Saturday, February 18th, 2017
Stephan A. Schwartz, - Schwartzreport
Stephan: I need your help. I believe we are now in a crisis greater than Watergate -- and I was in government on a senior staff all through Watergate. Those of you who read me regularly know that I have been describing what I call the Great Schism Trend for some years, and that within that trend I see a Fascist Neo-feudal harmonic shaping up in the U.S. and other nations; and that I see Donald Trump as a symptom of this not the disease.
In anticipation of what was coming and to give regular citizens tools to use in this crisis to shift our culture to one where the first priority is a compassionate life-affirming social order that fosters wellbeing, from the individual, to the family, the community, the state, the nation, and the planet itself I wrote
The 8 Laws of Change.
Research shows that when 10% of any cohort shifts its world view, then the whole cohort tips. And that is exactly how I read the 2016 election. It represented just such a tip. I could see in the social outcome trends that a significant percentage of America had become lost in a fear fugue and threatened to actually end our democracy. Research also showed me that the only way to counteract this decline without violence was for those of us who are not in fear but are infused with hope and a sense of opportunity to use our beingness to raise America out of the swamp of fear and hate that threatens to consume us.
I have done everything I can to get 8 Laws into public awareness, and now I need help. I need new ideas, I need help in manifesting them. The 8 Laws is the antidote to Trump, and I need help getting this information out to people.
A number of you have written me suggesting that I ask my readers to post something about
The 8 Laws on their Facebook pages. If you feel comfortable doing that, I would appreciate it.
-- Stephan
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Saturday, February 18th, 2017
Nathalie Baptiste , - Alternet
Stephan: One of the first moves of every incoming Fascist government is to degrade civil rights and strengthen police powers. We're right on schedule.
Credit: Simon Schultz / Flickr Creative
The Donald Trump administration is off to a rocky start, with multiple damaging reports emerging from the White House alleging disorganization, incompetence and infighting—but that hasn’t stopped the new president from making good on his pledges to the country’s police officers. By branding himself the law-and-order candidate who would use his bully pulpit to take down criminals and fight crime, Trump earned himself the support of several police groups, most notably the Fraternal Order of Police, the country’s largest police union, which boasts more than 330,000 members.
Trump has already met with several law enforcement groups to make it clear where his priorities lie. Recently, while speaking to the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association (and after whining about a federal judge ruling that blocked his Muslim ban), Trump launched into a speech about what he believes cops in this country care about: crime in cities populated with black people, Mexican drug cartels, undocumented immigrants, and his desire to build a wall along the Mexican border. During the speech he […]
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Saturday, February 18th, 2017
Leon Kaye, - TriplePundit
Stephan: It is very interesting to note that Norway, a country that makes wellbeing as its first priority has produced a society in which citizens live longer than Americans, are healthier than Americans, have a much higher quality of life, a higher average income level, and less wealth inequity. And they are also leading the world in the conversion from petroleum energy to non-carbon energy. Here's the latest. Ask yourself: Why can't we in the U.S. do this?
A Nissan Leaf drives in a bus lane, one of many perks afforded to electric car drivers in Norway.
Although battery range is improving and designs are more appealing, electric vehicles still face a long road ahead in order to gain drivers’ acceptance. The 30-month-long slump in petroleum prices is not helping; neither is range anxiety (the fear of being stranded on a roadside with no electric power). In most industrialized nations, electric cars have a market share of around 1 percent at best.
But oil-rich Norway continues to dominate when it comes to battery-powered cars.
Norway welcomed its 100,000th all-electric car in December. And 2016 concluded with sales of over 130,000 new vehicles that either have an all-electric drive train or are a plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), according to the Norway EV Association. That is triple the amount of electric cars on Norway’s cars just two years earlier.
In 2015, the New York Times estimated that electric car had only a 2 percent market share in Norway – which was still good enough to double that of the global runner-up, […]
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Saturday, February 18th, 2017
Gina Coplon-Newfield, - Sierra Club
Stephan: In the previous story I asked why the U.S., the richest country in the world, can't seem to create a society that fosters wellbeing. The answer of course is that America has forgotten what the Founders intended and has morphed into a country where the only social priority is to create profit for a tiny percentage of the population. Here's the proof. Do I need to say this is all being done by Republicans? No? I didn't think so.
States across the U.S. have been introducing legislation that would punish people for switching to electric vehicles. Since the start of 2017, six states (Indiana, South Carolina, Kansas, Tennessee, New Hampshire, and Montana) have introduced legislation that would require EV owners to pay a fee of up to $180 a year.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time people have been penalized for driving green. Wyoming, Colorado, Virginia, Nebraska, Missouri, Washington, North Carolina, Idaho, Georgia, and Michigan have all implemented yearly fees on electric and hybrid vehicles that vary from $50 to $300 per driver per year. Arizona’s and Arkansas’ respective Department of Transportations are also suggesting legislators cast a fee for EV ownership. Georgia, formerly the state with the second most EV sales, used to offer a tax credit of up to $5,000, but replaced the program with a $200 yearly fee that led to an 80 percent drop in EV sales.
This attack is coming at a time when EVs are just starting to take off within the larger auto industry–and it’s likely no […]
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Saturday, February 18th, 2017
17 Feb 2017 at 10:56 ET , - The Raw Story
Stephan: The first reaction, if you live in a fact-based world, when you read stories like this one about giants, and dinosaurs fighting humans is to laugh. Don't.
This is what Trumpworld, at least a large part of it, believes. Yes, they really do believe this, just as they believe the world was created 6,000 years ago. If you can believe that, and teach it to your kids, then thinking Donald Trump is a fine President, doing just the right things isn't much of a stretch I guess.
Giants, humans, and dinosaurs fight for supremacy in the strange world of creationism
Creationist and Christian fundamentalist Ken Ham believes that in ancient times humans and dinosaurs co-existed with a race of giants and they all did battle with each other in gladiator-style combat.
Huffington Post’s Ed Mazza said Friday that Ham tweeted an image of a new diorama in Kentucky’s “Ark Encounter” theme park that features humans, giants and dinosaurs battling to the death in a Roman-style arena.
“Exquisite design by @ArkEncounter artists for new Diorama depicting wicked population in the pre-Flood world to be installed @ArkEncounter,” Ham wrote.
Ham is the director of Answers in Genesis, a fundamentalist Christian sect who believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old and that humans, dinosaurs and apparently giants coexisted rather than being separated by millions of years.
“Scientists estimate that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, or a good 64.8 million years before the first homo sapiens, who evolved roughly 200,000 […]
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