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Fatal Insanity: Gallup poll shows climate change near the bottom of things Americans worry about

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Wed, 12 Mar 2014 10:03 UTC
Image
While some people speculate there was a climate bloviage link to the recent loss of a congressional seat in Florida, we have the name calling all nighter clownfest in the Senate last Monday.

Bjørn Lomborg writes on his Facebook page: A new survey from Gallup shows that Americans don't worry all that much about global warming.

This is very similar to the survey showing Europeans worrying a lot more about almost all other issues than global warming, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152349665523968

This does not mean that global warming is not a problem or something that needs to be addressed. But it does indicate that politicians are vastly overhyping the discussion and likely doing us a great disservice by focusing on short-term fixes like solar and wind that have huge costs but almost no benefits.

It is also encouraging that race relations is the least important worry in the US now.
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Bad Guys

Fourteen American men arrested for operating child-abuse site through Tor


Guardian
Wed, 19 Mar 2014 07:27 UTC
Image
© Alex Wong/Getty Images
US Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson announces the results of the ‘major international operation’
Authorities have arrested 14 men in a secret, members-only child abuse website that involved 251 children, mostly boys, in the United States and five other countries, US officials said on Tuesday.

Some of the men assumed female online personas to connect with the children, who ranged in age from three to 17 years, on popular social networks, officials from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

The alleged US victims, who have been identified and contacted by authorities, were from 39 US states. The majority were between 13 and 15 years old and all but a handful were boys. Authorities said 23 of the 251 victims were identified in Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Belgium.
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Family

Seattle teachers boycotted standardized testing - and sparked a nationwide movement

Diane Brooks
Common Dreams
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 17:01 UTC
Image
© Betty Udesen
Kris McBride, Garfield's academic dean and testing coordinator, at left, and Jesse Hagopian, Garfield history teacher and a leader of the school's historic test boycott.
Life felt eerie for teachers at Seattle's Garfield High in the days following their unanimous declaration of rebellion last winter against standardized testing. Their historic press conference, held on a Thursday, had captured the attention of national TV and print media. But by midday Monday, they still hadn't heard a word from their own school district's leadership.

Then an email from Superintendent José Banda hit their in-boxes. Compared with a starker threat issued a week later, with warnings of 10-day unpaid suspensions, this note was softly worded. But its message was clear: a teacher boycott of the district's most-hated test - the MAP, short for Measures of Academic Progress - was intolerable.

Comment: See also: The Untold History of Modern U.S. Education

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Stock Down

Banker suicides baffle and rattle financial world

Michael Gray
NY Post
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 14:27 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock; Linkedin; Zumapress.com
From left: JPMorgan Chase's headquarters in London; Autumn Radtke, the 28-year-old First Meta CEO; the Deutsche Bank entrance on Wall Street.
The financial world has been rattled by a rash of apparent suicides, with some of the best and brightest among the finance workers who have taken their lives since the start of the year.

A majority of the eight suicides of 2014 have been very public demonstrations, which has suicide-prevention experts puzzled.

"Jumping is much less common as a method for suicide in general, so I am struck by the number that have occurred in recent months in this industry," said Dr. Christine Moutier, chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Moutier also discounts the location of the act as being the driver behind the reason for the suicide.

"The suicide-research literature doesn't help very much with the question of why the method of these suicides is so out in the open," she added.
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Health

Pastor diagnosed with cancer: 'No compassion in the Affordable Care Act'

Daniel Halper
Weekly Standard
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 09:01 UTC
A pastor recently diagnosed with cancer, and who is covered under Obamacare, tells a local Iowa reporter that there's "no compassion in the Affordable Care Act."

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Map

Scottish independence is winning over uncommitted, says SNP

Severin Carell
Guardian
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 19:59 UTC
Image
© Murdo Macleod
Scottish nationalists say time is on their side as they win over uncommitted voters.
Margie Maxwell is no Scottish nationalist. But she is Glaswegian, and intensely loyal with it. It never occurred to her she would vote for independence. But then the threats were made, to shipyard jobs on the Clyde, to Scotland's right to keep the pound and to her country's economy.

"I fully want independence now. They've had their chance," she said.

There was the speech in February by George Osborne, the chancellor, vetoing any sterling pact between the UK and an independent Scotland. And Maxwell, 57, deeply resented warnings last winter that lucrative Royal Navy warship contracts for Glasgow's critically important shipyards would end if Scotland voted yes to independence.
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Stock Down

Starving college students see the ugly truth behind the meritocratic social contract

Michelle Goldberg
Common Dreams
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 14:40 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Amy Sancetta
Volunteers fill bags with food for part of their backpack school lunch program.
If you want to know why millennials are far more economically liberal than other generations, consider the news that colleges have started opening on-campus food banks to keep their students from going hungry.

Dozens of food pantries are "cropping up at colleges across the country in recent years as educators acknowledge the struggles many students face as the cost of getting a higher education continues to soar," the Associated Press reported this weekend. Tuition alone, the article notes, "has become a growing burden, rising 27 percent at public colleges and 14 percent at private schools in the past five years, according to the College Board. Add in expenses for books, housing and other necessities of college life and some are left to choose between eating and learning."
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Arrow Up

More than 90 percent of Russians approve of Crimea decision


RT.com
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:53 UTC
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© RIA Novosti / Mikhail Voskresenskiy
Participants in the "We Are Together" rally and concert to support the residents of the Crimea, at Vasilyevsky Slope, Moscow
Over 90 percent of Russians approve of Crimea becoming a part of the Russian Federation, a poll has revealed as Crimeans voted for integration in Sunday's referendum.

Only 5 percent of Russians oppose the Autonomous Republic of Crimea joining Russia, while 91.4 percent of respondents said they welcome the idea, according to a joint poll by Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) and Public Opinion Fund (FOM). Both in Moscow and in the northern capital - St Petersburg - the idea is favored by 89 percent of citizens.

Meanwhile, 86 percent of respondents already consider Crimea - home to an ethnic Russian majority - a part of Russia.
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Dollars

Average healthcare premiums have soared 39%-56% post Obamacare

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 17:53 UTC
Health Care Ad
© Washington Examiner
It's been a couple months since I last updated readers on the epic disaster that is Obamacare. In case you need a refresher, here is the last article I published on the law: Computer Security Expert Claims he Hacked the ObamaCare Website in 4 Minutes.

Moving along, we now have some details on the average premium increase for non-Obamacare health plans following the implementation of the law, and the results are not pretty.

According to a cost report from eHealthInsurance, premiums have increased by between 39%-56%.
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USA

Pennsylvania private school says strip search is OK

Erin Mcauley
Courthouse News
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 22:45 UTC
Private School
© Courthouse News
Harrisburg - Officials at the Milton Hershey School strip-searched a student in the mistaken belief she had a cell phone, then told her mother that the girl "does not have constitutional rights because she is in a private school," the girl and her mom claim in court.

The mother, Trina Howze, and her daughter sued the Milton Hershey School, its Student Home Affiliate Michael Randolph, and C.W.'s student home supervisors Kenneth Wilson and Tysha Wilson, in Federal Court.

Milton Hershey School is a "cost-free, private, coeducational home and school for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students from the families of low income, limited resources and social need operating in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," according to the complaint.

Howze's daughter, C.W., had lived at and attended the Milton Hershey School for nearly four years when she was strip searched at the school in June 2013, according to the complaint.

The Wilsons and Randolph suspected she had a smartphone, "which was prohibited contraband within the Wilsons' student home," the complaint states.
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