services [at the Junction of the M1 and M25], and the first phase of the network spread across 12 motorway services will be completed by September. Each post will be located outside the main entrance, with two sockets that can be accessed by registering for a free swipecard. Within 18 months all 27 Welcome Break motorway services will have charging points.
Electric cars can get a quick charge in just 20 minutes using rapid recharge points (32A supply) or fully charge in two hours; while those using the slower (13A supply) will […]
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Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
FELICIA SONMEZ, - The Washington Post
Stephan: This is all happening because the Right wants to eliminate unions in the railroad and airline industries. As a result of this utterly callous and cynical action thousands of men and women are going to be furloughed or, if they work for any of the contractors hired to improve our airports, just plain let go. And the Congress went on vacation for a month. This is the naked truth that is destroying the quality of all our lives.
The House and Senate began a five-week recess on Tuesday without resolving a funding stalemate at the Federal Aviation Administration, leaving 4,000 agency employees and 80,000 contractors high and dry.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced shortly before 7 p.m. that the chamber was in recess until Sept. 6. The House, which wrapped up its legislative business on Monday, will not be in session again until Sept. 7.
The impasse is over a proposal by House Republicans to cut funding for a program for airports in several rural areas. Also at issue is a longer-term FAA reauthorization bill containing provisions restricting airline workers’ collective bargaining rights.
Earlier Tuesday, Reid had told reporters that absent a resolution, Senate Democrats might be willing to consider the House Republicans’ version of the FAA reauthorization bill.
‘As we learned with this big (debt-limit) deal we’ve just done, sometimes you have to step back and find out what’s best for the country and not be bound by some of your own personal issues,
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Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
TSUYOSHI INAJIMA and KARI LUNDGREN, - Bloomberg Business Week
Stephan: Most the media have moved on, but radiation has nothing to do with news cycles. Japan has a multi-thousand year cancer eating away at its vitals. This is why nuclear power should be abandoned. Even that is going to require hundreds of years of costs to deal with and store the millions of gallons of waste the industry has already produced. It will go on until someone figures out how to deal with the waste.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. reported its second deadly radiation reading in as many days at its wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant north of Tokyo.
The utility known as Tepco said yesterday it detected 5 sieverts of radiation per hour in the No. 1 reactor building. On Aug. 1 in another area it recorded radiation of 10 sieverts per hour, enough to kill a person ‘within a few weeks
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Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
ERIC W. DOLAN, - The Raw Story
Stephan: This is the latest in the growing trend on the Far Right to subvert the electoral process. They can't get what they want through fair elections so they create shock doctrine situations on the one hand, and carry out operations like the one described here on the other. Note the explanation when they were caught. It is so absurd; it's not even a plausible lie.
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin filed a complaint on Tuesday seeking to stop what it called a Koch brothers-funded scheme to suppress Democratic votes in upcoming Republican recall elections.
Politico reported that Americans for Prosperity sent absentee ballots to Democrats in two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions that could render the votes ineligible.
Ballots must be received by August 9 to be counted, but the instructions say to return the paperwork two days later, by August 11.
The complaint (PDF) alleged that Americans for Prosperity ‘displayed a continued pattern of tampering with the electoral process in Wisconsin with elaborate, illegal and fraudulent schemes designed to suppress Democratic votes.’
Americans for Prosperity was started by oil billionaires Charles and David Koch, and has been associated with the tea party movement. The Koch brothers’ political action committee gave Republican Gov. Scott Walker roughly $100,000 in campaign contributions during the 2010 election.
‘Scott Walker has sought the help of the corporate front group ‘Americans For Prosperity,’ and here they come with dirty tricks clearly meant to meddle in our elections and suppress votes against the Koch Brothers’ agenda,’ Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Monday in a statement.
‘Wisconsin’s election authorities must stop the black […]
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Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
Stephan: I have been following this situation for some months but am going to follow it very closely. Given our own meager recovery, and the very real possibility that we are going to go back into recession, a major melt down in Europe would be disastrous, and affect us one and all.
Europe is a ‘train wreck’ and on the ‘brink of a major financial crisis,’ Scott Minerd, CIO of the fixed-income firm Guggenheim Partners, told CNBC Tuesday.
‘The way Europe is operating right now, it’s what I called recently ‘cognitive dissonance,” Minerd said, or ‘basically doing the same thing thinking they’re going to get a different outcome.’
‘They keep throwing more and more liquidity at it thinking it’s going to get better and it’s not,’ he added. Europe fails to recognize that it has a ‘structural problem, not a liquidity problem.’
People will ‘flee the euro’ unless they find a way to bifurcate the euro in some way where strong countries are in the euro only and the weak countries are out, Minerd explained, adding, ‘To be honest with you, I don’t see the mechanism to do that.’
‘As the capital is flooding out of Europe, which we’re starting to see now, the first place it’s going to go is to the safe havens-[U.S.] Treasurys, which [the market] perceives to be safe, and it’ll chase gold,’ he added.
Compared to a 2 percent return on Treasury notes, investors will eventually say that ‘stocks with price-earnings multiples of 12 or 13 or 14 look relatively cheap, and […]
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