How the Koch Machine Quietly Pushed for the Dakota Access Pipeline and Stands to Profit

Quietly and behind the scenes, a front group funded by the Koch family fortune has lobbied and advocated for the soon-to-be-operating Dakota Access pipeline, a project in which a Koch subsidiary stands to profit. A DeSmog investigation reveals that the group, the 60 Plus Association, pushed in recent months for Dakota Access both on the state…

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The World on a Billionaire's Budget

Originally posted at theconversation.com The world’s wealthiest are prospering. As of February 2017, there were about 2,000 billionaires in the world. This micro-elite controls over US$7.6 trillion, an increase of 18 percent from 2016. A billionaire’s spending power is difficult to grasp, both because most people do not correctly intuit large numbers, and because a billion dollars far outstrips most people’s experience. What does a household budget look like to a billionaire? To find out, let’s scale down a billionaire’s income to $50,000, the median American income, adjusting budget items proportionally. A year in the life of Joe Billionaire To start, we need to estimate a billionaire’s annual income. In the 30 years from 1987 to 2016, Bill and Melinda Gates amassed about $120 billion. This figure represents $80 billion in net worth and $40 billion controlled by their charitable foundation. The Gates’ average annual income for these years is $120 billion divided by 30, or $4 billion. ...

Preventing Crimes Against Humanity in the US

Immigrant rights advocates speak against Trump’s policies in New Mexico. AP Photo/Russell Contreras, File By Nadia Rubaii , Binghamton University, State University of New York and Max Pensky , Binghamton University, State University of New York There are those who say that comparing President Donald Trump’s rhetoric to that of Adolf Hitler is alarmist, unfair and counterproductive. And yet, there has been no dearth of such comparisons nearly one and a half years into his term. Many commentators have also drawn parallels between the conduct and language of Trump supporters and Holocaust-era Nazis . Recent news of ICE agents separating immigrant families and housing children in cages have generated further comparisons by world leaders, as well as Holocaust survivors and scholars. Trump’s use of the word “infest” to refer to immigrants coming to the U.S. is particularly striking. Nazis referred to infestations of Jewish vermin, ...

Why Our Brains See the World as 'Us' versus 'Them'

What are your in-groups and out-groups? ksenia_bravo/Shutterstock.com By Leslie Henderson , Dartmouth College Anti-immigrant policies, race-related demonstrations, Title IX disputes, affirmative action court cases, same-sex marriage litigation. These issues are continually in the headlines. But even thoughtful articles on these subjects seem always to devolve to pitting warring factions against each other: black versus white, women versus men, gay versus straight. At the most fundamental level of biology, people recognize the innate advantage of defining differences in species. But even within species, is there something in our neural circuits that leads us to find comfort in those like us and unease with those who may differ? Brain battle between distrust and reward As in all animals, human brains balance two primordial systems. One includes a brain region called the amygdala that can generate fear and distrust of things that ...

Illusions Revolt!

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