Stephan: When I left university and went to work for National Geographic if I had had somewhere between $15 and $30 thousand worth of debt it would have made me crazy. Just thinking about it now gives me the jimjams. And yet, as this report lays out, this is the new normal. And if you came out of say Med School with a quarter of a million in debt... well, I have several younger friends to whom that happened and they were in their late 40s before they had the debt paid off, and it shaped their lives every day. When Grifter Trump and Moscow Mitch tell you how great the economy is doing just remember this Millennial and Gen Z debt, the homeless situation, and the fact that 40% of American families could not write a $400 check in an emergency.
Siraanamwong / Getty
Millennials carry an average of $27,900 in debt, not including mortgages, according to new data released today by Northwestern Mutual. Gen Z, the oldest of whom are now 22 years old, have an average debt of $14,700.
Having sizable debt at a young age “is the new normal,” said Chantel Bonneau, wealth management advisor at Northwestern Mutual. “There are lots of people who exit school, and before they start their first job, have debt. That is a different situation from 30 years ago.”
Millennials’ main source of debt is credit card bills, and Gen Z’s is student loans. In a previous poll by CreditCards.com, 40% millennials said the top reason they carried a credit card balance was daily expenses such as groceries, childcare, and utilities, and about 20% pointed to unexpected emergencies such as medical bills and car repairs. Bonneau said discretionary expenses such as vacations and eating meals out also contribute to credit […]
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Thursday, September 19th, 2019
Oliver Milman, - Scientific American
Stephan: We don't have a government in the United States any longer in any sense the Founders would understand. Instead, we have a Trumpian mafia operation.
Betsy Southerlan, former water quality official at the EPA. Credit: Jamie McCarthy/ Getty
From weakening vehicle emissions to blocking warnings about how coastal parks could flood or the impact on the Arctic, the Trump administration is accused of muzzling climate science.
Here six whistleblowers and former government scientists describe being sidelined by the administration—and why they won’t be quiet.
JEFF ALSON
ROLE: A FORMER SENIOR ENGINEER AT THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA)’S VEHICLES LAB IN ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN
What did the work involve?
“I was an engineer at the EPA, working for 40 years in a very technical job. In 2009, after the election of Barack Obama, the EPA started working on greenhouse gas standards for vehicles for the first time. It felt like we were making history.
“There was a team of around 25 people producing thousands of pages of analysis for the standards. We knew it would be controversial but it was a very big deal, the first critical steps to address the climate crisis.”
What changed under the Trump administration?
“Once Trump was elected it became pretty […]
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Wednesday, September 18th, 2019
Stephan: Other countries which see the wellbeing of their societies as more important than keeping the petroleum industry alive are committed to transiting out of petroleum by 2040. In the United States something very different is going on.
Electric cars charging.
Credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty
The oil industry is trying to crush the booming electric car movement.
Groups backed by industry giants like Exxon Mobil and the Koch empire are waging a state-by-state, multimillion-dollar battle to squelch utilities’ plans to build charging stations across the country. Environmentalists call the fight a reprise of the “Who Killed the Electric Car?” battles that doomed an earlier generation of battery-driven vehicles in the 1990s.
Oil-backed groups have challenged electric companies’ plans in 10 states, according to utility commission filings reviewed by POLITICO, waging regulatory and lobbying campaigns against the proposals. The showdown is taking place as utilities, eager to increase the demand for power, push for approval to build charging networks in locations such as shopping centers and rest stops in more than half the nation.
“Fossil fuel interests control 90 percent of the transportation fuel market in the U.S. and are really feeling threatened,” said Gina Coplon-Newfield, director of the electric vehicle initiative at the Sierra Club.
The counterattack involves […]
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Wednesday, September 18th, 2019
BRIAN GOLDSTONE, - The New Republic
Stephan: According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Annual Homeless Assessment Report, "as of 2018 there were around 553,000 homeless people in theUnited States on a given night." When you hear a politician tell you how wonderful the economy is, how low unemployment is, you should know that you are listening to either a moron or a liar who is probably a corporate zombie. If you are employed at $7 an hour, and the minimum cost in your city for housing requires an income of $21 an hour, employment figures are just a cloak to hide reality. In the U.S., where profit is the only social priority, we literally create homelessness as a social program.
Cokethia Goodman and her children outside their former home in Forest Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. The house was condemned shortly after they moved in.
Credit: The New Republic
Last August, Cokethia Goodman returned home from work to discover a typed letter from her landlord in the mailbox. She felt a familiar panic as she began to read it. For nearly a year, Goodman and her six children—two of them adopted after being abandoned at birth—had been living in a derelict but functional three-bedroom house in the historically black Peoplestown neighborhood of Atlanta. Goodman, who is 50, has a reserved, vigilant demeanor, her years trying to keep the kids out of harm’s way evident in her perpetually narrowed eyes. She saw the rental property as an answer to prayer. It was in a relatively safe area and within walking distance of the Barack and Michelle Obama Academy, the public elementary school her youngest son and daughter attended. It was also—at $950 a month, not including utilities—just barely […]
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