Stephan: Here is the latest on long haul trucking. I just finished writing a novel in which one of the characters is a long haul trucker of an EV driving on electronic lanes on roadways, with the batteries wirelessly recharging as the truck goes, so he always has plenty of power when he goes off the special lane. I see this as a major new trend.
As Tesla prepares to jump into the electric truck market, Daimler is poised and ready to take on the competition.
Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, has been investing heavily in the global truck business for years. The German automaker now has five commercial truck brands: Mercedes-Benz Trucks, Freightliner Trucks, Mitsubishi FUSO, Western Star, and BharatBenz.
Freightliner has 40 percent market share in the U.S. heavy duty vehicle market.
In an April Twitter post, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that a Tesla semi-truck reveal has been set for September. And that the company’s truck team has done “an amazing job. Seriously next level.”
As for a pickup truck, that will be rolling out in 18 to 24 months from April, Musk said.
Tesla is preparing to meet demand in global markets like the U.S., Europe, and China, where vehicle emissions rules are getting tighter. Most of these trucks are diesel powered, which has fallen out of favor during the Volkswagen diesel emissions cheating scandal. Electric trucks are much more viable now with fleet […]
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Stephan: Here is the contempt in which Republicans hold average Americans spelled out in their vision of healthcare. As I have said before I don't think it is possible to be a compassionate life-affirming moral person and be a Republican. It is a measure of the moral confusion in American society that people vote to have this done to them. The Republican position, and indeed, most of the Democratic position on healthcare is based on a tissue of lies. The truth is single payer would be both immeasurably healthier and much much cheaper. How can I say this? Can this be true? Look at the rest of the world's data. No other country pays anywhere near what America does for healthcare per capita, and yet they all have higher quality care.
This healthcare bill has very little to do with healthcare. It is a tax cut for the rich, and complex mélange of schemes to make sure everyone's profits are protected
Credit: Business Insider
The actual policies contained in the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the Senate Republican plan introduced on Thursday to repeal and replace Obamacare, would help some Americans a lot. The biggest winners are households making $250,000 a year or more, which would see two different taxes targeting them repealed; households with millions in investment income would come out particularly far ahead.
But vastly more Americans would come out behind.
22 million will lose health care coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office estimated would lose insurance under the bill that passed the House in May. Medicaid beneficiaries will have to deal with $774 billion in cuts over ten years, plus additional ones in years after that.
And because the bill substantially weakens regulations for both individual and employer plans, millions of people who still get insurance will see the extent of their coverage shrink, and see themselves forced to pay out of pocket for expensive procedures that would otherwise be covered.
The […]
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KELSEY BRUGGER, Reporter - Santa Barbara Independent
Stephan: There is a massive transformation going on in the agriculture community, particularly in the West, as this report describes. The Trump administration has made it clear to Mexicans they are not welcome, so they aren't coming and, as a result, crops are not getting picked or planted. Maybe that's why when I went to the market the other day I noticed that an organic head of lettuce was $4.49. Happily we grow all the produce we eat; I don't know families deal with such costs, and it is only going to get worse.
Here, celery is harvested and made ready for market. But last year, farm labor shortages forced growers to let $13 million worth of their crops go unpicked, left to rot in the fields.
Credit: Paul Wellman
Last year marked the fifth consecutive year Santa Barbara County’s agriculture industry has struggled with labor shortages, which have ranged from 15 to 26 percent. Farmers, therefore, must leave crops to rot in the fields. An estimated $13 million of strawberries, broccoli, leafy greens, and other unharvested produce were plowed under last year, up from five years ago when losses amounted to an estimated $4.4 million, according to the region’s Grower-Shipper Association.
Central Coast growers do not receive government subsidies for mowing unpicked berries and veggies as Midwestern farmers do for destroying wheat or barley. Some area growers have insurance for losses from heat waves or pests but not for lack of workforce.
Five years ago, when Santa Ynez Valley grower Cindy Douglas put a call out for farmworkers on Spanish radio, she got flooded. Not anymore. Now, farmers might have […]
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Marshall Allen, - ProPublica
Stephan: There is no shame in the pharmaceutical industry, there are no morals; there is only greed. Human life, hardly any consideration at all.
Everything happened so fast as I walked out of the doctor’s exam room. I was tucking in my shirt and wondering if I’d asked all my questions about my injured shoulder when one of the doctor’s assistants handed me two small boxes of pills.
“These will hold you over until your prescription arrives in the mail,” she said, pointing to the drug samples.
Strange, I thought to myself, the doctor didn’t mention giving me any drugs.
I must have looked puzzled because she tried to reassure me.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It won’t cost you any more than $10.”
I was glad whatever was coming wouldn’t break my budget, but I didn’t understand why I needed the drugs in the first place. And why wasn’t I picking them up at my local CVS?
At first I shrugged it off. This had been my first visit with an orthopedic specialist and he, Dr. Mohnish Ramani, hadn’t been the chatty type. He’d barely said a word as he examined me, tugging my arm this way and bending it that way before rotating it behind my back. The pain made me squirm and yelp, but he knew what he was doing. He promptly diagnosed me with frozen shoulder, a […]
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