January 2, 2014

Minimum Wage vs. Living Wage: A chart

from HuffPost:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/state-minimum-wage-raise_n_4530757.html?ir=Politics&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

January 2, 2014

OMG: Payday lender collecting tolls in El Paso

At a time when payday lenders are under scrutiny in El Paso and Texas, the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority which is charged with implementing the area's first toll road is partnering with an organization that uses a payday lender to help collect tolls.

As of right now, ACE Cash Express -- a payday lender -- is the only place in El Paso a person can walk into to buy a toll tag or pay a toll to use the toll lanes on the César Chávez Border Highway. People can also pay the toll by phone, online or mail.

The Border Highway toll road is expected to be operational by Jan. 8. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_24820752/toll-authority-partners-payday-lender?source=most_viewed

January 2, 2014

Warming Climate May Cut Cloud Cover

This piece first appeared at Climate News Network.


LONDON—Australian and French scientists believe they have cracked one of the great puzzles of climate change and arrived at a more accurate prediction of future temperatures.

The news is not good, according to Steven Sherwood of Australia’s Centre for Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of New South Wales. If carbon emissions are not reduced, then by 2100 the world will have warmed by 4°C.

This figure does not, at first, sound high: researchers have been warning for 20 years on the basis of computer models that under the notorious business-as-usual scenario in which everybody goes on burning coal and oil, then as carbon dioxide levels double, global temperatures could rise by between 1.5°C and 4.5°C.

Pessimists could cite one extreme, optimists the other: the range of uncertainty was a recognition that there were still some big unknowns in the machinery of climate, and one of those unknowns was the behaviour of the clouds in a warmer world.
More warmth means more evaporation, more vapour could mean more clouds. Low-level clouds reflect sunlight back into space, and help cool the climate a bit. This is what engineers call negative feedback. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/warming_climate_may_cut_cloud_cover_20140102

January 2, 2014

Those Michigan State Spartans aren't half bad.......

January 1, 2014

Chris Christie on track to break his own record for vetoes

TRENTON — The legislative session that wraps up in two weeks could be the least fruitful in recent memory, with the fewest bills signed into law in at least 25 years.

That’s in part because Gov. Chris Christie is on track to break his own record for vetoing bills that he set just two years ago.

"This governor has more power than any other governor in the nation, and he uses every inch of it," said Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester).

Since the current two-year session began in January 2012, Christie has signed 270 of the bills placed on his desk by the Democratic Legislature and taken his veto pen to 92 bills — striking down 49 outright and conditionally vetoing 43. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/12/chris_christie_on_track_to_break_his_own_record_for_vetoes.html

January 1, 2014

As Colorado legalizes recreational marijuana, hopes soar in other states

from the Detroit Free Press:



New Year’s Day is a shining moment for those who’ve shouted Free the Weed in Colorado. And many in Michigan are voicing similarly upbeat sentiments about broadening the access to recreational as well as medical marijuana.

Colorado kicks off legal sales of recreational marijuana Wednesday at state-licensed stores. Meanwhile, three cannabis bills are awaiting action in the Michigan Legislature.

But a bevy of prominent drug-abuse specialists from across the country, including several in Colorado, countered today with a call for marijuana to remain illegal.

Patrick Kennedy, the son of Robert Kennedy and a former U.S. representative from Rhode Island, said Americans are rushing recklessly toward legalizing a dangerous substance. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.freep.com/article/20131231/NEWS06/312310105/marijuana-cannabis-medical-marijuana-patrick-kennedy

January 1, 2014

Robert Scheer: NSA, Benghazi and the Monsters of Our Own Creation

from truthdig:


NSA, Benghazi and the Monsters of Our Own Creation

Posted on Dec 30, 2013
By Robert Scheer


If we are so smart why are we so dumb? I am referring to the “intelligence” that our spy agencies have gathered at great cost in both massive secret black box budgets and, much more important, the surrender of our personal freedom to the snooping eyes of our modern surveillance state.

“We know everything but learn nothing” would be an honest slogan for the NSA, CIA and lesser-known spy agencies that specialize in leading us so dangerously astray. For all of their massive intrusion into the personal lives of individuals throughout the world, it is difficult to recall a time when the “intelligence” they collected provided such myopic policy insight.

Take the revelations in The New York Times’ exhaustive six-part investigation published Saturday demonstrating that the devastating 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, was an intelligence disaster. The Times “turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault” that led to the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. Instead, a local militia leader on the side of the U.S.-supported insurrection in Libya with no known affiliation with al-Qaida is a prime suspect, and he and others allegedly responsible were not on the radar screen of the 20-person CIA station in Benghazi because they were part of the insurgency the U.S. supported.

As for the vast collection of phone and email intercepts maintained by U.S. spy agencies, it turned up only one bit of information, a phone call from someone involved in the mob attacking the U.S. post. He called a friend elsewhere in Africa who allegedly knew some folks in al-Qaida, but the friend “sounded astonished” at the news from Libya, “suggesting he had no prior knowledge of the assault,” according to U.S. officials. In short, the only evidence turned up by the vast spying apparatus was evidence that inconveniently contradicted the al-Qaida connection, so it was not made public. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/nsa_benghazi_and_the_monsters_of_our_own_creation_20131230

December 31, 2013

Too cold to fly in Winnipeg

(CBC News) If you thought it was cold in Winnipeg yesterday, wait until you step outside today — it's worse.

.....(snip).....

In Winnipeg, the daytime high temperature for Tuesday is only expected to reach –31 C but the windchill will make it feel more like –40 to –50. That means exposed skin can freeze in less than five minutes.

.....(snip).....

Grounded planes

It's so cold that one airline has decided not to fly in or out of Winnipeg.

ExpressJet, a partner of United Airlines, cancelled some flights Monday night and Tuesday morning.

Passengers are being moved onto flights operated by other airlines and rerouted through other cities. ExpressJet says the unique combination of extreme low temperatures and ice crystals exceed safe operating guidelines for their aircraft. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/extreme-cold-in-winnipeg-cancels-flights-1.2479967

December 31, 2013

AZ: Former Mayor's Dogs To Be Euthanized After One Killed Her Husband

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/31/diane-vick-dogs-killed_n_4523935.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037


All of the dogs belonging to former Bullhead City, Arizona mayor Diane Vick will be euthanized after one killed her husband.

Vick was injured and her husband Tom killed after the couple tried to break up a fight between two of their dogs, a boxer and a cocker spaniel. The Arizona Republic reports the couples other four dogs eventually joined in the fight.

The couple's cocker spaniel died from injuries sustained in the fight. Police said the couple's five remaining dogs were put in a 10-day quarantine by animal control, where the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports they'll be monitored for signs of rabies.

According to the AP, those dogs will be euthanized according to a request from the Vick family.

December 31, 2013

Who says you can't learn anything from teevee news?