Sunday, February 2nd, 2014
Stephan: The New Dark Ages Trend is gathering steam in the Red value states. Here is an example from Kansas, home of abortion clinic bombers and assassins, Creationism, and young earth madness.
Note this abomination comes from ALEC.
The State of Kansas could often be said to be one of those places where torturing your residents just makes sense. While the work against women, children, the disabled, schools and others continues, the state of Kansas Legislatures took on a new target: Stop Google Fiber. And not just google fiber, make sure that cities cannot invest in any broadband network technologies.
Except with regard to unserved areas, a municipality may not, directly or indirectly:
(1) Offer to provide to one or more subscribers, video, telecommunications or broadband service; or
(2) purchase, lease, construct, maintain or operate any facility for the purpose of enabling a private business or entity to offer, provide, carry, or deliver video, telecommunications or broadband service to one or more subscribers.
Let me explain what this means. When a new provider comes into a market, they generally want some assurances; the right of way from a city, use of public right of ways, and yes, they in many cases will go for city buy ins, like tax incentives or the use […]
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Sunday, February 2nd, 2014
AVIVA SHEN, - Think Progress
Stephan: You will remember the piece I ran a few days ago showing that the repair of our water infrastructure would produce far more jobs and income than than an oil pipeline. Here is further information on this. Look at the wastage that is going on, and the systems that are close to collapse. The nation's infrastructure is literally breaking down. I hope this will become a restoration trend in this country. Without it we are going to be in serious trouble.
The nation’s crumbling infrastructure was made strikingly obvious by a recent string of collapsing bridges and train derailments. A newly released report highlights a less visible but equally urgent time bomb: deteriorating drinking water systems. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that $384 billion over the next 17 years is needed to repair and replace thousands of miles of pipes, thousands of water treatment plants, storage tanks, and water distribution systems. Without this investment, millions of Americans will lose the clean drinking water we currently take for granted.
Most of the drinking water infrastructure in the nation is 50 to 100 years old, and the risk of contamination grows as pipes age and break down further. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, 7 billion gallons of clean drinking water are lost every day because of leaky pipes. In order to address this growing problem, every state needed at least $1 billion to fix their drinking water infrastructure. Most require between $3 and $10 billion, while nine states need more than $10 billion.
California, already struggling with severe water shortages that will only worsen with climate change, needs the most rehabilitation. Repairing and updating California’s drinking water system will cost at least […]
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Sunday, February 2nd, 2014
STEPHAN A. SCHWARTZ, Columnist - Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
Stephan:
We were studying healing. Our research was simple in concept. We were asking 14 men and women, seven of them experienced healers using techniques ranging from evangelical Christian laying-on-of-hands, to channeling space people, and seven of them volunteers who had never formally tried to express therapeutic intention-healing-to beneficially affect the well-being of another person. They were being asked to treat 14 men and women suffering from everything from migraines to cancer to whom they had been randomly assigned.1
They could use any technique they wished during their approximately 45-minute session but were asked to try not to touch the recipient’s body. While they were expressing healing, small sealed vials of water were strapped to their hands. In the experiment, these little bottles, the same kind of rubber topped bottle used for the injections we all know from getting ‘shots” in a doctor’s office, were filled with very pure triple-distilled water-to obviate the possibility of getting false results as a product of pollutants in the water.
The bottles were held in place by a tube of white cotton into which the bottle was inserted. Velcro patches took the place of a knot to hold the bottle in place on the palm of the […]
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Saturday, February 1st, 2014
MARIAH BLAKE, Reporter - Mother Jones
Stephan: It is a measure of how deeply corrupted our electoral system has become that this can go on, and not be illegal. It is a direct assault on the form and substance of our democracy.
Last election season, a shadowy nonprofit pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into a campaign to change how electoral votes are counted. The group didn’t disclose who was funding its efforts-a fact that Mother Jones highlighted in a story titled “Who’s Paying for the GOP’s Plan to Hijack the 2012 Election?” But now, thanks to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonpartisan government watchdog, it’s clear that organizations with ties to billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch footed at least some of the bill.
Each state and the District of Columbia has a certain number of electoral votes, based on their population, and they get to decide for themselves how those votes should be allotted. Currently, every state except Maine and Nebraska gives all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote. But in 2011, GOP lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin introduced bills that would divide electoral votes among candidates based on how many congressional districts they won. Because Republicans drew the boundaries of the districts in those states, this scheme would be almost certain to hand Republican presidential candidates the majority of their electoral votes-even if more voters cast ballots for Democrats. […]
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Saturday, February 1st, 2014
PAUL BEDARD, - Washington Examiner
Stephan: This is a devastating portrait of the triumph of willful ignorance. It is a lesson in how fear and a sense of victimhood can be manipulated to produce social power.
NBC News and sister cable network MSNBC rank at the bottom of media outlets Americans trust most for news, with Fox News leading the way, according to a new poll from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling.
In its fifth trust poll, 35 percent said they trusted Fox news more than any other outlet, followed by PBS at 14 percent, ABC at 11 percent, CNN at 10 percent, CBS at 9 percent, 6 percent for MSNBC and Comedy Central, and just 3 percent for NBC.
The pollster said Fox won because Republicans are devoted to it. ‘It leads the way because of its continuing near total support among Republicans as the place to go for news- 69 percent of Republicans say it’s their most trusted source with nothing else polling above 7 percent,” said PPP.
The pollster also tested voter attitudes on Fox star Bill O’Reilly, who is set to conduct the annual Super Bowl interview with President Obama, and Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert. PPP said that in a presidential match, O’Reilly would beat Colbert 38 percent to 35 percent.
What’s more, O’Reilly had a better favorability rating than any of the potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates.
The poll also asked which news team was […]
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