June 6, 2013

Middle Class Jobs, Income Quickly Disappearing (with some depressingly eye-popping charts)

from huffpost:



Middle Class Jobs, Income Quickly Disappearing (INFOGRAPHIC)
Posted: 06/06/2013 9:31 am EDT


As President Obama continues his “Middle Class Jobs and Opportunities Tour" in Mooresville, N.C., on Thursday, middle-class Americans continue to experience historic losses of jobs and opportunities. The recession eliminated many mid-wage jobs, leaving moderately educated workers to take low-wage jobs if they can find work at all.

While the Obama administration has trumpeted job growth in recent months, the middle class is taking home a shrinking portion of the country's income. Deep job losses in occupations such as construction, information technology, manufacturing and insurance are not likely to recover. Middle-class families also saw nearly 30 percent of their wealth disappear over the past decade, while the cost of goods and services they rely upon steadily climbed.

The swift contraction of the middle class has left most Americans fearful they may be unable to maintain their standard of living.







.......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/middle-class-jobs-income-_n_3386157.html?ir=Politics&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

June 6, 2013

Toronto: Eglinton Crosstown (LRT) crews launch giant tunneling machine

from the Toronto Star:



By: Tess Kalinowski Transportation reporter, Published on Wed Jun 05 2013


[font size="1"]Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star
Glen Murray, Minister of Transportation and Minister of Infrastructure, flips the switch on the giant tunnelling machine that is finally beginning the big dig for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, while Bruce McCuaig, left, president and CEO of Metrolinx watches.[/font]


The earth didn’t exactly move. But the launch of the first of four giant tunnel boring machines that will dig the Eglinton Crosstown LRT marked a seismic shift of sorts on Toronto’s transit scene.

Eighteen years after the provincial Conservative government stopped subway construction on Eglinton, the $4.9 billion, 19-kilometre Crosstown will help put Toronto back on the world transit map, promised Ontario Transportation Minister Glen Murray.

“We are not going to be second-class citizens in the world any more when it comes to transit. Torontonians are going to join every major city from Paris to Shanghai on building the highest quality transit in the world. We know without it we can’t compete,” he told media and construction crews at the tunnel launch shaft at Black Creek Dr.

More than half of the Crosstown — about 10 kilometres — will function like a subway, running under the road. With 14 underground stations and 11 surface stops, it will connect to 54 bus routes and three subway stops at Eglinton West, Yonge St. and Kennedy, as well as the Scarborough RT, which is also getting a $1.8 billion light rail renovation. ..........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/06/05/eglinton_crosstown_crews_launch_giant_tunneling_machine.html

June 6, 2013

Amazing pics of the flooding in Central Europe (pic heavy)

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/photo-gallery-floods-sweep-through-central-europe-fotostrecke-97569.html


from Der Spiegel:


Deggendorf, Germany


near Dresden, Germany


Halle, Germany


along the Elbe River, near Dresden


Przemysl, Poland


suburbs of Prague

June 6, 2013

Michael Ratner: When Truth Becomes an Enemy of the State: Bradley Manning on Trial

When Truth Becomes an Enemy of the State: Bradley Manning on Trial

Tuesday, 04 June 2013 14:58
By Michael Ratner, Truthout | Op-Ed


Yesterday, after three years of confinement, Pfc. Bradley Manning finally went on trial in a military court at Fort Meade, Maryland. But it is less a real trial than it is a trial run, an experiment on how to make an example out of a government whistleblower, intimidate journalists' sources, and make journalists and publishers targets.

What Manning did for his country was priceless, and for that he will pay a heavy price. Here's a young soldier who put his future on the line so Americans had a chance to see the human and moral cost of the wars their government is waging. Manning's information shaped the American public's understanding of the ongoing wars and the way the press reports on these conflicts. This shift in perception is largely responsible for US troops finally coming home. Manning now faces a life sentence and the most serious charge against him carries a potential death penalty.

Government prosecutors will try to prove Manning had reason to believe his actions would aid the enemy. In his testimony earlier this year, Manning explained his political motivation, arguing that he had hoped to "spark a domestic debate" over current US wars and saying that he did so to have a "clear conscience."

In a telling sign of just how fair of a trial Manning will get, the military judge already ruled that almost all questions and evidence the defense can raise about Manning's intentions for acting are irrelevant to the trial. The judge has also stated that two dozen prosecution witnesses will testify behind closed doors. Many of these will be discussing the WikiLeaks documents available to all everywhere, except in the courtroom, since the government still considers them secret. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16774-when-truth-becomes-an-enemy-of-the-state-bradley-manning-on-trial

June 6, 2013

Will Ohio Be Fracking's Radioactive Dumping Ground?

Will Ohio Be Fracking's Radioactive Dumping Ground?

Wednesday, 05 June 2013 09:16
By Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report


As hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," has boomed in Ohio, Pennsylvania and nearby states in recent years, waste wells in Ohio have absorbed millions of barrels of liquid waste from oil-and-gas drilling operations in the region. Environmentalists and other observers are now calling Ohio a "dumping ground" for the fracking industry. Drillers now want to dump potentially radioactive waste mud, drill cuttings and frack sand from fracking operations in municipal landfills in the state, and environmentalists are up in arms.

"I am not against fracking, I am against stupid," said Julie Weatherinton-Rice, a senior scientist at Bennett & Williams Environmental Consultants and an adjunct professor at Ohio State University. "I am seeing a lot a lot stupid and a lot of heads in the sand, and that's what's going to kill us."

Fracking produces both solid and liquid wastes. The liquid wastes, known as "flowback" and "brine" in industry lingo, are laced with chemicals and can be radioactive from materials that occur naturally in the underground shale formations where oil and gas is extracted. In Ohio, brine is typically pumped into underground injection wells.

Fracking also produces solid wastes such as drill cuttings, rocks, mud, dirt and used frack sand. These wastes can also be contaminated with radioactive material, especially if they come from Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus Shale formation at the heart of a fracking boom is known to contain considerable levels of radium-226 and other material. A truck carrying fracking waste was recently turned away from a landfill in Pennsylvania after setting off radiation alarms. .........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/16751-will-ohio-be-frackings-radioactive-dumping-ground

June 6, 2013

The Business of Standing in Line

from truthdig:


The Business of Standing in Line

Posted on Jun 5, 2013
By Thomas Hedges, Center for Study of Responsive Law


Eric Hopkins paced up and down a hallway in the Dirksen Senate Office Building two weeks ago in front of 25 people who were standing in line for a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Few of them knew what the public hearing was about. That’s because they were hired by LineStanding.com, which paid them to reserve spots for lawyers, lobbyists, union members and anyone else willing to spend $32 an hour to secure a place in line. Hopkins works for the company as a coordinator. He makes sure that the line standers show up because if they are late, the company could lose spots, especially if the hearing is popular.

The business of line standing got some attention in March when The New York Times mentioned the practice in a piece about people trying to get tickets to watch the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on same-sex marriage. The mainstream media writes about line standing every few years, but only during landmark cases and hearings. The truth is that line standing goes on much of the time. It happens almost every day on Capitol Hill and some people are worried that it has weakened the influence the public has on committee hearings.

Line standing “verges on the absurd,” Hopkins concedes. “The German, Japanese, Aussie (press)—they love us because they think this is crazy, because it is crazy.”

Hopkins is cynical about the purpose of the business. But others see it as more than absurd—it’s malicious, they contend. It shuts out regular folk from what are supposed to be public hearings, they argue, while allowing big businesses and law firms to overrun them with their own people. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_business_of_standing_in_line_20130605/?ln

June 6, 2013

The Race for What’s Left

from truthdig:


The Race for What’s Left
Posted on Jun 5, 2013

“The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources”
A book by Michael T. Klare

Reviewed by Louise Rubacky


There’s an AT&T commercial that’s been running on TV recently. A guy in a suit sits on a schoolroom floor, surrounded by a circle of preschool-aged kids. He poses a question: “Who thinks more is better than less?” A lisping little girl answers, in a cute and incoherent way, then wraps up her ramble with: “We want more, we want more; like, you really like it, we want more.” The deadpan man nods, “I follow you … ” and the screen cuts to an animated graphic with voice-over: “It’s not complicated—more is better, and AT&T has the largest 4G network.”

The setting alone stands as a marvel of irony, but the “more is better” message of the ad sums up the mantra of almost every corporation selling any commodity today. Kids don’t necessarily learn that in school; they absorb it as a cultural truism well before they get to kindergarten. Because of that, partly, things on our planet are going to get ugly.

Michael T. Klare’s vastly researched, minutely detailed book “The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources,” now out in paperback, can be read as a direct rebuke to the “we want more, we want more” world. The author, a professor of peace and world security studies at the Five College Consortium in Massachusetts and a contributor to The Nation and TomDispatch, has long written about potential conflict resulting from humans claiming rights to and using too much of what comes from the earth. His latest is something of a sister volume—with different angles and emphases—to his “Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet” (2005) and “Resource Wars” (2002.)

In “The Race for What’s Left,” he continues his exploration of the high stakes at play when the demand for resources is bottomless. Powerful nations are on collision courses marked by differing claims of ownership; economically weak countries have little chance of prevailing in contests of greed over need. In addition to those conflicts are the disasters that climate change will foist on large swaths of people, causing millions to become refugees. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_race_for_whats_left_20130605/

June 6, 2013

R Train Service to Halt Between Brooklyn, Manhattan

There will be no R train service between Brooklyn and Manhattan for at least a year starting in August as the MTA shuts down a key tunnel to repair damage sustained during Sandy, officials say.

The closure of the Montague tube will likely last between 12 and 14 months, and affect about 65,000 daily riders.

In addition, the MTA will shut down all G train service between Brooklyn and Queens for 12 weekends beginning later this summer.

“Closing these two subway tubes is a difficult but necessary step to restore them to the condition they were in before Sandy struck,” said MTA Acting Chairman Fernando Ferrer in a statement.

“The temporary repairs that returned these tubes to operation after Sandy are not enough to provide reliable service. This is unfortunately the reality of recovery from Sandy: the damage is insidious and continuing, and repairing it will take billions of dollars over several years." ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/transportation-nation/2013/jun/05/no-r-train-year-starting-august/

June 6, 2013

We Need to Address the Profound Stupidity That Afflicts America

Reader Supported News / By William Boardman

We Need to Address the Profound Stupidity That Afflicts America
Crackdown on Florida high school science student is prime example of American idiocy.

May 31, 2013 |


It's not as though a bunch of people in central Florida have been consciously conspiring about the best way to trash a 16-year-old girl's life, but the effect of their collective personal and institutional stupidity may well produce the same effect. At first there was no sign that any of them much cared, but now there's a ray of hope for a just outcome. Read on.

This cultural stupidity in Florida isn't an all-American sort of thing that could happen anywhere—and probably has in a variety of forms similar to the recent mindlessness that led school officials to call the police who called the prosecutor who decided, over the phone, to have a 16-year-old girl arrested as an adult and charged with two felonies under state law because she did an outdoors experiment that blew up an 8 oz. water bottle with the force of a small firecracker, doing no damage and harming no one.

This is the case of 11th grader Kiera Wilmot, a Bartow High School honor student with straight A's and a perfect behavior record, according to school officials. Sometime around 7 a.m. on Monday, April 22, she tried an experiment with a friend watching: she mixed hydrochloric acid (in a toilet bowl cleaner) with a bit of aluminum foil inside a plastic water bottle—a trick known familiarly as a "Drano bomb" or "works bomb." As predicted (and shown in video), shortly after Kiera Wilmot mixed the ingredients and put the cap on the bottle, hydrogen gas was produced, with enough pressure to pop the top off the bottle with the sound of a small firecracker.

Arguably, that was a stupid thing to do, at least on school grounds.

So the Question Quickly Arises, Are There Any Grown-Ups Here?

Then the adults got involved and took the stupidity to higher levels, quickly producing a stupidity tsumani of an all too familiar American kind. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/education/florida-school-example-american-stupidity

June 6, 2013

Seven States Not to Get High In While Black

from Rolling Stone:



Seven States Not to Get High In While Black
ACLU report documents shockingly racist enforcement of marijuana laws

By Tim Dickinson
June 5, 2013 4:39 PM ET

The ACLU has published an astonishing report on the racist enforcement of our nation's marijuana laws. While pot is consumed at nearly equal rates by black and white Americans, blacks are 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for possession – a ratio that can soar above 8:1 in individual states. Here are the seven states with the most outrageously racist patterns of enforcement, each with an arrest ratio of worse than 5:1.

How Much More Likely Black People Are To Be Arrested for Marijuana Possession Than White People, By State

1. Iowa: 8.34 times more likely

2. Washington, D.C.: 8.05 times more likely

3. Minnesota: 7.81 times more likely

4. Illinois: 7.56 times more likely

5. Wisconsin: 5.98 times more likely

6. Kentucky: 5.95 times more likely

7. Pennsylvania: 5.19 times more likely


(Source: 2010 FBI/Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data, ACLU)


Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/seven-states-not-to-get-high-in-while-black-20130605#ixzz2VODvyrb2