Quote of the Day -- On GOP Vote Suppression

"Expand the Supreme Court. Abolish the Electoral College. End the filibuster. The GOP calls these moves radical because they know once we make democracy work, they won't stand a chance." --Robert Reich @RBReich

Quote of the Day -- The Day Before This Year's Tax Day

"Just a casual reminder that the richest 1% of Americans is responsible for 70% of all unpaid taxes.
Quite literally, tax the rich."

--Professor Robert Reich

15 Warnings On the Upcoming Trump Presidency

Professor Robert Reich wrote and warned the following, early this month. I thought it important and that more should see it.

The 15 Warnings Signs 

of Impending Tyranny

As tyrants take control of democracies, they typically:

1. Exaggerate their mandate to govern – claiming, for example, that they won an election by a landslide even after losing the popular vote.

2. Repeatedly claim massive voter fraud in the absence of any evidence, in order to restrict voting in subsequent elections.

3. Call anyone who opposes them “enemies.”

4. Turn the public against journalists or media outlets that criticize them, calling them “deceitful” and “scum.”

5. Hold few if any press conferences, preferring to communicate with the public directly through mass rallies and unfiltered statements.

6. Tell the public big lies, causing them to doubt the truth and to believe fictions that support the tyrants’ goals.

7. Blame economic stresses on immigrants or racial or religious minorities, and foment public bias and even violence against them.

8. Attribute acts of domestic violence to “enemies within,” and use such events as excuses to beef up internal security and limit civil liberties.

9. Threaten mass deportations, registries of religious minorities, and the banning of refugees.

10. Seek to eliminate or reduce the influence of competing centers of power, such as labor unions and opposition parties.

11. Appoint family members to high positions of authority

12. Surround themselves with their own personal security force rather than a security detail accountable to the public.

13. Put generals into top civilian posts

14. Make personal alliances with foreign dictators.

15. Draw no distinction between personal property and public property, profiteering from their public office.

______________________________________________________

Here's hoping he, Mr. Trump, proves us wrong.

A huge, very important solar "game changer", folks

This is huge.

UCLA researchers create highly transparent solar cells for windows

And why is this "huge"?

It's big and important for a few reasons.

First, it makes electricity created from the sun far less expensive.  That alone is an important step in getting electricity from the sun more widespread so we can have far cleaner energy and less pollution and carbon dioxide spread around the world. 

Second, it makes it far easier to install on, say, all the glass business towers across the US and world. That, again, makes it far more likely to happen and spread.  Nothing but environment wins for us.

Third, it makes solar energy far less polluting itself, since solar panels wouldn't have to be created.

I don't think people understand how big and pivotal and important this is and can be, for the US and even the world.

It's been said that, whatever nation "owns" solar energy will also "own" the next century. It's important we be on top of this, as a nation. This needs to be patented quickly and, unfortunately, the technology kept from the Chinese. We can sell it to them but that's all.

Now, that said, I'd have to immediately fall back on that and say that, the minute we do sell it to them, they'll take apart and mimic that same technology and create their own so the "win" for us will be short-lived.

Coincidentally, from The New York Times yesterday:

China's Feud With West on Solar Leads to Tax

This could help us avoid a trade war with China, at the same time, a fourth big benefit of this development. This would make that a thing of the past. We would, in effect, leapfrog over this problem of trade with the Chinese on now-antiquated solar panels.  A total win.

All that said, this could and should make energy not only far cleaner and less polluting and distributing far less carbon dioxide but it should also help get energy far more cheaply, out to the entire world and should and reduce the costs of electricity but also get it out to more of the poor and impoverished of the world, too, unless it's controlled only by corporations and the governments they "own."

I'm also thinking--and hoping--that this technology will allow the purchaser to merely put this on existing windows, too, and not have to replace them. If that's the case, and I feel strongly it either is or will be, it just makes it that much bigger a solar energy advancement. That owners and developers of existing skyscrapers and other companies and corporations could merely put these electricity-generating cells on their existing windows would be a huge energy savings for those companies, at the same time it reduces pollution.

This could, conceivably, be, if not a death knell, certainly a huge dent in our need for very-polluting power plants with all their coal and pollution and yes, carbon dioxide emitting stacks.

It could also, quite conceivably, lead to cars with these cells on not just the glass, maybe, but on the hood and roof and trunk, so they generate their own, clean power and we start polluting far less with our transportation one day soon, too. That would be a great advance for the planet.

This breakthrough should make it reasonably-priced, then, for corporations, organizations and building owners, at least, to put these on existing buildings so they generate their own power. Can you imagine the short- and long-term savings of doing away with most of a skyscraper's utility bill? Added to it, in much of the year, I'd be very surprised if those same glass towers would generate more power than the building would require so they could and would be able to sell that additional power back to the utility company as is now prescribed by law.

Finally, folks, note where this was made, note who created this breakthrough.

Yes, it was UCLA--the University of California at Los Angeles.

It wasn't a corporation.

That, too, is huge.  

It's also why we need to both stop cutting education funding and absolutely stop making education more and more expensive for the students and children in the nation.

But that's another story.

For now, let's just enjoy that this has apparently been created and that it was created here in the good old US of A.

Great solar energy news out of California

Just as I'd hoped and written about here, earlier:

How your windows could be the future of electricity: Scientists create transparent solar panels out of 'glass-like' plastic

"...researchers developed a new transparent solar cell which means windows in homes and other buildings can have the ability to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside.

The University of California, Los Angeles team describes a new kind of polymer solar cell (PSC) that produces energy by absorbing mainly infrared light, making the cells nearly 70 per cent transparent to the human eye.

They made the device from a photo-active plastic that converts infrared light into an electrical current.

"'These results open the potential for visibly transparent polymer solar cells as add-on components of portable electronics, smart windows and building-integrated photovoltaics and in other applications,' said study leader Yang Yang, a UCLA professor of materials science and engineering."

Here's one of the most important, additional features:

"'Our new PSCs are made from plastic-like materials and are lightweight and flexible,' he said. 'More importantly, they can be produced in high volume at low cost.'"

This is, potentially, a huge breakthrough.

Now if we can just put these all over our homes and commercial buildings, we'll be able to generate our own electricity, save loads of money, burn less coal and clean the air significantly, just with this one advancement. We'll be far less dependent on the utility companies, as well, of course. Finally, it seems we would be able to, eventually, anyway, do away also with nuclear energy, its costs and all the residual, additional nuclear waste we never knew how or where to store.

Those are huge improvements for societies and nations.

With the loss of power for some 600 million people in India the last two days, too, it's been pointed out that that is an excellent and timely reminder of coal's big weaknessses and shortcomings. If we can get this kind of technology out across the world, even the poor could have a steady, reliable and clean source of electrical energy. The benefits of this are multiple, at least, if not exponential.

I still say this could also lead to cars and buses having this same technology on them so we'd run clean transportation, too.

Here's hoping this spreads and spreads quickly, across the nation and world.

It is said that the nation that "owns" solar technology will own the next century.

Even if that's not true, this is a huge boon, potentially, for the nation and even, again, the world and in many ways.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2177763/Scientists-create-transparent-solar-panels-glass-like-plastic.html

Coincidentally, this article came out today, too:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/31/613161/massive-blackout-leaves-620-million-indians-without-power-demonstrating-dangers-of-relying-on-outdated-coal-system/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climateprogress%2FlCrX+%28Climate+Progress%29

Quote of the day

"Those of you who worry that the President won't follow through on the ideas he put forth yesterday have every reason to be skeptical. But if we organize and mobilize around these ideas -- as the Occupiers have done -- we have a shot at creating a mandate for O and the Dems in 2012 and beyond. Nothing good happens in Washington unless good people outside Washington make it happen. Finally O is offering a large and true picture of where the nation has been and where we must go. He can't get there without us. We have to push him." --Robert Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. Links: https://www.facebook.com/#!/RBReich; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich

Proof of the power of non-violence

Following is a breif YouTube video shot at the University of California-Davis of President Linda Katehi as she walked to her car last week, after the University Police pepper-sprayed peaceful, protesting students on campus, apparently at least with her awareness, if not her explicit direction: I think it very powerful. We will overcome.

Quote of the day

‎"Government-haters seem to be everywhere....One would have thought the last few years of mine disasters, exploding oil rigs, nuclear meltdowns, malfeasance on Wall Street, wildly-escalating costs of health insurance, rip-roaring CEO pay, and mass layoffs would have offered a singular opportunity to explain why the nation's collective well-being requires a strong and effective government representing the interests of average people." --Robert Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley; Author, 'Aftershock'. Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-rise-of-the-wreckingb_b_899871.html

Quote of the day--on unfair, imbalanced taxation

“How can hedge-fund managers who are pulling down billions sometimes pay a lower tax rate than do their secretaries?” ask the political scientists Jacob S. Hacker (of Yale) and Paul Pierson (University of California, Berkeley) in their deservedly lauded new book, “Winner-Take-All Politics.”   --Frank Rich, in his column "Who Will Stand up to the Superrich?" Sunday, The New York Times

Links:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/opinion/14rich.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a212
http://books.simonandschuster.com/Winner-Take-All-Politics/Jacob-S-Hacker/9781416588696