Tuesday, August 16th, 2016
Alex Zielinski, Health Reporter - Think Progress
Stephan: The growing failure of regulatory agencies in an age of collapsing infrastructure is a recipe for the destruction of wellness. Yet reducing regulation and increasing corporate power over regulation is part of the Republican platform.
Credit: Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society/ CBS Chicago
Akeeshea Daniels first suspected something was off when her two toddlers came down with scarlet fever. It was 2004, and she just moved her family into a spacious public housing complex in East Chicago, Indiana.
“I looked it up. Scarlet fever hasn’t been a problem since the ‘50s,” she said. “It was something straight out of a history book.”
But when she brought her concerns to the East Chicago Housing Authority — the manager of her public housing complex— she was brushed off.
“A Pandora’s Box has been opened. Why have they waited this long to tell us?”
“They told me it was my fault for not cleaning well enough,” she said. “I had toddlers! I was cleaning every day. And then things kept happening.”
The next decade was rife with mysterious family health issues: Ear infections, upper respiratory problems, throat infections. Her son was put on ADHD […]
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Tuesday, August 16th, 2016
Harrison Kaminsky, - Yahoo Tech
Stephan: More good news about the transition out of the carbon era. And once again note: wellness oriented social policy is cheaper, more efficient, more effective, more productive, and nicer to live under.
The Sierra Club, synonymous with the start of the United States’ large-scale preservation movement in the late 19th century, is now looking toward the future with a report it released last week.
The report is part of the organization’s Ready for 100 initiative, which launched in 2016 and challenged 100 cities in the United States to move from “dirty, outdated fossil fuels, step up, and commit to 100 percent clean energy,” according to a press release. It outlines 10 case studies examining cities making positive change.
A total of 16 U.S. cities have since signed on as part of the commitment, in which the Sierra Club is working with mayors, CEOs, pastors, principals, civic and community leaders, parents, and students to “commit to solutions that help us achieve 100% clean, renewable energy across the United States by 2050.”
When setting these types of goals, it’s key to define the term “clean energy,” which the Sierra Club uses to refer to “carbon- and pollution-free energy collected […]
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Monday, August 15th, 2016
Mint Press Staff, - Mint Press News
Stephan: We are now bombing four Muslim countries. It is hard to imagine how much hate that is creating against Americans. But we don't seem to even debate it anymore, and the media barely gives it a paragraph. We seem to have entered an age of constant war and I think we will pay the price for generations.
Sirte, Libya. Islamic State militants have controlled the city since August 2015. The U.S. military has announced ongoing airstrikes against targets in Sirte, and other Libyan cities.
Credit: AP
WASHINGTON — With little fanfare and minimal media attention, the United States recently began bombing yet another country, further expanding a fight against terrorism that has no clear end in sight.
U.S. airstrikes in Libya began on Aug. 1 with “precision air strikes against ISIL targets in Sirte, Libya,” the Pentagon announced in a press release. The airstrikes were apparently carried out at the behest of Libya’s temporary government, the Libyan Government of National Accord, appointed by the United Nations after the U.S. helped overthrow Libya’s ruler, Moammar Gadhafi, under the direction of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Special forces ground troops, deployed by the U.S. and its Western allies, are also present […]
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Monday, August 15th, 2016
Lynn Stuart Parramore, - Alternet
Stephan: I just love fact-based social outcome research. It cuts through layers upon layers of shoddy media coverage, polemics, and outright lies to reveal the truth about us as a society. Unfortunately, at the present time an awful lot of it is pretty unpleasant to face.
Outrage over how big money influences American politics has been boiling over this political season, energizing the campaigns of GOP nominee Donald Trump and former Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders alike. Citizens have long suspected that “We the People” increasingly means “We the Rich” at election time.
Yet surprisingly, two generations of social scientists have insisted that wallets don’t matter that much in American politics. Elections are really about giving the people what they want. Money, they claim, has negligible impact on elections.
That was a good line for Cold War propaganda, and good for tenure, too. Corporate titans seized upon it to argue that their money should be freer to flow into political campaigns. Not only billionaires, but academics argued that more money in elections meant more democracy.
Even today, many academics and pundits still insist that money matters less to political outcomes than ordinary citizens think, even as business executives throw down mind-boggling sums to dine with politicians and Super Pacs spring up like mushrooms. The few dissenters from this consensus, like Noam Chomsky, are ignored in the U.S. as “unpersons,” though they are enormously respected abroad.
This is a […]
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Monday, August 15th, 2016
Natasha Geiling, Reporter - Think Progress
Stephan: I hate to tell you that I told you this was coming but, well, it is. Another failure of Republican governance, another screwing of the poor and what's left of the middle class.
An ash pond full of dead trees near Duke Energy’s Buck Steam Station in Dukeville, N.C.
Credit: AP/Chuck Burton
In North and South Carolina, the problems of coal ash — the waste product leftover from burning coal — are often shouldered not by the utilities that burn the coal, but by residents that live nearby.
In South Carolina, Duke Energy — the largest electric power holding company in the United States — recently filed a case with state regulatory agencies requesting that the first $1.5 million installment of their $500 million coal ash cleanup program be funded by a rate hike for South Carolina residents. According to the Charlotte Business Journal, this is the first time that Duke has asked to make taxpayers fund the cleanup of its 34 coal ash ponds throughout North and South Carolina.
After a 2014 coal ash spill, in which more than 80,000 tons […]
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