Tuesday, February 21st, 2017
SEAN WHALEY, Reporter - Las Vegas Review-Journal
Stephan: The stupidity, short-sightedness, and corruption of Republican state legislators in 2016 almost killed solar in Nevada. Now wiser more wellness-oriented individuals are trying to revive it. I think we are going to see this pattern repeated elsewhere
The Silver State Solar Energy Center in Primm, Nevada
Credit: Erik Verdusoo/LV Review-Journal
CARSON CITY — Nevada’s burgeoning rooftop solar industry crashed and burned last year after new rates for net metering eliminated financial incentives for the green energy investment.
Now several state lawmakers want to get the industry back on track and growing again.
Nevada lost more than 2,500 rooftop solar installation jobs in 2016 after the less generous net metering rates were approved by the state Public Utilities Commission. Net metering provides homeowners with a credit for the excess electricity their systems generate.
Both the Assembly and the Senate have created special subcommittees on energy to focus on ways to make rooftop solar financially attractive for homeowners and put Nevada back on track with the industry and the thousands of jobs it can create in a state with nearly limitless sunshine.
This while balancing the effort with the vast majority of ratepayers who are not rooftop solar customers.
Specific proposals on net metering are not likely to emerge […]
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Tuesday, February 21st, 2017
Robert Preidt, Reporter - U.S. News & World Report
Stephan: If you or someone you know is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer here is some important news.
Eating a low-fat meal when taking an expensive prostate cancer drug can cut the cost of the drug by three-quarters, a new study indicates. (emphasis added)
“We know this drug [Zytiga] is absorbed much more efficiently when taken with food,” said study author Dr. Russell Szmulewitz, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago.
“It’s inefficient, even wasteful, to take this medicine while fasting, which is how the drug’s label says to take it,” he noted in a university news release.
But, Szmulewitz cautioned that patients shouldn’t start experimenting with drug doses on their own.
“This was a relatively small study, too small to show with confidence that the lower dose is as effective. It gives us preliminary, but far from definitive, evidence. Physicians should use their discretion, based on patient needs,” he advised.
Zytiga (abiraterone acetate) costs more than $9,000 a month and patients typically remain on the drug for 12 to 18 months, researchers said. Even patients with the best health insurance can have co-pays of $1,000 to $3,000 a month.
This study found similar outcomes between 36 advanced prostate cancer patients who took 250 […]
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Monday, February 20th, 2017
Stephan: A democracy cannot be run on lies. It needs a vital Fourth Estate that tells the truth and a government which produces real facts. We don't seem to be headed in that direction.
As the White House staff tries to put together a budget for President Donald Trump, they face a fundamental problem. Trump has promised to cut taxes, increase spending on the military and infrastructure, and avoid cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The only way to do that without producing an exploding budget deficit is to assume a big increase in economic growth.
And Nick Timiraos at the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is planning to do just that — by making things up.
Deep into his story about Trump budget hijinks, Timiraos reveals that “what’s unusual about the administration’s forecasts isn’t just their relative optimism but also the process by which they were derived.” Specifically, what’s unusual about them is that they weren’t derived by any process at all. Instead of letting economists build a forecast, Trump’s budget was put together with “transition officials telling the CEA staff the growth targets that their budget would produce and asking them to backfill other estimates off those figures.”
Trump is assuming much faster economic growth
Staff has been ordered to project that inflation-adjusted growth will average between 3 and 3.5 percent over the next decade, eventually settling at around 3.2 […]
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Monday, February 20th, 2017
avid Ferguson, - The Raw Story
Stephan: I can think of no period in my lifetime in which an average person could witness the President of the United States not only tell a lie, but tell a lie that a fourth grader could check and see was a lie. It isn't funny; this is what Fascism looks like.
Donald Trump at rally in Melbourne, FL
At his rally in Melbourne, Florida on Saturday, Pres. Donald Trump listed a terror attack that never happened as part of the rationale for his controversial anti-Muslim travel ban.
In defending his executive order banning Islamic refugees and travelers from 7 Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., Trump said, “When you look at what’s happening in Germany, when you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden — Sweden! Who would believe this? Sweden!”
“They took in large numbers, they’re having problems like they never like they never thought possible,” he went on.
However, there was no terror attack in Sweden on Friday. Perhaps, as some Twitter users suggested, the attack in Sweden happened in the same parallel universe as Kellyanne Conway’s fictitious “Bowling Green massacre.”
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Monday, February 20th, 2017
MEGAN TWOHEY and SCOTT SHANE, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: It isn't just the constant and compulsive lying, it's the incompetence. It's one thing to screw up a reality program, quite another to screw up the world.
Michael D. Cohen, second from left, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, with Michael T. Flynn, left, and former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas at Trump Tower in December. Mr. Cohen delivered the peace plan to Mr. Flynn a week before Mr. Flynn resigned as national security adviser.
Credit: Sam Hodgson/ The New York Times
A week before Michael T. Flynn resigned as national security adviser, a sealed proposal was hand-delivered to his office, outlining a way for President Trump to lift sanctions against Russia.
Mr. Flynn is gone, having been caught lying about his own discussion of sanctions with the Russian ambassador. But the proposal, a peace plan for Ukraine and Russia, remains, along with those pushing it: Michael D. Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer, who delivered the document; Felix H. Sater, a business associate who helped Mr. Trump scout deals in Russia; and a Ukrainian lawmaker trying to rise in a political opposition movement shaped in part by Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul D. Manafort.
At a time when Mr. Trump’s […]
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