On a recent Friday afternoon, with budget negotiations winding down, Arizona state representative John Kavanagh was racing against the clock. His position as House Appropriations Chairman afforded him the opportunity to stuff whatever minor extra provisions he wanted into the budget before it went to a vote the following Monday, and he only had a few hours left to do it.

What was Kavanagh frantically trying to accomplish for his constituents at the last minute? Extra funding for education, since Arizona spends less on educating its children than all but three states? No, Rep. John Kavanagh was trying to secure an extra $900,000 gift for the GEO Group, the billion-dollar private prison corporation whose state lobbyists came to him at the last second begging with upturned hats. The $45 million already earmarked for the maintenance of low- and medium-security facilities wasn’t enough, they said.

The Arizona Department of Corrections didn’t ask for the extra money, nor did anybody push for the prison funds to be included in the Senate budget.

“This came out of nowhere – I mean that,” Arizona House Minority Leader Chad Campbell told the Arizona Republic. ‘No one said a word about it. It wasn’t in the Senate budget, it […]

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The stock market is at all-time highs, but trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange is at 15 year lows.

Quite simply, the mom-and-pop investor has had enough and is leaving the market.

One likely culprit for the decline in trading volume is the shrinking number of market participants, especially on the retail side…

Retail investors have been ‘beaten up,” said Pado, pointing to the painful losses inflicted by the bursting of the dotcom bubble and 2008 Wall Street crisis. ‘You had a one-two punch on a whole generation that was completely crushed.”

The financial media generally views this trend with a shrug and “So what? Stocks are up.” Which is true. However, what suckers are they going to sell to when stocks start going down?

It took a couple stock market crashes, but the average American has realized that the stock market is rigged in favor of the big players, and they no longer want any part of it.

Only 18 percent say they are more inclined to invest in the stock market with interest rates as low as they are. But a whopping 76 percent are saying “no” to equities, according to Bankrate’s latest Financial Security Index.

Part of the reason for this trend […]

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LONDON-Greenland-the largest terrestrial mass of ice in the northern hemisphere-may be melting a little faster than anyone had guessed.

A region of the Greenland ice sheet that had been thought to be stable is undergoing what glaciologists call ‘dynamic thinning”. That is because the meltwater from the ice sheet is getting into the sea, according to a study in Nature Climate Change.

In short, Greenland’s contribution to sea level rise has been under-estimated, and oceanographers may need to think again about their projections.

Shfaqat Khan from the Technical University of Denmark and colleagues used more than 30 years of surface elevation measurements of the entire ice sheet to discover that overall loss is accelerating. Previous studies had identified melting of glaciers in the island’s south-east and north-west, but the assumption had been that the ice sheet to the north-east was stable.

Four times as fast

It was stable, at least until about 2003. Then higher air temperatures set up the process of so-called dynamic thinning. Ice sheets melt every Arctic summer, under the impact of extended sunshine, but the slush on the glaciers tends to freeze again with the return of the cold and the dark, and since under historic conditions glaciers move at the […]

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Pastor John Hagee is warning members of his megachurch to prepare for the end of the world because a ‘blood moon” eclipse on Tuesday is signaling that the End Times could be beginning.

On Tuesday, most of the United States will be treated to the first of four complete lunar eclipses – which scientists call a tetrad – occurring in six month intervals. The eclipses are often referred to as ‘blood moons” because as sunlight shines on the moon through the Earth’s atmosphere, it gives the moon a red color.

Hagee, pastor of Texas’ Cornerstone Church, has written a book on the phenomenon titled Blood Moons: Something is About to Change. And he is airing a live television event on Tuesday to reveal ‘direct connections between four upcoming blood-moon eclipses and what they portend for Israel and all of humankind.”

‘Is this the end of the age?” Hagee asked during a recent sermon, before quoting Acts 2:19-20: And I will show wonders in Heaven above and signs in the Earth beneath, the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.”

‘I believe that the heavens are God’s billboard, that […]

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The highest beef prices in almost three decades are causing sticker shock for both consumers and restaurant owners – and relief isn’t likely anytime soon.

A dwindling number of cattle and growing export demand from countries such as China and Japan have caused the average retail cost of fresh beef to climb to $5.28 a pound in February, up almost a quarter from January and the highest price since 1987.

Everything that’s produced is being consumed, said Kevin Good, an analyst at CattleFax, a Colorado-based information group. And prices likely will stay high for a couple of years as cattle producers start to rebuild their herds amid big questions about whether the Southwest and parts of the Midwest will see enough rain to replenish pastures.

The high prices are welcome news for at least one group: ranchers, especially those in Texas who for years have struggled amid drought and high feed prices. Despite the most recent numbers that show the fewest head of cattle in the U.S. since 1951, prices for beef haven’t declined along with the herd size as demand has remained strong.

“I’ve noticed a huge increase in price in all ages and grades of cattle,” said Ray Law, owner of the […]

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