VIDEO: John Oliver on democracy hypocrisy

Colin Gorenstein at Salon notes that the United States is currently the only democracy in the world that fails to give residents of its capital a vote in Congress. “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver is hoping this will change ASAP.

If you prefer to watch this directly on YouTube, CLICK HERE.

I've always wondered that

This explains a lot

Hormones influence unethical behavior, experts say

University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)

Hormones play a two-part role in encouraging and reinforcing cheating and other unethical behavior, according to research from Harvard University and The University of Texas at Austin.

With cheating scandals a persistent threat on college campuses and financial fraud costing businesses more than $3.7 trillion annually, UT Austin and Harvard researchers looked to hormones for more answers, specifically the reproductive hormone testosterone and the stress hormone cortisol.

According to the study, the endocrine system plays a dual role in unethical acts. First, elevated hormone levels predict likelihood of cheating. Then, a change of hormone levels during the act reinforces the behavior.

Kitty of the week

Meet Hal!
Animal Rescue Rhode Island

Hi, I am Hal, a sweet 2 year old male cat.  I've been at the rescue the longest of any cats we currently have, and it is likely because I am FIV positive. 

Don't let that scare you… It just means I can't be housed with other cats that don't have the same condition. 

I can however be placed with dogs and feline FIV can't be passed to humans, so we can still be best friends! 

Could you please open your doors to this lonely cat?  I don't get much play time at the rescue either because of the other cats around, so I am getting tired of being in my cage. 

I am all set to live a nice full happy life, but I need a forever home to finally make that happen. 

Every cat deserves a chance, no matter what they might have as baggage, so please, please, please try and give me a chance!

Feel full, curb cravings

Effects of spinach extract on satiety

Taylor & Francis

A new study found in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition examines how consuming the concentrated extract of thylakoids found in spinach can reduce hunger and cravings. 

Thylakoids encourage the release of satiety hormones, which is very beneficial in slowing down fat digestion. 

The article "Acute Effects of a Spinach Extract Rich in Thylakoids on Satiety: A Randomized Controlled Crossover Trial" is an Open Access article available from the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, the official publication of the American College of Nutrition.

The study examines the effect of consuming a single dose of concentrated extract of thylakoids from spinach on satiety, food intake, lipids, and glucose compared to a placebo. Sixty people (30 males and 30 females) classified as overweight or obese took part in a double-blind randomized crossover study. 

Don’t Get Burned by Coal’s Demise

Everyone, including pension fund managers, must dump their holdings in the bedeviled industry.

By Emily Schwartz Greco

Stanford, Georgetown, and other universities are stripping coal stocks and bonds out of their endowments. Why? For starters, they don’t want to lose money.

At least 200 U.S. coal-fired power plants have stopped operating since 2010, shrinking the total fleet by 40 percent. The pricesteelmakers pay for coal has withered, sinking by two-thirds over the past four years.

“Let’s face it,” says analyst Travis Hoium of the plainspoken Motley Fool investment hub. “Coal is dead.”

Shares in Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, two of the industry’s only companies that still trade on the stock market, have plummeted by about 85 percent so far this year andstopped paying dividends. 

Most of their competitors went bankrupt or were delisted because their shares were selling for pennies.

Oil and gas holdings are also inflicting losses on investors these days, but many university endowments aren’t ready to swear off those fossil fuels for good. The coal industry’s bleak prospects make investing in it unquestionably harmful to your life savings, as well as the climate.

Clearly, coal divestment makes sense for everyone apart from moral and environmental concerns. Could someone please explain this to pension fund managers?

Take TIAA-CREF, a firm that manages retirement funds for 5 million people — mostly teachers and professors. It still had $838 million in assets tied to major coal companies as of late April, The Guardian reported.

There are another 25 pension funds serving public-sector workers and retirees across our nation that hadn’t dumped their coal holdings by mid-spring either, according to the British-based newspaper. California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as CalPERS, topped that list, with $300 million in coal holdings, followed by the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, with $105 million.

State lawmakers are moving toward barring CalPERS and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, known as CalSTRS, from holding any investments in companies that derive half or more of revenue from coal mining. In June, California’s state senate passed the measure, which had already cleared a key state assembly committee.

Why bother with this legislative hassle? Because the pension funds have declined to divest, despite the abysmal performance of the industry’s stocks and bonds — and ample pressure in a state that’s working hard to cut climate pollution.

“Coal is going the way of the dinosaur, dial-up Internet, and VHS tapes,” California state senator and president pro tempore Kevin De Leon wrote in an Orange County Registerop-ed explaining why he wants to protect retirees from this dying industry’s fallout. “It is rapidly becoming outmoded.”

Perhaps you don’t personally know any of the nation’s 68,400 remaining coal miners — a fast-shrinking demographic sorely lacking retirement security. But you probably do know at least one current or former teacher whose pension is being undermined by coal exposure.

Despite its poor financial health, burning coal remains a big business that generates about one-third of our power. After years of surging, natural gas briefly bypassed coal in April, becoming the national grid’s top energy source.

And something more promising than a cloud of fracked gas is rising from coal’s ashes.Renewable energy powered more than two-thirds of the 3.9 gigawatts of generating capacity that came online in the United States over the first half of 2015.

This emerging greener grid doesn’t just tread more gently on the Earth. Investing in it yields robust returns at a time when fossil-fuel assets are increasingly toxic. Most shares in solar and wind companies are outperforming the overall stock market.

That’s just one good reason why anyone managing a pension fund or university endowment should consider investing in renewable energy.

Columnist Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords.org.

DEM produces training video for rural firefighters

To help prepare for brush and forest fires

PROVIDENCE - The Department of Environmental Management's Division of Forest Environment is kicking off a new educational project this summer. 

By leveraging grant funding from the US Forest Service with local matching funds from the RI State Firefighter's League, along with assistance from the Northeast Forest Fire Protection Commission, DEM forest rangers are filming and producing a series of wildfire training videos for release on the Division's Facebook page.

Want to join the Charlestown Police?

Window of opportunity – August 3rd to August 28th

CPD Chief Jeffrey Allen at his swearing in

The Charlestown Police Department is looking to recruit a patrol officer and has opened up an application period through the month of August.

Visit the CPD website to get more information and application information.

The job solicitation is on the next page so read on.

Jail time would be one way

Preventing Death on the Job

By Phil Mattera, Dirt Diggers Digest

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration recently put DuPont on its list of severe violators and proposed fines totaling $273,000 in connection with last year’s chemical leak at a pesticide plant in La Porte, Texas that killed four workers. OSHA called the deaths preventable and accused DuPont of having “a failed safety program.”

This was a severe blow to a company that prides itself on having a “world-class” safety system and which thinks so highly of its skills in this area that it provides safety consulting services to other companies. 

DuPont expressed disappointment at OSHA’s actions.

VIDEO: Stand up for Planned Parenthood

Obama Draws Bright Red Line In The Sand Over Planned Parenthood, Dares Republicans To Cross It

By Jameson Parker

 

For weeks now, conservatives have been passing around heavily-edited videos that they think might finally give them enough of a push to kill Planned Parenthood. There are just a few problems with the plan: The videos are laughably fraudulent, and President Obama is at the “no bullshit” stage of his presidency.

Refreshingly, much of the faux-scandal about Planned Parenthood’s “selling of baby parts” has remained relegated to the furthest corners of the conservative blogosphere. 

The mainstream media, like most thinking people, took one look at the idea that the women’s non-profit health clinic was harvesting fetal organs to enrich themselves and rolled their eyes. 

However, Republican politicians didn’t wait for people to actually believe this nonsense, they immediately began to follow through on a pre-planned coordinated attack on the very existence of Planned Parenthood, which has been a thorn in the side of conservatives for years.

Scary!

In charts, why black women die in jail so often

Demystified
BY DYLAN PETROHILOS & ANDREW BREINER, in Think Progress

DEM lifeguard tests coming up

Those with Current Conditional Certification Must Also Take Test

PROVIDENCE - The Department of Environmental Management's Division of Parks and Recreation will administer surf and non-surf lifeguard certification tests, beginning on Monday, August 3, to certify lifeguards for the year 2016.

Any candidate who passes one of these tests will be certified through September 30, 2016. Lifeguards who received a conditional 2015 surf or non-surf certification must take and pass one of these tests.

Surf tests will be given daily from Monday, August 3 through Friday, August 7, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Scarborough State Beach in Narragansett. Non-surf tests will be given daily from Tuesday, August 11 through Friday, August 14, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Prosser Grove Picnic area in Burlingame State Park in Charlestown. No appointment is necessary. For those who pass, there is a $10 fee for the 2016 state certification card.

In case of inclement weather, candidates should contact the facility where the tests are being given for any cancellation information: Scarborough telephone 789-2324; Burlingame State Park telephone 322-8910.

A radically different approach to wastewater treatment

Solutions: West Coast wastewater plant chooses trees over technology

By Brian Bienkowski in Environmental Health News

Five years ago Medford, Oregon, had a problem common for most cities—treating sewage without hurting fish.

The city’s wastewater treatment plant was discharging warm water into the Rogue River. Fish weren’t dying, but salmon in the Rogue rely on cold water. And the Environmental Protection Agency has rules to make sure they get it.

So, instead of spending millions on expensive machinery to cool the water to federal standards, the city of Medford tried something much simpler: planting trees.

It bought credits that paid others to handle the tree planting, countering the utility's continued warm-water discharges. Shady trees cool rivers, and the end goal is 10 to 15 miles of new native vegetation along the Rogue.

To Fight Racism, Protect the Right to Vote

Politicians are rolling back voting rights in the former Confederacy.

By LeeAnn Hall

The cold-blooded murder of nine people at a Charleston church made it impossible to deny the persistence of racism across the nation. So do the symbols of support for slavery and segregation that remain emblazoned on public property throughout the South, and scattered among some Northern states as well.

What will it take to bring real racial justice to our country? For starters, protecting the right to vote.

A century after the end of the Civil War, Southern segregation thrived because of lynch laws, poll taxes, and other institutional restrictions on African Americans. 

One of the great achievements that finally broke the back of Jim Crow was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which enshrined the right to vote in federal statute for the first time.

The Voting Rights Act mandated federal review of any new voting rules in 15 states, most of them in the South, with histories of discrimination at the polls. Two years ago, the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision on Shelby County v. Holder effectively gutted the enforcement tools of the federal voting law.

The right to vote is still the law of the land — in principle — but the Supreme Court ruling turned the protection of those rights over to state and local authorities.