Stephan: When I tell you that a large number of Americans are willfully ignorant about climate change and what it is going to do, is already doing, to regions all over the United States, either because of too much water, or not enough, plus increased temperatures this is what I mean. I can understand wanting to leave a city, both for the style of life it imposes, and also for the cost. But moving to a location which is heavily climate threatened, Southern Florida for instance, exposes one to all sorts of short and long term problems and, ultimately, migration
Downtown Miami along the Miami River. Credit: Sylvain Sonnet / Getty
Nearly 25% of the property search queries on online real estate brokerage Redfin.com are for cities where the person doesn’t live, according to the company’s most recent data. That’s up roughly 10% from five years ago.
Out of 100 metro areas examined during the three months ended in October, the following 10 cities had the highest net inflow of property searches on Redfin’s website. Net inflow is the number of people looking to move into a city minus the number of people looking to leave.
Sacramento, California: 7,800
Las Vegas: 7,100
Miami: 6,700
San Diego: 6,500
Tampa, Florida: 5,600
Phoenix: 4,700
Cape Coral, Florida: 4,600
North Port-Sarasota, Florida: 4,300
Dallas: 3,800
Orlando, Florida: 3,700
By far the most popular relocation choices are in Sun Belt states in the Southwest and Southeast, with half of the top destinations in Florida.
And the majority of those looking to relocate are from large cities, especially San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston. The following cities had the largest outflow of property searches, according to Redfin’s data:
Candidates backed by Peter Thiel lost in Arizona and Washington, calling into question his judgment and contributions’ value. Credit: Carolyn Kaster / AP
With the power balance in Congress at stake in this year’s midterm elections, the GOP money machine kicked into high gear. Spending on advertisements and drumming up votes was fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars from the party’s mega-donors and Super Pacs. Many donors’ spending figures marked new records.
Their return on investment, however, is probably not what they had hoped: some donors who spent eight figures notched zero wins in the Senate, while others spent far more money on losing candidates than winners. In the midterms, some of the biggest losers were Republican donors.
Among the clearest of those losers is Mehmet Oz, who self-funded much of his own failed run for office – loaning his Pennsylvania US Senate campaign about $22m, or about 55% of the roughly $40m he raised.
Meanwhile, candidates backed by Peter Thiel, the rightwing tech investor hyped pre-election as a new GOP “kingmaker”, lost in Arizona and Washington, calling into […]
Stephan: Nationally, 41.9 percent of American adults are obese. Black adults have the highest level of adult obesity at 49.9 percent. Hispanic adults had an obesity rate of 45.6 percent. Among the OECD-developed democracies, the United States is the most obese (36.2%).
Much of this obesity results from the American diet, and that was created and promoted not to produce wellbeing, but to make maximium profit. Why did that happen? Once again because the United States is a deeply corrupt society as a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision which legalized bribing.
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has accepted at least $15m from 2011-2017. Nestle was among one of the highest contributors. Credit: Laurent Gilliéron / AP
Newly released documents show an influential group that helps shape US food policy and steers consumers toward nutritional products has financial ties to the world’s largest processed food companies and has been controlled by former industry employees who have worked for companies like Monsanto.
The documents reveal the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has a record of quid pro quos with a range of food giants, owns stock in ultra processed food companies and has received millions in contributions from producers of pop, candy, and processed foods linked to diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other health problems.
The findings are a part of a recently published peer-reviewed study that examined a trove of financial documents and internal communications obtained through a Freedom of Information act (FOIA).
“It’s incredibly influential so if the Academy is corrupt then nutritional policy in the US is going to be corrupt,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of US Right to […]
Stephan: The Republican Party is doing everything it can to destroy public education, and turn it into public indoctrination, just as they do in North Korea. Why are they doing this? Because multiple studies have shown that children who are educated on a factual basis, particularly if they go to college, tend to vote Democratic. Only the poorly educated, or uneducated tend to vote Republican. The people who run the party know this, and want to stay in power, so the obvious strategy is what they are doing. Destroy fact-based public education.
Members of Moms For Liberty and other supporters attend a campaign event for Jacqueline Rosario in Vero Beach, Florida, on October 16, 2022. Credit: Giorgio Viera / AFP / Getty
Following the November elections, staffers from several dark money anti-public school groups — Moms for Liberty (M4L), Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) and Parents Defending Education (PDE) — took to the media to tout the supposed success of far right school board candidates.
One IWF staffer described the results of local and state public education races as a bright spot for Republicans in an overall disappointing midterm, representing a “red undercurrent” where a “red wave” failed to appear.
In reality, right-wing school board candidates backed by such groups did not sweep their races, far from it. In particular, M4L, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that keeps its funders secret from the public, and its state PACs, which endorsed more than 500 school board candidates this year, lost the majority of the races the group endorsed in.
But the infrastructure that M4L and other dark money anti-public education groups have built up will […]
Stephan: Big tobacco spread disinformation for decades because profit was more important to them than killing tens of thousands of Americans, and others around the world. Now big oil is following the same playbook. Here's the story.
People shout slogans against ExxonMobil as they take part in a protest on October 22, 2019 in New York. Credit: Eduardo MunozAlvarez / VIEWpress)
A trove of internal documents from companies including BP, ExxonMobil, and Chevron reveal how the fossil fuel industry has continued to make massive long-term investments in oil and gas extraction even as the corporations have publicly claimed to be committed to aiding in a transition to a renewable energy economy.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, joined Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who chairs the panel’s Subcommittee on the Environment, in releasing a roughly one million pages of documents uncovered as part of the committee’s yearlong investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s role in spreading climate misinformation.
“Just like Big Tobacco, it’s time to hold this industry accountable for their lies.”
While fossil fuel giants have made highly publicized pledges to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in the coming decades—pledges that climate experts have found are rife with loopholes that will keep the companies from actually helping the global community to limit […]
