Tag Archives: living

Friday Cat Blogging – 11 April 2014

by Amilianp2t Posted on April 11, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Here she is, the Queen of Sheba, keeping a watchful eye on her domain and her loyal subjects. Soon she will take a well-deserved nap.

But before you take a nap, how about donating a few bucks to our investigative reporting fundraiser? Our goal is to raise $100,000 over the next three weeks. As you all know, we’re a reader-supported nonprofit, so those dollars aren’t going to come from big corporations or super-rich political donors. They’ll be small contributions from regular people who read Mother Jones. If you value our reporting—or hell, even if you only value our catblogging—please donate $5 to the Mother Jones Investigative Fund. If you can afford it, make it $10. We’ll put it to good use. Here’s how to make a contribution:

Credit card donations: Click here

PayPal donations: Click here

Thanks!

Originally posted here:

Friday Cat Blogging – 11 April 2014

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Friday Cat Blogging – 11 April 2014

Obamacare and the Hack Gap: A Case Study

by d2wk58 Posted on April 11, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

“Watch the right search desperately for bad news on Obamacare,” says the headline to Michael Hiltzik’s piece a couple of days ago about the right, um, desperately searching for bad news on Obamacare. And it’s true. Obamacare is a great example of the famous hack gap.

Don’t get me wrong. We lefties generally try to portray Obamacare as a success. You won’t find Diogenes on either side. But I read lots of lefties who write about health care, and they’ve generally been willing to acknowledge Obamacare’s problems. The federal website rollout was a disaster. The insurance pools so far seem to have fewer of the young and healthy than we’d hoped. Narrow networks are a significant problem, especially in some states. We don’t know yet how many Obamacare enrollees were previously uninsured—and in any case, the number appears to be less than CBO projected earlier this year. Etc.

But unless I’m reading the wrong conservatives, you simply see nothing of this sort on the right. Their coverage of Obamacare is simply an endless search for increasingly strained ways to deny that anything even slightly positive has happened. The Obama administration is lying about its numbers. If they’re not lying, the figures are meaningless anyway until they’ve been unskewed. Premiums are skyrocketing. People are being tossed off their plans and thrown in the street. The budget projections are a joke. Cancer patients are dying for lack of doctors to see them. Hours are being cut back and part-time workers are being fired. Fewer people have coverage now than before Obamacare started up.

I could go on. And on. And on. This is the hack gap in all its glory. There’s simply no willingness on the right to acknowledge any success at all. And even when they’re forced to concede that maybe there are a few people benefiting from Obamacare, it’s just an opportunity to rail about Democrats handing out bennies to inner-city moochers like a modern-day Boss Tweed. Welcome to America, ladies and gentlemen.

See original article: 

Obamacare and the Hack Gap: A Case Study

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obamacare and the Hack Gap: A Case Study

Some Follow-Up Notes on Thomas Piketty’s "Capital in the 21st Century"

by SamualBuvelot Posted on April 10, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I’m a little reluctant to dive ever deeper into the weeds of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century since I’m woefully unqualified for the task. But I have a couple of follow-up comments that might be worthwhile. These are things I alluded to in my post on Tuesday but didn’t elaborate on.

First: As you know by now, Piketty’s primary argument is that, historically, r > g. That is, the return on capital is higher than economic growth, which means that owners of capital see their incomes grow faster than ordinary laborers. Since the rich own most of the capital, this means that the incomes of the rich naturally increase faster than the non-rich unless proactive steps are taken to stop it.

That’s fine. But take a look at the highlighted region in the chart on the right. The first set of points is for 1950-2012, a period in which r was about 0.5 percentage points less than g. The next set of points is a projection for 2012-2050, a period in which r is roughly 0.5 percentage points greater than g. This is not a big difference, especially considering the inherent noise in the data. Even if it’s correct, it means the next 40 years will see only small changes in the relative returns to capital and labor.

The real action is in the period 2050-2100, and it’s almost entirely dependent on Piketty’s projection that g will plummet by two full percentage points. Now, this might be correct. But keep in mind what’s going on here. Piketty’s main conclusion is (a) based on a projection more than 50 years in the future, which is inherently unreliable, and (b) primarily a guess that economic growth will plummet. So everything boils down to this: will global economic growth plummet during the period 2050-2100? I’d like to suggest that this is a very different question from the one most people are addressing in their reviews of Piketty.

Second: Another thing I mentioned on Tuesday is that if economic growth slows and capital stocks increase, then the return on capital should go down. Piketty acknowledges this—though not in the chart above—but contends that r will fall less than g. In technical terms, this all depends on the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. However, over at Tyler Cowen’s blog, Matt Rognlie argues that Piketty is confusing gross and net production functions. If you account for depreciation, then the elasticity is such that r is likely to fall much faster than Piketty thinks as capital stocks increase and economic growth slows down.

I want to be clear that I can’t assess this independently. But it sounds plausible, and Cowen thinks it sounds plausible too. I’d very much like to hear Piketty or someone else address this.

View original article: 

Some Follow-Up Notes on Thomas Piketty’s "Capital in the 21st Century"

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Some Follow-Up Notes on Thomas Piketty’s "Capital in the 21st Century"

Even New York Drivers Wowed by a White, Winged Commuter

by Myrna Posted on April 9, 2014

An odd moment in which a white pigeon races commuters on a New York highway seems a little less odd after some Googling. See original article –  Even New York Drivers Wowed by a White, Winged Commuter ; ;Related ArticlesShowtime Series Aims to Engage Sleepy Public on Global Warming With Celebrity GuidesOther Voices: Earth Institute’s Steven Cohen Seeks a Post-Hysterical Approach to Climate ProgressThe Uphill Climate Challenge in ‘Years of Living Dangerously’ ;

Link – 

Even New York Drivers Wowed by a White, Winged Commuter

Posted in alo, alternative energy, ATTRA, Bunn, Citadel, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Monterey, Mop, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Even New York Drivers Wowed by a White, Winged Commuter

Guess What? Greece Is Finally Starting to Recover

by LibbyHammqmm Posted on April 9, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Apropos of nothing in particular, I want to highlight this column from Hugo Dixon that I found at Counterparties yesterday:

Greece is undergoing an astonishing financial rebound. Two years ago, the country looked like it was set for a messy default and exit from the euro. Now it is on the verge of returning to the bond market with the issue of 2 billion euros of five-year paper.

There are still political risks, and the real economy is only now starting to turn. But the financial recovery is impressive. The 10-year bond yield, which hit 30 percent after the debt restructuring of two years ago, is now 6.2 percent….The changed mood in the markets is mainly down to external factors: the European Central Bank’s promise to “do whatever it takes” to save the euro two years ago; and the more recent end of investors’ love affair with emerging markets, meaning the liquidity sloshing around the global economy has been hunting for bargains in other places such as Greece.

That said, the centre-right government of Antonis Samaras has surprised observers at home and abroad by its ability to continue with the fiscal and structural reforms started by his predecessors. The most important successes have been reform of the labour market, which has restored Greece’s competiveness, and the achievement last year of a “primary” budgetary surplus before interest payments.

I don’t have anything to say about this, but once a narrative takes hold we sometimes don’t realize it when things change. If you had asked me last week how Greece was doing, I would have answered, “Oh, they’re still screwed.” But apparently they’re doing better. Not out of the woods yet, but doing better. Update your priors.

POSTSCRIPT: If this keeps up—and that’s still a big if—it also might be a lesson in the virtue of kicking the can down the road. Back in 2012, lots of commenters, including me, believed that the eurozone had deep structural problems that couldn’t be solved by running fire drills every six months or so and then hoping against hope that things would get better. But maybe they will! This probably still wasn’t the best way of forging a recovery of the eurozone, but so far, it seems to have worked at least a little better than the pessimists imagined. Maybe sometimes kicking the can is a good idea after all.

See the original post: 

Guess What? Greece Is Finally Starting to Recover

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Guess What? Greece Is Finally Starting to Recover

Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

by LeviCfiasgh Posted on April 3, 2014

Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

By

WCN 24/7

Could it be that frackers are die-hard Ravens fans? That might explain their cavalier attitude about the health of citizens in Steeler Country.

Kidding! Money is the motive, yinz – and if Pennsylvanians are exposed to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals in the making of it, who cares?

An alarming new study by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, published in the journal Reviews on Environmental Health, finds that current methods and tools used to measure harmful emissions from fracking wells don’t accurately assess health threats – not even close, in fact.

Federal and state officials tend to measure and report emissions in big-picture terms – tons of methane released per year, for example. Another method is to track hourly emissions over a given day or week. These might not capture rapid and brief increases in chemical exposure, which can cause real harm to bodily systems. SPEHP reports that emissions near drilling sites can fluctuate wildly, and toxic chemical particles can reach high levels of concentration in the air in a very short period of time – as little as a minute or two – and then drop back down. This can occur repeatedly throughout drilling, but might not be captured by the tools or methods customarily used to measure emissions.

SPEHP researchers collected data on levels of four toxic chemicals in 14 households near fracking sites in southwestern Pennsylvania, and found that contamination was concentrated at peak levels – three times the median level of concentration – about 30 percent of the time, but in spurts. These short blasts of contamination can go undetected by tools customarily used to measure emissions.

Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene are all toxic substances released into the air from shale drilling. So, what can go wrong if one is exposed to peak levels of these chemicals? Glad you asked! The health effects can include “respiratory, neurologic, and dermal responses as well as vascular bleeding, abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting.”

If that weren’t bad enough, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has a flawed system for responding to citizen complaints about emissions, as ProPublica reports:

[T]he agency’s own manual for dealing with complaints is explicit about what to do if someone reports concerns about a noxious odor, but is not at that very moment experiencing the smell: “DO NOT REGISTER THE COMPLAINT.”

When a resident does report a real-time alarm about the air quality in or around their home, the agency typically has two weeks to conduct an investigation. If no odor is detected when investigators arrive on the scene, the case is closed.

In light of the SPEHP findings, this response falls very much short of what would be needed to accurately determine whether there’s a health threat, as it not only fails to address the issue immediately, but also doesn’t account for the intermittency of spikes in exposure.

ProPublica reports that the DEP has been criticized for bowing to energy company interests rather than serving Pennsylvania citizens.

Activists and environmental groups have accused the agency of being overly deferential to the gas industry, and defensive and slow moving in its dealings with the public.

“It was very top down, very secretive and paranoid about who the enemies were,” said [George] Jugovic, [a] former agency official, who left the department when Corbett succeeded Rendell as governor. “The control on information was significant.”

Gov. Tom Corbett (R) has an impressive history of wooing gas companies to Pennsylvania. Now, these companies have made themselves at home enough to dump all their shit in the air without so much as a “whoops!”, and sure enough, it’s making some of those unlucky enough to live near fracking sites sick. Maybe in between bouts of vomiting, Pennsylvanians can try to enjoy some complimentary pizza.


Source
In Fracking Fight, a Worry About How Best to Measure Health Threats, ProPublica

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

,

Living

,

Politics

See original article:

Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, ProPublica, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

Oil workers and Jewish grandmas driving American metropolitan growth

by HFOSpencer Posted on March 28, 2014

The Villages People

Oil workers and Jewish grandmas driving American metropolitan growth

By

Shutterstock

Looking for the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States? Follow the fracking – or, alternatively, search for the top-rated golf club brunches on Yelp. The most recent U.S. census data, measuring urban growth between July 1, 2012 and July 1, 2013, showed that oil boomtowns and Southern retirement communities now get to sit at the popular table. The irony here, of course, is that there were never more unlikely candidates for said table than The Villages, Fla., or Fargo, N.D. This list paints a pretty bizarre picture of America’s future, but at least it’s interesting.

A couple of cities on this list – Austin, for example – actually seem like fun places to live for young people, but what’s most striking is that with the exception of The Villages, all of the top spots are filled by oil towns. That’s no coincidence. Last July, the New York Times published a study examining social mobility in metro areas across the United States. The places of greatest economic opportunity, according to the results, were concentrated in oil-rich regions: North Dakota, eastern Montana, western Texas.

Here’s a list of the top 10 fastest-growing metro areas, with the most likely reasons for their growth:

1. The Villages, Fla. – 5.2 percent

Awkwardly named The Villages is literally just a retirement community in the dead center of Florida, about an hour northwest of Orlando. No one under the age of 65 is moving there.

2 & 3. Odessa and Midland, Texas – tied at 3.3 percent

Odessa and Midland, about 20 miles apart, lie on the oil-rich Permian Basin in western Texas, which is expected to produce 1.41 million barrels this month. Both towns have experienced housing shortages in recent years due to an oil boom in the region.

4 & 5. Fargo and Bismarck, N.D. – tied at 3.1 percent

Fargo and Bismarck have both seen unprecedented growth due to workers flocking to high-paying jobs on the Bakken shale. This influx — and its attendant problems, including high real-estate prices, increased crime rates, and a really tough dating scene – have been well-documented.

6. Casper, Wyo. – 2.9 percent

Casper, nicknamed The Oil City, is bringing recent high school grads to work in the region’s oil fields in droves. A city full of 18-year-olds with tens of thousands of dollars in disposable income? Pretty sick, brah!

7. Myrtle Beach, S.C. – 2.7 percent

It turns out everyone you’ve ever met wearing a Myrtle Beach sweatshirt is finally making their sartorially expressed dreams a reality and moving to Myrtle Beach. There is no other explanation.

8. Austin, Texas – 2.6 percent

Have you ever been to Austin? There is pretty much nowhere within the city limits that you can’t get a delicious taco. That’s just part of the reason that 110 people move to Austin each day – the city’s economy expanded by 5.9 percent last year, more than twice the growth rate for the national economy.

9. Daphne, Ala. – 2.6 percent

Fairhope, in the Daphne metro area on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, was founded as an experimental utopian society by a group of rare Iowan socialists, and continues to pride itself on being a weird little resort town. Fairhope’s current mayor started out as the city’s horticulturist, and the town is committed to being bike- and pedestrian-friendly. This one doesn’t sound so bad, y’all.

10. Cape Coral, Fla. – 2.5 percent

In 2012, Forbes named Cape Coral among its 25 top places to retire in the U.S. It seems that the publication’s target audience took that recommendation to heart.

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Cities

,

Climate & Energy

,

Living

Taken from: 

Oil workers and Jewish grandmas driving American metropolitan growth

Posted in Anchor, ATTRA, FF, Free Press, GE, LAI, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Oil workers and Jewish grandmas driving American metropolitan growth

Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s okay for you to buy Teslas

by HelaineAtchison Posted on March 27, 2014

Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

By

Tesla

If you live in Ohio, your lawmakers are poised to allow you to purchase a Tesla from a sales center — without forcing you to drive outside the borders of the Buckeye State to do your eco-friendly spending.

But legislative efforts to placate the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association will nonetheless cap the number of sales offices Tesla is allowed to operate inside the state at three – and other auto manufacturers will be barred outright from hawking their wheel-spinning wares direct to buyers. Here’s the news, courtesy of NJTV:

An Ohio Senate committee approved a bill formally barring automakers from selling directly to consumers except for a maximum of three outlets for electric-car builder Tesla Motors Inc.

The measure was a compromise between the company and the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association, which had sought to block Tesla from selling without a middleman, according to state Sen. Scott Oelslager, the committee chairman.

Tesla, based in Palo Alto, Calif., operates Ohio stores in Columbus and Cincinnati and will be permitted to add a third as long as the company isn’t sold or acquired and doesn’t produce anything other than all-electric vehicles, under the legislation worked out yesterday.

Why are states getting into the strange business of banning a wildly hyped, pretty cool, awfully expensive electric car manufacturer? Tesla’s direct sales model has drawn opposition from car salesmen — middlemen who fear becoming superfluous as Tesla champions a direct-to-consumer auto-marketing model. That opposition has led to sales bans in five states and restrictions in two others.

In New Jersey, for example, Grist’s Ben Adler explains that Gov. Chris Christie’s administration is forcing the electric-auto maker to shut down its two sales offices. The promising news there is that a Democratic assemblyman recently introduced a bill that would unshackle Tesla from Christie’s new ban on its sales model.


Source
Tesla may be nearer to a compromise in Ohio, NJTV

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

,

Living

View this article: 

Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s okay for you to buy Teslas

Posted in alo, Anchor, aquaculture, eco-friendly, FF, Free Press, G & F, GE, Keurig, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, solar, TOTO, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s okay for you to buy Teslas

Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

by ColemanPermewan Posted on March 27, 2014

Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

By

Tesla

If you live in Ohio, your lawmakers are poised to allow you to purchase a Tesla from a sales center — without forcing you to drive outside the borders of the Buckeye State to do your eco-friendly spending.

But legislative efforts to placate the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association will nonetheless cap the number of sales offices Tesla is allowed to operate inside the state at three – and other auto manufacturers will be barred outright from hawking their wheel-spinning wares direct to buyers. Here’s the news, courtesy of NJTV:

An Ohio Senate committee approved a bill formally barring automakers from selling directly to consumers except for a maximum of three outlets for electric-car builder Tesla Motors Inc.

The measure was a compromise between the company and the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association, which had sought to block Tesla from selling without a middleman, according to state Sen. Scott Oelslager, the committee chairman.

Tesla, based in Palo Alto, Calif., operates Ohio stores in Columbus and Cincinnati and will be permitted to add a third as long as the company isn’t sold or acquired and doesn’t produce anything other than all-electric vehicles, under the legislation worked out yesterday.

Why are states getting into the strange business of banning a wildly hyped, pretty cool, awfully expensive electric car manufacturer? Tesla’s direct sales model has drawn opposition from car salesmen — middlemen who fear becoming superfluous as Tesla champions a direct-to-consumer auto-marketing model. That opposition has led to sales bans in five states and restrictions in two others.

In New Jersey, for example, Grist’s Ben Adler explains that Gov. Chris Christie’s administration is forcing the electric automaker to shut down its two sales offices. The promising news there is that a Democratic assemblymember recently introduced a bill that would unshackle Tesla from Christie’s new ban on its sales model.


Source
Tesla may be nearer to a compromise in Ohio, NJTV

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

,

Living

Original article:

Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

Posted in alo, Anchor, aquaculture, eco-friendly, FF, Free Press, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

Flood Zone Foolishness

by Stephaniauxu Posted on March 24, 2014

green4us

Politicians from disaster-prone states lead the fight against real disaster reforms. Wang Chengyun/Xinhua/ZUMA The billion-dollar storm is the new normal. Eight of the 10 costliest hurricanes in U.S. history have occurred in the past decade, adjusting for inflation, at a staggering toll of more than $200 billion in losses. Sea level rise along the eastern seaboard is happening at the fastest rate in the world. Disaster experts have plenty of good ideas for ways to prepare for the unfolding crisis, but it’s hard to find legislators willing to think long-term. Welcome to disaster politics in the 21st century. Lawmakers continually prepare for the previous disaster. Witness the overhaul of nuclear power regulation after Three Mile Island or overwhelming reforms to counterterrorism after Sept. 11, 2001. Similarly, it was only in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that lawmakers began to discuss serious reforms to the bankrupt National Flood Insurance Program, a government-backed system created in 1968 for homeowners living in flood-prone areas. It took until the summer of 2012 for Congress to pass the bipartisan Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, a bill aimed at restoring the NFIP to solid financial health. Just a few months later Hurricane Sandy, with its tens of thousands of under-insured victims, made Biggert-Waters look like visionary legislation. Read more at Climate Desk partner, Slate.

Original article:  

Flood Zone Foolishness

Related Posts

Natural Disasters Cost $3.8 Trillion Since 1980, World Bank Says
FEMA Report: Climate Change Could Increase Areas At Risk of Flood by 45%
Louisiana’s Coastline Is Disappearing Too Quickly for Mappers to Keep Up
3 Countries That Are Bailing on Climate Action
Climate Change Could Mean Seven Times As Many Katrinas

Share this:

Visit link: 

Flood Zone Foolishness

Posted in alo, Down To Earth, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, OXO, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Flood Zone Foolishness