Over the years in China, I watched my share (thousands of hours?) of China Central TV, CCTV, and have a very clear idea of its role as reliable presenter of the official governmental view.
In the past few evenings I’ve started watching the launch of new programs from CCTV America. I don’t know how representative the shows I’ve seen are, or how long this can go on — but flipping back and forth between CCTV America and a well-known US network based in Atlanta, I’ve generally heard a lot more, and in a lot more detail and less tendentiously and cutesily, from, gasp, CCTV America.
Archive | April, 2012
China Central TV: CCTV America – James Fallows
19 AprClean Technology on the Brink – NYTimes.com
19 Apr…renewable energy generation doubled from 2006 to 2011, the first new nuclear plants in decades are under construction, and prices for solar, wind and other clean energy technologies have fallen while employment in those sectors has risen by 70,000 jobs even during a deep recession.
Those gains could all be lost unless the federal government at least temporarily renews and pays for a variety of subsidies and production credits that have supported those industries as they strive to compete with fossil-fuel based energy sources, the report states.
The study notes that the tens of billions of dollars from President Obama’s stimulus program are drying up, even as tax breaks that have supported wind and solar power generation are expiring. The result is an anticipated 75 percent decline in federal clean technology spending by 2014 from a peak of $44.3 billion in 2009.
EPA Passes New Fracking Rules – National – The Atlantic Wire
18 AprIn what some, like Fuel Fix’s Jennifer A Dlouhy, consider another case of the government caving in to the wishes of the well-funded energy lobby, the rules won’t take effect until 2015.
The new regulations are designed to cut down on the polluting by-products of fracking, which involves drilling through rock and injecting a water-based chemical mixture to force out natural gas. However, after protest from the lobbyists, the EPA will allow the gas industry to hold on to the status quo until 2015, as long as they burn off some of the carcinogenic gases with a process called “flaring.”
Does “EPA” stand for “Enhanced Pollution Agency”?
via EPA Passes New Fracking Rules – National – The Atlantic Wire.
Ron Paul – 2012 TIME 100: The Most Influential People in the World
18 AprRalph Nader explains why Ron Paul makes Time‘s list of 100 most influential people of 2012.
… people like a politician without marbles in his mouth.
Paul does not censor himself. He comes across as sincere, earnest and independent of his party’s fat cats. In the debates, only he called out the American Empire’s meddling in the business of countless nations around the world. He assails the Pentagon’s bloated budgets and has worked with liberal Democrat Barney Frank to shrink the military-industrial complex. He wants to end our boomeranging wars.
Paul, 76, draws a distinction between libertarian conservatives and those corporatist conservatives entrenching a corporate state in which Big Business merges with Big Government.
via Ron Paul – 2012 TIME 100: The Most Influential People in the World – TIME.
Eyeless Shrimp and the BP Oil Spill – National – The Atlantic Wire
18 AprIt happened almost exactly two years ago, and as much good news as you read about the return of tourism and the spending of BP’s money to help the recovery efforts, some major problems remain.
We’re most concerned about the eyeless shrimp…. In other parts of the Gulf, fisherman are finding fish covered in black lesions and even dead dolphins floating in the water. Eyeless shrimp or killifish covered in oil-colored spots serve as cringeworthy reminders of how even a small amount of leftover contaminant can do huge amounts of damage to local lifeforms.
But you don’t even have to eat mutant fish to be affected by the spill. A new report by the non-BP-funded Surfrider Foundation shows that humans swimming in the Gulf are soaking up the chemical that BP used to disperse the oil right after the spill.
via Eyeless Shrimp and the BP Oil Spill – National – The Atlantic Wire.
Americans Link Global Warming to Extreme Weather, Poll Says – NYTimes.com
18 AprA poll due for release on Wednesday shows that a large majority of Americans believe that this year’s unusually warm winter, last year’s blistering summer and some other weather disasters were probably made worse by global warming. And by a 2-to-1 margin, the public says the weather has been getting worse, rather than better, in recent years.
The survey, the most detailed to date on the public response to weather extremes, comes atop other polling showing a recent uptick in concern about climate change. Read together, the polls suggest that direct experience of erratic weather may be convincing some people that the problem is no longer just a vague and distant threat.
via Americans Link Global Warming to Extreme Weather, Poll Says – NYTimes.com.
For Economists Saez and Piketty, the Buffett Rule Is Just a Start – NYTimes.com
17 AprA profile of the economists who’ve done the major work on income inequality in the US.
Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty have spent the last decade tracking the incomes of the poor, the middle class and the rich in countries across the world. More than anything else, their work shows that the top earners in the United States have taken a bigger and bigger share of overall income over the last three decades, with inequality nearly as acute as it was before the Great Depression….
Both admire, even adore, the United States, they say, for its entrepreneurial drive, innovative spirit and, not least, its academic excellence: the two met while re-searchers in Cambridge, Mass. But both also express bewilderment over the current conversation about whether the wealthy, who have taken most of America’s income gains over the last 30 years, should be paying higher taxes.
“The United States is getting accustomed to a completely crazy level of inequality,” Mr. Piketty said, with a degree of wonder. “People say that reducing inequality is radical. I think that tolerating the level of inequality the United States tolerates is radical.”
via For Economists Saez and Piketty, the Buffett Rule Is Just a Start – NYTimes.com.
ALEC Disbands Task Force Responsible for Voter ID, ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws | The Nation
17 AprAh, the CorpState blinked. That’s not much change, but it is change in the right direction.
Pressured by watchdog groups, civil rights organizations and a growing national movement for accountable lawmaking, the American Legislative Exchange Council announced Tuesday that it was disbanding the task force that has been responsible for advancing controversial Voter ID and “Stand Your Ground” laws.
ALEC, the shadowy corporate-funded proponent of so-called “model legislation” for passage by pliant state legislatures, announced that it would disband its “Public Safety and Elections” task force. …
The decision to disband the task force appears to get ALEC out of the business of promoting Voter ID and “Stand Your Ground” laws. That’s a dramatic turn of events, with significant implications for state-based struggles over voting rights an elections, as well as criminal justice policy. But it does not mean that ALEC will stop promoting one-size-fits-all “model legislation” at the state level.
via ALEC Disbands Task Force Responsible for Voter ID, ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws | The Nation.
Five Ways to Support Re-Occupation | The Nation
17 AprEmpowered by a federal court ruling that allows protesters to legally sleep on public sidewalks, as long as they don’t block building entrances or take up more than half of the available space, #SleepfulProtest is proving to be an effective new tactic helping speed Occupy Wall Street’s re-emergence into the streets and public spaces of the US. (My colleague Allison Kilkenny recently explained and explored this new strategy.)
It’s been so effective, in fact, that this morning at 6:00 am the NYPD, in direct defiance of the 2000 decision Metropolitan Council Inc. v. Safir, which held “public sleeping as a means of symbolic expression” to be constitutionally protected speech, raided the corner across from the New York Stock Exchange where Occupiers have been sleeping. A motion for an emergency injunction against NYPD disruption of the sidewalk protests was filed this morning.
In the meantime, here are five ways you can help support the Re-Occupation of America:
1. Go to Wall Street to join the Occupiers if you can….
2. Spread the word. …
3. Donate to Occupy Wall Street through its website. …
4. Get ready for the May 1 actions. This is expected to be a major day of resistance on many fronts and of many forms. Do something!
5. Help save Chicago’s Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic.
Greening an Entire Block Instead of Just One Building – Jobs & Economy – The Atlantic Cities
17 AprLiving City Block’s basic concept is simple. Small buildings rarely have the resources to do a serious retrofit. For most of them, the idea is cost-prohibitive. But what if you combined a small building with 10 more like it? If all of those building owners got together to order high-efficiency water heaters in bulk, or to collectively replace one-thousand windows, could they achieve the kind of economies of scale that the Empire State Building gets?
This sounds feasible, and Riley is sure the idea will work. But he’s talking about creating a kind of building owners’ association that has never been modeled before, one in which neighbors who otherwise have very little in common might make common decisions about pooling their trash pick-up, paying their utility bills, and renovating their properties.
If you’ve ever thrown in your lot with a condo association, you can begin to imagine the logistical and legal challenges of scaling up something like this to the neighborhood level and then convincing banks to finance the joint projects of all of these random people.
“The legal framework, the governance structures and the financing are the biggest three [challenges],” Riley says. “Everything else is just stuff.”
via Greening an Entire Block Instead of Just One Building – Jobs & Economy – The Atlantic Cities.
Truth and Traditions 