What Canadians--and the World--Are Seeing Here In the US

I saw this today out on the interwebs. I couldn't confirm it's written by a Canadian but seriously, think about what they write. It seems a very real, fair and at least sad, if not ugly comment on America presently.

And he didn't even touch on shoveling yet more money to the already-wealthy and corporations while taking it from the middle- and lower-classes.

Again, thanks, Republicans!

And may God help us.

The Next Important Documentary We Need to See

Get ye to the Tivoli

Elevating economics above the biosphere... ourselves

America? Number 1?

"WE'RE NUMBER 1!"

and 

"USA! USA! USA!"

Remember those?  Remember all that?

A new report was just issued, pretty much turning all that on its head:

Global Rankings Study Depicts an America in Warp Speed Decline

From access to healthcare and education, gender equality, attitudes toward immigrants and minorities, the U.S. looks like a second-rate nation.

A bit about the study:

Harvard business professor Michael E. Porter, who earlier developed the Global Competitiveness Report, designed the SPI. A new way to look at the success of countries, the SPI studies 132 nations and evaluates 54 social and environmental indicators for each country that matter to real people. Rather than measuring a country’s success by its per capita GDP, the index is based on an array of data reflecting suicide, ecosystem sustainability, property rights, access to healthcare and education, gender equality, attitudes toward immigrants and minorities, religious freedom, nutrition, infrastructure and more.

The index measures the livability of each country. People everywhere depend on and care about similar things. “We all need clean water. We all want to feel safe and live without fear. People everywhere want to get an education and improve their lives,” says Porter. But economic growth alone doesn’t guarantee these things.

Some of the indictments findings:

• While the U.S. enjoys the second highest per capita GDP of $45,336, it ranks in an underperforming 16th place overall. It gets worse. The U.S. ranks 70th in health, 69th in ecosystem sustainability, 39th in basic education, 34th in access to water and sanitation and 31st in personal safety.
• More surprising is the fact that despite being the home country of global tech heavyweights Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Oracle, and so on, the U.S. ranks a disappointing 23rd in access to the Internet. “It’s astonishing that for a country that has Silicon Valley, lack of access to information is a red flag,” notes Michael Green, executive director of the Social Progress Imperative, which oversees the index.
• the U.S. remains in first place for the number of incarcerated citizens per capita, adult onset diabetes and for believing in angels.
• New Zealand is ranked in first place in social progress. Interestingly, it ranks only 25th on GDP per capita, which means the island of the long white cloud is doing a far better job than America when it comes to meeting the need of its people. In order, the top 10 is rounded out by Switzerland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Denmark and Australia.
• Unsurprisingly these nations all happen to rank highly in the 2013 U.N. World Happiness Report with Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden among the top five. So, what of the U.S? In terms of happiness, we rank 17th, trailing neighboring Mexico.

The article and author rightly point out that, what with so much of the nation's wealth going to the already-wealthy, the middle- and lower-classes and working class people are getting soaked while the rich get richer.

So what're ya' gonna' do about it?

Breaking news on Southwest Airlines' take on our airport

According to Missouri Representative Sam Graves Facebook page today:

At today's KCI Terminal Advisory Group meeting, Southwest Airlines officials cautioned that a new terminal is "unlikely to significantly increase non-stop flights or passenger demand" and could be "so expensive that it drives up costs and drives away airlines." 

It's as they're saying, as we've said all along, if we build it, they won't necessarily come.

Could we put nails in this coffin now?

Please?

Quote of the day--on what's important

 

 

 

 

Three quarters of one trillion dollars, at least, for weapons and killing and attacking other nations--far beyond what any other nation spends, in fact, far beyond what virtually all other nations spend--but we don't take care of the people.

How does anyone think this is sustainable for the nation?

New York City imitates Kansas City, for once

They now want to tear down their airport, too.

Final push to save landmark 'flying saucer’ terminal

Southwest Airlines---expands??

Yessiree, I read it just this afternoon on none other than our own Kansas City International Airport's Facebook page:

Southwest Airlines restarted service to Oakland and Seattle-Tacoma this week. Book your flight to the West coast soon!

Imagine that.  And we didn't even have to tear down a terminal to get it.

Link:  http://www.facebook.com/Southwest?fref=ts

At what point do we learn? At what point do we change?

I was speaking last evening, late, with a friend that recently retired from the federal government's National Weather Service and told him what I thought--that all it's going to take, I expect, is one more hit, one hit in Florida of some major city, heaven forbid, and finally, finally more people will think there likely is a good chance of humans effecting weather with all the CO2 we're putting into the atmosphere.

Heaven forbid it's Miami but there it sits, like a bit of a big bullseye, jutting out into big bodies of water. 

Purely coincidentally, after I wrote this entire piece, I ran across this article:

As hurricanes loom, Florida insurance lives on borrowed time

Because of its size and geographical position, with 1,200 miles of coastline on a peninsula sticking out into the warm waters where the Caribbean meets the Atlantic, Florida is a uniquely risky insurance market. Most of its insured residential and commercial property - 79 per cent - lies in coastal areas vulnerable to both wind damage and flooding.

Coastal property is valued at just under $3 trillion, according to a report due to be released next week by AIR Worldwide, a global leader in catastrophe risk modeling. Florida accounts for almost 30 percent of the nation's entire $10 trillion coastal exposure, AIR found.

Only New York has as much exposure, with $3 trillion in coastal property, and that compares to $239 billion in South Carolina and $107 billion in Georgia.

Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Daytona, you name it. When/if that should happen, it'll be game over for Florida, if it's a big enough storm. There will be lots more believers.
In the meantime, there's Oklahoma and Oklahoma City, repeatedly hit by tornadoes in the last week.

Did you know there were 9--nine tornadoes in the last 36 hours?

And in the last 24 hours, there was this:

5 dead in tornado in Oklahoma City area, 50 hurt

And that, of course, is on top of the direct hit the suburb of Oklahoma City took in Moore, the previous week.

At what point do we think maybe the way we humans live on this planet maybe isn't sustainable?

At what point do we maybe think we need to stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?

On KCI and Pitch Magazine's Cover Story

The Pitch Magazine is out today, as usual, and this week, their cover story is on our airport and the pros and cons of building a new, single terminal.

It's an excellent article, very comprehensive.

And as usual, the Kansas City Star got scooped.

Sometimes, occasionally, even The New York Times scoops the local paper, as they did last year on a report out of Kansas but this time, the local free paper got the better of them.

The article points out some important, if rather obvious and already-covered points about any possible new terminal:

Does the city need a new, billion-dollar Kansas City International ...

Points the article and others of us make about our airport:

1) Airline traffic is down nationally, at least, anyway, for all airlines especially since the financial collapse of 2008. No one and nothing can or will change that;

2) Airlines are, if anything, shrinking and consolidating. There are fewer airlines, not more so expansion of any isn't on the horizon and isn't going to get more flights here;

3) Airlines, like all other businesses, want and need to keep their costs low. That just stands to reason. A new airport would, make no mistake, as the article points out, raise costs for those airlines, too. Sure, they'd pass them on to their ticket buying customers but their costs would be higher, period. As the article says:

"Costs would almost certainly increase with a new terminal — for parking, for a cup of coffee and for landing an airliner on a runway."

4) There is nothing wrong with our existing airport that can't be changed by revamping it, updating and innovating it and at far lower cost than of the 1.2 billion dollars a new airport terminal would cost. Not only that, but the updating and innovating, especially on heating and cooling, could well end up with additional savings on the facilities;

5) A little-known fact about our airport, at least to the person on the street--It has now 90 available gates for flights. We're using far fewer of those right now. With a new, very-expensive, single terminal, we would have 37 gates.  Seriously.  Yet people pushing a new terminal want to talk expansion;

6) There is even a question of whether or not Kansas City can AFFORD to pay for the new airport, let alone if it's really needed. Pitch seems to cover this, the financing aspects, very thoroughly and in all detail. They make just one great point here, as just one example:

Kansas City's finance team estimates that a single terminal could fetch 2.8 percent in interest rates. They would be lucky to find single-digit interest rates among private-equity financiers or pension funds looking to invest in municipally owned airports.

Bonds are sold to investors to drum up quick cash. The upfront money would pay for the airport's construction. Buyers would be repaid by airport revenues — from coffee, parking spaces, landing fees.

The city would not be on the hook to make up the difference if the airport didn't produce enough revenue to cover bond payments. Bondholders would be screwed on their investments, but so would the airport's reputation when it wanted to issue bonds in the future.

And federal funds? Fuggedaboudit:  "You can't put together a financing plan that's dependent on the federal government," Kansas City Manager Troy Schulte tells The Pitch.

So the very financing and affordability of a new airport is even an issue and in question, let's be clear. Not only can we possibly not afford it, it doesn't make sense to tear a working, existing one down to do so.

7) City Manager Schulte and the Airport Authority want to make more money than we do now at the airport with concessions. With the existing layout, naturally, that's not possible because everyone's corralled in the security areas, away from the restaurants, etc.

I say again, if we use Terminal B for the main security clearance area--most or all of the building--and then have walkways out to Terminals A and C, we could have the security needed for today's post-9/11 airports as well as the restaurants and added concessions.

Both problems, solved. And at far, far less cost than the 1.2 billion dollar boondoggle they want with a new, single terminal.

8) As for deicing and the drainage it needs, the article covers that very well, again, and makes clear there's no reason that can't be done at the existing airport and at far less cost. And let's face it, how many days per year is that in use? It's not a high volume of deicer since there aren't that many days per year when its called  for.

9) And finally, nearly most importantly, a new terminal categorically does not bring a new flying public to a city. To think otherwise is at least foolish if not utterly mistaken. No one flies to a city to see their new airport as I've written here before. A few architects might--might--and that's doubtful but that would be it.

So, again, kudos to Pitch Magazine for a good, comprehensive article that doesn't really take sides but just covers the issues in front of us.

Hopefully, in a couple of months or so, the Star will do an update on the subject of their own.

"Hell to pay" in Kansas and the plains states

The New York Times ran an important article today (one more), this time on the Great Plains overall but Kansas, in specific, and how our water aquifers below ground are running dry:

Wells Dry, Fertile Plains Turn to Dust

Just a bit from the article:

HASKELL COUNTY, Kan. — Forty-nine years ago, Ashley Yost’s grandfather sank a well deep into a half-mile square of rich Kansas farmland. He struck an artery of water so prodigious that he could pump 1,600 gallons to the surface every minute.

Last year, Mr. Yost was coaxing just 300 gallons from the earth, and pumping up sand in order to do it. By harvest time, the grit had robbed him of $20,000 worth of pumps and any hope of returning to the bumper harvests of years past.

“That’s prime land,” he said not long ago, gesturing from his pickup at the stubby remains of last year’s crop. “I’ve raised 294 bushels of corn an acre there before, with water and the Lord’s help.” Now, he said, “it’s over.”

...Vast stretches of Texas farmland lying over the aquifer no longer support irrigation. In west-central Kansas, up to a fifth of the irrigated farmland along a 100-mile swath of the aquifer has already gone dry. In many other places, there no longer is enough water to supply farmers’ peak needs during Kansas’ scorching summers.

And when the groundwater runs out, it is gone for good. Refilling the aquifer would require hundreds, if not thousands, of years of rains.

This is in many ways a slow-motion crisis — decades in the making, imminent for some, years or decades away for others, hitting one farm but leaving an adjacent one untouched. But across the rolling plains and tarmac-flat farmland near the Kansas-Colorado border, the effects of depletion are evident everywhere. Highway bridges span arid stream beds. Most of the creeks and rivers that once veined the land have dried up as 60 years of pumping have pulled groundwater levels down by scores and even hundreds of feet.

On some farms, big center-pivot irrigators — the spindly rigs that create the emerald circles of cropland familiar to anyone flying over the region — now are watering only a half-circle. On others, they sit idle altogether.

Two years of extreme drought, during which farmers relied almost completely on groundwater, have brought the seriousness of the problem home. In 2011 and 2012, the Kansas Geological Survey reports, the average water level in the state’s portion of the aquifer dropped 4.25 feet — nearly a third of the total decline since 1996.

And that is merely the average. “I know my staff went out and re-measured a couple of wells because they couldn’t believe it,” said Lane Letourneau, a manager at the State Agriculture Department’s water resources division. “There was a 30-foot decline.”

And as it says above, we see this coming and we've seen it coming. There have been warnings. We can't go on like this forever. It isn't, it wasn't sustainable. We can't just take and take and take.

Something's got to change.

What has struck me most about our current situation, both about drought and the 2008 financial crisis, the worst in 80 years, since the Great Depression, is that it is, in those two ways--the financial crisis and drought--so very much like those years, the 30's. That is, people hurt by both the financial crisis and the drought.

In the case of the Depression, it was all man-made.

Turns out, really, it could be argued this one is, too.

As if that isn't enough, Robert Reich, writing from Europe today, posts the following on Facebook:

At a time when you'd expect nations to band together to gain bargaining power against global capital, the opposite is occurring: Xenophobia is breaking out all over. 

Here in Britain, the UK Independence Party -- which wants to get out of the European Union -- is rapidly gaining ground, becoming the third most popular party in the country, according to a new poll for The Independent on Sunday. Almost one in five people plan to vote for it in the next general election. Ukip's overall ratings have risen four points to 19 per cent in the past month, despite Prime Minister David Cameron's efforts to wrest back control of the crucial debate over Britain's relationship with the European Union. 

Right-wing nationalist parties are gaining ground elsewhere in Europe as well. In the U.S., not only are Republicans sounding more nationalistic of late (anti-immigrant, anti-trade), but they continue to push "states rights" -- as states increasingly battle against one another to give global companies ever larger tax breaks and subsidies. 

WWIII, anybody?

One last thing from Facebook today that wraps this all up:

Anyone care yet?

Additional link: 

When the Wells Go Dry in the Great Plains

How you can help Save KCI

We will have volunteers out this weekend at the Cosentinos and/or Price Chopper in Brookside collecting signatures if you would like to sign. 

If you would like to help and take a shift collecting signatures even better! 

To sign you must be a registered voter in Kansas City, MO. 

If you want to volunteer it doesn’t matter where you live, your help is needed and appreciated. 

To volunteer for this weekend or any other shift please contact friendsofkci@gmail.com and our volunteer coordinator will get back with you.

Another Star reader/writer gets it right about our airport

This was in the Kansas City Star in a letter to the Editor today:

Screwy KCI logic

The Kansas City Star editorial board has reached new heights (or plumbed new depths) of inanity (5-6, Editorial, “A KCI good for travelers, environment”). Editorial board members have become so used to echoing government talking points that they have stopped thinking about how foolish they sound.

They would have us believe that the solution to long lines at security checkpoints at Kansas City International Airport is to have longer lines.

Someone would benefit from building a new airport, probably the consultants, the contractors and the airlines, but certainly not the public.

William Nowack
Leawood

Thank you, Mr. Nowack.  You're so right. Link to original post: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/05/08/4224946/kci-logic-violence-president-obama.html

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/05/08/4224946/kci-logic-violence-president-obama.html#storylink=cpy

The latest Star article on a new airport

Yes, there's a new article in the Star on the Airport Authority's desire for a new airport:

Political turbulence rattles plans for a single-terminal KCI

What gets me, though, and I keep saying it, is why--why--is no one talking about or suggesting we update the existing facility?

Why?

I know "new' is sexy, especially in this land we call America but can we stop throwing away whole buildings?

Should we not, can we not update and innovate and not throw these things in the trash dumps? Can we not improve and in the meantime, save?

Doesn't that make sense?  In so many ways?

I find it extremely difficult to believe that any environmental study that's done on this new airport proposal could come to any conclusion but that updating and renovating and innovating the existing buildings is the absolute best way to go, and in a few different ways, not the least of which is cost.

Excellent, breaking news on the airport

Wonderful, breaking news on the airport and the whole one terminal idea. This from the Kansas City Star this evening:

Last-minute filing launches challenge to one-terminal plan at KCI

From the article:

A group of Kansas City residents filed paperwork with the city clerk’s office Sunday to start a formal challenge to the planning for a new terminal at Kansas City International Airport.

The paperwork, filed by a committee of five petitioners, starts the process to seek a citywide vote on the future of KCI. The group needed to turn in 100 valid signatures of registered voters and gathered more than 160 signatures, according to John Murphy, a member of the petition committee, which is calling itself Friends of KCI.

“We think a $1.2 billion airport is unnecessary and wasteful,” Murphy said.

Once those signatures are verified, the group would have 30 more days to gather about 7,200 signatures to trigger an actual referendum vote.

So now, let's get out there. Let's sign these petitions and share and distribute them. Let's get some input on this whole hair-brained, wasteful, polluting, obscenely expensive idea.

On a new airport--this bears repeating

Thanks to a article in The Kansas City Star in an "As I See It" column and to our Missouri Representative Sam Graves, we got a bit of common sense and intelligence on the idea of a new airport:

KC's airport doesn't need 'fixing'

The City Council recently gave the go-ahead to study a proposed new airport.

As I have written in this paper before, I am a fan of the current three-terminal design, as are the majority of Kansas Citians.
  A recent poll found that 70 percent of local residents favor keeping KCI as is.

The fact of the matter is, it’s a convenient and accessible airport for visitors and residents alike and it has been ranked among the top five airports in the country on a consistent basis by J.D. Power and Associates, including as the highest-rated medium-size airport.

There are a number of reasons to maintain the current KCI, from the ease of use for customers to the effectiveness of the multi-checkpoint security screening.

But the biggest reason may be the price tag of building a new airport.

The current estimate, which may still rise, is $1.2 billion. In the last decade and a half, $250 million has already gone into renovating the current airport.

That investment — equal to more than one-fifth of the cost of building a new airport — will have gone to waste with a new terminal.

It appears the city is planning to pursue federal funding for part of the project, and that inevitably means some Washington bureaucrats who don’t appreciate how we feel about the convenience of the current layout will attach strings to that money. Federal funding would also only cover a fraction of the cost of constructing the new airport.

The remainder would likely come from bonds, which the public would need to approve.

Those proposing a new terminal suggest that taxpayers won’t be stuck with the bill for the portion that Washington doesn’t cover, and that citizens will be completely immune from debt associated with the project.

But the bonds would be paid back through ticket prices, higher fees, and taxing the food and drink you buy at the airport. So if you use KCI, you’ll be paying more anyway.

The Federal Aviation Administration requires airports to file a new master plan every 10 years, and as the result of legislation I got passed last year, they must take customer convenience into account when planning for the future.

We’re just five years away from a new master plan, and at that time we can assess how best to move forward.

Even if the one-terminal proposal were approved this year, it is highly unlikely the new airport would be up and running in that time frame anyway. Additionally, the city’s Aviation Department has already made clear its intention to close Terminal A later this year.

This will help the airport save costs, particularly on security and baggage handling.

It may also be the answer to improving KCI, rather than building an entirely new terminal.

Let’s see what the coming years bring before rushing to build a costly new facility that won’t guarantee the same comforts we enjoy now.

Washington is full of people willing to spend millions of dollars to fix something that isn’t broken or to dismantle something convenient and practical. We can’t let Kansas City join them.

The fact is, besides being expensive, at a minimum cost of $1.2 billion dollars, it would also be environmentally irresponsible, throwing away, as it would be, at least 3 buildings, in essence.

My big question is, why is no one proposing updating and innovating the existing group of buildings? It makes no sense not to. Clearly it's not falling down. None of the buildings are. Heck, they haven't been there that long.

Let's do updated, extremely efficient heating and cooling and modernize that so there are cost efficiencies and savings there. Let's add some solar energy possibly. The advancements with that technology lately has been great. We should at least look into it. It makes too much sense.

It seems the Airport Authority got this "jones" for a new airport and they want to shove it down our throats, as though it's the only option.

And as though it's either cheap, wise or someone else will pay for it.

I say and propose again, some architect or architects need to look into making the existing terminal B the main, unloading, security terminal and then having walkways out to terminals A and C, for our gates. Problems and issues likely solved, I think. Then we don't have to tear down the existing and still have plenty of gates.

Link to original article: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/16/4185642/kcs-airport-doesnt-need-fixing.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy  

Other links:   http://www.savekci.com/congressman-sam-graves-adds-a-rational-voice-to-the-conversation/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SaveKCI+(SAVE+KCI+!)  

Join the cause here:   http://www.savekci.com

 https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/SaveKCI?fref=ts

Quote of the day

"It makes no sense to elevate economics above the biosphere."

--Dr. David Suzuki

Links: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/david/

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Suzuki

July heat records across the country

Fact: More than 4,300 daily high-temperature records were tied or broken across the United States in July.

Finally: News about the radiation on the US from Fukushima

Ever since the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan blew, I've wondered how much radiation hit the US. And since then, I've seen nothing, nothing about it from media or our government. That surprised me a bit--I'm very naive about far too much--and disappointed me. Finally, today, an article on the internets: California Slammed With Fukushima Radiation "The Journal Environmental Science and Technology reports in a new study that the Fukushima radiation plume contacted North America at California 'with greatest exposure in central and southern California', and that Southern California's seaweed tested over 500% higher for radioactive iodine-131 than anywhere else in the U.S. and Canada: Projected paths of the radioactive atmospheric plume emanating from the Fukushima reactors, best described as airborne particles or aerosols for 131I, 137Cs, and 35S, and subsequent atmospheric monitoring showed it coming in contact with the North American continent at California, with greatest exposure in central and southern California. Government monitoring sites in Anaheim (southern California) recorded peak airborne concentrations of 131I at 1.9 pCi m−3." As the post then so wisely and succinctly says: "Anaheim is where Disneyland is located." Just in case you're thinking no one's out there or effected.

But wait! There's more! There's much, much more! (Naturally) In addition, radioactive debris is starting to wash up on the Pacific Coast. And because the Japanese are burning radioactive materials instead of disposing of them, radioactive rain-outs will continue for some time … even on the Pacific Coast. Nice, huh? So what are our respective governments doing about it, if anything, you might ask? Your answers: Instead of doing much to try to protect their citizens from Fukushima, Japan, the U.S. and the EU all just raised the radiation levels they deem “safe”.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says that high-level friends in the State Department told him that Hillary Clinton signed a pact with her counterpart in Japan agreeing that the U.S. will continue buying seafood from Japan, despite that food not being tested for radioactive materials.

And the Department of Energy is trying to replace the scientifically accepted model of the dangers of low dose radiation based on voodoo science. Specifically, DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley Labs used a mutant line of human cells in a petri dish which was able to repair damage from low doses of radiation, and extrapolated to the unsupported conclusion that everyone is immune to low doses of radiation… Isn't that all just lovely? So, finally, what is our government's response to information and data going foward? Great question: American and Canadian authorities have virtually stopped monitoring airborne radiation, and are not testing fish for radiation. If you weren't sick before, you probably should be now. (If after all that, you really are nauseous--not surprisingly--the comments at the links below have some magnificent, very dry and ascerbic wit to them, if that helps). Links: http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-13-30/california-slammed-fukushima-radiation; http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/update-fukushima-0; http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/fukushima-radiation-highest-ever-exceeding-capacity-measuring-device-fuel-likely-leaking; http://www.zerohedge.com/article/no-amount-radiation-released-japanese-nuclear-reactors-not-safe; http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/radioactive-iodine-blankets-much-europe-everyone-points-fingers