"Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces," – Sidney Hook
Archive for July, 2012
Tuesday July 31, 2012 -
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012EIA: Today’s Gasoline Prices Monday, July 30, 2012
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012
Weekly Retail Gasoline Prices, Regular Grade, by Week and PADD (Self Service Prices per Gallon, Including Taxes) Date 7/16/2012 7/23/2012 7/30/2012 U.S. 3.427 3.494 3.508 PADD 1 - East Coast 3.407 3.488 3.497 PADD 1a - New England 3.540 3.633 3.630 PADD 1b - Central Atlantic 3.482 3.564 3.569 PADD 1c - Lower Atlantic 3.312 3.387 3.403 PADD 2 - Midwest 3.420 3.482 3.515 PADD 3 - Gulf Coast 3.201 3.294 3.310 PADD 4 - Rocky Mountain 3.507 3.491 3.466 PADD 5 - West Coast 3.674 3.715 3.708 PADD 5b - West Coast less CA 3.538 3.553 3.546 California 3.753 3.808 3.802 http://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/
Congressman Ron Paul’s Weekly Column for Monday July 30th – Audit the Fed Moves Forward!
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012
Audit the Fed Moves Forward!
Last week the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed my legislation calling for a full and effective audit of the Federal Reserve. Well over 300 of my Congressional colleagues supported the bill, each casting a landmark vote that marks the culmination of decades of work. We have taken a big step toward bringing transparency to the most destructive financial institution in the world.
Full Article Here:
TRAC: Drop in ICE Deportation Filings in Immigration Court
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012
Drop in ICE Deportation Filings in Immigration Court
So far this fiscal year, there have been fewer Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) filings for deportation orders than in FY 2011. According to the latest Immigration Court data obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) — current through the end of June 2012 — new deportation proceedings have been steadily falling since 2009 when ICE filed 255,238 requests for deportation orders.
TRAC projects that filings will reach only 212,749 in FY 2012 once all late reports are in. This would represent a drop of 10 percent — more than 24,000 cases — from the previous year, and more than 42,000 fewer than the number of ICE deportation order requests made during FY 2009.
TRAC’s findings are based on case-by-case data obtained from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The report can be viewed at this address:
http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/289/
These findings will be among the topics addressed in a free webinar titled "ICE Prosecutorial Discretion: Latest Details on New Immigration Court Filings and Closures" scheduled for Thursday, August 2, at 2:00 PM (Eastern US). To register for this event, go to:
http://trac.syr.edu/webinar/register.php?wid=20120802
TRAC’s Deportation Proceedings tool lets you view details of the charges filed in deportation proceedings by type of charge, state, nationality, Immigration Court and hearing location. Go to:
http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/charges/deport_filing_charge.php
To keep up with TRAC, follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:
http://facebook.com/tracreports
David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563
trac@syr.edu
http://trac.syr.edu
Western Fires: "Perfect Storm" or New Norm? –William DeBuys
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Western Fires: "Perfect Storm" or New Norm?
WILLIAM DEBUYS, wdebuys@earthlink.net, http://www.williamdebuys.com
Author of "A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest," deBuys recently wrote a piece titled "The Oxygen Planet Struts Its Stuff: Not a ‘Perfect Storm’ But the New Norm in the American West," which states: "Dire fire conditions, like the inferno of heat, turbulence, and fuel that recently turned 346 homes in Colorado Springs to ash, are now common in the West. A lethal combination of drought, insect plagues, windstorms, and legions of dead, dying, or stressed-out trees constitute what some pundits are calling wildfire’s ‘perfect storm.’
"They are only half right.
"This summer’s conditions may indeed be perfect for fire in the Southwest and West, but if you think of it as a ‘storm,’ perfect or otherwise — that is, sudden, violent, and temporary — then you don’t understand what’s happening in this country or on this planet. Look at those 346 burnt homes again, or at the High Park fire that ate 87,284 acres and 259 homes west of Fort Collins, or at the Whitewater Baldy Complex fire in New Mexico that began in mid-May, consumed almost 300,000 acres, and is still smoldering, and what you have is evidence of the new normal in the American West.
"For some time, climatologists have been warning us that much of the West is on the verge of downshifting to a new, perilous level of aridity. Droughts like those that shaped the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and the even drier 1950s will soon be “the new climatology” of the region — not passing phenomena but terrifying business-as-usual weather. Western forests already show the effects of this transformation. …" http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175573
FROM Institute for Public Accuracy
BOOK: A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest William Eno DeBuys
Description
Publication Date: December 12, 2011
With its soaring azure sky and stark landscapes, the American Southwest is one of the most hauntingly beautiful regions on earth. Yet staggering population growth, combined with the intensifying effects of climate change, is driving the oasis-based society close to the brink of a Dust-Bowl-scale catastrophe.
In A Great Aridness, William deBuys paints a compelling picture of what the Southwest might look like when the heat turns up and the water runs out. This semi-arid land, vulnerable to water shortages, rising temperatures, wildfires, and a host of other environmental challenges, is poised to bear the heaviest consequences of global environmental change in the United States. Examining interrelated factors such as vanishing wildlife, forest die backs, and the over-allocation of the already stressed Colorado River–upon which nearly 30 million people depend–the author narrates the landscape’s history–and future. He tells the inspiring stories of the climatologists and others who are helping untangle the complex, interlocking causes and effects of global warming. And while the fate of this region may seem at first blush to be of merely local interest, what happens in the Southwest, deBuys suggests, will provide a glimpse of what other mid-latitude arid lands worldwide–the Mediterranean Basin, southern Africa, and the Middle East–will experience in the coming years.
Written with an elegance that recalls the prose of John McPhee and Wallace Stegner, A Great Aridness offers an unflinching look at the dramatic effects of climate change occurring right now in our own backyard.
The Ethanol Mandate Is Worse Than The Drought–WSJ
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012
Wall Street Journal
But aggravating the problem and adding to the crisis is the U.S.
government’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires that a certain volume of ethanol (15.2 billion gallons in 2012, mainly derived from corn) be blended into gasoline. This is an …