Samantha Page, - Think Progress
Stephan: The news is dominated by the miasma of lies, and grotesqueries of Donald Trump, a man I believe to be mentally ill; ignorant but conniving, and obsessed with power. You may have read that a group of psychiatrists at a conference at Yale have concluded much the same; the second group of mental health professionals to do so.
But underneath that news his minions who head the agencies that we as a nation have developed over the years are being sabotaged right and left, their functionality destroyed almost without notice. I have already done a dozen stories on this process. Here is the latest. The only thing that will stop this is citizen action; I'm just not sure the will to act is there.
Credit: AP/Charlie Riedel
The Trump administration on Tuesday asked a court to delay arguments over a rule that prevents coal-fired power plants from releasing heavy metals into the environment.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS) rule has been in place for two years, but, “in light of the recent change in administration” the agency now says it wants time to “fully review” the findings. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was expected to hear oral arguments for the case on May 18.
The rule was the culmination of more than two decades of effort to limit the amount of mercury from coal-fired power plants. In 2015, the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision led by Justice Antonin Scalia, found that the EPA had not adequately considered the cost of the regulation. That ruling sent the standard down to the D.C. Circuit Court […]
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Ed O'Boyle and Jim Harter, - The Gallup Organization
Stephan: I hope everyone who reads SR knows about the Quotidian Choice; in many ways the most powerful act a private individual can do. Only people like Thoreau, Gandhi, and Dr King in the political world have really understood it. I have written about it at length in The 8 Laws of Change, but the principle is simple. Quotidian means mundane, daily, ordinary; the little choices we make by the dozens all day long. First, be aware you are making a choice. Second, of the options available to you, always choose the one that is the most compassionate and life-affirming, as you understand that, at that moment.
The challenge of course in buying a product or a service, which is what many decisions entail, is that it can be hard to know which is the better option. One way of taking the measure is how the business which created the product treats its employees. Not an easy task.
However, the Gallup Organization, an institution with real integrity, whose data can be relied upon, has done some of the work for us. Here it is:
What separates great workplace cultures from the rest? Gallup has studied millions of employees around the world to answer this very question.
We’ve found that regardless of company size, location, culture or industry, the very best organizations all share one undeniable trait: They have an intense and intentional focus on engaging their employees.
That focus means more than administering a survey once or twice a year. While measurement is important and necessary, great workplaces know that engaging employees requires real strategy and commitment. They don’t simply promise a culture of engagement; they deliver on it.
Great workplaces have leaders who make engagement a priority — as a competitive point of differentiation — and who communicate openly and consistently. They hold their managers accountable — not just for their team’s measured engagement level, but also for how it relates to their team’s overall performance. They have well-defined and comprehensive development programs for leaders and managers, and they emphasize the development of individuals and teams.
Great workplace cultures treat employees as stakeholders of their future. They put their attention on concrete performance management activities, such as clarifying […]
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Saturday, April 22nd, 2017
Brian Kahn, - Scientific American/Climate Central
Stephan: You can't say we weren't warned.
The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii recorded its first-ever carbon dioxide reading in excess of 410 parts per million.
Credit: Sharloch Flickr
The world just passed another round-numbered climate milestone. Scientists predicted it would happen this year and lo and behold, it has.
On Tuesday, the Mauna Loa Observatory recorded its first-ever carbon dioxide reading in excess of 410 parts per million (it was 410.28 ppm in case you want the full deal). Carbon dioxide hasn’t reached that height in millions of years. It’s a new atmosphere that humanity will have to contend with, one that’s trapping more heat and causing the climate to change at a quickening rate.
In what’s become a spring tradition like Passover and Easter, carbon dioxide has set a record high each year since measurements began. It stood at 280 ppm when record keeping began at Mauna Loa in 1958. In 2013, it passed 400 ppm. Just four years later, the 400 ppm mark is no longer a novelty. It’s the norm.
“Its pretty depressing that it’s only […]
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Saturday, April 22nd, 2017
JESSICA BENKO, - The New York Times Magazine
Stephan: It has been eight years since my first essay "
Migration" was published in
Explore in March 2009. For a long time readers and others who heard me speak about this, criticized me for being an alarmist. Several climate deniers cited my work as an example of "over-the-top exaggeration" by a "climate change fanatic."
Well now we have come to this. Migrations as a geopolitical concern, as I have been trying to make my readers aware, have become a very big deal. Why? Because as I predicted they hold the potential for massive social disorder and even the collapse of societies. Here is the
New York Times take on the subject. Sound familiar?
Climate change is not equally felt across the globe, and neither are its longer term consequences. This map overlays human turmoil — represented here by United Nations data on nearly 64 million “persons of concern,” whose numbers have tripled since 2005 — with climate turmoil, represented by data from NASA’s Common Sense Climate Index. The correlation is striking. Climate change is a threat multiplier: It 
contributes to economic and political instability and also worsens the effects. It propels sudden-onset disasters like floods and storms and slow-onset disasters like drought and desertification; those disasters contribute to failed crops, famine and overcrowded urban centers; those crises inflame political unrest and worsen the impacts of war, which leads to even more displacement. There is no internationally recognized legal definition for “environmental migrants” or “climate refugees,” so there is no formal reckoning of how many have left their homes because climate change has made their lives or […]
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Saturday, April 22nd, 2017
Paul Buchheit , - Alternet
Stephan: The American illness profit system is a failure by every measure except its profitability. But unlike a restaurant chain or a department store, it routinely kills people, and the number of deaths is growing. The entire argument over Obamacare and Trumpcare is not about which produces greater social wellbeing, but how profit can be preserved. Every other developed nation in the world has figured out that individual wellbeing leads to social wellbeing, but from a profit point of view poor wellbeing is desirable and a big money maker. It is one of America's greatest shames.
In his report, “This is how American health care kills people,” Ryan Cooper tells the story of 29-year-old Matthew Stewart, who required emergency surgery for hepatitis-induced liver damage, but learned that only about $10,000 of his $74,000 bill was covered by his “gold plan” insurance policy, partly because of out-of-network rules even in emergencies.
When his insurance provider decided to quit the insurance exchange, Stewart was left without a liver specialist, and he couldn’t obtain Medicaid because his state of Texas had refused the option to carry it. His alternative—declaring bankruptcy and leaving the state—would be delayed by a lengthy legal process exacerbated by the physical and mental stress of his illness. But the hospitals kept sending their bills.
Evidence for the Financial Collapse of the Great Majority of Americans
The poorest 90% of Americans lost nearly $2 trillion in wealth in 2015-’16, an average of $8,500 per adult. Every sector of society lost money except for the richest 1%, whose members gained an average of $1.5 million in that single year.
Wealth is down in part because income […]
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