Wednesday, June 22nd, 2016
Stephan: You may remember a few days ago that I published a piece on Chattanooga creating a municipally owned internet service where you can get 1 gigabyte a second for $69 a month -- eat your heart out, you're probably getting a fraction of that for the same price or even more. That means you can download a film in 3-5 seconds.
Now the city is moving on a plan for electric cars for rent, as this report describes. Although Tennessee is a deeply Red value state, Chattanooga although it has a Republican majority has civic policies oriented towards social wellness which make it a particularly interesting social laboratory.
Chattanooga’s Electric Power Board has automatically upgraded connection speeds for customers at no charge each of the past four years.
Credit: Shutterstock
Chattanooga will be one of the first cities in the nation with an electric vehicle ride share program, officials said Thursday.
Gustave Occhiuzzo, CEO of GreenCommute, said the firm is extending the environmentally-friendly program from Los Angeles, where it was launched.
When the program is launched soon, Chattanoogans will be able to rent a zero-emission, all-electric car by the hour or day for $9 per hour.
Users will be able to utilize GreenCommute’s ap to find a nearby rental electric car, use a Smartphone to unlock it and start the engine (no key is involved).
Mr. Occhiuzzo said the firm will start out with two Chattanooga employees operating out of CARTA offices at Shuttle Park South by the Chattanooga Choo Choo.
There […]
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Seung Min Kim, - Politico
Stephan: Monday we got a true look at who we are, and what our government has become concerning a device whose only function is explicitly causing death, be it fowl, animal, or human. Today we made our societal statement on guns.
On the citizen side there was virtual unanimity on universal background checks. On the other side, the arms industry, and the NRA its public face, and they do not want any restriction on being able to buy and carry a gun. And they don't mind the gun death. Massacres in fact, as Orlando has proven once again, are good for business, sales enjoy a big spike. And as to selling to terrorists, no problem. So who do you think won?
Think about this for a minute. If you are a terrorist from overseas you are spared the difficult problem of smuggling your arms in, as would be the case in many countries. Getting the same stuff you could find in a National Guard Amory is easy, and I am sure every non-American, and all American terrorists, know this very well.
And yet we do nothing and 33,000 people a year die.
Our relationship to guns is a disease state. It has nothing to do with what the Founders intended in the 2nd Amendment, and they would be appalled at this state of affairs.
Democratic Senator from Connecticut Chris Murphy
The Senate voted down four separate gun measures Monday in the aftermath of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history — showing the partisan paralysis over gun control has barely moved on Capitol Hill despite the stream of continued gun violence across the country.
Lawmakers took up two separate issues involving gun regulations: how to improve the nation’s background check system for those who want to purchase firearms, and how to ensure those with terrorist ties do not obtain a gun. But those questions remained unresolved by lawmakers as of Monday night.
Instead, Democrats made it clear they want to make it as painful for Republicans to oppose their gun amendments, whether through a flood of advocacy calls to their Senate offices or at the ballot box in November.
“Some of this is going to turn into an electoral operation,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who led the Senate Democrats’ nearly 15-hour gun filibuster last week, said an interview […]
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Stephan: Here are the actual votes on the four gun bills that were voted on Monday. The answer to this list is to vote those who blocked these sensible bills out of office.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
Credit: Win McNamee
The U.S. Senate had four cracks at passing beefed up gun legislation on Monday and failed to muster the 60 votes necessary to pass any of the four proposals. Two Republican bills and two Democratic versions went before the chamber and none of the four was able to generate a compromise that would make it more difficult for individuals on the terror watch list to legally buy firearms.
The Democratic versions, sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), predictably, went further than the Republican alternatives filed by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.). The votes were mostly party-line affairs, as Democratic proposals were considered too restrictive by Republican legislators and Republican amendments didn’t go far enough for Democratic Senators. Here is how the vote tallies brokedown.
Dianne Feinstein’s Democratic amendment, that the Washington […]
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Sam Jones, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: If you read SR regularly you know my many comments on the importance of the Migration Trend; it is one of the meta-trends of this century I think, and we are just at the beginning. Yet already 1 out of every 113 people on the planet is a refugee. The social implications are enormous, and how we handle them, will do much to determine the level of peace in the world.
Sri Lankan migrants refuse to leave Indonesian waters and demand fuel to continue their journey to Australia after becoming stranded at Lhoknga Beach, Aceh, Indonesia, in June 2016.
Credit: Hotli Simanjuntak/EPA
A record 65 million men, women and children were forced from their homes by war and persecution last year, leaving one in every 113 people a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum at the end of 2015, according to the UN.
The latest annual global trends study from the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, shows that the total number of forcibly displaced people rose sharply last year, increasing from 59.5 million in December 2014 to 65.3 million in December 2015.
With 24 people being displaced every […]
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Sarah K. Burris, - The Raw Story
Stephan: I have read over a dozen stories like this one, each concerning a different Fundamentalist Protestant cleric and church. This is what Christianity has become in the U.S. in all too many churches.
Pastor Donnie Romero
In the wake of the attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida last week, many right-wing Christian religious leaders have celebrated the shooter’s actions, but a Texas pastor is taking that to a whole new level.
Pastor Donnie Romero of Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth told his flock he agrees “100 percent” with Baptist Pastor Roger Jimenez, who made news with his sermon advocating that the government should use a firing squad to “blow their brains out.”
“These 50 sodomites are all perverts and pedophiles, and they are the scum of the earth, and the earth is a little bit better place now,” Romero said in the Sunday sermon. “And I’ll take it a step further, because I heard on the news today, that there are still several dozen of these queers in ICU and intensive care. And I will pray to God like I did this morning, I will do it tonight, I’ll pray that God will finish the job that that man started, and he […]
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