Thursday, 12/4/14, Public Square

Saturday, 1/18/14, Public Square

Thursday, 7/21/11, Public Square

How the Stimulus Is Changing America

Creating Strategies for the 21st Century

The debate over President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill has mostly been about whether it has saved jobs — and most economists say it has — but that’s not the only thing it aimed to do.  The bill was also designed to help advance several Democratic goals — a green economy, computerization of the health-care system, education reform, and scientific research. Time says “Any of those programs would have been a revolution in its own right” and that the stimulus “may be President Obama’s signature effort to reshape America.”

Republicans counting on Climate Change Bill to save them

Republicans have long ago given up having ideas or solutions of their own, and set their fortunes on the Democratic Party messing up badly enough that voters will turn to them. Yesterday when the global warming energy legislation narrowly passed the House, the GOP members began chanting, ““B.T.U., B.T.U.” and seemed almost in a celebratory mood. Always the Party to look backward instead of forward, they are counting on 1993.

According to an article in The New York Times, Friday’s vote will be the ‘way back’ for the Republican Party.

“House Democrats, in the early months of the Clinton administration, reluctantly backed a proposed B.T.U. tax — a new levy on each unit of energy consumed — only to see it ignored by the Senate and seized as a campaign issue by Republicans, who took control of the House the next year. A lot of Democrat members got burnt on that vote,” warned Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, who called the climate change measure the defining vote of this, the 111th, Congress.”

fnord

New Climate Change Report Alarming

A new report from federal scientists does not mince words in demanding action on climate change. Though the info in the report, titled “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,” is nothing new, the size of the report, its timing, and the clear language used are all notable, The Washington Post reports. “Climate change over this century will challenge the ability of society and natural systems to adapt,” the report says, which was released as Congress begins to consider a bill that would include drastic measures such as the first national cap on emissions.

fnord

Cicadas: Latest Evidence for Climate Change

Since I know that many of you are missing the inane arguments from the other place, I thought I would do my civic duty and report on what the Cicadas are saying.  They, according to this scientist, are thinking that their underground homes are getting too hot and they are leaving them early.  This has been a consistent pattern and attributed by this scientist as more evidence of climate change.

More information here.

iggy donnelly