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Some Thoughts on the Isla Vista Killer

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By John Lawrence

Elliot Rodger left a 140 page document which is a truly revealing window into his soul. After reading this “manifesto,” which is really more of a life history, his twisted life which led up in painful stages to his “Day of Retribution” becomes, if not excusable, at least more understandable. And understanding why people feel impelled to do these horrific acts is important if we are to come to any conclusions which just might prevent more of these situations in the future.

Understanding is more important than condemning. It’s not about Rodger, at this point, or his victims. Nothing can be done to bring them back. But lessons can be learned about what went wrong in this young man’s life and what could have been done to deflect him from his ultimate course. After all, right up until the end he expressed some tiny bit of hope that his life would take a more positive turn, and he wouldn’t be driven to commit the crimes that he did.   [Read more…]

Stanford University Divests From Fossil Fuel Stocks

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By John Lawrence

Stanford University has decided to divest its $18.7 billion endowment from coal stocks in response to a student led movement – Fossil Free Stanford. This is part of a larger movement among students to get their colleges and universities to get rid of fossil fuel stocks. Fossil Free Stanford petitioned the university last year to divest from 200 fossil-fuel extraction companies as part of a national divestment campaign.

In their wisdom the Stanford Trustees limited their divestment activities to 100 fossil fuel corporations. Evidently, divesting of stocks in 200 companies was considered to be a little bit too extreme.

Surprisingly, Stanford, home to the right wing Hoover Institute, acceded to most of the students’ demands. The Hoover Institute is a think tank closely associated with Republican politicians and Presidents who have derived many of their policies from Hoover fellows including Condoleeza Rice who gave some intellectual credibility to George W Bush’s lies which enabled him to invade Iraq.

  [Read more…]

Who Knew? Organic Foods Contain a Dose of GMOs

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By John Lawrence

To be labeled as “USDA organic,” 95% of the ingredients must be organically grown and the remaining 5% may be non-organic agricultural ingredients or synthetic substances that have been approved for use in organics by the USDA.

The 5% of non-organic products are usually derived from GMO corn which is highly sprayed with Monsanto’s Roundup.   [Read more…]

Capitalism: A Comparison of Marx and Piketty

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By John Lawrence

Thomas Piketty’s new book Capital in the Twenty-First Century begs comparison with Karl Marx’ Das Kapital written in 1867. The two books are alike in the sense that they both point out the incredible centralization and concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. They are unlike in the sense that Marx’ book is more exhortatory while Piketty’s is more of a massive collection of historical data presented in the form of numerous graphs and charts.

While Marx was more of a “workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains” kind of guy, Piketty is a Dragnet’s Sergeant Joe Friday’s “The facts, ma’am, just the facts” kind of guy. While Marx’s solution to the dilemma of inegalitarianism was revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, Piketty’s is a global tax on wealth, something that even he concedes is unlikely to happen.   [Read more…]

Public Banking Advocate, Ellen Brown, Is Running For California State Treasurer

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By John Lawrence

Ellen Brown, author of the Public Bank Solution, is running for California State Treasurer. The primary election takes place June 3. There are three candidates. Two will advance to the general election. She is running on a platform to establish a public bank for the state of California similar to the one in North Dakota.

She has the endorsement of the Green Party – along with Luis Rodriguez for governor and David Curtis for secretary of state. Green Party candidates take no corporate money. Candidates who take corporate money – and that means nearly all conventional candidates – are beholden to large corporate interests and cannot properly represent the interests of the disenfranchised 99%.

A public bank will bring many benefits to California including the fact that interest on outstanding loans will accrue to the taxpayers of the state instead of to private Wall Street banks. State and local finances could be restored by making sure that profits now going to Wall Street will remain at home. Taxes could be lowered, public services expanded. The cost of a college education could be reduced. The cost of borrowing for in state businesses could be lowered thus attracting more businesses to California.

  [Read more…]

Extreme Weather Watch: April 2014 – Tornadoes, Flash Floods Pound US

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159 Tornadoes, 35 Deaths as Torrential Rain and Flash Floods Pound East, South and Midwest

By John Lawrence

The last week in April saw extreme weather over as much as half the nation. Over 20 states were affected. In some places a month’s worth of rain fell in a day. In New York City there was close to 5 inches of rain in one day. In Pensacola, FL there was over 20 inches of rain in 24 hours, 6 inches in one hour alone, more rain than Los Angeles saw all last year. More rain fell in Pensacola than during Hurricane Ivan. There were nearly 6000 lightning strikes in fifteen minutes. First responders rescued people in boats. Roads and bridges collapsed.

Two trillion gallons of water fell on the south and the east coast in just one day. Flooding was worse than after some hurricanes. Heavy rain led to the collapse of a retaining wall in a Baltimore neighborhood sending cars tumbling 75 feet down an embankment onto railroad tracks. These cars were not covered by insurance as the collapsing embankment was considered an “act of God.”  The Schuylkill River in Philadelphia crested higher than after Hurricane Irene and Super Storm Sandy. Philadelphia received more rain in a day than it usually gets in a month. Golf ball sized hail pummeled the country.   [Read more…]

Republicans in the Senate Vote Not to Raise Minimum Wage

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By John Lawrence

A report by Demos revealed that, in 2012, the compensation of fast food CEOs was more than 1,200 times the earnings of the average fast food worker. Proxy disclosures recently released by fast food companies reveal that the ratio remained above 1,000-to-1 in 2013. Raising the minimum wage would do more to reduce inequality in the US than just about any other measure that could be taken.

But Republicans in the Senate voted down a Federal increase in the minimum wage. What else did we expect? As long as they have the veto, nothing will pass the Senate that benefits the middle class or the poor.

Thomas Piketty’s book Capitalism in the 21st Century is the top seller on Amazon.com. He is drawing attention to the fact that the very rich have incomes hundreds of times greater than average workers.   [Read more…]

Wealth Creation for Dummies

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By John Lawrence

Now that Thomas Piketty has clued us in with his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, that the upper one percent is making all the money and that the middle class is getting screwed, as if we didn’t already know that, the question remains what should we do about it?

Paul Krugman seems to think that government should redistribute money from the wealthy to the poor, and this would be a good solution, one that is achieving good results in Europe, but, since the US government is owned by the wealthy, one that is unlikely to be manifested here any time soon.

Piketty points out that income is derived from two sources: labor and return on capital or wealth. Capital and wealth are essentially synonymous by the way.   [Read more…]

Are The Skeptics Right That Global Warming Is An Alarmist Charade?

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By Frank Thomas / Edited by John Lawrence

The slower rate of rise in global surface mean temperature since 1998 has been the last straw for Britain’s respected, eccentric, environmental scientist, James Lovelock. He now has made a complete reversal from being a ‘radical alarmist’ on climate change to being a ‘radical non-alarmist’.

In 2008, Lovelock said climate warming had already become irreversible, “Catastrophe is unstoppable and everything we are trying to do about it is wrong.We won’t invent the necessary technologies in time and ‘80%’ of the world’s population would be wiped out by 2100. People have been foretelling Armageddon since time began, but this is the real thing. Enjoy life while you can because if you are lucky it’s going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.” 
  [Read more…]

Cheap Corn Permeates Every Facet of the American Diet

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By John Lawrence

Corn is the staple of the US agricultural system and food supply. It’s in everything we eat unbeknownst to many Americans.

Corn feeds steers that become steak and fast food hamburgers. Corn feeds chickens and pigs – even catfish, salmon and tilapia. Milk, cheese and yogurt that once came from cows that grazed on grass now come from Holsteins that spend their time tethered to milking machines while munching on corn.

Processed foods contain even more corn than so-called “natural” foods. Take chicken nuggets, for example. Not only the chicken itself but the corn starch that holds it together, the corn flour in the batter, the corn oil in which its fried, the leavenings and lecithin, the mono-, di- and triglycerides, the golden coloring, the citric acid that keeps it fresh – all these ingredients come from corn.

Any soft drink in the supermarket including Coke and Pepsi contains High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) so you can wash down your corn with some more corn. A quarter of the 45,000 items in the average supermarket contain corn.   [Read more…]

Extreme Weather Watch: March 2014

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Winter Weather Made a $55 Billion Hit to US Economy

By John Lawrence

The winter of 2014 broke records and budgets. NBC News reported that the economy took a $55 billion hit because of the extreme winter weather. There was $5.5 billion in damage to homes, businesses, agriculture and infrastructure. Cities had additional costs for salt for roads and asphalt for potholes. There were more than 30,000 potholes in Toledo, OH alone. The companies that supply salt and asphalt are making a fortune. This winter also saw 79.3 inches of snow falling in Chicago where there were 23 days below zero.

In California drought covers 99.8% of the state. The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which typically holds at least half of all the water that will flow to the state’s farms and cities each year, is at just one-fourth of its normal level.   [Read more…]

Big Data Renders College Diplomas Worthless; Billionaires Nonplussed

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By John Lawrence

It used to be accepted without question that a college degree was necessary to get a good job, and over the course of a lifetime, you would make more money with a college degree than without one. But not so fast. Despite the propaganda put out by colleges who hope to profit off your matriculation, it turns out that the latest thing in hiring practices is to disregard the college degree altogether.

Companies like Xerox are hiring not based on your resume, which includes your degrees and work experience, but on a test they’ve devised which they claim is a better predictor of job performance. Xerox runs 175 call centers around the world. In all, the centers employ more than 50,000 customer service agents who deal with questions about everything from cellphone bills to health insurance.

Xerox was having a problem hiring the right people for the jobs and reducing turnover. So they hired a company to help them do a better job of finding the right people. This company studied the characteristics of those people already at Xerox who were successful at their jobs and came up with a test whose aim was to find new applicants with exactly those same characteristics.   [Read more…]

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