LAURA CLAWSON, - Daily Kos
Stephan: Who do you think is more important for the health of society: a hedge fund manager or a kindergarten teacher? I would vote for the teacher.
This disparity tells us that as a society we value allowing a few people to become obscenely rich more than we value well-educated children.
In 2013, the trade journal Alpha revealed, the hedge fund industry’s top 25 earners collected $21.15 billion, a whopping 50 percent over their total the year before. […]
But the real enormity of America’s annual hedge fund jackpots only comes into focus when we contrast these windfalls with the rewards that go to ordinary Americans. Kindergarten teachers, for instance.
The 157,800 teachers of America’s little people, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us, together make about $8.34 billion a year. Hedge fund America’s top four earners alone last year grabbed $10.4 billion.
What makes this especially disgusting is that all that money means hedge funders can buy a bigger say in American education than kindergarten (or third grade, or high school math) teachers:
Hedge fund billionaires are indeed investing colossal millions in charters, educational entities – often tied closely to for-profits – that take in public tax dollars but operate independently of local school board oversight.
Hedge fund manager cash has gone both to individual charter schools directly and into political war chests to support candidates who want to see charter networks expanded. Thanks to this cash, charters have […]
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KEN SILVERSTEIN, - Forbes
Stephan: If you have been reading SR for some time you know I predicted this in the late 90s. Eventually a wide range of industries are going to be opposed to the carbon energy interests. This is an important trend, and one to watch closely.
Being a big business, the insurance industry is a strong backer of free enterprise and its laissez-faire leaders. But a rift could be developing now that some major carriers are staking claims in the climate change cause while many of their congressional backers have remained skeptical of the science.
For insurers, it’s not about the political machinations but rather, it’s about the potential economic losses. If even part of the predictions hold – the ones released by the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change that ascribe temperature change to humans with 95 percent certainty – then the rate of extreme weather events will only increase and the effects would be more severe. That, in turn, would lead to greater damages and more payouts.
‘The heavy losses caused by weather-related natural catastrophes in the USA showed that greater loss-prevention efforts are needed,” says Munich Re board member Torsen Jeworrek.
He says that the United States suffered $400 billion in weather-related damages in 2011 and insured losses of $119 billion, which were record amounts. In 2012 – and despite Superstorm Sandy – losses were well above the 10-year averages at $165 billion total, of which insurers paid $50 billion. In 2013, insurance companies paid out, globally, […]
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IAN SAMPLE, - The Raw Story/The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: This extraordinary story is the first report of what I think is going to become a major trend.
In a neat demonstration of E=mc2, physicists believe they can create electrons and positrons from colliding photons
Researchers have worked out how to make matter from pure light and are drawing up plans to demonstrate the feat within the next 12 months.
The theory underpinning the idea was first described 80 years ago by two physicists who later worked on the first atomic bomb. At the time they considered the conversion of light into matter impossible in a laboratory.
But in a report published on Sunday, physicists at Imperial College London claim to have cracked the problem using high-powered lasers and other equipment now available to scientists.
‘We have shown in principle how you can make matter from light,” said Steven Rose at Imperial. ‘If you do this experiment, you will be taking light and turning it into matter.”
The scientists are not on the verge of a machine that can create everyday objects from a sudden blast of laser energy. The kind of matter they aim to make comes in the form of subatomic particles invisible to the naked eye.
The original idea was written down by two US physicists, Gregory Breit and John Wheeler, in 1934. They worked out that – very rarely – […]
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CLIFF WEATHERS, Senior Editor - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: This is why nothing serious is going to be done in a timely manner about climate change remediation. Political prostitutes like Senator Inhofe, who are beholden to carbon energy interests, will not permit it.
Republican Sen. James Inhofe is once again dismissing a report on climate change, attacking the integrity of the report’s authors. While that’s not news in itself, the targets of Inhofe’s derision are 16 retired three- and four-star generals and admirals. Inhofe claims that retired military officers are just desperate for publicity, and don’t understand the defense needs of the nation.
The generals and admirals wrote a federally funded report on climate change, assessing the threats of global weather events on national security.
Other Republicans, however, have been notably quiet since the report’s release. Typically, they form a chorus to shout down any climate-change report, claiming that man-made climate change is fraud perpetuated by the “liberal agenda.” This time, the authors of the report are not scientists and environmentalists, the typical targets of conservative derision. It would be political suicide for any Republican to categorize such a large group of career military officers as liberals, especially in an election year.
The authors of the climate change report focused solely on their area of expertise, national security. They serve as the military advisory board for the CNA Corporation, a non-profit research and analysis organization in Alexandria, VA. They warned that climate change is not […]
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Stephan: Increasingly other countries, for their own reasons, are simply going to bypass the U.S.. Another part of this will be the end of the dollar as the reference currency. When one major party is willing to damage the country as a whole to retain power, and is unwilling to pass meaningful legislation, everything just grinds to a halt -- as it has.
SANTIAGO, CHILE — The United States government is taking a strong public position on climate change.
By now everybody’s heard it: The White House has recognized that climate change is already being felt in many corners of the US, and the worst is yet to come. One of Barack Obama’s major plans for cutting America’s greenhouse gas emissions is to wean the country off oil. The president even flew to California to get people revved up about renewable energy.
But the US had a very different message down in Chile, where a diplomat’s comments on a local carbon tax created a huge controversy – one largely ignored by the superpower way up north.
The US ambassador in Santiago, Michael Hammer, publicly commented in a meeting with Chilean lawmakers and business owners earlier this month on a planned fiscal overhaul that includes a carbon tax: ‘In order to continue contributing to the economy and society, US companies need, in fact all companies need, political and economic stability, in addition to clear rules.”
Some brushed it off. But others called it an attempt at meddling in Chilean politics, which remains a sore spot here even two decades after Chile transitioned from the Pinochet dictatorship the CIA […]
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