Category Archives: finance

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Social Security Reserves Projected to Run Out Earlier Than Expected – The Wall Street Journal.

Social Security Reserves Projected to Run Out Earlier Than Expected https://www.wsj.com/articles/social-security-reserves-projected-to-run-out-earlier-than-previously-forecast-60932de5

“Social Security won’t have enough money to pay all beneficiaries the amount they are entitled to starting in 2034, according to the latest report by the program’s trustees. Unless Congress takes action to shore up the program, beneficiaries would receive about 80% of their scheduled benefits after that point.” According to Dave Harrison WSJ

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David Brooks: The urban backlash against the populist backlash – The Salt Lake Tribune

https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/11/22/david-brooks-urban/

“The populist backlash came in different forms in different parts of the world. In Central and Eastern Europe it came in the form of nationalist strongmen — Victor Orban, Vladimir Putin, the Law and Justice party in Poland. In Latin America it came in the form of the Pink Tide — a group of left-wing economic populists like Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. In the Anglosphere it was white ethnic nationalism of Donald Trump and Brexit. In the Middle East it was Muslim fundamentalism. In China it was the increasing authoritarianism of Xi Jinping. In India it was the Hindu nationalism of Narendra Modi.”

David Brooks

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Plan Released for Klamath River Dam Removal | American Rivers

https://www.americanrivers.org/2018/06/plan-released-for-klamath-river-dam-removal/

“The Klamath River project will be the most significant dam removal and river restoration effort yet. Never before have four dams of this size been removed at once which inundate as many miles of habitat (4 square miles and 15 miles of river length), involving this magnitude of budget (approximately $397 million) and infrastructure.

But perhaps more important than the size of the dams is the amount of collaboration and the decades of hard work that have made this project possible. American Rivers has been fighting to remove the dams since 2000. And thanks to the combined efforts of the Karuk and Yurok tribes, irrigators, commercial fishing interests, conservationists, and many others, our goal of a free-flowing river is now within reach.”

Biggest dam removal ever! Klamath was largest salmon producer until dams interrupted reproduction cycles.

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Water around the world #HOWWILLWE | PepsiCo

https://www.howwillwe.com/thrive?sf64943841=1#water-map

FOR FOUR IN TEN PEOPLE, SEVERE WATER STRESS IS ALREADY A DAILY REALITY, AND DEMAND IS SPIRALLING.

Where water is scarce, energy (oil, gas, hydropower) can become more costly, crops can fail and food processing may be disrupted.

Read on….

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New idea for dealing with school shootings, slate.com

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/a-nationwide-teacher-walkout-could-shake-us-out-of-our-mass-shooting-stupor.html

Exercise your Civic duty. Keeping sending legislative proposals to your representatives until something breaks through the stangle holds on our nation’s lawmakers.

Teachers in Europe strike with much less provocation – in the US now teachers lives and the lives of their students are at stake.

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Waste shipments to WIPP to soon resume

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR-Waste-shipments-to-WIPP-expected-to-resume-soon-1602174.html

“The shipment of transuranic wastes from generator sites to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico is set to resume in April. The US Department of Energy (DoE) expects a total of 128 shipments to be made to WIPP over the next 12 months.”

Scary huh?

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Budget blueprint

​Yesterday, The Hill reported that President-elect Trump’s budget blueprint would eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and privatize the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with the goal of reducing federal spending by trillions over the next decade. The budget blueprint itself has not yet been produced and would be a non-binding document. We are at the very beginning of the federal appropriations process. We do not expect the President’s budget to be released until April. The House and Senate will each soon begin work on the annual appropriations process. Each chamber must pass its own spending bills and then come to agreement on spending for the year before sending bills to the president to be signed into law. Fortunately, there is a solid foundation of bipartisan arts advocacy and support over the years.

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Exeter’s Great Dam Removal :: NOAA Fisheries

https://www.greateratlantic.fisheries.noaa.gov/stories/2016/september/08_exeter_s_great_dam_removal.html

Good news for boaters! And everyone!

“Friday, September 9, the town of Exeter, New Hampshire celebrates the removal of the Great Dam and the restoration of the Exeter River. The town will hold a public ceremony in Founders Park at 10am.

There have been dams along the Exeter River since the 1640s or so. The Great Dam, named for the nearby Great Falls, was built around 1831 to provide power to Exeter’s mills. After coal and oil power came to Exeter, the Great Dam continued to provide power to Exeter businesses into the mid-20th century. When the dam’s owner sold the dam and factories in 1981, the Great Dam was donated to the Town of Exeter.

With the need for the dam gone, the Great Dam fell into disrepair. In 2000, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services advised the town that the dam had serious safety and flooding issues. The Town considered repairing, modifying, or removing the dam, and finally decided that removing the dam was the best solution.

Great Dam Removal Project SignView slideshowExeter’s Great Dam Removal Project

Opening 21 Miles of River “

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Dams produce more greenhouse gas emissions than we thought — Quartz

http://qz.com/797380/reservoirs-methane-emissions-climate-change/

Katherine Ellen Foley on the problem with “clean” hydropower. “Globally, the reservoirs created by dams may actually contribute almost a gigaton of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions—about 25% more than they had previously thought. This means that we’ve almost certainly been underestimating how much greenhouse gas we’ve been shooting into the atmosphere.”

Another reason to let rivers run their natural course….too late to stop China’s 3 River Dam on Yangtze.