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n2doc's JournalCharles P Pierce - Watching Scotty Blow, Cont'd: Why Singing Grandmas Are Like ISIS
It's easy being a goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin when you can cower in your office, hide behind your capitol police force, have people with inconvenient signs or singing inconvenient songs hauled off in restraints, handpick your audiences, make up O'Reillyish tall tales of your time in the combat zones of Oconomowoc and Pewaukee, and are blessed with a pet legislature full of people who are even further off the right edge of the world than you are. But, Scotty, when other conservatives are saying you went too far at CPAC -- which is a standard that, until yesterday, I thought utterly impossible to meet -- well, that's welcome to NFL football, lad.
In case you missed it, here's what Marquette's most prominent drop-out since the late Maurice Lucas had to say yesterday at the annual festival of bowties and entitlement on the banks of the Potomac.
Breathtaking, isn't it? He didn't "take on" anyone. He was the invisible man when 100,000 of his constituents came to call. He did everything he could to suppress the free speech rights of said constituents. And, with the abject cowardice and buck-passing that has marked his entire public career, Walker trotted out a sacrificial spokes-drone to "clarify" what he meant when he compared the chanting of middle-school teachers to bloodthirsty barbarism.
Anybody that was in and around Madison in those days knows how laughable Walker's claim to "strength and leadership" during that time is on its face. He was the invisible man, using outside money and the Capitol Police as his shield and buckler. (Give Chris Christie this much. When he screwed the firefighters of New Jersey out of their pensions, he did it to their face.) And any fair reading of what he said yesterday does not sustain Ms. Kukowski's explanation. He knew exactly what he was doing.
more
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a33382/watching-scotty-blow-contd-why-singing-grandmas-are-like-isis/
Meet 2 New Spider Species: 'Skeletorus' and 'Sparklemuffin'
A male of the peacock spider species Maratus jactatus, which is nicknamed Sparklemuffin, lifts its leg as part of a mating dance.
Two gorgeous new species of peacock spiders nicknamed "Skeletorus" and"Sparklemuffin" have been discovered in Australia, according to a new report.
Peacock spiders are so-named because of their bright colors and their dancelike, courtship rituals.
The two new species were found in southeast Queensland by Madeline Girard, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley who studies peacock spiders, and a friend who went with her into the field. Girard affectionately gave the nickname Sparklemuffin to one of the species, Maratus jactatus, which has bluish and reddish stripes on its abdomen.
A male of the peacock spider species Maratus sceletus, which is nicknamed Skeletorus.
Credit: Jürgen Otto
She nicknamed the other species Skeletorus for its white markings on a black background, which make it look a bit like a skeleton. Sparklemuffin looks similar to three previously discovered species in this group of peacock spiders, whereas Skeletorus looks very different from all the other known species in the group.
more
http://www.livescience.com/49957-new-species-peacock-spiders.html
Hyperloop Construction Starts Next Year With the First Full-Scale Track
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, the company that wants to move the revolutionary transit system out of Elon Musk’s brain into the real world, plans to start construction on an actual hyperloop next year.
OK, it will only run five miles around central California, and it won’t come anywhere close to the 800 mph Musk promised, but it’s a start.
The Hyperloop, detailed by the SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO in a 57-page alpha white paper in August 2013, is a transportation network of above-ground tubes that would span hundreds of miles. Thanks to extremely low air pressure inside those tubes, capsules filled with people zip through them at near supersonic speeds.
The idea is to build a five-mile track in Quay Valley, a planned community (itself a grandiose idea) that will be built from scratch on 7,500 acres of land around Interstate 5, midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Construction of the hyperloop will be paid for with $100 million Hyperloop Transportation Technologies expects to raise through a direct public offering in the third quarter of this year.
more
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/construction-hyperloop-track-starts/
Why Everyone Was Wrong About Net Neutrality
Today, the Federal Communications Commission, by a vote of three to two, enacted its strongest-ever rules on net neutrality, preserving an open Internet by prohibiting broadband providers from blocking or slowing content that flows across their pipes. It is a substantial achievement for the Obama Administration and the F.C.C. chairman Tom Wheeler, and also for the many groups that fought hard for the outcome. But it also is a moment to reflect back on the process over the last year that led here, and figure out why what so many people thought they knew turned out to be wrong.
Let’s begin with the most obvious incorrect prediction, namely that passage of a strong rule (a Title II rule in telecom jargon) would be politically impossible. A year ago, Kevin Werbach, a thoughtful and prominent analyst, predicted that “the political and marketplace costs” of strong net-neutrality rules would be just “too great.” He warned, among other things, that Congress would “grind the FCC to a standstill, starve its budget, and do everything in their power to inflict permanent harm on the agency.”
Werbach’s point was echoed by political cynics who believe that federal regulatory agencies like the F.C.C. tend to become captured and obey the bidding of whoever spends the most to lobby them. Money was certainly not on the side of net neutrality. A.T. & T., Verizon, Comcast, and others opposed strong net-neutrality rules, while the richest potential allies, companies like Google and Facebook, mostly sat things out. Some of the only groups in favor of strong rules were little-known activist organizations like Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, and Free Press; a few startups like Tumblr and Kickstarter; a handful of academics dabbling in public policy; and the narrow segment of the public who actually pays attention to such things. Given that lineup, the outcome seemed about as preordained as what happened when Michael Spinks stepped into the ring with Mike Tyson.
But these predictions were wrong. Why, exactly, is subject to debate. It may have been the unexpected effectiveness of Internet-based activist groups, who protested the F.C.C. and helped convince millions of people to write and send comments about the potential rules. It may have been the White House and the personal involvement of President Obama himself. Or maybe people just misunderstood the character of the F.C.C. chairman Tom Wheeler. Whatever the explanation, the most pessimistic theories of lobbyist power clearly need be revised.
more
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-everyone-was-wrong-about-net-neutrality
Get out the Butter, Christie is Toast!
by Gail Collins
Chris Christie is political toast.
Cause of his charred presidential prospects: an unreformed state pension system. I know that’s disappointing. Not nearly as exciting as the political near-death experiences that went before. We were hoping the next disaster would be something like Governor Yells at Elmo. Or a reprise of the day he chased a guy down the boardwalk while waving an ice cream cone, this time maybe featuring Tom Hanks or Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Fixing New Jersey’s pension system was supposed to be Christie’s signature achievement. He explained it in his keynote speech at the Republican convention in 2012, right after he told us about his mom, his dad, his wife, his children and his love of Bruce Springsteen. “They said it was impossible to touch the third rail of politics,” he bragged.
By this point some of his listeners were wondering when he’d get to Mitt Romney. But Christie went on about how he had saved New Jersey workers’ pensions and staved off fiscal disaster. Thanks to shared sacrifice and “politicians who led instead of politicians who pandered.”
The politicians in question would be Chris Christie, who appeared to be referring to himself with the royal “we.” No matter. It was still a very big deal because there are crisis-ridden pension plans all over the country in need of rescue.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/opinion/gail-collins-adieu-chris-christie-adieu.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0
EPA to probe whether N.C. hog farms violate neighbors’ rights
The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to investigate claims that North Carolina’s regulation of hog farms violates the civil rights of their minority neighbors.
Three advocacy groups filed a complaint with EPA in September. North Carolina’s 2,100 farms produce about 10 million hogs a year, second-highest in the nation.
The groups claim the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ lax regulation of the farms discriminates against the African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans who live near the farms in disproportionate numbers.
Advocates filed the complaint after North Carolina renewed a statewide permit regulating hog farms last year without substantially stiffening standards, the groups say.
The complaint was filed under a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits recipients of federal aid from discriminating on racial or other grounds.
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article11206091.html#storylink=cpy
What happened to the lobbyists who tried to reshape the US view of climate change?
In 1998 major fossil fuel companies put $2m behind a plan that would effectively fuel the fires of climate science scepticism among the American public. We reveal where the 12 people behind that plan are nowIn early 1998, some of the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world were hatching a plan to hijack the science of human-caused global warming.
Representatives from major fossil fuel corporations and industry groups had joined forces with operatives from major conservative think tanks and public relations experts to draft what they called their Global Climate Science Communications (GCSC) plan.
In a memo the plan boldly declared its goal would be to convince “a majority of the American public” that “significant uncertainties exist in climate science”.
Earlier this week it was revealed that major US coal utility Southern Company had paid scientist Dr Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, more than $400,000 in recent years for science research.
more
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/27/what-happened-to-lobbyists-who-tried-reshape-us-view-climate-change
Hundreds of illicit oil wastewater pits found in Kern County California
Water officials in Kern County discovered that oil producers have been dumping chemical-laden wastewater into hundreds of unlined pits that are operating without proper permits.
Inspections completed this week by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board revealed the existence of more than 300 previously unidentified waste sites. The water board’s review found that more than one-third of the region’s active disposal pits are operating without permission.
The pits raise new water quality concerns in a region where agricultural fields sit side by side with oil fields and where California’s ongoing drought has made protecting groundwater supplies paramount.
Clay Rodgers, assistant executive officer of the water board’s Fresno office, called the unregulated pits a “significant problem” and said the agency expects to issue as many as 200 enforcement orders.
more
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pits-oil-wastewater-20150226-story.html
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