February 10, 2016

Me too or three! And for firms like Verizon, which over the past few years have paid Zero

Percent in taxes, it would be a good thing.

Even if that move to tax these big Communications Firms, like Verizon and AT & T, means higher fees to users, it might have one additional good result (other than contributing to ability to fund sociial and infra-structure funding.) In fact, it might help to save the birds and bees.

The birds and bees are under assault from all the magnetic smog that disrupts the normal magnetic signals that are needed to allow for successful flight. Navigation for the bees and migration for the birds is under assault by our using these devices 24/7.

February 10, 2016

Bernie's Sanders recent Tweet: "reform our broken criminal justice system"

Bernie Sanders ?@BernieSanders 2 hours ago
As President, let me be very clear that no one will fight harder to end racism and reform our broken criminal justice system than I will.


What will Hilary Clinton's response be?

Probably "Me too!"

Except under her breath she has to be saying, but "somehow I need to make it work out so that I can still profit from our prison system."

January 24, 2016

Chrysler admits cars were hacked. Sends out some 1.4 million

Thumb Drives, so owners can update their cars' software.

What had gone wrong? Well, outside of a hack affecting the cars' acceleration, I guess not much.

From the article:

It’s impossible to say whether or not the company would have issued the recall if it weren’t for the original Wired story, but there is a clear cause and effect here — call the manufacturers out on their failings and they will address them. If we don’t? That’s a scary thought.

The U.S. government has responded as well. Senators Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have introduced a new bill called The Security and Privacy in Your Car Act (SPY Car Act). The legislation will direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Trade Commission to set industry-wide benchmarks to protect driver safety and privacy, shining regulatory light on an issue that was largely contained within the automotive sector until now.

More at the following link:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/hacking-connected-cars-jeep-recall-spy-car-act-opinion-news/

January 15, 2016

Question submitted by truedelphi

January 8, 2016

RHODE Island Teachers Assoc asks FBI for help in pension scandal.

http://www.ibtimes.com/wall-street-fine-print-retirees-want-fbi-probe-pension-investment-deals-2250476


Diane Bucci and her fellow retired Rhode Island schoolteachers were angry about a deal last year to cut their promised retirement benefits. For 28 years, the elementary school teacher devoted between 7 and 9 percent of her paycheck to the state’s pension system. In return, the 72-year-old had been promised a consistent cost-of-living increase to make sure her retirement stipend kept pace with inflation. Now, though, state officials were trimming her check in the name of replenishing the depleted pension fund.

There was, however, a sliver of hope — or so it seemed: If the pension system could generate better investment returns and amass 80 percent of the money needed to pay current and future retirees, the annual cost-of-living increases would return.

“There was a lot of unrest and anger among teachers, but we buckled down and focused on how we could get to solvency,” said Bucci, who is on the board of the 700-member Rhode Island Retired Teachers Association. “So even though we aren’t Wall Street experts, we just started to ask questions about how the pension fund was managed, and what it was invested in. That’s when we realized the fees we’ve been paying to the investment companies were the problem.” Those levies — which hit $79 million last year — were the product of the state’s recent investment strategy. Following a controversial
national trend, Rhode Island pension officials led by then-General Treasurer Gina Raimondo shifted roughly a quarter of the state’s pension portfolio into high-fee hedge funds, private equity firms and other so-called “alternative investment" funds.
(More at link in the first line of the OP)
#####

We have a gazillion dollar a year Military and Defense fund program so that the Red Chinese, the Russians and Iranians can't come here and enslave us. But meanwhile our own public officials are letting Wall Street do just that!

December 27, 2015

Is there a way to get my spouse's new Windows Seven Machine to display

The old XP start menu box?

Any help appreciated. ***** On edit: Even figuring out how to access "Games" and "Search" would be great.

December 26, 2015

Sanders election is predicted to national audience of one million people:

Last night on Coast to Coast Am with George Noory, noted author and psychic Mark Frost, who channels Seth, predicted to a national audience of one million people that Bernie will win in a landslide. (Source: coasttocoastam.com - if you go there before tonight's broadcast, at 10 pm Pacific time, you can listen by streaming it for free, I believe.)

The spiritual entity he channels puts it at a seventy percent likelihood - it would be more that that but we do have to deal with the following situations:

One: the crookedness inherent in the primaries,

Two: the gerrymandering

and

Three: the electronic voting machinery, which those of us who were active in 2004 know switched the election to George W Bush.

But if we roll up our shirt sleeves and work hard, we should be able to persevere.

####

I need to mention that this noted author is also my bedmate, and spouse of eleven years. (Well, ten years and three weeks, but who's counting!?!)

*******************************************

December 23, 2015

Thirty Five years ago Yesterday, Eco History was turned on its head.

Thirty five years ago yesterday, Pres. Ronald Reagan revealed that his nomination for the Secretary of the Interior Position was to be one James Watt.

Among other things, "after the President, the Secretary of Interior has more power than anyone else in government over the nation's public lands and natural resources. The Secretary of Interior is steward over a quarter of the nation's land area, and 300 million acres on the outer-continental shelf. The Secretary is required by many laws to carefully balance the grazing, timber and mining interests with fish and wildlife conservation, watershed protection, wilderness and recreational needs."

"Watt's positions on virtually every important Interior Department program were well known and documented when he was nominated. As President and chief legal officer of the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) Watt initiated many lawsuits to stop or impede federal programs to protect the environment. For example, MSLF 1) tried to block efforts to control overgrazing on public lands; 2) repeatedly sued to stop EPA from controlling air pollution; 3) promoted diversion of water away from Wild Rivers already in danger of drying up; and 4) fought restrictions on oil development in wilderness study areas.' " Source, website and URL http://scorecard.lcv.org/roll-call-vote/1981-13-nomination-james-watt-be-secretary-interior

But what is to be noted as perhaps the most astounding aspect of Watts' nomination is that during the hearings for his Senate confirmation, Watt made a remarkable statement. He insisted to the US Senate that there was no need at all to protect the environment, due to the "fact" that the "Rapture" was due to happen any day now, and that therefore the earth's resources should be offered up for profit, as since after the Rapture no one would need the earth. It stands to follow that if no one was living on the Planet after the Second Coming of Christ then "why not?" became the most sensible policy as far as exploiting the earth. (And it offers up far more immediate profits, besides. What is not to like about this stance!)

After his confirmation was finalized, he immediately put into place insane policies that allowed much of the nation's designated federal lands to be further exploited. And lands owned and overseen by the Native People's were also taken out from under them.

If you have ever wondered why the News Media promotes right wing Christians so much,the doctrine of "The Rapture is Coming, so all available resources might as well be immediately utilized" is most agreeable to Big Industry.

I have been told that no one in the US Senate bothered to set Watt straight as to how:

The Rapture was not then (or ever later on) to be a proven concept, and also, that
all his extreme notions were the stuff of fairy tales. I have not researched whether that is true or not.

But if there was money to be made, I imagine our Senators, always pragmatic, saw no real reason to scream at Watts out loud.

####

December 14, 2015

I downloaded an imp ACA insurance PDF file on Friday, but

I cannot open it.

The download history shows that it was downloaded and it shows the title, the time and date and also the amount of megs it took up. (It is listed as being 1.2 megs big.)

But I cannot for the life of me get it to open.

Sometimes when a file is stubborn about opening, right clicking gets me a menu that says things like "Open in a new tab" or "open in a new window" but this time around, all I get after right clicking is "Delete file from history" and one or two things that don't make sense.

I operate a Windows XP file computer.

November 25, 2015

So should the USA now applaud Russia for seriously kicking of some ISIS/ISIL butt over

The last 72 hours?

Over the last 48 hours, Russia has destroyed a fleet of 500 ISIS trucks used to smuggle oil out of Syria. 355 [targets] were destroyed in the countryside of Aleppo, Idleb, Raqqa and Dir Ezzor during the last 48 hours. “The Russian air force, in cooperation with the Syrian air force, carried out 186 sorties against ISIS sites in Syria,” Syria news agency reported. It added 26 command-centers, 35 depots, 28 fortified sites, 3 training camps, 8 explosive factories and 86 heavy-weapon stores were destroyed.