Victoria M. Massie , - VOX
Stephan: In spite of discrimination Asian workers are the highest wage earners. Here is the data.
A new report shows that men’s and women’s wages are closer to parity than they’ve ever been, but white men and women aren’t necessarily the highest wage earners. (emphasis added)
The Pew Research Center found that Asian men’s median hourly earnings were higher than white men’s — $24 to $21, respectively. Asian women also earned more than white women ($18 per hour versus $17 per hour) and black and Hispanic wage earners regardless of gender, whose median hourly earnings were between $12 and $15.
White women now earn 22 cents more to every white man’s dollar than they did in 1980, with Asian-American women following a similar trajectory.
Other demographics are experiencing growth at a far more sluggish pace (if at all). During the same time period, African-American women only earned 9 more cents and Hispanic women only early 5 more cents. Meanwhile, black and Hispanic men’s wages have remained relatively stagnant. Across the past 35 years, black men still only make 73 percent of white men’s wages. Hispanic men have seen almost negligible growth, from […]
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John Fialka, - Scientific American/Climatewire
Stephan: More good news about our transition out of the carbon era. And an interesting and novel approach.
Los Angles night skyline
Credit: Arman Thanvir/Flickr
By 2021, electricity use in the west Los Angeles area may be in for a climate change-fighting evolution.
For many years, the tradition has been that on midsummer afternoons, engineers will turn on what they call a “peaker,” a natural gas-burning power plant In Long Beach. It is needed to help the area’s other power plants meet the day’s peak electricity consumption. Thus, as air conditioners max out and people arriving home from work turn on their televisions and other appliances, the juice will be there.
Five years from now, if current plans work out, the “peaker” will be gone, replaced by the world’s largest storage battery, capable of holding and delivering over 100 megawatts of power an hour for four hours. The customary afternoon peak will still be there, but the battery will be able to handle it without the need for more fossil fuels. It will have spent the morning charging up with cheap solar power that might have otherwise been wasted.
Early […]
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Stephan: Stephan is experiencing technical difficulties. There will be no Schwartzreport today.
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Stephan: With two police murders, one in Louisiana and the other in Minnesota in the past two days and now, as I write, an ongoing sniper crisis in which 11 police in Dallas have been shot, and 5 have died, perhaps it's time to rethink the American culture's view of guns.
Credit: Shutterstock
There is a segment of the American population who believes passionately that guns are critical for personal protection against both violent individuals and governmental intrusion. They believe nothing should prevent them from getting the guns they need to do that.
There is another, larger group of Americans who believes passionately that we have created an environment that makes it far too easy for those who intend to kill to have access to all the firepower they want.
How could groups who hold these disparate views ever agree?
What’s more: If most Americans believe we should have some gun regulation, why are those who don’t winning the debate?
People on each side agree the threat from violence is real, but support different responses to that threat – either regulate the sale of guns or make sure a gun is in the hand of every good guy.
Winning hearts and minds
According to Pew Research Center, “50 percent say it is more important to control gun ownership, just slightly more than the 47 percent who say it […]
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D.D. Guttenplan, - The Nation
Stephan: What all who have read it at least cursorily -- since it is 12 volumes and 2.6 million words -- seem to take away is confirmation that the war that has shaped the 21st century was based on lies, planned by incompetents, and executed at the cost of tens of thousands of lives, hundreds of thousands of injuries, and over a trillion dollars. That Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld Blair and the rest of the Neocons were not held accountable is one of the war's greatest obscenities. The one bit of good news is that history will revile them as the villains they are.
Sir John Chilcot presents the Iraq Inquiry Report in London on July 6, 2016.
Credit: Dan Kitwood / AP
LONDON — What can you say about a 13-year-old war that destroyed a country and killed hundreds of thousands of people? If you are John Chilcot, chairman of the Iraq Inquiry—the official British investigation into the causes and conduct of the Iraq War—the answer turns out to be quite a lot. Released on Wednesday morning—a little under seven years after the inquiry was first announced—the Chilcot Report’s 2.6 million words fill 12 volumes, and would take about nine days of around-the-clock reading to finish.
It may well be that, as in so many American government White Papers, the most significant findings are buried deep in the footnotes. But even judging by the early coverage, the findings are damning enough to ensure that unlike Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair will remain a political pariah for […]
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