Daily Caller News Foundation Russia’s Putin Says Global Warming Is ‘A Fraud’

Stephan:  Here is an account of Vladimir Putin's views on climate change as recounted by a Rightist publication. I am publishing it because it accords with what I was told a few weeks ago by several prominent Russians with whom I spent the week discussing this and other issues. They noted particularly that the sanctions the U.S. imposed crashed the Russian economy and made their petroleum sector all the more critical -- another case of poor geopolitical choices -- and that drove Putin to ignore climate change. This Russian position, combined with our own Theocratic Rightists in the U.S. Congress who are climate deniers, conjoin to undercut the hope humanity will deal with climate change in an adult and responsible way. I say again the 2016 election is going to determine the world your children and grandchildren and you live in. If social progressives who are wellness oriented do not vote in massive numbers it is going to get very nasty.
Russian President Vladimir Putin Credit: Reuters/lexei Druzhinin

Russian President Vladimir Putin
Credit: Reuters/lexei Druzhinin

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes global warming is a “fraud” — a plot to keep Russia from using its vast oil and natural gas reserves.

Putin believes “there is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries, including Russia,” Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst and Putin critic, told The New York Times.

“That is why this subject is not topical for the majority of the Russian mass media and society in general,” Belkovsky said.

Putin has been casting doubt on man-made global warming since the early 2000s, according to the Times. In 2003, Putin told an international climate conference warming would allow Russians to “spend less on fur coats,” adding that “agricultural specialists say our grain production will […]

Read the Full Article

No Comments

Congress Introduces Resolutions To Kill The Clean Power Plan

Stephan:  This is why I am so pessimistic about the government's response to climate change, and why I think communities and regions need to seriously plan and prepare for what is coming. And why the smart ones are. This is the corruption of Willful Ignorance manifested.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, (R-WV) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have both come out strongly against the Clean Power Plan. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, (R-WV) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have both come out strongly against the Clean Power Plan.
Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Republicans in Congress are trying every means available to stop the Clean Power Plan, and they might go as far as putting a government shutdown on the line, experts say.

A resolution announced by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), and Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY) this week will seek to use the Congressional Review Act to essentially strike the Clean Power Plan from the books. If the resolutions disapproving of the Clean Power Plan pass — and the president signs them into law — the rule would be prohibited from going into effect.

Granted, there is no way that President Obama is going to sign a resolution killing what is widely considered to be his most important legacy […]

Read the Full Article

No Comments

Cosmic Irony: States That Didn’t Expand Medicaid Paying More For The Program

Stephan:  Here is some good news. We have solid data that Right's policies produce decreased wellness.   Here, in contrast is some actual data showing how wellness oriented policies deliver better outcomes by being more compassionate and life affirming. Note that states that accepted ACA also saw improvements in costs, and with benefits in other areas as well. Programs that produce wellness are always cheaper, more efficient, and more effective because money is not being siphoned off to serve special interests and the inherent structure is not distorted in the service of that end.

“We did see a higher growth rate of what states spent of their own dollars on Medicaid in the in non-expansion states than we did in the expansion states” said Laura Snyder, a senior policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation. The report found that total spending in expansion states grew by 17.7 percent, but the state spending only grew by 3.4 percent. Meanwhile, state spending on Medicaid in non-expansion states increased […]

Read the Full Article

No Comments

One in 14 Children in U.S. Has Had a Parent in Jail or Prison

Stephan: 
The headline says it all. One in 14 children in the U.S. has had a parent in prison -- 5 million children total. Add to that 17 million with hunger issues and 2.5 million homeless, as well as high child mortality rates, particularly in Red value states, and America's claim to be family centered is shown to be pious hypocritical polemical manure.
Parents Behind Bars   the full report is available by clicking on this link.
 

Parents behin barsAmong the pernicious collateral damage of mass incarceration is the devastation it causes in the lives of children who lose parents to prison. A new study from research firm Child Trends finds that the problem has reached troubling proportions, with one out of every 14 American children having one parent who is currently, or has previously been incarcerated. The numbers are a direct consequence of our system of over-incarceration;, America jails more of its citizens than any other country on Earth, in both raw numbers and by population percentage.

According to a Child Trends report released this morning, more than five million American children—or 7 percent of all of the country’s youth—has had a parent who lives with them spend time in prison or jail. The vast majority of those incarcerated parents, a staggering 99 percent, are fathers.

For black children, parental incarceration rates are even more troubling. The new study finds that one out of every nine black children under the age of 18 has a parent who is, or has been, in prison or jail. Other children disproportionately […]

Read the Full Article

No Comments

Math, reading scores slip for nation’s school kids

Stephan:  When one wades through the cesspit of ideological arguments over education one irrefutable fact confronts us. Our kids are being failed by our school systems, and are ignorant and grossly inferior in performance to children from other developed nations. We are on the wrong track, and we cannot or will not muster the political courage to change course. The long term implications of this are a deteriorating standard of living, a decreasing ability to be competitive with better educated societies, and a failing political system.
Credit: micheleborba.com

Credit: micheleborba.com

WASHINGTON  — Results from national math and reading tests show slipping or stagnant scores for the nation’s schoolkids.

Math scores were down for fourth and eighth graders over the last two years. And reading grades were not much better: flat for fourth graders and lower for eighth graders, according to 2015 results released Wednesday for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam.

The falling mathematics scores for fourth and eighth graders mark the first declines in math since 1990.

The results suggest students have a ways to go to demonstrate a solid grasp or mastery in reading and math.

Only about a third of the nation’s eighth-graders were at proficient or above in math and reading. Among fourth graders, the results were slightly better in reading and in math, about two in five scored proficient or above.

The report also found a continuing achievement gap between white and black students.

There were a few bright spots: the District of Columbia and Mississippi both saw substantial reading and math gains.

Read the Full Article

No Comments