Tuesday, February 14th, 2017
Erika Rawes , - Digital Trends
Stephan: More good news about the transition out of carbon energy.
Imagine if your house ran on a giant, low-maintenance rechargeable battery. Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) developed a new flow battery capable of lasting more than 10 years. Along with its 10-year lifespan, the researchers also successfully designed the battery to remain inexpensive, non-corrosive, and non-toxic. Led by professors Michael Aziz and Roy Gordon, the groundbreaking research boasts the potential of changing the way people utilize power all over the globe. Aziz and Gordon devised a way to take advantage of the benefits of a flow battery without the energy degradation that occurs while maintaining a traditional flow battery.
A flow battery uses liquid electrolytes to store charges. Two chemical components dissolved in liquids are typically separated from each other in external tanks, with bigger tanks storing more energy than a smaller tank. Generally with flow batteries, all that’s required to recharge them is replacing the liquid electrolytes — the chemical compound that allows for an electrical charge when dissolved. Each time someone replaces the electrolyte liquid, however, the battery grows weaker, making it one of the […]
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Monday, February 13th, 2017
Austin Sarat, - The Alternet/The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: I was asked today in a radio interview on Zoh Hieronimus' 21st century radio, what I thought of Donald Trump. My answer was I saw him as a symptom not the disease, and my real concern was that about 25 per cent of Americans no longer seemed invested in the maintenance of democracy, and seemed quite comfortable with Fascism. This essay makes the point.
Credit: arindambanerjee / Shutterstock
There is much to celebrate in the court decision against President Trump’s immigration ban. It was a stirring victory for the rule of law and reaffirmation of the independence of the judiciary. Yet America faces a serious problem which that decision did not address: the erosion of public faith in the rule of law and democratic governance.
While we have been focused on partisan divides over government policy and personnel, an almost invisible erosion of the foundations of our political system has been taking place. Public support for the rule of law and democracy can no longer be taken for granted.
In 2017, the rule of law and democracy itself are under attack by President Trump and his administration. This is as much a symptom as a cause of our current crisis. Public Policy Polling has released the startling results of a national survey taken this week. Those results show significant fissures in the public’s embrace of the rule of law and democracy.
Only 53% of those Read the Full Article
Monday, February 13th, 2017
Stephan: Since the Nixon era, and particularly beginning with the Reagan administration, the Republican Party recognizing that it was becoming a White race party and that we were becoming a majority min0rity nation has worked to limit voting to Whites whenever and wherever it could. Here is a report on this process.
Credit: AP Photo/Eric Gay
Republican legislators throughout America are working to make it harder for minorities and the poor to vote.
The precise nature of the efforts varies from state to state, but there are at least 20 overall that are trying to restrict voting in some way,
according to the Associated Press on Thursday.
Iowa and New Hampshire are trying to eliminate same-day registration and voting. Texas is shortening its early voting period. Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Maine and Nebraska are imposing new or stronger Voter ID laws.
All of this is being done despite all reputable research proving that in-person voter fraud is much more rare, and thus much less of a risk, than other threats to election integrity like voting machine tampering.
What’s more, because these restrictions would disproportionately impact the poor, racial minorities, and college students — all of whom tend to vote Democratic — many critics claim the new laws are being pushed to disenfranchise Democratic voters and thereby help Republicans cheat to win elections.
There is already evidence that voting […]
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Monday, February 13th, 2017
Rachel Waldholz and Bill Chappell , -
Stephan: Scott Pruitt has spent much the the past couple of decades doing what he could as a climate change denier who sought to limit or eliminate the agency he now heads. He holds the post because the President is also a climate change denier. The result is predictable, and here it is.
Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency’s presence at an environmental conference in Alaska this week was cut in half, after the Trump administration’s transition officials ordered the change. The agency had helped to plan the Alaska Forum on the Environment — but days before it was to start, word came that half of the EPA’s 34 planned attendees wouldn’t be making the trip.
“We were informed that EPA was directed by the White House transition team to minimize their participation in the Alaska Forum on the Environment to the extent possible,” forum director Kurt Eilo says.
The change has created awkward scenes at the conference, particularly at events meant to highlight the EPA’s role in Alaska, a state known for both its pristine ecosystems and its oil production.
More than a thousand people attend the multiday event in downtown Anchorage each year, and the EPA is normally a major partner. This year, agency officials were scheduled to take part in about 30 sessions on everything from drinking water and sanitation in rural Alaska to climate […]
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Monday, February 13th, 2017
, - Alternative Media Syndicate
Stephan: We have never seen Trump's taxes, nor has there been any real attempt to deal with the multitude of his conflicts of interest. Here is just one aspect of what lies hidden behind the curtain. The media should be keeping this in the public eye and American citizens should be demanding the curtain be pulled back. Only you can make this happen.
President Donald Trump
Donald Trump’s debt problem is two fold. The first is a money problem: he’s so deeply in debt to various banks around the world that the billions he’s been documented owing to these banks may well exceed the value of his assets — which would mean he’s broke.
The second is a perception problem: his financial debt to Russia, combined with allegations that Russia is blackmailing him, and his oddly pro-Russia political policies, create a perception problem. Now it turns out these two problems may be the same thing.
One of the institutions Donald Trump is deeply in debt to is a German bank known as Deutsche Bank. It has a rocky history over the past decade of high risk investments and financial instability which mirror those of Trump’s own finances. At last count, Trump owed Deutsche Bank and its subsidiaries a combined $1.3 billion.
It never made sense why the bank in question, which has been struggling financially, would have loaned so much money to Trump — who has a long […]
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