FRANK ELTMAN, - The Associated Press
Stephan: Here is the next data point on my trend analysis, and my prediction concerning the role of the insurance industry as it faces the reality of climate change. In the U.S. alone over a trillion dollars worth of coastal high-end real estate is doomed, and the same is true all over the developed world. People like to have properties on the coast; it is always very beautiful. The collapse of that market is going to have a profound effect on the U.S. and world economies, and it will start with insurance, just as described here.
The devastation of Superstorm Sandy months after the event.
Credit: www.consumerreports.org
MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — A $24 billion sea of red ink has millions of Americans in vulnerable flood zones, including homeowners still struggling to recover from Superstorm Sandy, facing steep increases in flood insurance premiums.
New legislation that went into effect this month — the second time in two years Congress has tweaked the troubled National Flood Insurance Program — allows rate increases of up to 18 percent.
“This appears to be death by a thousand cuts,’” said Scott Primiano, an Amityville, New York, insurance broker who has been holding seminars for clients to explain the new legislation. “The concept sounds good, but no one can say what the full risk is. … They are going to take it in bits and pieces every year and it keeps going until Congress determines we’ve had enough.”
Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said the flood insurance program has for decades been paying out more than it took in, […]
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Tana Ganeva, - The Raw Story/Alternet
Stephan: If you are not in the gun culture, by which I mean guns are one of the ways you define your world, it is hard to comprehend how truly weird, fearful, and aggressive that world is. These are people who think Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, Sam Brownback, and Rick Scott are worthy of being national leaders. That what these politicians say represents what they think. Here is a good article that pulls back the curtain a bit.
None of this would matter, it would just be a group of crazies... but they have guns. This is another America.
Convention goers check out handguns equipped with Crimson Trace laser sights at the 143rd NRA Annual Meetings and Exhibits at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 25, 2014
Credit: Agence France-Presse
It’s the afternoon before the first day of the NRA’s annual conference at the Music City Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Handguns, rifles and semi-autos are unpacked and hung in booths; scaffolding and stages are raised; one vendor grapples with a tragic routing mistake—his wares have somehow ended up somewhere in Florida instead of Tennessee (‘How can they confuse Florida with Tennessee?!”)
Gruff avatars of American manhood scowl from posters hanging on the walls in the main showcase. Cowboys riding away in sunsets, soldiers, policemen, snipers and hunters. Charlton Heston posthumously clutches his gun, as promised. A sweaty, disturbingly ripped Founding Father poses against the American flag with a black semi-automatic rifle strapped […]
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Richard Jacoby and Raquel Baldelomar, - Salon
Stephan: To my mind the U.S. is in the midst of a food scandal and a crisis that, it can accurately be said, is killing us. This report should alarm you and, I hope, will cause you to eat a healthier diet. Your life and, if you have a family, their lives may depend upon it.
Students in Minneapolis’ Armatage public school go to lunch every day with their own classroom. Lunch begins at 9:50 am and goes with a classroom coming every 5 or 10 minutes until 1:00.
Credit: Armatage School
Excerpted from “Sugar Crush: How to Reduce Inflammation, Reverse Nerve Damage and Reclaim Good Health” by Richard Jacoby and Raquel Baldelomar. Published by HarperWave, a division of HarperCollins Publishing.
Lie: The U.S. Department of Agriculture Knows What Should Be on Your Plate
You know by now that sugar has been pumped into the food chain over the last fifty years, especially in the form of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). As a result, there has been a dramatic increase in a whole range of illnesses that manifest in different parts of your bodies, depending on your own genetic profile. All are caused […]
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Stephan: This all took place without evoking much interest in the U.S., outside of Florida and a few other places where large communities of people of Cuban heritage exist, but attention paid or not, I think this signals a major change in the U.S. relationship with the Hispanic world, and a greatly diminished role for the Monroe Doctrine. I think that is good news.
US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro
US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro have met on the fringes of the Summit of the Americas, the first formal talks between the two countries’ leaders in half a century.
Earlier, Mr Obama described the historic thaw in US-Cuba relations as a “turning point”.
This is their first full meeting since the thaw began in December.
Mr Castro has called for the lifting of the US economic blockade on Cuba, in place since 1959.
Sensitive issues
President Obama said that it was time to “try something new” and that it was important for the US to engage more directly with the Cuban government and the Cuban people.
He added that over time it would be possible to “turn the page” on old divisions but he acknowledged that there were still significant differences.
“We have both concluded that we can disagree with a spirit of respect and civility.”
Mr Obama said that immediate tasks include normalising diplomatic relationships between the two countries […]
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Alan Pyke, - Think Progress
Stephan: Like marijuana prohibition the objections to raising the minimum wage are shibboleths and myths. As this report details raising the minimum wage in Seattle to $15 has had no bad effect on the restaurant business as the Rightists maintained must inevitably come to pass. Rather the contrary.
Republican economic policies the data shows live in a fact free world along with its cousins, climate change denial, evolution denial, and young- Earthers.
Weeks before the first gradual increase in Seattle’s minimum wage kicked in, conservative pundits decided that the city’s vibrant restaurant scene was shuddering to a halt. Numerous prominent outlets on the right touted a thin report in a local magazine that a handful of well-liked restaurants were closing down to avoid the wage law.
High-profile writers confidently proclaimed that Seattle’s once-proud restaurant scene was in retreat and that the wage hike was already chilling business activity and killing jobs, based on one anecdotal report. None of that was true. When the Seattle Times asked them about the story, the restaurant owners in question laughed off the claim that their decisions were motivated by the wage law. But even that direct testimony didn’t stop the media wave all the way. The conservative National Federation of Independent Business ran a post parroting the disproven restaurant closures claim days after the Times debunked the anecdote underlying the narrative.
Now, there’s even harder evidence that the right was wrong. The Big Picture pulled the numbers on how many restaurant permits […]
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