Monday, January 14th, 2013
CHRISTOPHER DOERING, - USA TODAY
Stephan: This is what is happening to American society almost without comment or public discussion. What this report misses is that as our government is currently structured each state has two senators. We now have Federal Senators who represent a few hundred thousand people, and others that represent tens of millions. As the emptying of rural America continues this trend will be exacerbated, and it will lend force to the Great Schism Trend.
WASHINGTON — When the top cheerleader for rural America has some harsh words for the people he represents, it might be time to take notice.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack delivered a dire warning to the 51 million farmers, ranchers and other residents inhabiting rural America before a farm group in Washington last month. His message: Rural Americans are becoming less relevant in the country’s increasingly urban landscape and unless they find a way to reverse the trend their voice will continue to fall on deaf ears in Washington and around the world.
‘Unless we respond and react, the capacity of rural America and its power and its reach will continue to decline,’ Vilsack said. ‘Rural America, with a shrinking population, is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country, and we better recognize that, and we had better begin to reverse it.’
In the past four years, he said, more than 50% of rural counties have seen their population decline.
Vilsack pointed to rural America’s diminishing impact as a reason Congress was unable to pass a farm bill in 2012 - during an election year. More than 80% of lawmakers are not representing rural areas, making it an uphill battle for […]
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Sunday, January 13th, 2013
AVIEZER TUCKER, Assistant Director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin - Foreign Affairs
Stephan: This will help you understand what is going on as the world of energy changes. In my view this is a mid-point assessment by an analyst still focused principally on carbon energy. His comments about Fracking, for instance, reveal this. Even within that paradigm, and with that caveat, as you can see, huge changes are afoot.
The energy map of the world is being redrawn — and the global geopolitical order is adrift in consequence. We are moving away from a world dominated by a few energy mega-suppliers, such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, and toward one in which most countries have some domestic resources to meet their energy needs and can import the balance from suppliers in their own neighborhood. This new world will feature considerably lower energy prices, and in turn, geopolitics will hinge less on oil and gas. Within the next five to ten years, regimes that are dependent on energy exports will see their power diminished. No longer able to raise massive sums from energy sales to distribute patronage and project power abroad, they will have to tax their citizens.
The revolution in unconventional energy production results from technologies that make drilling and extraction from underground shale formations increasingly easy and cheap. One cutting-edge procedure, hydraulic fracturing, involves injecting a mixture of sand, chemicals, and either water, gel, or liquefied greenhouse gases into shale rock formations to extract hydrocarbons. Although the technique was first conceptualized in 1948, only recently have other technologies arrived to make it commercially viable. (One such procedure, horizontal […]
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Sunday, January 13th, 2013
Stephan: Taken globally, the total fertility rate at replacement is 2.33 children per woman. At this rate, global population growth would trend towards zero. Japan's birthrate is 1.39 and their situation is a forerunner of what is coming. The Japanese have never been able to figure out how to assimilate minorities and they are now dealing with what flows from that. No industrialized nation has a sustainable birthrate. That's why how a nation handles immigrant minorities is one of the keys to its future -- the other being gender equality. In a high tech world the country with the most neurons working for its success wins.
TOKYO — Japan’s population in 2012 is estimated to have decreased by 212,000, the largest decline rate on record, the Health Ministry said.
At the end of September 2012, the latest period for which numbers were available, Japan’s total population was estimated at 125.95 million, the ministry said.
The estimates said the number of newborn babies in 2012 fell to a record low of 1,033,000, down by 18,000 from 2011, a ministry survey said, Kyodo News reported.
Based on those numbers, the natural population decline obtained by deducting deaths from births was estimated at 212,000 in 2012, up from the previous year, which marked the first year when the decline exceeded 200,000 in a country of aging population. Total number of deaths in 2012 is expected to total 1.245 million.
A ministry official said the pace of decline will only increase as the number of the younger generation decreases.
Kyodo reported that the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research has predicted Japan’s total population would drop to 86.74 million in 2060.
The country’s population has been shrinking since 2007. In 2011, when east Japan was struck by the deadly earthquake and tsunami, the country’s number of deaths totaled 1,253,066.
The ministry said the four leading […]
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Sunday, January 13th, 2013
Stephan: Conservatives cannot seem to understand that when people have less money to spend, they spend less money, and the economy tanks. Austerity is a Randian delusion.
Americans are beginning to feel the pinch from Washington’s decision to embrace austerity measures aimed at bringing down the nation’s budget deficit.
Paychecks across the country have shrunk over the last week due to higher federal tax rates, and workers are already cutting back on spending, which will drag on the economy this year.
In Warren, Rhode Island, Ben DeCastro got his first paycheck on Friday in which taxes on his wages rose by 2 percentage points. That works out to about $30 a week.
‘You sit back and do the calculation, and that’s $30 I’m not going to spend at a restaurant,’ said DeCastro.
He said he worries that people hit by higher taxes will spend less at the chain of furniture stores where he works as a marketing manager.
Politicians in Washington made much hubbub last week about a bipartisan deal to soften or postpone some $600 billion in scheduled tax hikes and government spending cuts. President Barack Obama said the deal would shield 98 percent of Americans from a middle-class tax hike.
Nevertheless, for most workers, rich and poor alike, taxes went up on December 31 as a temporary payroll tax cut expired. That cut – a 2 percentage point reduction in a […]
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Sunday, January 13th, 2013
ROBERT F KENNEDY JR and MARC A YAGGI , - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Another unintended consequence arising from the failure to work with nature, and to place wellness first. And, once again, I find myself asking, why am I reading this in a British newspaper; why don't I see this on the television news?
Next week, diplomats from around the world will gather in Geneva to negotiate a treaty on global emissions of mercury – a lethal neurotoxin that includes, among an inventory of grim effects, brain damage and the loss of IQ points in unborn children, injuries to kidneys and heart, and results in tens of billions of dollars in healthcare costs every year in the US alone. The Geneva conference is the final of five meetings, with a treaty expected soon thereafter.
While global mercury emissions are on the rise, negotiators, unfortunately, appear to be leaning towards a treaty with soft measures unlikely to prevent continued catastrophic impacts from this deadly and debilitating poison. Ironically, signatories propose to ink their treaty in Minamata, Japan, a town that famously suffered widespread mercury poisoning.
Health experts first described mercury poisoning, then called ‘Minamata disease’, in Minamata city, in Japan, in 1956. Mercury discharges from the Chisso chemical plant contaminated finfish and shellfish, devastating the community’s human and animal population for decades. Many of the region’s citizens died and tens of thousands of people suffered mercury-related illnesses.
A former Japanese prime minister proposed naming the treaty the ‘Minamata Convention’ to inspire delegates to reach an agreement that would […]
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