Friday, February 26th, 2016
David Dayen, Contributing Writer - Salon
Stephan: I go through the comments section on dozens of websites. And what I read is pain and anger, people having a hard time, and outraged. When I look at the data it is clear that Red value states particularly are really struggling. They are in fact in another recession, or about to go into recession. It surprises me, I confess it, how much discomfort and stress people will tolerate rather than change.
Credit: Shutterstock
If Bill Gates walked into a room with two unemployed laborers, the average income level of the room would skyrocket, but the unemployed folks still wouldn’t have any jobs. This paradox resembles my frustration with many economic assessments. If it doesn’t threaten a national recession, it often doesn’t register as a problem. Yet in a big, diverse country, it’s axiomatic that certain regions can thrive while others experience hardship. In fact, that’s happening right now.
According to economic indexes tracked by Moody’s Analytics, four states – Alaska, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming – suffered consecutive quarters of economic contraction at the end of 2015. That means those states met the technical definition of a recession. Another three – Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma – saw economic growth decline in the final quarter of the year, and could be headed toward recession themselves. (emphasis added)
The four states in recession only contain about 3.9 million citizens, about 1.2 percent of the total population. Those on the cusp would add another 10.6 million, […]
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Friday, February 26th, 2016
Laure Fillon, - Agence-France Presse (France)
Stephan: A first account of what looks like a major game changer.
Li-Fi (Light-Fidelity) has reached speeds of over 200 Gbps
Credit: AFP Photo/Jung Yeon-Je
Barcelona (AFP) – Connecting your smartphone to the web with just a lamp — that is the promise of Li-Fi, featuring Internet access 100 times faster than Wi-Fi with revolutionary wireless technology.
French start-up Oledcomm demonstrated the technology at the Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest mobile fair, in Barcelona. As soon as a smartphone was placed under an office lamp, it started playing a video.
The big advantage of Li-Fi, short for “light fidelity”, is its lightning speed.
Laboratory tests have shown theoretical speeds of over 200 Gbps — fast enough to “download the equivalent of 23 DVDs in one second”, the founder and head of Oledcomm, Suat Topsu, told AFP.
“Li-Fi allows speeds that are 100 times faster than Wi-Fi” which uses radio waves to transmit data, he added.
The technology uses the frequencies generated by LED bulbs — which flicker on and off imperceptibly thousands of times […]
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Friday, February 26th, 2016
Bethania Palma Markus, - The Raw Story
Stephan: I am writing this while listening to a news report about the latest gun Massacre; this one is in Kansas. Oh, that's the end of it, now it is back to the endless cud chewing over the latest Republican debate which struck me as nothing so much as a pissing match of 4th grade boys. MSNBC gave the mass murder of four or six depending on whose report one is listening to, and 14 others wounded to varying degrees of severity, about 3 and a half minutes.
It seems like just the other day that some previously non-criminal "good guy," an Uber driver in Kalamazo, Michigan, spent the evening randomly driving around with his legal guns murdering six people between Uber gigs. Oh, wait, it was just the other day. It passed almost unnoticed, wasn't even mentioned on the Sunday talk shows. And of course those are just the mass murders
And now in Iowa we have what may be the apotheosis of Second Amendment stupidity. A law permitting children to to possess firearms. What could possibly go wrong? Except the life of at least one human a week by a gun fired by a child.
The weird thing is I got my first gun, a 22 rifle, at 11 when I became a Boy Scout and went through the NRA -- then a very very different organization -- gun safety program. There was a cultural difference then however; there was none of the political obsession by Theocratic Rightists over guns.
I have thought a lot about this, and I think the reason for the difference was that tens of millions of Americans, one way or another, had been caught up in World War II and, then, the Korean War. Almost every family had a member or a family friend who had been killed or wounded in one of those conflicts. Everyone understood people walking around with guns was a bad idea. We seem to have lost that recognition. How else to explain 92 people a day being killed by guns, and it is hardly a blip on the news. Even massacres have become commonplace, as this week demonstrates.
Credit: mediacriminaljustice
Iowa legislators passed legislation that would allow small children to possess firearms.
The bill passed the Iowa House and is now headed to the state Senate with strong opposition from minority Democrats, according to Iowa Public Radio.
“You’re missing the whole point of the bill,” Republican Jake Highfill told an uneasy Democrat. “I think this is one of the best bills we’ve done for second amendment rights.”
The bill would allow anyone under the age of 14 to handle handguns under adult supervision, with no age limit.
“We do not need a militia of toddlers,” Democrat Kirsten Running-Marquardt said of the bill. “We do not have handguns that I am aware of that fit the hands of a 1-or-2-year-old.”
Democrat Mary Mascher also pointed out that “Every three hours in this country a child dies from gun violence.”
According to Iowa Public Radio, the Iowa House also passed bills that allow people riding snowmobiles to carry loaded firearms, and also keep weapons permits confidential.
The bills passed in spite of a stream of accidental shootings involving children. On Tuesday, the 12-year-old daughter of an Idaho militiaman was
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Thursday, February 25th, 2016
James West, - Mother Jones
Stephan: Here is some good news about coal for the Earth and all life living in its biosphere. The Chinese are moving much more quickly than the U.S. to exit the carbon energy era -- perhaps because the Chinese government is clear that climate change is real and pollution is bad while the Republican Party in the U.S. doesn't think either are real issues. As a result I think China is going to dominate the noncarbon power era and make trillions equipping the rest of the nations with energy technologies that do not involve carbon. It will create tens of thousands of jobs.
Chimneys spew pollution in an ailing industrial city in China’s northeast.
Credit: Mark Henley/Ropi/Zuma Press
The world’s top coal producer, and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, will shut down 1,000 coal mines this year. (emphasis added) It’s a move that will simultaneously cool off China’s over-supply of dirty coal and help tackle the country’s air pollution crisis—with even deeper cuts to come.
The news was confirmed on Monday by China’s National Energy Administration, and first reported by Xinhua, the state-run outlet, after detailed plans to slash coal consumption were issued earlier this month by the country’s powerful executive body, the State Council. The move will accelerate China’s well-documented shift away from coal.
The news comes as a Chinese firm topped a reputable global ranking for wind energy production for the first time, besting US giant General Electric. Chinese companies already lead the world in solar energy production.
Plans to curb coal in China have been shaping up for […]
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Thursday, February 25th, 2016
Stephan: Here is some more good news about coal. It is ironic that American coal companies placed their bet on what China would do, and China changed course and caught the U.S. business people by surprise. Here's the story.
Credit: Shutterstock
Consider this remarkable fact, from a new report by the Rhodium Group:
The four largest US miners by output (Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, Cloud Peak Energy, and Alpha Natural Resources), which account for nearly half of US production, were worth a combined $34 billion at their peak in 2011. Today they are worth $150 million.
Dozens of US mining companies have declared bankruptcy in the past few years. More are on the verge.
What’s going on? What is killing US coal?
The conventional answer to that question is that less coal is being burned for electricity in the US, thanks to cheap natural gas, renewables, and federal regulations.
And that’s part of it. But not the only part, or even the biggest. The biggest driver of US coal’s decline isn’t happening in the US at all.
To see what it is, let’s look at the latest company to go under.
Coal companies are going under, and workers are getting screwed
Last week, the United Mine Workers of America swallowed another bitter pill.
At issue were the jobs, […]
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