No one said it would be easy

Sen. Elizabeth Warren vows to fight on to lift the burden of student loan debt. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

By Elizabeth Warren, Elizabeth Warren for Senate

23 June 14

readersupportednews.org

e lost the vote.

Earlier this month, the Senate held its first vote on the Bank on Students Act to let people refinance their student loans. We got a majority -- 58 senators were ready to go our way -- but the Republicans filibustered the bill and we didn't even get to debate it.

I guess this is when some people would give up. Not us. Not a chance.

Here's how I see it:

When we first started talking about student loans last summer, we stood strong for a better deal on new student loans. Today, we got every Democrat, every Independent, and even three Republicans to support a bill that would permit refinancing for 40 million people who are shouldering $1.2 trillion in student loan debt.

Considering the speed that the Senate normally works, that's a lot of movement in a short time.

And it's not only what we did, it's how we did it. We put the plan to pay for it right on the table. No gimmicks or smoke-and-mirrors. We said that when the government reduces its profits on student loans, the money should be made up by stitching up tax loopholes so that millionaires and billionaires pay at least as much in taxes as middle class families.

We made the choice clear: billionaires or students. People who have already made it big or people who are still trying to get a fair shot.

We made the choice clear -- and then we fought for it. We stood up and spoke out -- individually and through our terrific organizations. We gathered more than 750,000 signatures on petitions. We made our voices heard -- and that's how we got well over 50 votes.

At this point, most Republicans want us to quiet down and fade away. They don't want us to point out that this morning, most Republicans said it was more important to protect the tax loopholes for billionaires than to cut the rates on student loans.

I think it is time to come back louder than ever. I think it is time to show up at campaign events and town halls and ask every single Republican who voted against this bill why protecting billionaires is more important than giving our kids a chance to pay off their loans. I think we need to ask, and ask again, and ask again.

So there it is: Show up at an event and ask a question. Encourage your friends to show up and ask questions. Send an email. Make a call. And keep circulating the petitions. This isn't over.

In Washington, I hear people say that "Elections have consequences." I'd like to shift that just a little bit and say "Senate votes have consequences, too."

When Republicans vote to force students to keep paying high interest rates on students loans in order to plug the budget holes from tax breaks for billionaires, then it's time to hold those Republicans accountable.

I don't plan to let this issue die. I plan to fight back. And I hope people all across this country will do exactly the same.

GCC Fall Semester music classes

Payson Campus Offers New Music Classes in Fall 2014

            GCC welcomes our new Music Instructor Ted Steinbrecher.  Ted has worked in the public school system for 35 years teaching general music classes, directing concert bands, orchestras, jazz bands, and choirs of all ages.

            GCC offers four different music classes:

1.      Music Theory I teaches basic theory needed for development of musicianship and musical understanding; scales, keys. Rhythm, triads, part-writing, cadences, dominant sevenths, secondary dominants, and simple modulations.   MUS 105, Music Theory I, meet Friday from 8-10:45 am.

2.      Aural Perception I emphasizes sight singing, ear training, and keyboard harmony.  MUS 107, Aural Perception I, meet Friday from 11:00 am-12:50 pm.

3.      Chamber Ensemble I is the study and performance of a wide variety of chamber music repertoire with weekly coaching sessions of string quartets and trios, with piano and in other combinations with other instruments.  Auditions will be held.   MUS 140, Chamber Ensemble I, meet Friday from 4-5:50 pm.

4.      Class Piano for Non-Music Majors provides instruction of piano keyboard repertoire, technical skills, and keyboard theory commensurate with student’s level of achievement.  May be taken four times for credit.  MUS 165, Class Piano for Non-Music Majors, meets Friday from 1:30-3:20 pm.

Fall semester dates are August 18 – December 11, 2014.   Registration is ongoing now.  For students 55 and older, tuition is waived.

Rand calls Hillary’s book not worth plagiarizing

June 9, 2014

Posted by Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) ripped former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s new book, “Hard Choices,” today, telling reporters, “I read it, and honestly, I didn’t find anything in it worth plagiarizing.”

 

Calling the new book “disappointing,” Sen. Paul said, “I read a lot of books, and it’s rare that I don’t find a passage or two to lift here or there. I just read the second Harry Potter book and I thought there was some dialogue of Voldemort’s that could work well in my stump speech. But this Hillary book? Nada.” 

 

Asked whether he would read future books by Secretary Clinton, Sen. Paul said that it was “unlikely.” 

 

“Look, if you write six hundred and fifty-six pages and give me nothing to steal, you are just wasting my time,” said Sen. Paul, who added that he was currently finding “some great stuff” in the novel “The Fault in Our Stars.”

Photograph by Tom Pennington/Getty.

Beware the politics of whopper editorials

By Jim Keyworth

Gazette Blog Editor

 All the media got the press release - the one about Payson Mayor Kenny Evans' letter to one of Chaparral Pines fat cats giving him permission to build a swimming pool before the town council had rescinded a ban on such pools - at the same time, around noon on Monday, June 16.  The Gazette Blog and KMOG ran the story the next day.  The Roundup didn't, and now we know why.  They needed a few days to concoct one of the biggest cover-ups in the annals of local journalism.

In its Friday, June 20 edition the Roundup ran a rambling, tedious, confusing news article that so obfuscated the issue that it was hard to tell what even happened.  Suffice it to say, poor, innocent Kenny had been wronged by those bully opponents who concocted the press release.

But it was Editor Pete Aleshire's self-serving editorial that wins the trophy for biggest crock of poop ever to grace the pages of a once-proud newspaper.  Here is Pete's editorial with a few comments of ours inserted at strategic places where we couldn't take any more.  Then, for the sake of clarity and simplicity, you'll find a copy of the Gazette's original article based on the press release.

Pete's editorial:

Beware the politics of personal attack

Friday, June 20, 2014

Sometimes, the rules can trap you — even when you believe in those rules with all your heart. So we struggled a bit with the first salvo of what’s shaping up to be a fiercely contested battle for the privilege and duty of serving as Payson’s mayor.
Challenger Randy Roberson asserted that a seemingly bland [Seemingly bland.  Jesus Christ, Pete.  You are soooo transparent!] letter Payson Mayor Kenny Evans wrote to a homeowner concerning the town’s restrictions on swimming pools was unethical and perhaps illegal.

We gave the story prominent play, since the allegations are serious and we have a sacred obligation [Yeah, right.  And I've got a covered bridge for sale - cheap.] to our readers to give them the information they need to make a decision in the voting booth.

But it grieved us to do so.

Certainly, many grave and important issues face Payson. Everyone benefits from an open, vigorous campaign. Both Mr. Evans and Mr. Roberson have repeatedly proven their deep commitment to this community — and their admirable drive to serve their fellow citizens [Blah...blah...blah...blah...]. Mr. Evans has spent vast sums of time and much of his own money [Tell us more about that, Pete.  How much of his own money and where did it go?] to help others. Mr. Roberson has devoted himself to charity work, saving lives by flying into disaster areas with urgently needed supplies and care. They’re both thoughtful, public spirited and brave [Please.  How about thrifty, clean and reverent too?]. 

But we need a thoughtful, forthright debate [Now, there's an idea.  Why don't you sponsor one between these two?]. The council must make crucial decisions in the next two years. The town must conclude its effort to bring a university to town [You're not still beating that dead horse?], confront the danger of wildfires, build a resilient, year-round economy, encourage growth without sacrificing our small-town virtues. The candidates have lots of issues to debate. Sometimes, we have agreed with the incumbents — sometimes we have challenged them [That's BS Pete, and you know it.].

But we hope both sides will refrain from unsupported personal attacks. Perhaps Mayor Evans has sometimes overreached and underestimated, but he has worked selflessly on behalf of this community. He has poured out his time and his energy. He does not deserve to have his integrity challenged on such thin evidence [Thin evidence?  It's black and white evidence, Pete].

We felt compelled to report the allegations — along with the mayor’s defense. As a result, the hurtful [Hurtful?  Oh, Lordy!] speculations got wide circulation. The rules we believe in to our deepest roots require us to report as objectively and completely as we possibly can in our news columns anything we feel our readers need to know.
Mind you, we don’t endorse in elections. We trust our readers to reach their own conclusions. So don’t read this as an endorsement [Gee, wonder whose side Pete's on?]. But we hope the candidates will also trust those voters. Don’t let the politics of personal destruction that has metastasized through national politics spread through our beautiful little town.

Let’s have a debate on the issues [OK, let's.  I know for a fact that the challengers are ready and willing.  Is Kenny?] — even if the personal attacks do get headlines.

 The Gazette's original story:

Swimming pool letter lands mayor in hot water

Photo by Jim Keyworth

Payson Mayor Kenny Evans wrote a letter on town letterhead allowing a Chaparral Pines resident to build a swimming pool at his mansion while such pools were still banned by the town according to a press release issued by a group of town council candidates.

By Jim Keyworth

Rim Country Gazette Blog Editor

A group of candidates for the Payson Town Council issued a press release Monday accusing Mayor Kenny Evans of behavior that is either “unethical” or a “violation of law.”

Evans, according to the candidates, sent a letter Feb. 19 on town letterhead “granting permission for a friend to build a swimming pool at his multi-million dollar (Chaparral Pines) mansion a full two months before the council” voted to allow pools.  The group, which includes mayoral candidate Randy Roberson and council candidates Charlene Creach Brown, Chris Higgins and Robert Lockhart, provided the Gazette Blog and other local media outlets with a copy of the letter obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In the letter, Evans grants Fred Wagenhalls permission to build the pool to facilitate the sale of his 9-bedroom, 10-bath home at 901 Indian Paintbrush Circle for $2.7 million to Fountain Hills resident Lou Laskis, who was copied on the letter.  Until the town council voted to allow in-ground pools on April 17, such pools were banned by the town for purposes of water conservation.

“I found this information to be very disheartening as it raises the question of a violation of the open meeting law prior to Feb. 19, or Mayor Evans feels such a sense of power over the six other council members that he was confident enough to write this letter before the issue was ever brought forward in a public council meeting in April,” Creach Brown said.

Roberson questions the mayor’s intentions: “First we heard the mayor say it was OK for pools because it would generate impact fee revenues.  Then it was to attract resorts.  Now we learn it is really because of a promise made months ago to a home seller who wanted to attract a buyer with a pool.”

This is not the first time Evans has been accused of giving Chaparral Pines preferential treatment regarding water.  He was criticized last year by the Gazette Blog and others for striking a deal with the tony gated community to provide a 49-year supply of water for its private golf course.  The mayor claimed the water from the C.C. Cragin reservoir that will be supplied for the golf course will not be potable because it will bypass a treatment plant that makes the water chemically compatible with Payson groundwater sources.

The council candidates who issued the press release are known on Facebook as “The Voice of Rim Country.”

6 things you need to know about global warming

Joshua Holland

Campaign for America’s Future / Op-Ed

Published: Saturday 14 June 2014
ourfuture.org 

Mann believes that climate change “skepticism” could not exist if the public had a better understanding of how science works—if they got that climatology is based on the same scientific method as any other field of knowledge.

There is nothing controversial about the work of climatologist Michael Mann, director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center. His innovative research helped recreate the Earth’s historical temperature record and separate the noise of natural weather fluctuations from the steady signal of real climate change. As such, Mann has played a significant role in the development of the overwhelming scientific consensus – the planet is warming and human activities are responsible.

It’s another story in the realm of politics, where Mann, an affable scientist, has been dragged into the fray by diehard climate change deniers. He was a central figure in the trumped-up “climategate” scandal, accused with other scientists of fraud by conservative bloggers and pundits before being vindicated by eight separate independent investigations. He was later the subject of an “academic witch-hunt” by former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli until a circuit court judge ruled that Cuccinelli had provided no “objective basis” for his crusade.

But if he began as an unwilling combatant in the public debate, he has since become a fierce defender of scientific discourse. He’s currently suing for defamation the National Review, right-wing columnist Mark Steyn and the Competitive Enterprise Institute — a libertarian think tank dubbed “a factory for global warming skepticism” by The Washington Post that has received funding from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and Arch Coal, among others.

Mann believes that climate change “skepticism” could not exist if the public had a better understanding of how science works — if they got that climatology is based on the same scientific method as any other field of knowledge.

BillMoyers.com spoke with Michael Mann, and here are six things he’d like you to understand about the scientific consensus on global warming.

1. Climate Scientists are the Real Skeptics

Mann: Too often we allow the forces of anti-science, the forces of denialism, or contrarianism, to somehow frame their position as one of skepticism. But denying mainstream, well-established science based on arguments that don’t stand up scrutiny, that’s not skepticism. That’s pseudo-skepticism.

Real scientists embrace skepticism because that’s what moves science forward. That’s the self-correcting machinery, to use the language of Carl Sagan, which keeps science on this inexorable course toward a better understanding of the way the world works. If your ideas are wrong, if your theories are wrong, if they don’t hold up, if the data don’t support them, if other studies don’t come to the same conclusion, then science moves on, and it searches for a better answer. Scientists are always trying to find holes in each other’s proposed ideas, or in their own proposed ideas.

2. The Science of Climate Change is Based on Many Sources of Data and Many Different Methodologies
Mann: This is what attracted me to climate science. I started out as a theoretical physicist. But then I was captivated by the fact that there were scientists who were using physics and math to model this amazingly complicated system that we call the earth’s climate. I realized that there was an opportunity to work on this incredibly interdisciplinary problem that involves the physics of the atmosphere and the ocean and the ice sheets and the way they all interact with each other, and their interaction with incoming sunlight and the outgoing heat energy from the surface.

There’s also biology. You have to understand Earth’s carbon cycle, the balance of carbon in the atmosphere and ocean, which involves living processes. There is important chemistry; the chemistry of greenhouse gases, the geochemistry of the oceans.

Some people claim that climate models can’t be trusted because they haven’t made successful projections. That’s just dead wrong.
So this has become, in my view, one of the most interdisciplinary science problems that exists and that’s part of what makes it so exciting.

3. The Models Have Proven Accurate Mann: The science isn’t based only on a bunch of climate models, we also have a lot of observations. We can test the principles against what we see in the real world.

Some people claim that climate models can’t be trusted because they haven’t made successful projections. That’s just dead wrong. Climate scientists have a very strong track record of having made predictions like how much cooling we would expect after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, back in 1991. James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies successfully predicted the cooling that would be observed using a climate model. Hansen also successfully predicted two decades of warming in advance, using a climate model back in the 1980s that was quite crude.

4. If Anything, Global Warming is Probably Worse Than Scientists Say
We asked Mann about a peer-reviewed paper published in 2012 in the journal Global Environmental Change. It reviewed several studies and found that at least some of the attributes of global warming had been under-predicted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The authors of the study concluded that scientists tend to err “on the side of least drama.”

Mann: As Naomi Oreskes describes in that study, there’s an innate tendency in the world of science to be conservative, because the greatest risk is to stick your neck out there with a hypothesis that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Scientists are intrinsically conservative because they don’t want to be proven wrong. If you are perennially wrong, if your predictions are perennially bad, it will reflect negatively on your reputation as a scientist.

We may have been too conservative — the climate models may actually be underestimating the rate at which some changes are taking place. Now, add to that innate scientific reticence all of the additional pressure from a very well-funded and well-organized disinformation campaign by industry interests looking to discredit the case for concern over climate change. They go after individual scientists. They attack them, they vilify them. They haul them up before Congress — scientists find themselves in the hot seat in hostile hearings, led by politicians who are in the pay of the fossil fuel industry.

David Suzuki on the War Against Climate Scientists
Climate change deniers try to make the public think that it’s the small group of contrarian scientists who are being subjected to a kind of McCarthyism. But that draws attention away from the real story, which is that it’s the scientists conveying what the science has to say about climate change who are being attacked.
So we may have been too conservative — the climate models may actually be underestimating the rate at which some changes are taking place. For example, the loss of ice from the west Antarctic ice sheet — there were some recent studies suggesting that that’s taking place sooner, and with a greater magnitude, than originally predicted.

5. A Scientific Consensus Isn’t Like a Popularity Contest
Mann: I think the process of science is foreign to the public because it’s so different from the 24/7 news cycle-driven world that we live in, where we are inundated with rapidly changing information. That’s not the pace at which science operates.

Every once and a while there’s some contrarian paper that gets published in a journal and immediately the climate change contrarians trumpet this new study and it gets air-time on Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, and inevitably — in almost every case that I can think of — the study turns out to have been fundamentally flawed.

But it may take a year before a peer-reviewed article assessing that particular study is published. It takes time for scientists to independently look at the data, test the hypotheses, and either replicate or refute an analysis in a previously published article.

Scientists also present findings at meetings, and other scientists may criticize them, they may ask questions or make comments. There’s feedback that takes place at these scientific meetings.

So what happens is, over the course of years — with many meetings and exchanges and the peer-reviewed literature — these things get sorted out. Studies either get replicated or refuted on a time-scale that reflects the slow gears of science.

But it becomes very easy for those looking to throw doubt and confusion into the picture to select some late-breaking study, take it out of context, milk it for all it’s worth and neglect the fact that there’s a much larger body of scientific research upon which our understanding is based.

We have what are called assessment processes. For example, the National Academy of Sciences has done an assessment of the science of climate change every few years. There was a study published not too long ago by the National Academy of Sciences in which they reviewed all of the existing climate literature, and these assessment reports look at what’s robust — what findings stand up when you look across the literature. Those are the findings that we put the greatest stock in — those findings that have been replicated by multiple studies over a number of years, and when you step back and you look at the science of climate change through these assessment reports, what they find is that there is literally no scientific debate about whether climate change is real, whether it’s caused by us or even whether it represents a risk.

Now, there are uncertainties about the specific impacts that climate change might have. And when you start getting very specific about what may happen in the future or look at relatively small regions, the uncertainties get larger.

And that’s also what these assessment reports are about: Determining where the greatest uncertainties remain. And it’s those areas that attract the interest of scientists. It’s not very interesting to validate once again something that was already known. That’s not what drives scientists.

If we don’t speak out, then we leave a vacuum in the discussion. And that vacuum will be filled by industry-funded disinformation.

6. Climatologists are Beginning to Recognize That They Have to Speak Up
Mann: I wrote an op-ed in The New York Times earlier this year in which I made a very strong and impassioned plea to my fellow scientists to be willing to advocate for an informed public discourse. Not that they need to advocate for specific policies to deal with climate change, but to be willing to step up and participate in the larger public discourse over what we know about the scientific evidence.

Part of the reason for the attacks against me and other scientists who have participated prominently in the public discussion is to send a warning signal to other scientists who might think about speaking out. But if we don’t speak out, then we leave a vacuum in the discussion. And that vacuum will be filled by industry-funded disinformation — the anti-scientific claims of industry front groups and their paid advocates. All of society suffers if scientists are not willing to participate in this discussion.

Part of what makes me optimistic about the outlook for this larger discussion is that the younger generation of scientists seems far more engaged in outreach and communication. They’re far more likely to participate in social media and do what they have to to get their thoughts out into the public sphere. 

Originally published at BillMoyers.Com.

Consensus: Sunnis, Shiites tell Cheney to shut up

June 20, 2014

Posted by Andy Borowitz

BAGHDAD (The Borowitz Report)—In a development that offers a faint glimmer of hope for Iraq, both Sunnis and Shiites are finding common ground in the view that former Vice-President Dick Cheney seriously needs to shut up.

 

In the days following the publication, this week, of a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece about Iraq that Cheney wrote with his daughter Liz, hatred of the former Vice-President has, to the surprise of many, become the first thing that Sunnis and Shiites have agreed upon in centuries. 

 

Iraqi observers in recent days have reported seeing both Sunnis and Shiites reading the Cheneys’ op-ed then tearing it to shreds in a rage. 

 

“Cheney is an ass!” a Sunni merchant reportedly exclaimed in a Baghdad market on Thursday, to the resounding cheers of several Shiites nearby. 

 

“Historically, it’s been challenging to find anything that Sunnis and Shiites agree on,” said Sabah al-Alousi, a history professor at the University of Baghdad. “That’s why their apparent consensus that Dick Cheney needs to shut the hell up is so significant.” 

 

Visiting Baghdad on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the joint Sunni-Shiite calls for Dick Cheney to shut his pie hole were a cause for optimism. 

 

“If Dick Cheney winds up being the one thing that brings Sunnis and Shiites together, the United States owes him a debt of thanks,” he said, adding that the two sects’ view of the former Vice-President was also shared by the Kurds.

Photograph by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.

Honey: Solution for antibiotic resistant super bugs?

Elizabeth Renter

Natural Society / News Report

Published: Tuesday 3 June 2014
nationofchange.org

The solution is complex and involves reducing our use of antibiotics, but it may also include the use of something as beautifully simple as honey.

Antibiotic resistance is a true crisis, one that is growing and is even recognized by the federal government as a near-future crisis. An over-dependence on antibiotics and the sanitization of everything has helped bacterial evolve into unstoppable “super bugs”, or those that are capable of resisting conventional drugs designed to kill them. The solution is complex and involves reducing our use of antibiotics, but it may also include the use of something as beautifully simple as honey.

“The unique property of honey lies in its ability to fight infection on multiple levels, making it more difficult for bacteria to develop resistance,” said Susan M. Meschwitz, Ph.D. , leader of a study presented at the 247th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Honey, Dr. Meschwitz went on, acts using a combination of components toxic to bacterial cells, including osmotic effect, high sugar content, polyphenols, acidity, and hydrogen peroxide. “Honey may also disrupt quorum sensing, which weakens bacterial virulence, rendering the bacteria more susceptible to conventional antibiotics,” Meschwitz said. Her research isn’t the only to identify honey as a powerful antibiotic. On the contrary, numerous studies have found the natural substance to fight a variety of infection types.

One of those studies, reported on by NaturalSociety’s Christina Sarich, found that manuka honey was particularly effective in the treatment of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a deadly and relatively common super bug.

“Fifteen antibiotics were tested with and without sublethal concentrations of manuka honey against each of MRSA and Pseudomonas aeruginosa using disc diffusion, broth dilution, E strip, chequerboard titration and growth curves,” wrote the study authors in PLoS ONE. “Five novel antibiotic and manuka honey combinations were found that improved antibacterial effectiveness in vitro and these offer a new avenue of future topical treatments for wound infections caused by these two important pathogens.”

Another study came to similar conclusions, finding that honey – particularly that derived from bees foraging on manuka flowers – halted one type of streptococcus pyogenes from inhibiting the healing of wounds.

And while modern research is only on the tip of the iceberg where honey’s powers are concerned, using honey to fight infections is far from a modern phenomenon. As Anthony Gucciardi reports, honey was routinely used historically until the penicillin came on the scene:

“In fact, honey was traditionally used to fight infection up until around the early 20th century. Around this time, honey was forgotten and predominantly replaced with penicillin, but is now regaining its former popularity as the world continues to become more conscious to the dangers of pharmaceutical drug use (which now kill more individuals per year than traffic accidents).”