Stephan: Here's another little shocker on the weather produced by climate change.
“Columbia River Gorge at Sunset”
Credit: Chip Phillips
Freakishly hot, dry weather in the Pacific Northwest is killing millions of fish in the overheated waters of the region’s rivers and streams.
“We’ve lost about 1.5 million juvenile fish this year due to drought conditions at our hatcheries,” Ron Warren of Washington State’s Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a statement. “This is unlike anything we’ve seen for some time.”
Sockeye salmon losses in the Columbia River due to the heat are in the hundreds of thousands, said Jeff Fryer, senior fishery scientist with the river’s Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. The fish were returning from the ocean to spawn when the “unprecedented” warm water killed them, he said.
Water temperatures in the Columbia River — part of which runs along the border of Oregon and Washington — reached the low 70s shortly after July 4, something that doesn’t usually happen until August, if at all, Fryer said.
High temperatures — coupled with the low water levels — can be lethal to fish, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. With […]
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Bethania Palma Markus, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Senator Bernie Sanders tells the truth about the new international plutocracy. Few in mainstream media even notice. There is a kind of blackout on his candidacy or, when he covered, he is treated as an aberrant sideshow. Only you can make the political establishment take him seriously. There is no reason he cannot and should not win.
Senator Bernie Sanders speaks truth to power. It goes almost unremarked by mainstream corporate media.
The extremely rich have “psychiatric issues” and it affects day-to-day Americans, populist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said recently. Research shows that he’s on to something.
he extremely rich have “psychiatric issues” and it affects day-to-day Americans, populist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said recently. Research shows that he’s on to something.
“We all know people who are addicted to alcohol or drugs. These people are addicted to money,” Sanders said earlier this year, according to MSNBC. The result? A “philosophical war being waged against the middle-class and working families.”
Sanders wants to revive a time in American history where “one person could work 40 hours a week and make enough to take care for the entire family.”
That will take a political revolution, he said, and again he could be right.
Last August, Maria Fernandes became the poster child for the […]
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Saturday, August 1st, 2015
Heather Digby Parton, Contributing Writer - Salon
Stephan: This is what American democracy has come to. The ultra-rich audition Presidential aspirants and decide which one they want to buy. Ask yourself: How did we get to such a pass? Are you happy with this?
Scott Walker, David Koch, Jeb Bush
Credit: AP/Jim Cole/Phelan M. Ebenhack/M. Spencer
People who regularly read my byline will recall that back in April I wrote about poor Scott Walker making a huge gaffe just as it seemed like the Koch brothers, his presumed benefactors, were ready to go all-in on his campaign. This resulted in a postponement of any endorsement in the GOP primary in favor of an “audition” among other candidates later in the summer.
Well, the big day is upon us. Politico reported this week that a handful of candidates have made the final cut and have been invited to make one last tryout for the starring role in the Kochs’ big 2015 Summer Super-Pageant:
Four leading GOP presidential candidates – Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker – are traveling to a Southern California luxury hotel in coming days to make their cases directly to the Koch brothers and hundreds of other wealthy conservatives planning to spend […]
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Saturday, August 1st, 2015
Jon Schwartz, - The Intercept
Stephan: Jimmy Carter, in his ninth decade has the courage to tell the truth. Consider his words in light of the previous article about the Koch brothers and their ilk.
Former president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday on the nationally syndicated radio show the Thom Hartmann Program that the United States is now an “oligarchy” in which “unlimited political bribery” has created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.” Both Democrats and Republicans, Carter said, “look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves.” (emphasis added)
Carter was responding to a question from Hartmann about recent Supreme Court decisions on campaign financing like Citizens United.
Transcript:
HARTMANN: Our Supreme Court has now said, “unlimited money in politics.” It seems like a violation of principles of democracy. … Your thoughts on that?
CARTER: It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get […]
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Saturday, August 1st, 2015
Ana Swanson, Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: Read this article in light of the two preceding ones. All of this describes the Neo-feudalism Trend that now defines the U.S. We are a society defined by a plutocracy a shrinking middle class and a growing peasantry. Welcome to the 14th century.
Credit: The Washington Post
What are your odds of being a millionaire, do you think? One in 10? One in 50? One in 100?
If you’re over 62, your odds of having at least $1 million in net wealth (your total assets minus your total debt) are relatively achievable — about 1 in 7. But if you are under 40, your odds are low: 1 in 55.
In the last 25 years, the odds that an old person is a millionaire have improved slightly. But for young people, they have gotten much worse.
These figures come from a new paper by economists at the St. Louis Fed’s Center for Household Financial Stability, which shows evidence of a growing wealth gap that few people are talking about — the gap between the young and the old.
The paper, by William Emmons, Bryan Noeth and Ray Boshara, draws on surveys of 40,000 families that the Fed carried out between 1989 and 2013 to examine the all-important role that your age plays in how […]
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