EFTA01207294.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 2/22/2015 Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2015 08:15:09 +0000 Attachments: Here_Are_The_Most_Expensive_Countries_In_The_World_To_Live_In_Huff_Post_01.21.2 015.docx; Oklahoma_worries_over_swarm_ofearthquakes_and_connection_to_oil_industry_Lori_Mo ntgomery_TWP_01.28.2015.docx; Americans?_increasing_dist_rust_of_science_— _and_notjust_on_climate_change_Aaron_Blake_TWP_01.30.2015.docx; Elvis_Presley_bio.docx; The Economic_and_Fiscal Consequences_of_Improving_U.S._Educational_Outcomes_Ro bert_Lynch_02.02.15.docx; Fast_Facts_The_Economic_and_Fiscal Consequences_of_Improving_U.S._Educational_Ou tcomes WCEG 02.02.15.docx; Believing_that_Tife_is_fair_might_make_you_a_terribleperson_Oliver_Burkeman_The_Gu ardian_02.03.15.docx; How.Clean.Was_Sold_to_America_with_Fake_Science_Sarah_Zhang_Februaty_12,_2015.d ocx Inline-Images: image.png; image(I).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(I4).png; image(I5).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(I8).png; image(19).png; image(20).png; image(21).png; image(22).png; image(23).png DEAR FRIEND Another Disaster in the Making EFTA01207294  Airpollution. traffic problems, water contamination and earthquakes have occurred in communities near fraiking sites. The other night I was watching a documentary on the PBS program NOVA about Sinkholes, which is a subject that I knew little to nothing about. I was so blown away that I decided to make it a subject of one of my Weekly Offerings and over the next week or so researched sinkholes. And since one thing often leads to another I came across an article by Lori Montgomery — Oklahoma worries over swarm of earthquakes and connection to oil industry - based on the dramatic increase of earthquakes in Oklahoma now being attributed to rapid rise of Fracldng in the state. Dramatic Increase in Oklahoma 3000 Earthqpakes 2500 ro 2000 )2 1500 it 1000 500 Though mild for the most part, the Oklahoma quakes have already caused harm, and not just to people's foundations and swimming pools. Around it on Nov. 5, 2O11, a magnitude 5.6 quake — the biggest in state history — hit the small town of Prague, east of Oklahoma City. Sandra Ladra, a business manager for a state job training center, was sifting in a recliner watching television when the quake toppled her two-story stone fireplace. Big rocks rained down on her legs, gashing her knees. In August, Ladra filed suit, the first case in Oklahoma to try to pin liability for the quakes to the oil companies — in this case, New Dominion LLC and other producers with disposal wells near Prague. In October, a trial judge dismissed the case, agreeing with New Dominion that Ladra must first go before the Corporation Commission and prove "a scientific basis" for her claim. Last month, in an unusual decision, the Oklahoma Supreme Court agreed to review that ruling. If the case goes to trial, Ladra's attorney, Scott Poynter, said he intends to convince a jury that the oil companies are at fault — a potential gamechanger, both legally and politically. EFTA01207295 It's not definitive that earthquakes have been caused by fracking wastewater injection. Thus far, the research has lacked data on sub-surface pressure, which is rarely accessible but could take the science further than merely noting correlations between the timing of earthquakes, the timing of wastewater injection, and the location of faults. But it is indisputable that Oklahoma has seen a rise in earthquakes since the fracking boom began — right now, the state averages about 10 small earthquakes per day. According to the Oklahoma Geological Survey, InJo documented cases of induced seismicity have ever come close to the current earthquake rates or the area over which the earthquakes are occurring." 6o Minutes reporter Leslie Stall once described Natural Gas as "our ugly step-child in the nation's energy debate," as it is now being touted as the answer to our energy problems. What's brought about the change is the process of Hydraulic Fracking or just "Fracking" for extracting natural gas from shale, a dense rock formation one to two miles underground. And if you are sitting on top of it, you might have hit the shale lottery. But if the BP spill and other incidents have taught us anything, exploring for energy has safety risks. But that can get lost in all of the greed and accompanying excitement. Shale gas is overly abundant in the United States because in the last few years we have discovered the equalivant of two Saudi Arabias of oil in the form of natural gas. Again.... Not one but two.... As a result, drilling for gas is now a fact of life in hundreds of communities in more than thirty states across the country. Shaleformations in the United States as of 2014 EFTA01207296  Production or exploration of natural gas in the United States in 2014 In rural America many residents draw their water directly from the aquifer under the ground through wells. Fracking sites drill 6,000 feet though the aquifer toward the shale beneath. Then horizontal drilling can reach lengths of 4,000 feet. A perforation gun is deployed. Fractures created in shale release methane. Various layers of piping are sent into the bore hole. 8 million gallons of fraeldng fluid is injected into the shale under high pressure. Due to extreme pressures, and corrosiveness, toxic fluids expand fractures in the shale. Fracking fluid is retrieved from the shale. But only 25% to 50% of the fracking fluid is recovered during this process. Retrieved toxic fluids called "Flow-back" is stored in lined pits. Poor lining practices allow pits to leak. Man-made fractures can create a pathway for Methane to rise to the surface. Taking short cuts and human error are endemic to the Fracking drilling process, with valves not being tightened, unattended tanks overflowing, fluids leaking from a frack container, machine malfunctions and workers cutting corners. With people involved accidents are going to happened and this is not different in fracldng. Improper and insufficient cement casting can lead to leaks. Poorly constructed casting/tubing can also lead to leaks. Fugitive Methane can also leak along the walls. Low quality concrete allows Fugitive Methane to escape. Fugitive Methane can then follow paths into the aquifer. Fugitive Methane is released dissolving in the aquifer where residential wells pump contaminated water into the house that is then used for drinking, food preparation, cooking, showering, cleaning, irrigation for landscaping, etc. There are a number sources of contamination; neglected surface pumps, unlined storage pits, insufficient or improper castings and new fracture released methane in the form of methane as EFTA01207297 asphyxiant and/or methane is an explosive hazard. And once this in the soil and water, it poisons the ground forever. Bis(2tthythenfl)phlhalale (OEHP) Barium Sulfate Arsenic Glycol Compounds • • • • The Marcellus Shale deposit (which covers parts of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and a bit of Tennessee contains enough gas to support the US gas needs for 14 years. But gas development here can prove to be a catastrophe in the making as toxic chemicals and methane gas seep into the drinking water and now ratio active Radium 226 in waste products. The gas maybe booming but what price for people. Hydraulic Fracking or Fracking threatens to destroy the environment and lives... But in the rush to drill concerns about the potential risks of Fracking are being swept aside. Already there are a number of communities in New York and Pennsylvania who can no longer drink their well water do to its contamination caused by fracking wells in the area. Water is a commodity which we often take for granted but when you lose it, it is gone and then you realize how precious water is. In a number of areas people have been told to not drink or bathe in their well water due to the high concentration of contaminates. Some of the sites are well regulated but 95% of the sites are not well-regulated at all and some are real bad with sites where contaminated liquids are oozing out of the sides of the mountains. But the Big Ugly is that the Marcellus Shale deposits is rich in radium, Radium 226 and the level of radium in the Marcellus is 267 times the safe disposal amount. Meaning it will kill you. So in addition to the cocktail of contaminates which we know is toxic, the Frack-flow-back leaches Radium out of the shale. The Radium is cariogenic and that is something that is being introduced to the surface in a spill as thousands of trucks roll across the countryside carrying tens of thousands of toxic waste water and chemicals to disposal the few disposal sites trying to keep up with the ever increasing volume. Yes natural gas is a much cleaner burning fuel than either coal or crude oil, it is really only used as a substitute for coal whereas crude is primarily used for transportation and natural gas is primarily used for heating and industrial activity. Yes, gas has less than half the carbon emissions of coal and no mercury. But natural gas is still a fossil fuel. And yes, natural gas burns cleaner than any other fossil fuel but it is not cleaner in its life-cycle. Studies being done at Cornel University show that the life- cycle in terms of carbon dioxide emissions and methane emissions from the development of gas from unconventional sources such as shale is at least as dirty as coal. EFTA01207298 Without a doubt the fracking industry is under-regulated. We need to work toward limiting the amount of toxic chemicals to zero. We need to do away with the Halliburton Loophole, which was created in 2005 under Vice President Dick Cheney (former CEO of Halliburton), completely exempted the natural gas industry's fracking technology from any regulation under The Safe Drinking Water Act. This should be an outrage. The Vice President advocated for it and pushed Congress to insert it into the language of the bill. Whether it is the technology or human error that is causing the earthquakes and toxic poisoning of the water, land and air in areas where fracking wells are being drilled and operated are the cause, we definitely need more regulation and penalties commiserate to the long-term effects of the damage done. But more importantly the public needs to become aware that there is a possibility that this process could destroy large areas of the country for generations to come which far outweighs the short-term economic gains of today. Web Link: http://youtu.be/2qxh7f3WJle When the oil and gas industry came to the small town of Dryden, NY (population: 14,500) with plans to start fracking things didn't turn out quite how they expected. Find out how a group of neighbors turned the tables on a powerful industry — and changed the fracking game forever. See the story on the video through the web link above. The World's Most Expensive School Recently the Daily Mail (UK) did a piece on my favorite school in the world, the Institut Le Rosey — under the heading — Inside the world's most expensive school: $1.40,000 a year Swiss institute has its own yacht, concert hall and equestrian center and counts royalty among its pupils. Institute Le Rosey commonly referred to as Le Rosey or simply Rosey, is a school near Rolle, Switzerland. The school was founded by Paul-Emile Carnal in 1880 on the site of the 14th- century Château du Rosey near the town of Rolle in the Canton of Vaud. It is one of the oldest boarding schools in Switzerland. The school also owns a campus in the ski resort village of Gstaad in EFTA01207299 the Canton of Bern, where the student body, faculty, and staff move to during the winter months of January through March. Institut Le Rosey is owned by its fourth generation of Directors, Philippe and Anne Gudin, who assumed ownership of Le Rosey in 1980. Michael Gray is the current Headmaster of the school. Le Rosey's main campus, near Rolle, is situated on 28 hectares (approximately 70 acres) of landscaped grounds adjacent to Lake Geneva. It is divided into two campuses, one for boys situated on the main campus and one for girls called La Combe. The boarding houses contain a total of 179 bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, and all together the academic buildings contain: 53 classrooms, 8 science laboratories, 14 specially-equipped rooms, 48 apartments for Le Rosey teachers, 2 infirmaries, a library/media centre with about 20'000 to 30'000 literary and reference works, a theatre, 3 dining rooms and 2 cafeterias, an auditorium, 2 gymnasiums, and an ecumenical chapel. Sports and arts facilities at Le Rosey include: 10 day Tennis courts, a 25-meter indoor pool and wellness centre, a 25-meter outdoor pool, 3 football pitches, 1 synthetic rugby pitch, 1 wood chip running track, a shooting and archery range, an open-air theatre, and a computer-regulated greenhouse. Off-campus Le Rosey owns: a private Equestrian center housing 3o horses, 1 indoor riding school, 1 Dressage area, and a clubhouse. Also off-campus is the Le Rosey sailing center equipped with: ro dinghies, 3 motorboats, 3 yawls and a 38-foot (12 m) yacht. In addition to 13 games and IT rooms students can also use a local 18-hole golf course and karting track. Le Rosey's 38o students are all boarders. The school offers a demanding bilingual and bicultural education with the language of instruction being French or English depending on the student's academic program. Students must sit either the International Baccalaureate (IB) or French baccalaureat after following an academic program with the chance to take each subject in either English or French, as well as studying one, two or even three further foreign languages. They live in an international community to which each student contributes through his or her own language, culture and religion; making the campus sort of a global village to share with friends. To sustain an international atmosphere at Le Rosey, there exists a quota where no more than ro% of the students may come from a single country. The student body, ages 7 through 18, is composed of pupils from approximately 58 different countries, with 60% of the students being European. The school's current enrollment, over 400 pupils, is equally divided between male and female. The majority of students are between the ages of 14 and 18. The Student-teacher ratio is 5:1 with the average class size being less than 10 students, and the average teacher's length of stay at Le Rosey is over ten years. Students at Le Rosey are nicknamed "Roseens" (in French) or "Roseans" (in English), and former students are labeled "Les Anciens Roseens". \ Notable alumni With over 5,000 former students, Rosey has one of the most prestigious alumni registries in the world. It has educated generations of dynastic families, including Hohenzollern, Rothschilds, Mettemichs, Borgheses, Hohenlohes, and Radziwills. The school has also famously educated royalty from around the world, including members of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty of Egypt, Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia, the House of Gliicicsburg of Greece, and the House of Savoy of Italy. Le Rosey has educated several monarchs, including Aga Khan IV, King Albert II of Belgium, King Baudouin I of EFTA01207300 Belgium, King Fuad II of Egypt, King Ntare V of Burundi, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Persia, and Prince Rainier III of Monaco. The future Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Prince Guillaume, was also educated at the school. Famous parents of past students at Le Rosey, who often visited the Rolle and Gstaad campuses, include: Elizabeth Taylor, David Niven, Sir Roger Moore, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Diana Ross, King Leopold III of Belgium, Aristotle Onassis. Rainier III once commented on Le Rosey: "The students were muchfriendlier because they werefrom such diverse, international backgrounds. I felt,for once in my childhood, that I could take a breath." Although I never attended Rosey, many of my friend did and during a period I went to so many reunions that there are still people who will tell you that I did. But the coolest thing about Rosey is that do to its internationalization and comradery the friends that many of the friends that you make there will be friends for life giving you entrée around the world. Why We Often Blame The Victim How much sympathy you havefor this woman probably depends on whether you feel the universe is a just place I recently came across an interesting article in The Guardian by Oliver Burkeman - Believing that life isfair might make you a terrible person - that suggest, faced with injustice, we'll try to alleviate it — but, if we can't, we'll do the next best thing, psychologically speaking: blame the victims of the injustice. The premise of the article is based on the finding, in a 2009 study, that Holocaust memorials can increase antisemitism. Confronted with an atrocity they otherwise can't explain, people become slightly more likely, on average, to believe that the victims must have brought it on themselves. For example, that last month's commemorations of the liberation of Auschwitz may have marginally increased the prevalence of antisemitism in the modern world, despite being partly intended as a warning against its consequences? Or that reading about the eye-popping state of economic inequality could make you less likely to support politicians who want to do something about it? EFTA01207301 These are among numerous unsettling implications of the gust-world hypothesis", a psychological bias explored in a new essay by Nicholas Hune-Brown at Hazlitt. The world, obviously, is a manifestly unjust place: people are always meeting fates they didn't deserve, or not receiving rewards they did deserve for hard work or virtuous behavior. Yet several decades of research have established that our need to believe otherwise runs deep. Faced with evidence of injustice, we'll certainly try to alleviate it if we can — but, if we feel powerless to make things right, we'll do the next best thing, psychologically speaking: we'll convince ourselves that the world isn't so unjust after all. The classic experiment demonstrating the just-world effect took place in 1966, when Melvyn Lerner and Carolyn Simmons showed people what they claimed were live images of a woman receiving agonizing electric shocks for her poor performance in a memory test. Given the option to alleviate her suffering by ending the shocks, almost everybody did so: humans may be terrible, but most of us don't go around being consciously and deliberately awful. When denied any option to halt her punishment, however — when forced to just sit and watch her apparently suffer — the participants adjusted their opinions of the woman downwards, as if to convince themselves her agony wasn't so indefensible because she wasn't really such an innocent victim. "The sight of an innocent person suffering without possibility of reward or compensation", Lerner and Simmons concluded, "motivated people to devalue the attractiveness of the victim in order to bring about a more appropriatefit between her fate and her character." It's easy to see how a similar psychological process might lead, say, to the belief that victims of sexual assault were "asking for it": if you can convince yourself of that, you can avoid acknowledging the horror of the situation. What's truly unsettling about the just-world bias is that while it can have truly unpleasant effects, these follow from what seems like the entirely understandable urge to believe that things happen for a reason. After all, if we didn't all believe that to some degree, life would be an intolerably chaotic and terrifying nightmare in, which effort and payback were utterly unrelated, and there was no point planning for the future, saving money for retirement or doing anything else in hope of eventual reward go mad. Surely wanting the world to make a bit more sense than that is eminently forgivable? Yet, ironically, this desire to believe that things happen for a reason leads to the kinds of positions that help entrench injustice instead of reducing it. Hune-Brown cites another recent bit of evidence for the phenomenon: people with a strong belief in a just world, he reports, are more likely to oppose affirmative action schemes intended to help women or minorities. You needn't be explicitly racist or sexist to hold such views, nor committed to a highly individualistic political position (such as libertarianism); the researchers controlled for those. You need only cling to a conviction that the world is basically fair. That might be a pretty naive position, of course — but it's hard to argue that it's a hateful one. Similar associations have been found between belief in a just world and a preference for authoritarian political leaders. To shield ourselves psychologically from the terrifying thought that the world is full of innocent people suffering, we endorse politicians and policies more likely to make that suffering worse. All of which is another reminder of a truth that's too often forgotten in our era of extreme political polarization and 24/7 internet outrage: wrong opinions — even deeply obnoxious opinions — needn't necessarily stem from obnoxious motivations. "Victim-blaming" provides the dearest example: barely a day goes by without some commentator being accused (often rightly) of implying that somebody's suffering was their own fault. That's a viewpoint that should be condemned, of course: it's unquestionably unpleasant to suggest that the victims of, say, the Charlie Hebdo killings, brought their fates upon themselves. But the just-world hypothesis shows how such opinions need not be the consequence of a deep character fault on the part of the blamer, or some tiny kernel of evil in EFTA01207302 their soul. It might simply result from a strong need to feel that the world remains orderly, and that things still make some kind of sense. On a personal level, I grew up with the Carwells; Charlie, Billy, Jimmy and Mary who overtime were guests in Otisville, Warwick, Elmira, Green Haven, Hudson, Bedford Hills, Attica and Sing Sing prisons in the State of New York. And although they were degenerate jailbirds they were also often seen as the neighborhood's protectors whom one could call on when someone outside of the neighborhood bullied a resident. But I also remember when once called, Charlie who was the oldest and on parole at the time, surprisingly turned on my friend Raymond demanding to know what had he done to invite the problem. The psychology of blaming the victim is extremely complicated, especially when combined with expectation. How else can one explain blaming the poor for being poor? Or Trayvon Martin for wearing a hoody? Often we see that when society can't explain why, it is easier to blame the victim. Facing the truth — that the world visits violence and poverty and discrimination upon people capriciously, with little regard for what they've done to deserve it — is extremely scary. Because, if there's no good explanation for why any specific person is suffering, it's far harder to escape the frightening conclusion that it could easily be you next. 10, 548 The numbers are in as the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan documented io,548 civilian casualties in 2014, the highest number in a single year since 2009. They include 3,699 civilian deaths, up 25 percent from 2013. The MI. says the Taliban and other insurgents were responsible for 72 percent of all civilian casualties, with government forces and foreign troops responsible for just 14 percent. The "Taliban don't actually accept the veracity of the information in the report," UNAMA head Nicholas Haysom told journalists Wednesday. "They have accepted in the engagements with us that protection of a civilian is important and have pledged to take certain measures to eradicate civilian casualties." EFTA01207303 U.S. and NATO troops pulled back from volatile areas last year, handing security responsibility over to Afghan forces and officially concluding their combat mission at the end of the year. At least 2,213 U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the invasion to to the Taliban following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to an Associated Press count. The =. report attributed the rise in casualties to intensified ground fighting, in which weapons like mortars, rockets and grenades are used in populated areas, sometimes indiscriminately. For the first time since 2009, more Afghan civilians were killed and injured by ground fighting than by any other tactic, including roadside bombs. The report found that civilian deaths and injuries resulting from ground operations surged by 54 percent, making them the "biggest killers ofAfghan women and children in 2014." In southern Kandahar province, a suicide bomber struck near a police station on Wednesday, killing an Afghan woman and a small child, according to Samim Elham, the provincial governor's spokesman. The attack, which happened in Kandahar city, also wounded three civilians, added Elham. And the day that the report was released, a roadside bomb exploded outside of Kabul, killing four members of a family among other incidents. And to suggest that government and foreign forces were "only" responsible for 14% of the casualties plays down we are talking about almost 2000 innocent men, women and children in a unnecessary war now in its fourteenth year. ****** Don't Believe The Republican Hype About Their Obamacare Replacement WHERE'S siatorDociourFREEDOM? After nearly five years since the Affordable Care Act became law and two years into its expansion of health coverage to an estimated 10 million uninsured people, GOP lawmakers renewed their efforts to develop a health reform plan they can position as a "replacement" for President Barack Obama's health care law. It's no coincidence that this is taking place in the run-up to a June Supreme Court ruling that could blow a giant hole in the Affordable Care Act. A decision against Obamacare would kick millions of people, mainly living in red states, off their health plans -- and leave them looking to the Republican Congress for a solution. Congressional Republicans want Americans -- especially the nine on the Supreme Court -- to think the GOP can do in less than five months what it took Democrats decades to achieve: enact comprehensive health care reform legislation. But given that Republicans have been unable to reach consensus on much beyond repealing Obamacare in the last five years, that's an ambitious timeline. This pattern EFTA01207304 has been repeating itself since 2009. Two weeks ago, House Republicans approved yet another bill (the 56th time) to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and this one included language charging three House committee chairmen with devising a replacement plan. Meanwhile, Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (Utah), Sen. Richard Burr (M.) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (Mich.) unveiled the GOP's latest attempt to construct an Obamacare alternative. Although the proposal is virtually identical to the one that Hatch and Burr issued a year ago with then-Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the duo -- along with Upton -- scored headlines describing their framework as the Obamacare replacement plan. But remarks from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday underscore how far congressional Republicans are from having an actual alternative in place. "Clearly, our three chairmen have an awful lot of work to do to come up with our replacement. But I would expect all of this to be pan of the discussion -- all of it. Listen, there's a lot of ideas out there," Boehner said. The key is going to be to boil those concepts down to what a real replacement would look like." The problem is that their proposal doesn't make things better even if they can get a consensus of support. The Hatch-Burr-Upton proposal is a case study in the difficult trade-offs Republicans would eventually have to negotiate among their members and supporters -- and then defend to the broader public. Relative to Obamacare, the Republican proposal would provide financial assistance to fewer people and cut off aid at a lower income level. It would also roll back Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, replacing it with a tax credit for buying private insurance; eliminate regulations that guarantee all policies include comprehensive benefits; and, among other things, give insurers more leeway to vary premiums by age. Republicans promote these changes as increasing "choice" and Texibility" in insurance, claiming that they will result in less federal spending and that younger adults will pay lower prices. But each of these proposed changes would carry other consequences as well. Policies without full benefits, including "junk" plans and mini-med policies, would return to the market. The same pricing practices that reduced premiums for 25-year-olds would jack them up for 6o-year-olds, putting insurance out of reach for many older Americans. And the proposal's precise effect on the uninsured is hard to tell, but under the prevailing assumptions of most forecasting models -- including those used by the Congressional Budget Office -- the likely impact would be more people without insurance and/or much weaker financial protection, as an analysis of last year's plan by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggested. Republicans will have a hard time defending those changes -- particularly when so many of their constituents now benefit from the Affordable Care Act's more generous assistance and protections. Yet for more conservative Republicans who are bent on full repeal and resistant to increased federal authority over the health care system, the proposal might actually not go far enough. (Last year's plan drew fire from the right for precisely that reason.) The GOP is far from agreement on the question of whether Congress should replace Obamacare with anything at all, in the event the law is repealed legislatively or gutted by the Supreme Court. As a general rule, expanding access to health care reform requires enacting redistributive tax and social welfare policies -- the kind many conservatives oppose on principle. To date, none of the GOP health care reform proposals have so much as made it out of committee. And no Republican in Congress has laid out a plan for advancing any health care bills through the EFTA01207305 legislative process this year. In 2013, then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) couldn't even get a comparatively modest bill funding high-risk pool insurance programs for sick people passed, thanks to a conservative revolt. This week, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, acknowledged to Politico that Republicans might choose not to come together on a plan at all. Perhaps Alexander realizes that putting together a real Obamacare alternative will take more time -- and more genuine interest -- than Republicans have, or than the Supreme Court's schedule demands. And until Republicans are serious about bettering healthcare in America other than for ideological reasons or to kill on President Obama's signature achievements, PLEASE LEAVE THE AFFORDABLE HEALTHCARE ACT LEGISLATIONALONE and this is my rant of the week.... WEEK's READINGS Study: Too many Americans don't believe in evolution or man-made climate change A new study published in Science has alarming news about our scientific knowledge is _Study: Too many Americans don't believe in evolution or man-made climate change We have to wonder why in a country like ours where ingenuity is so celebrated that so many Americans refuse to accept the conclusions of the scientific community. A new study published in the prestigious journal Science found that Americans are seriously misinformed when it comes to evolution, GMO foods and humanity's role in climate change. The survey, jointly conducted by the Pew Research Center and American Association for the Advancement of Science, compared opinions about scientific matters of the public and AAAS' member scientists. The results were discouraging. 31 percent of Americans believe that humans have been in "their presentform"since their creation, while 24 percent believe that humans evolved but under the guidance of a God-like figure. Only 2 percent of AAAS scientists did not believe in evolution (which is pretty scary in and of itself). Perhaps the most contentious issue the survey touched on was climate change, where only half of the population agreed with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change view that climate change was mostly driven by human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels. Nearly half said there was either no good evidence for global warming, or that the recent warming of the Earth was due to natural climate variability. Scientists and the broader public disagreed most strongly about the safety of GM foods, though their views differed substantially on global warming too, with 87% of scientists believing that climate change was mostly caused by human activity. The researchers spoke with 2,002 adults by phone, and used EFTA01207306 answers to online questionnaires from 3,748 members of the AAAS that live in the U.S. Alan Leshner, the CEO of AAAS and Executive Publisher of Science said, "There is a disconnect between the way the public perceives science and the way that scientists see science. Scientists need to do something to turn this around." Eight in to Americans believe science has made life better for most people, but they still don't trust scientists — and/or aren't aware of their consensus — on many of the most important science-related issues of the day. And that goes for far more than just climate change. And it includes plenty of Democrats too. The study comparing the attitudes of scientists and the public shows wide gaps between the two when it comes to climate, food that uses genetically modified organisms and pesticides, research using animals, and also the threat posed by the fast-growing world population. While 87 percent of scientists in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the world's biggest scientific society) say climate change is caused by humans, just 5o percent of U.S. adults agree — a 37-point gap. There's an even bigger gap when it comes to GMOs. A similar proportion of scientists say they are safe in food, but just 37 percent of Americans agree.Also bigger than the climate- change gap are the use of animals in research (89 percent of scientists favor it, versus 47 percent of Americans) and using pesticides to produce food (68 percent of scientists, 28 percent of Americans). EFTA01207307  Opinion Differences Between Public and Scientists % of US. adults and.4_4_45 scientists saying each of the following Biomedical sciences Safe to eat genetically EDF AAAS scientists modified foods 51 point gap • 88% Favor use of animals in research 47 89 Safe to eat foods 28 68 grown with pesticides Humans have evolved over time 65 la.) 68 Childhood vaccines such as MMR should 68 elMD as be required Climate, energy, space sciences Climate change is mostly 5O'Y 87% due to human activity Growing world population 59 ®82 will be a major problem Favor building more 45 20 • 65 nuclear power plants Favor more 32M 52 offshore drilling Astronauts essential for 47CNIED 59 future of U.S. space program Favor increased use 68®78 of bioengineered fuel Favor increased 31n 39 use of tracking Space station has been 64 CD 68 a good investment for U.S. 4 Surveyof U.S. adultsAugust15-25, 2014. AAASscientisrs survey Sept 11-Oct 13, 2014. Other responsesand those sayingdont know or going no answerare not shown. PEW RESEARCH CENTER On some of these issues, Republicans are more in line with scientists. A similar 2009 Pew study showed 62 percent of Republicans favored using animals in research, versus 48 percent of Democrats. The same study showed a similar split on nuclear power, which 65 percent of scientists favor. And on GMOs, past polling has generally shown at least slightly more concern among Democrats. While Republicans remain more skeptical on top-line issues like evolution and climate change, there has been less partisan difference than one might think on issues like evolution. And on vaccines, the doubters in the two parties have been about equal. While Republicans have moved more against science's impact on food, both Republicans and Democrats shifted about equally against its impact on the environment. And on basically every measure, Americans are more skeptical of science's impact on American life than they were five years EFTA01207308 ago. Which doesn't bode well for science — or building political consensus on it. Below please find a web link for a summary of the study Web Link: ****** Here Are The Most Expensive Countries In The World To Live In Highest Cost of Irving II Lowest Cost of Living You might think life here in America is expensive. But it turns out that when compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. doesn't even make the list of the 20 most expensive countries to live in. Thanks to a new infographic from Movehub, a site that provides information to those looking to move abroad, we can see clearly whose wallets have it worst off. The graphic includes a number of maps showing which nations have the highest cost of living, based on the average price of consumer goods in each country. Above is how the cost of living stacks up worldwide. EFTA01207309 Western European countries count among the most expensive places to live. Switzerland's cost of living is highest, barely edging out Norway, a country well-known for being harsh on checkbooks. This dose-up map shows how European nations compare to one another: North America By contrast, the cost of living in the U.S. is cheaper than at least 20 other countries, including Canada, Australia and the U.K. Here's how North America looks: EFTA01207310 Movehub created the maps using data from Numbeo, a website that crowd sources the prices of consumer goods across the globe. Numbeo users submit price data from a variety of sources, including supermarket and taxi company websites, government institutions, press reports and more. The Numbeo data used in Movehub's maps were collected between July 1, 2013 and Jan. 2, 2015, but does not include rent or mortgage payments. Still, as Consumer Reports points out, the number of user submissions on Numbeo varies from country to country, so it's best to take the rankings with a grain of salt. Below are the 15 countries with the highest costs of living, according to Numbeo's data. The living costs in each country are measured against a base of 100, which represents New York City's cost of living. For instance, the data show that living in Switzerland is just over 26% more expensive than living in New York City. 1. Switzerland - 126.03 2. Norway - 118.59 3. Venezuela - 111.01 4. Iceland - 102.14 5. Denmark - 100.60 6. Australia - 99.32 7. New Zealand - 93.71 8. Singapore - 93.61 9. Kuwait - 92.97 10. United Kingdom - 92.19 11. Ireland - 92.09 12. Luxembourg - 91.78 13. Finland - 89.68 14. France - 88.37 15. Belgium - 87.22 For more maps on the cost of living around the world, check out Movehub's full infographic. ****** Closing Education Gap Will Lift Economy, a Study Find EFTA01207311 We know from study after study that there is a growing educational achievement gap between the poorest and wealthiest children in America. And the Washington Center for Equitable Growth just released a study to identify the lost economic growth and tax revenues caused by this gap. The researchers concluded the United States could ultimately enrich everybody by improving educational performance for the typical student. Because when it comes to math and science scores, the United States lags most of the other 33 advanced industrialized countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, ranking 24th, far behind Korea, Poland and Slovenia. Moving up just a few notches to 19th — so that the average American score matched the average — would add 1.7 percent to the nation's gross domestic product over the next 35 years, according to estimates by the Washington Center, a nonpartisan, liberal leaning research group focused on narrowing inequality. That could lead to roughly $9oo billion in higher government revenue, more than making up for the cost of such an effort. If Americans were able to match the scores reached in Canada, which ranks seventh on the . scale, the United States' gross domestic product would rise by an additional 6.7 percent, a cumulative increase of $io trillion (after taking inflation into account) by the year 2050, the report estimated. Setting Targets to Improve U.S. Educational Outcomes F dig abonal 'mot ovements. measured by PISA suet. under three different ..cenar Kr, among the 34 member nation•, of the Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development. Cavalry Carnet score Staid° t Scarf* 2 Scowl. No change Matching OECD Matching Canadian Matching top qualrile average PISA score PISA score U.S. PISA score PM mat. Pat PIM ttav lest NIA tap Rath RSA tea. R.& OECD average 995 995 995 995 Us 978 24th 995 19th 1044 7 th 1080 3rd lo.rt .aeon pr :012 fava %tut Soden KS ant Can - 'tar. Pair.le•C• .410•PTIM,I Readers arel k•nce rVoOrne I Ilte, • Ntayary 201•I PIS.. C D Asst.. Mipat. do or,' toe 7/97112&42•311 Lon 1/4 colcutrucen W."110., C (*stab.Onatth based.m• PIA scorn EFTA01207312 In the three decades that followed the end of World War II, almost all Americans, no matter where they fell on the earnings scale, enjoyed at least a doubling of their real incomes. But that balanced growth has evaporated. While those at the top have continued to experience robust income increases, everyone else's income has either stalled or dropped. The average income of the bottom 20 percent of households sank by more than 8 percent from 1973 to 2103, while the inflation adjusted incomes of the top 20 percent grew by about 6o percent, according to the report. The top 5 percent enjoyed an 8o percent jump. A restoration, then, of the economic growth pattern that characterized the first three post-war decades would result in both greater and more widely shared economic growth—equitable growth. In order to address this key challenge confronting the United States, this study empirically quantifies the economic and tax benefits of raising the educational achievement of children from less advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. In general, there are large gaps in the educational outcomes among children from families with lower and higher socioeconomic status. These gaps contribute to subsequent economic inequality, with the relatively poor performance of children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds reducing U.S. economic growth. Thus, closing income or class-based educational gaps would promote faster and more widely shared economic growth. The study suggests that the added cost of improving educational achievement at the bottom would be more than made up for by the rise in economic output and tax revenue. The study used math and science scores from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment, a test widely used around the world for measuring and coritin educational achievement. The average combined score for the United States is 978, while the average is 995. The Canadian average is 1,044. Eliminating the achievement gap in America would require raising the country's average to 1,080, so that it would rank third behind South Korea (with an average score of 1,092) and Japan (with a 1,083 av