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25% of our carbon footprint in CA is just to move water. We can harvest vast amounts of green energy from our rivers and use it to transport water. The low face fish ladder dams harvest energy more efficiently then the old dams and creates ideal fish habitiat. We must enact within our environmental protection laws the mandate that all new water systems meet 3 criteria. The system uses less energy then conventional, produces purer water, and has a positive impact on our environment. I am trying to bring this system to Santa Cruz.
Include in the national carbon tax a methane tax for large industrial meat production facilities. Too much methane in the end may be our doom.
The Koch brothers bought the last election in Australia tipping politics back to conservatives. They ended their carbon tax. Building the brothers 5 new coal burning plants. They plan to dump the tailings on bleached out reef. They figure its dead anyway.
We must formulate a world environmental protection agency. With more power then the WTO.
The Daily Show did a segment ("Operation Black Hair") on the new regulations for black female soldiers, showing how arbitrary they were, and suggesting that it was a way of reducing the numbers (giving an excuse to discharge some people). Thanks in part to that exposure, the military has relented somewhat.
(moved to today's daily topics)
@Paul Hoss (comment #15). "Foreign aid" is not humanitarian aid. Very little of U.S. taxpayers' money goes to such purposes. Most "aid" is for armaments (Israel gets $3bn/year in "aid", with which they use to purchase weaponry). Other "aid" comes in the form of loans from International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. These funds go to infrastructure projects that benefit the upper classes of those countries. Or a corrupt leader simply steals them, and leaves the poor populace to pay back the loan, with interest.
I'm sorry.. I meant to reply to your post directly and was not pay attention when I posted on this blog.. However, I did address you post as post #19.. Thanks
My response in part was to address indifference as the key culprit in America’s unjustifiable hunger problem. I still don’t believe that there is a deliberate collective effort by the wealthiest to starve the poor. I was just trying to make the point that the democratic process is not a function of our represented government. I see the problem this way. The political class; which has a lot of crossover with the wealth interest in the US, lacks the political will to combat an easily winnable fight against hunger in the US, because their constituents concerns have no overlap with those of the poor or even the middle class. Rich people don’t go hungry so there isn’t a concern among the wealthy to use their obvious dominance of the political systems to advocate for those in poverty to ensure that all people in America should have the fundamental right to food.
However; the majority of the Americans, according to different polls, believe access to food should be a fundamental right, the problems lies in the American system of government. The government was never set up to be a functioning democracy. James Madison’s, who held great influence over the creation of the US constitution, thought that democracy was a dangerous idea and that the decisions of the country should be made by our betters (wealth interest). Madison, if you take him seriously, did come to regret his assertion that people of privilege would do right by all people and not act solely in their own self-interest. That system is still in place and even more entrenched than when Madison was envisioning the formation of limited representative government. On the rare occasion when Congress, “the People’s House”, tries to create a law with popular support that falls outside the concerns of the wealthiest Americans, there is a system of “checks and balance” (Senate, Executive and Judicial branch) that was created to ensure that will of the people (democracy) would not prevail (Plutocracy).
It is true that sometimes the majority of the population does have enough influence to effect the laws and policies of the US government and that the country is much more civilized than has been in the past, but that’s not a result of the U.S. form of government. It’s a direct result of the wealthiest Americans fearing that the population might start to think we live in a democracy and start to change our form government to reflect the democratic process. The wealthy can allow things like the New Deal to be enacted as trade-off to save the system and then use that system to dismantle popular public programs. This is played out over and over again in American history from civil rights to fundamental human rights like food and shelter.
The wealthiest have a fully realized representative government that acts in their interest but that’s because it was set up that way by a very small minority of privileged men with an agenda to keep the democratic process out of the hand of the people. This is not going directly to you point of deliberately attacking the poor but you have to understand that the consideration of the poor is not the interest of the ruling class. It might look deliberate but this is a natural product of a system that is indifferent to majority of American opinion. The will of the people has never been fully realized at any point in American history and that isn’t going to change within our current political system. I do offer an idea of changing the system through Consumer Unions and have addressed it on my blog. The idea is sound in my estimation but the volition is silent on the matter.
In short, the rich (tiny minority) in the U.S. live in a representative government and rest of the U.S. citizens live with the political decisions that are enact on the behalf of America's wealthiest citizens.
Thom,
Satellite data is not always accurate. See the following articles:
1. “Antarctic Sea Ice Growing Despite Global Warming Warnings”
from June 29, 2014
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/antarctic-sea-ice-growing/2014/06/29/id/579853/?promo_code=FF89-1&utm_source=WeaselZippers&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1
2. “Greenland’s Ice Sheet is Growing”
from November 4th, 2005
http://www.universetoday.com/11078/greenlands-ice-sheet-is-growing/
A new gas fired power plant is going to be built in Memphis , Tennessee, replacing the 3 unit coal fired plant built there in 1959. Carbon and other pollutants will be greatly reduced so a carbon tax would be a lot less on this type of power plant, saving the city a lot of money and the people who, like me, live in the area, will have cleaner air to breathe. It takes a long trainload of coal EVERY DAY to operate the old Allen Steam Plant. The new gas fired plant will put out less carbon emissions than the old coal plant but it will still put out carbon emissions. So where is all of this gas going to come from? Fracking? The process that often pollutes peoples supply of clean water? It sounds like a move in the right direction but not far enough in the right direction. Wind power, yea, that's the right direction to avoid a carbon tax and to avoid putting out greenhouse gasses that will destroy life on this planet as we know it.
This requires a simple fix and should be applied to all corporate tax dodgers.
LEGISLATION : Private companies are indeed private and can do what is in their best interests. Conversley it is governments responsiblity to do what is in the best interest of the nation. If a corporation refuses to pay into the communities (ie nation) their fair share of taxes they are hearby BANNED from profiting off those communities.
Translation............ Dont think you are going to peddle your product in our country !
Comment: Businesses will never miss an oportunity to make profit, even though their ultimate goal is consistently HIGHER profits.
Conclusion : They will not leave or close just because the profit margin is less. Sure they want 100 million in profit but they will NOT pass up 10 million in profit if it is to be had.
Yaaaaaa! The new post numbers are here, the new post numbers are here!! If I wasn't so tired I'd pop open some champagne! THANKS NIGEL!! You rock!
Feed ALL children worldwide for
ONE MILLION $$$ of each One Billion spent on WAR.
FIGHTING costs WAY MORE than FEEDING !!
Get with the program folks !
Feed ALL children Educate ALL people to care for themselves and others
to feed themselves and others
Our RIGHT is to establish ideal human habitat; our DUTY for 7 generations. ALL kept as PUBLIC BENEFIT controlled only by real HUMANS, on GAIA our living planet.
FOOD CEREMONIES generate PEACEFUL COMMUNICATION
Gather in fields: the congregation.
Plant seeds: the ceremony.
PRAY during the growing/watering.
Share WORLDWIDE: the communion.
Peace n Planting our true way of life.
99% feel the same ...... Feed ALL children Educate ALL people
Please BEE REAL -- get a hive going with somebody anywhere!
BEE ProACTIVE aka benefit the 7 generations in all you do!
PS MAKING IT HAPPEN LOCALLY in your neighborhood.
Thought this local action peace plan might be at the heart of our prayers.... we could rent church kitchens and make wonderful BREAKFAST in YOUR POCKET cookies and donated organic milk for school children. Friday night we use the kitchen again to make WHOLE GRAIN PIZZA with ten vegetables and mushrooms. Salad bar too, all organic fresh!
NO MOVIE NIGHTS -- instead there are ten tables with crafts and skills mentors sitting there to help the YOUTH. A great fisherman, a basket maker, leather worker, food preservation teacher and other useful survival skills teachers /life guides.
If they move to Canada they should be banned from doing business in America. Seize their domestic assets and auction them off to PATRIOTIC competitors/franchise owners.
The bullshit must stop.
Don't forget the rebate part. It seems that rebate part would help sell the idea of a carbon tax.
RichardofJeffer -- You should read some of the details that Chicago Matt posts on this blog before you say
The employer actions they take on the working poor seem very deliberate.
By the way, Chi Matt is a conservative.
Indifference and greed are the driving force behind hunger in the US and around the world. I will stick to the situation in the US because I’m a US citizen and familiar with its domestic policies. Indifference by the political class to the hunger situation in the US can easily explained by political and economic influence of the poor, if the politician doesn’t feel there is a benefit in trying to stop or prevent hunger in American that injustice will go without any significant political advocacy. However, economic influence is a huge motivation factor in most if not all political decisions. According to Page and Gilens’s, two University Professors who have done research on political influence in American, have come to the conclusion that the poor have zero effect on public policy. Their research is serious and extensive leaving little doubt that their conclusion is a political reality in the US.
So, the wealthiest Americans have the most political influence on domestic policy in the US. This would lead to the conclusion that the wealthiest Americans have no concern about the poor in the United States and if we go by the research this is reflected in the public policy toward the poor in the US. The legislative, executive and judicial system have been regressive in their action toward the underprivileged in a bipartisan effort for the past four decades. The research also reveals it’s not just the poor with no voice in politics that the majority of Americans can expect to have little influence over political decisions. This can also be shown with polls taken on how Americans feel about government assistance towards people in poverty. Most American believe that the government; which is supposed to be an extension of the will of the people, should be doing more to help the poor. However, we clearly do not live in a functioning democracy or even a representative government with this clear democratic deficit revealed in this important research by Page and Gilens called Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups and Average Citizens.
I don’t believe that this is a deliberate action taken by the political class or the upper classes. The indifference to the poor is a byproduct of a corrupt system that allows wealth and greed to dominate political decisions. The American system government is not perfect and it was never a creation of the people as a whole. It is not my contention that wealthiest have any obligation to advocate for the poor. However, the poor; which is a much larger class than the wealthiest Americans that have the most influence over the political process, have no avenue to advocate for themselves in a representative government that lacks the basic democratic principle of majority rule.
How about "interstellar"? That's a movie coming out in November. Can't wait!
"cellar door"...excuse me...that's two words...never mind!
The problem with a funding bonus for the school with the highest parental voting rate is that it might be construed as paying people to vote.
To be clear, the pronunciations of "alga", "algae", and "algal" are, respectively, /al-guh/, /al-jee/, and /al-gull/. The alternation of the sound of the g is due to a strict adherence to the rule that words taken from Latin and Greek always soften c's and g's before e, i, y, ae and oe (the last two because they are treated as e for pronunciation as well).
There is no situational allowance for a c or g to be softened in the absence of those vowels, but 2 exceptions have arisen: "suggest" and "exaggerate", in which the double g must have come to be pronounced single before the sound evolved to a /j/.
There is a general allowance on a word-by-word basis elsewhere in English for a g to be hard before those vowels, and there is one such exception in a Greek-derived word: the prefix "gyneco-". I don't know if it's because a soft g would make it sound too much like "vagina" or what. (Actually a second example is "giga-", but that's not fimly established--in "Back to the Future", Doc Brown pronounces "gigawatt" /jih-ga-waht/", according to the rule. Somehow computer people hadn't picked up on that when they coined "gigabyte".)
There is no situational allowance for a c to be hard before those vowels, but 2 exceptions have arisen: "soccer", derived from the word "association", which has no /k/ sound (so that's confusing); and "Celtic", which was reverted to a hard c by someone else ignorant of the evolution of European languages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_Celtic#Pronunciation
How could we even get to the point where corporate profits are not taxed based on where they're earned, but rather on some arbitrarily chosen point on the Earth's surface?
Mark, regarding how we do in fact benefit from white privilege... where have I denied or challenged this? Tell me something else I don't know already. - AIW
We spend billions on weapon systems and more billions on foreign aid, and yet we have people going hungry in this this country. That's simply wrong by any measure. We should always take care of ourselves first and foremost as any nation, or even any family would. It's common sense.
We need to provide for our own. Not just in terms of food, but in terms of housing and especially in terms of jobs. We need to revamp our educational system to improve the quality of education students come out with. We've dumbed down schools to the point where newly minted graduates can't compete with their global counterparts. We need to stress the trades as muh as we stress higher education; we need plumbers as much as we need programmers and carpenters as much as gamers.
If we cannot be secure at home, we cannot be secure overseas.
Wow, I cannot believe anyone hasn't mentioned the ever-growing cost of going to the market to buy food. Even for those of us with moderate means, a trip to the market becomes even more and more depressing and expensive. Prices jump dollars not pennies and we find that even we do without the things we did before, which means someone somewhere could lose his/her job, but the CEO sure won't suffer. The packages are smaller or contain less product for the same or more money. Coupons, which my husband and I have used all of our lives together, aren't very good and they expire quicker than you can cut them out or you have to buy 3 of something at $3.00 a piece to get $1.00 off, so we stopped using them and we now shop at Aldi where our dollars go a little farther.
Even our electric bill suddenly doubled while our usage did not and this is while the company was supposedly denied a rate hike by the regulating body the PUCO.
We're ALL being squeezed--as 2950-10K says, why are we letting this happen? Do children have to die from hunger before we take to the streets?
We have been breaking it for the oil for many years. Now we are faced with the facts. Ben Ladin won in Russia and USA..
Mark J. Saulys ~ I see what you are saying. It would almost seem likely to be true. Certainly that is the way many people have interpreted it throughout the years; and, that certainly is the way many religious groups still interpret it today. Certainly the religious right have wrapped their collective heads around that idea in order to disenfranchise women and control their bodies through the anti-abortion movement. However, it is simply a wrong interpretation. The word "replenish" could not possibly mean that in this context. The Google Dictionary definition of "replenish" is, "fill (something) up again." "restore (a stock or supply of something) to a former level or condition."
In this context, God is addressing Adam and Eve--the FIRST man and woman. No human has ever lived on the earth before according to the story. It simply would be impossible to "restore" something that has never existed before. Your interpretation could only be correct if the word was translated incorrectly; or, if God himself--allegedly--used a poor choice of words.
Personally, when a scripture works for my needs--as this one does perfectly as written--I don't mess with it. Simply put, for any Bible thumper to make the claim that this scripture commands mankind to repopulate the world the only way they could defend that contention is by admitting that the modern King James version of the Bible is erroneously translated and therefore could not possibly be the exact word of a perfect God; or, God made a mistake; or, that the entire story of creation was just a fairy tale to begin with. In any case, I call such an argument with a religious fanatic, Check Mate! (Guaranteed to have them scratching their heads for months.)
Imagine the power of one little word!