Leslie Salzillo , - Daily Kos
Stephan: The New American Slavery Trend that is occurring within the American Gulag is about one thing: a few corporations making billions of dollars trafficking in human misery. And no aspect of this trend is more morally bankrupt than prison privatization. The United States is now one of the largest slave nation's in the world, and the trend is for it to grow. We have five per cent of the world's population and 25 per cent of the world's prisoners.
So, of course, down in the pit of that moral depravity is where you will find the Trump administration. Here's why I say this.
n August of 2016, the former Dep. Attorney General Sally Yates, via the Obama administration, made a public announcement to federal officials that phasing out “for-profit” private prisons would begin in December. At the time, contracted prisons were holding approximately 12% of the country’s federal inmates. In her memo posted on the Department of Justice (DOJ) website, Yates stated:
“We now have approximately 195,000 inmates in bureau or private contract facilities down from a high in 2013 of approximately 220,000.
This decline in the prison population means that we can better allocate our resources to ensure that inmates are in the safest facilities and receiving the best rehabilitative services – services that increase their chances of becoming contributing members of their communities when they return from prison.”
Just over a week ago, on February 23, the current Trump-appointee AG Jeff Sessions, known for racism and who’s been under scrutiny for lying under oath in Congress about his relationship with Russia, basically nixed the order for phasing out contract prisons. His actions will not only continue to cause more non-violent people (especially of people of color) to spend more time in prison. In addition, he not only destroyed an important Obama-era accomplishment, not only […]
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Camille von Kaenel, - Climatewire
Stephan: The Republican Party at the state level, principally in Red value states, is doing everything it can to impede the development of non-carbon energy. Who's being hurt? Why ordinary Americans of course. Is that a surprise? It shouldn't be, the party is nothing if not consistent in its favoritism of the rich few over the poor many.
Across the country, electric vehicle drivers are being hit with new fees to help pay for infrastructure costs.
Credit: Department of Energy.
Drivers of clean cars could be asked to pay special fees across almost half the country following a flurry of new state bills aimed at funding road improvements.
Lawmakers from a dozen primarily red states have introduced bills in the past few weeks to slap additional fees on drivers of electric or hybrid vehicles. The idea has come up before, and 10 states already have some version of the fees. But the interest this year is greater than ever before. (emphasis added)
The state debates feed into a national conversation about how to pay for much-needed repairs to the country’s roads. President Trump vowed during his address to Congress on Tuesday to spend $1 trillion in public and private funding to rebuild the nation’s “crumbling” infrastructure.
Electric vehicle advocates say they’re being punished and fear a chilling effect on sales of clean cars. Since 2013, Alleyn Harned, 36, has had to pay $64 a year […]
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JOEL CONNELLY, Reporter - Komo News
Stephan: We live on Puget Sound so, as you can imagine, I am paying particular attention to this latest Trumpian rape of the environment. Puget Sound, now joins the Great Lakes, and the Chesapeake Bay all of which have now been left unprotected and at the mercy of polluters. Here's the data.
Puget Sound
Credit: olyportal
A draft Trump administration plan, proposing deep cuts in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, would slash the EPA’s budget for Puget Sound cleanup by an astounding 93 percent. (emphasis added)
During the current fiscal year, the EPA will have spent $28 million on restoration and monitoring of the Sound. The money has been spread among local governments, Native American tribes and nonprofits.
The spending has been driven by a longtime bipartisan goal on putting Puget Sound at the same priority cleanup level as Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, the the Great Lakes.
The Trump EPA proposal would cut that spending to $2 million.
It is part of an overall plan to cut programs and reduce EPA spending from $8.24 billion this fiscal year, to $6.16 in the next fiscal year. A newly released draft plan would also ax 17 percent from the current budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“On the heels of a speech in which President Trump committed to working for clean water and good jobs, this proposal would devastate […]
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Avery Thompson, - University of Manchester (U.K.)/Popular Mechanics
Stephan: Computers are following the regular sequence of technologies: mechanical, electrical, biological. The implications, as this report describes, are profound.
DNA
Scientists at the University of Manchester have developed a new type of self-replicating computer that uses DNA to make calculations, a breakthrough that could make computing far more efficient.
Computing with DNA was first proposed in 1994 as a way to solve problems faster than with normal computers. DNA has a number of advantages over silicon that makes it ideal for problem solving, namely that it’s extremely small and highly stable.
But the biggest advantage of DNA is that it can copy itself. In computing terms, this means that a DNA computer can run an arbitrary number of calculations at the same time, which is very important for solving complex problems. While a typical computer might have to do a billion calculations one after another, a DNA computer can just make a billion copies of itself and do all the calculations at once.
In fact, that’s just what the University of Manchester researchers did with their DNA computer. Theirs is the first […]
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Pete Evans and Eric Szeto, - CBC News (Canada)
Stephan: If you are like me you probably thought that if pressed to eat fastfood the fallback position was Subway. Sorry to disabuse you, but Subway is just as bad as all the rest. Here are the facts. Subway it turns out is no better, and just a little phonier than Big Mac.
Subway’s oven-roasted chicken sandwich patty only contained about 50 per cent chicken DNA, according to Marketplace’s tests.
Credit: CBC
If you’re one of many Canadians who opt for chicken sandwiches at your favourite fast food restaurant, you may find the results of a CBC Marketplace investigation into what’s in the meat a little hard to swallow.
A DNA analysis of the poultry in several popular grilled chicken sandwiches and wraps found at least one fast food restaurant isn’t serving up nearly as much of the key ingredient as people may think.
In the case of two popular Subway sandwiches, the chicken was found to contain only about half chicken DNA.
Will Mahood, a loyal customer who considered Subway chicken sandwiches a lunchtime staple, was alarmed by the findings. To Mahood, messages from fast food companies can make it sound like “you’re taking it straight from a farm and it’s just a fresh piece of meat.”
DNA researcher Matt Harnden at Trent University’s Wildlife Forensic DNA Laboratory tested the poultry in six popular chicken sandwiches.
An unadulterated piece of chicken […]
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