Wednesday, February 4th, 2015
Homeland Security Today Staff, - HS today.us
Stephan: It is always very useful and often very revealing to read the trade press of an industry, the magazine and journals that reflect what the professional thinking in a field is about -- something almost impossible to ascertain in the popular corporate media. Homeland Security is a goose laying golden eggs for its corporate owners.
The border security amendment offered by Sens. John Hoeven (R-ND) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) to the Senate comprehensive immigration reform bill (S. 744) would authorize billions of dollars in extra spending on technology for security of the Southwest border.
The spending represents an unparalleled boon to companies specializing in border security technology, particularly those incumbents with proven solutions already under contract with Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) detailed the technologies called for in the Hoeven-Corker Border Security Amendment when he endorsed it Friday.
According to Rubio, “[T]he state of the art technological enhancements along the border consist of at least 86 integrated fixed towers, 286 fixed camera systems, 232 mobile surveillance systems, 4,595 unattended ground sensors, 820 handheld equipment devices, 416 personal radiation detectors, 104 radiation isotope identification devices, 62 mobile automated targeting systems, 53 fiber-optic tank inspection scopes, 37 portable contraband detectors, 28 license plate readers, 26 mobile inspection scopes and sensors for checkpoints, nine land automated targeting systems [and] eight non-intrusive inspection systems.”
In addition, Rubio said it includes “four unmanned aircraft systems, six VADER radar systems, 17 UH-1N helicopters, eight C-206H aircraft upgrades, eight AS-350 light enforcement helicopters, 10 Blackhawk helicopter 10 A-L conversions, five […]
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Wednesday, February 4th, 2015
Jason Salzman, - RH Reality Check
Stephan: In discussion about the obscene wealth inequity that has occurred in the U.S., one rarely hears specifics, such as how this plays out in the individual states. Here is that data.
Continuing a trend that started 35 years ago, an Economic Policy Institute report documents that the benefits of the rebounding economy are flowing primarily to the wealthiest Americans.
Credit: Shutterstock
Colorado’s economy has grown at a steady 6 percent clip in recent years. And income growth is up. That is, if you are among the state’s wealthiest 1 percent.
Colorado’s wealthiest have seen their income increase on average by 48 percent from 2009 to 2012, while incomes for the bottom 99 percent declined by 1 percent, according to a report released last week by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that focuses on economic policies affecting working Americans.
Colorado was not alone. In 15 other states, all economic growth over the three years analyzed in the report was accrued by the wealthiest 1 percent of the population. […]
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Wednesday, February 4th, 2015
David R. Baker, - San Francisco Chronicle
Stephan: If you ever doubted that compared to what the oil companies want, your needs don't count here is the evidence. This isn't just a story about oil, this is a story about influence, and it starkly demonstrates what has gone wrong in American government.
Unlined pit of unidentified fluid leading up to a fracking well. Shafter, CA
Credit: 350.org
Oil companies in drought-ravaged California have, for years, pumped wastewater from their operations into aquifers that had been clean enough for people to drink.
They did it with explicit permission from state regulators, who were supposed to protect the increasingly strained groundwater supplies from contamination. (emphasis added)
Instead, the state allowed companies to drill more than 170 waste-disposal wells into aquifers suitable for drinking or irrigation, according to data reviewed by The Chronicle. Hundreds more inject a blend of briny water, hydrocarbons and trace chemicals into lower-quality aquifers that could be used with more intense treatment.
Most of the waste-injection wells lie in California’s parched Central Valley, whose desperate residents are pumping so much groundwater to cope with the historic drought that the land has started to sink.
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Wednesday, February 4th, 2015
David Zucchino, - ArcaMax/Los Angeles Times
Stephan: Coal ash mountains, Nuclear waste pools and tanks. All of it illustrates the failure of government regulatory agencies to effective oversee the corporations they are supposed to regulate. Why has this happened? Guess.
Barbara and Major Wood on January 26, 2015, at their home near a clay mine pit in Lee County, N.C., that Duke Energy wants to fill with eight tons of coal ash. The Wood family and hundreds of other local residents have protested a proposal by Duke to dump coal ash waste in the rural county in central North Carolina. Credit: David Zucchino/Los Angeles Times/TNS
COLON, N.C. — After a massive coal ash spill coated the Dan River in North Carolina with 70 miles of toxic gunk a year ago, state lawmakers required coal ash stored at four Duke Energy plants in North Carolina to be moved to safer locations.
Now tons of coal ash may end up across the road from Joe Bray’s tidy little home and vegetable garden in the piney woods of central North Carolina.
“It’s going to pollute this whole area, I guarantee you,” Bray, a mustachioed glass blower, said of Duke Energy’s plan to dump up […]
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Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015
David Hambling, - Wired (U.K.)
Stephan: If you have been reading SR very long you know I have been following cold fusion (LENR) for over a decade. This is where matters seem to stand presently. I continue to believe that there is something to this technology and that if it can be commercialized it will be a major game changer.
Credit: Shutterstock
The E-Cat, or Energy Catalyser, is an alleged cold fusion reactor invented by Andrea Rossi. While many researchers claim to have produced small quantities of excess heat using nickel and hydrogen, Rossi claims he can produce kilowatts and his technology is ready for industry. Rossi’s claims are far-fetched, but the E-Cat refuses to go away. Now it appears to have been not only verified, but replicated. Should we start taking Rossi seriously?
Rossi’s style is striptease: punters are led on with big promises, followed by obsessive secrecy and occasional fleeting glimpses. He addresses the world only via statements in idiosyncratic English in the comments section of his web page, the grandly and misleadingly-titled Journal of Nuclear Physics. Scientists have never been allowed to examine the E-Cat, details of the supposed physics have never been revealed, and even the identities of his US business partners were only discovered by online sleuthing.
Given his keep-’em-waiting approach, few believed Rossi’s repeated assertions over the years that an independent scientific study of the E-Cat really was on […]
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