It looks like Barr misspoke

Here's what Mueller said about Barr's report:

“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” the special counsel wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

Don't get bitten by a snake

It will cost you a ton of money. For example,last summer a 9-year-old girl from Indiana was bitten by a copperhead. The cost to treat her was $142,938. Almost half the bill was for four vials of antivenin. That works out to $16,989.25 for each vial—more than five times the average list price of $3,198. The bill also included $55,577.64 for air-ambulance transportation. But she she was released within 24 hours of the bite.

It's getting worse

Minimum Taxes of $0

These are the 11 most profitable companies that paid no federal income taxes in 2018. In many cases, the companies also received tax rebates that could be used to reduce their tax burdens in other years.

Minimum Wages

A new form of compost

The Washington state legislature recently passed a bill that allows human bodies to be composted — and used for mulch. It awaits the governor's signature.
So now you will have another choice - beyond cremation and burial - as to what to do with your body when you die.

Here is what your body will look like when it has been converted to mulch.

Human composting is being billed as an eco-friendly option by a Seattle-based company called Recompose. It already as two patents pending for “natural organic reduction”, which uses microbes to transform the departed — skin, bones and all. Microbes go to work within a large vessel, about eight feet tall and four feet wide, that fits a single body along with alfalfa, straw and wood chips. Over the course of 30 days, as temperatures in the vessel rise to 150 degrees, decomposition destroys the body, along with most pathogens and pharmaceuticals

Are you paying less taxes?

Why did you give your child that name?

Working at Amazon

Really determined

Amy Palmiero-Winters certainly is. She just spent six days running in the Sahara desert. She competed in the Marathon des Sables, which means she ran over sand dunes, rocks, dry valleys, stony plateaus and salt flats in southern Morocco. And she had to carry a backpack containing everything needed for a week in the desert: food, sleeping bag, compass, headlamp, venom pump to minimize any bites from snakes and scorpions.

She is a single mother with two teenage children. She uses a prosthetic leg as Her lower left leg was amputated below the knee in 1997 after a motorcycle accident. Here she is in training.

An adoption

A Miracle?

Maybe not. But emerging from a coma after 27 years is surely a rarity. In 1991 a woman from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was seriously injured in a traffic accident.She had a severe brain injury and was in a coma. In the first couple of years, she was kept alive by feeding from a tube and she also had physiotherapy to ensure her muscles would not weaken through lack of movement.

In 2017, her family was offered a grant by the government body to be transfer to Germany. There, she underwent a number of surgeries to correct her severely shortened arm and leg muscles, and she was given medication to improve her state, including her wakefulness.
She became more responsive, and can now feel pain and have some conversations. She is back in Abu Dhabi undergoing physiotherapy and further rehabilitation - mainly to improve her posture when sitting and prevent muscles from contracting.

China's Navy

Should we have public banks?

Nomi Prins thinks so. Our current banking system is moved by private profit, not the public good. Yet, the states across our nation are sorely in need of better roads, ports, bridges and railways, more affordable higher education, and fully funded public schools. North Dakota has had public banks for 100 years. They use them to reinvest public funds in their communities by offering low-interest business and student loans, investing in clean energy, and supporting local infrastructure projects. California is pushing a new bill to give cities the freedom to start public banks accountable to the communities they serve.

 Beyond disaster response, public banks would help with disaster relief, social endeavors, and provide community control over where and how these funds are allocated. 

Another study, another reason for worrying.

This time it's the Arctic ocean; we're losing ice and the sea-level is rising. That's the conclusion of a study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study estimates that Greenland’s glaciers went from dumping about 51 billion tons of ice into the ocean between 1980 to 1990, to 286 billion tons between 2010 and 2018. This has caused the sea-level to rise about 14 millimeters (one-half inch) since 1972, half of which has occurred in the past eight years.

We are losing ice at a more rapid clip. Ice losses in the 1990s were about 41 billion tons per year, but by the 2000s they were 187 billion tons — and by the 2010s, 286 billion tons.

A strange law

We were a different country in 1920. That was when we passed the Merchant Marine or Jones Act, which requires all cargo shipped between American ports to be carried on US-flagged vessels that are assembled entirely in America, and that have some of their major components manufactured in the US. These ships must be at least 75% owned and crewed by Americans. And if a US-flagged ship needs to be repaired overseas, the US charges a 50% tax on the price. of 1920

Relatively independent organizations such as the World Economic Forum or the OECD thinks this law is ridiculous. It has also resulted in damaging our competitiveness, one example of which is the cost of shipbuilding and shipping operations in the US. American-built coastal-size container ships are estimated to cost between $190 million and $250 million each, compared to about $30 million for foreign-made equivalents. And because Jones-compliant ships are so expensive, their owners do not replace them. A ship’s economically useful life is generally considered to be about 20 years, but more than 65% of the Jones fleet is over 30 years old, making it inefficient and even dangerous. And we don't build too many ships; we built less than one million gross tons of ships between 2014 and 2016, South Korea and China produced a combined 140 million tons.

Operating costs of US-flagged ships are almost three times higher than those of foreign vessels. Crewing costs on American ships are reported to be about five times greater. And whereas transporting crude oil from the Gulf Coast to the US Northeast on a Jones-compliant ship costs $5 to $6 per barrel, it costs only $2 per barrel to carry crude from the Gulf Coast to Eastern Canada on a foreign-flagged vessel.

And it's bad for the environment. Only 2% of US domestic freight is carried by water, compared to 40% in Europe. By pushing companies to use land-based transport, the Jones Act increases costs for US firms, raises prices for consumers, and causes more congestion on the country’s highways. Moreover, truck, rail, and air transport produce up to 145 times more carbon dioxide emissions than cargo ships do.

Look at your change this week

This is National Coin Week. The U.S. Mint, collectors and coin dealers are trying to stir up coin collecting via what they call the Great American Coin Hunt. They will put into circulation more than a million new and vintage coins. There will be coins from the 1800s, Indian and wheat pennies, buffalo nickels, silver dimes, Ike dollars, five and 10 dollar blue and red seals, and silver certificate bills. The Mint will circulate 10 million first-ever 2019 America the Beautiful Quarters bearing a W mark minted at West Point.

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent

Going to Mars

Handwriting without hands

A nice way to start the day

Where will the workers come from?

One quick view of the report

Issues in Europe

This is an airport?

3D Printing a part of the human body

Israeli scientists have produced a heart using a 3D printer. This heart contains cells and biological material from a human patient. It includes cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers. It is small, the size of a rabbit's heart but it is a fantastic start.

They like to dance

Courtesy of our Plymouth correspondent

Jump for Joy

Personnel Management at DHS

The NY Times reports: 

 "The latest departures, along with previous vacancies, will leave the Department of Homeland Security without a permanent secretary, deputy secretary, two under secretaries, Secret Service director, Federal Emergency Management Agency director, ICE director, general counsel, citizenship and immigration services director, inspector general, chief financial officer, chief privacy officer and, once Mr. McAleenan moves, Customs and Border Protection commissioner."

Black women have a hard time at airports

It's due primarily to the body scanners. It thinks the woman may have explosives in her hair. Authorities think they turn on the scanner because they have thicker hair; many times they have braids or dreadlocks. The TSA warns on its website that “wearing a hairpiece, extensions or a wig as well as a ponytail, a hair bun or braids” may trigger an alarm. Naturally, most black women and other women of color describe the hair pat-downs as intrusive and disrespectful. They said they felt singled out during the process. The ACLU filed a complaint against the TSA in April 2014 asserting that “When that discretion comes into play, unless there is explicit- and implicit-bias training, that can play out in a way that harms people of color, black people.”

The number of complaints filed with the TSA by passengers alleging racial discrimination in hair pat-downs rose from 73 in 2017 to 105 in 2018.

You should keep in mind that the TSA is one of the most diverse agencies in the federal government. One-quarter of the nation’s 46,000 airport screeners are black and 23% are Hispanic, according to Office of Personnel Management data.

Stores are closing

Coresight Research, a consultant to retail stores and technology companies, reports that 5,994 store closings have been announced thus far the US this year. For the full year of 2018, 5,864 stores closed. Some close select stores trying to stay profitable, others are going out of business.

On the other side of the street, there have been 2,641 store openings announced so far this year compared with 3,239 openings in all of 2018.

The Next Notre-Dame?

The value of zero

If you were a Senator or Congressman, you could tell your boss...

.......... I have enjoyed working here these past several years. You have paid me very well and given me benefits beyond belief. Have 3-4 months off per year and a pension plan that will pay my salary till the day I die and then pay my estate one year salary death bonus and then continue to pay my spouse my salary with increases until he (or she) dies and a health plan that most people can only dream of having with no deductible whatsoever. Despite this, I plan to take the next 12-18 months to find a new position. During this time I will show up for work when it is convenient for me. In addition, I fully expect to draw my full salary and all the other perks associated with my current job. Oh yes, if my search for this new job proves fruitless, I will be coming back with no loss in pay or status. Before you say anything, remember that you have no choice in this matter. I can, and I will do this. 

Sincerely, Every Senator or Congressman running for re-election!!!

It's hard to believe given the quality of our legislators and their results.

From our Glastonbury correspondent

France's 911

True, no terrorism involved. But it's like the White House being destroyed.

Tax Day

April 15 is the days our federal taxes are due. It's also the day when the five largest tobacco companies pay $9 billion dollars to state governments, each and every year, forever, because of a 1998 legal settlement meant to compensate states for the costs of tobacco-related illness such as cancer, emphysema and heart disease.

Payments from tobacco companies, as well as tobacco taxes, help to support health care and other services for low-income people served by state Medicaid programs. Even though the federal government supports each state’s Medicaid program by paying at least half the costs, many states have difficulty finding revenues to pay the remaining share.

Looking at the Post Office

Congressman Bill Pascaral, Jr., has some very interesting thoughts about the Post Office. The articles has facts new to me. "USPS handles 47 percent of the world’s mail, delivering nearly 150 billion mail pieces annually. It delivers more in sixteen days than UPS and FedEx, combined, ship in a year. The agency has roughly half a million career employees spread out across almost 31,000 locations. Post offices are tucked into every state, across far-flung Native American reservations, and in remote protectorates. If it were a private business, the post would rank around fortieth on the Fortune 500. And you can send a letter from coast to coast for two quarters and a nickel—less than the cost of a candy bar."

And we like it. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that 88 percent of Americans have a positive view of it. That’s higher than the approval ratings for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In Pascaral's view Congress has not treated the Post Office intelligently. The Post Office has a weird structure promulgated by Congress 40+ years ago. They decided it made sense to have a half-public, half-corporate governing structure to make it operate more as a business. Then, in 2006, Congress required that the Postal Service pre-fund its health benefit obligations at least fifty years into the future. This crazy rule has accounted for nearly 90 percent of USPS’s red ink since.

USPS was part of the Cabinet for many years; now it is not. Even today most Americans don’t realize that despite their reliance on it, USPS is not a part of the government in the same way as the Department of Agriculture or the Pentagon, and receives effectively no support from the federal budget.

Pascaral proposes a bunch of changes based on not considering the Post Office a business.

Shifting taxes

From The Big Picture

One way to look at taxes

Do you agree with the IMF?

Six banks - $8.2 trillion in bailouts, 350 major legal actions, $200 billion in fines

The banks are Bank of America, Citicorp, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo. Better Markets has done a thorough analysis of these megabanks going back to the Great Recession. Here are the legal actions they have found:

Pre-crash: Bogus charges for credit monitoring services, overdrafts based on false balance information, illegal bid rigging, tricking subprime borrowers into buying credit insurance, selling unnecessary credit-card add-on products, providing conflict-ridden stock research analysis, trading ahead of clients, misrepresentations in the sale of auction rate securities, anticompetitive practices in the bond market, unlawful payment schemes to win muni-bond business, misallocation of public offering shares, antitrust violations, excessive overdraft fees on checking accounts, and opening millions of fake accounts; 

Crash-related: Fraud and abuse in the sale of mortgage-backed securities, loan servicing and foreclosure violations, betting against mortgage-backed securities that were sold to clients, use of invalid credit ratings for mortgage-backed securities, and steering subprime borrowers into more costly loans and falsifying income information; 

Post-crash: Unlawful debt collection practices, breach of fiduciary duty, market manipulation, anti-money laundering violations, unlawful securities lending practices, claims relating to the London Whale derivatives trades, abuses in the sale of credit monitoring services, error-ridden debt collection practices, failure to disclose adviser conflicts of interest, misrepresentations about foreign exchange trading programs, forcing clients into insurance policies, and kickback schemes involving title insurance. 

U.S. taxpayers didn’t provide $8.2 trillion to bail out these banks and save them from bankruptcy in 2008 for them to continue the crime spree that actually caused the crash in the first place. These simply are not the types of banks—and these are not the types of activities—that should be backed by U.S. taxpayers.

Are glaciers melting faster?

A new study expanded the universe of glaciers investigated. Usually only 500 glaciers are looked at, this one looked at 19,000. It looks like glaciers are melting faster than scientists thought, causing 25 to 30 percent of global sea level rise. The shrinkage rate for glaciers today is 18 percent faster than that calculated by another international study in 2013. 

Between 1961 and 2016, the world's non-polar glaciers had lost around 9,000 billion tons of ice and contributed 27 millimeters to rising ocean levels. That's enough ice to turn the U.S. into an ice-rink four feet thick. Today, glaciers lose about 335 billion tons of ice a year, the equivalent of one millimeter per year of sea level rise.

We have to worry the most as the study found that glaciers in Canada, the U.S., New Zealand and Europe could melt completely by 2100.

Learn about the black hole

What is reality?

Andrew Bacevich thinks that many of the principles we hold dear and think they reflect the real world are, in fact, myths. Here's his list of seven:

Myth #1: The purpose of government is to advance the common good.
Myth #2: Good governance entails fiscal responsibility.
Myth #3: Justice is blind.
Myth #4: The “wise men” are truly wise.
Myth #5: The Persian Gulf is a vital U.S. national security interest.
Myth #6: Prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace depend on Washington playing the role of honest broker.
Myth #7: War is the continuation of policy by other means.

What say you?

Bees find a new home in a woman's eyes

A woman in Taiwan was pulling out weeds when four insects flew into her eyes. The insects were Sweat bees; they are attracted to sweat and sometimes land on people to imbibe perspiration. They also drink tears for their high protein content. A doctor was able to pull them out by their legs. They were still alive. The woman was discharged from the hospital and is expected to make a full recovery.

Which sounds better?

Courtesy of a Duncaster resident

Thoughts on vaccination

She was one in fifty million

That's the opinion of a professor who examined the body of Rose Marie Bentley of Portland, Oregon, which she had donated to Oregon Health and Science University. She died at 99 having lived a fairly normal life healthwise. She had four children, had her appendix and gallbladder removed, had a hysterectomy and lived with chronic heartburn.

But when the researchers began examining her body, they found:

Her heart was missing a large vein that's normally on the right side. A typical body has a large vein called the vena cava that follows the right side of the vertebral column, curving under the liver and emptying deoxygenated blood into the heart. Bentley's vein was on the left, and instead of terminating directly into the heart, which is typical, "her vein continued through her diaphragm, along the thoracic vertebrae, up and around and over the aortic arch and then emptied into the right side of her heart."

Numerous veins that typically drain the liver and other parts of the chest cavity were either missing or sprouting from an unusual spot.

Her right lung had only two lobes, instead of the standard three, while the right atrium of her heart was twice normal size.

Instead of having a stomach on the left, which is normal, her stomach was on the right.

Her liver, which normally occurs predominantly on the right, was predominantly on the left.

Her spleen was on the right side instead of its normal occurrence on the left. The rest of her digestive tract, the ascending colon, was inverted as well.

Bentley's condition is called situs inversus with levocardia, in which most vital organs are reversed. It occurs in only 1 out of 22,000 babies and is invariably associated with severe congenital heart disease; 95% of those born this way die by age 5. However, Bentley lived to 99, most likely because she did not have heart defects.

Don't cross that bridge

• 47,052 of America’s 616,087 bridges are rated “structurally deficient” and need urgent repairs 
• The pace of repair in 2018 slowed compared to previous years—with only a 1 percent net reduction of deficient structures. 
• Americans cross these deficient bridges 178 million times a day. 
• Average age of a structurally deficient bridge is 62 years, compared to 40 years for non-deficient bridges. 
• 235,020 (38 percent) of U.S. bridges have identified repair needs. 
• 18,842 (1 in 3) Interstate highway bridges have identified repair needs. 
• State by state details: artbabridgereport.org

Grave Robbers

It's more than March Madness

I'm talking about the money in college sports that goes to everybody but the players. College sports programs pulled in $14 billion last year. The sources - ticket sales, television contracts, apparel deals and merchandise sales. Tickets have sold for as much as $4,000. Most of the money comes from just 65 schools (out of a total of 2,078); they pulled in $7.6 billion in revenue in 2018. That’s more than half of all college sports revenue.

Coaches do quite well. Their average salary is about $273,000. Approximately $1.2 billion is spent annually on coaches’ salaries to pay just 4,400 coaches. The average scholarship for players is $22,000 per student. 

As you would expect, the players have regular season practice, team meetings and film sessions. Plus media training and appearances, playoff practice and a lot of travel. How much time do they have for academics? 

Despite the extra work they do, the financial aid given to student-athletes on revenue-generating teams is remarkably similar to what is given other student-athletes who don’t have all these additional responsibilities.

The battle of coral reefs

Economic Indicator #6

Energy

• Energy consumption per capita was 250 million BTUs in 1960, rose to 350 million BTUs per person in 2000, but since then has fallen to 300 BTUs per person in 2017.
• Energy consumption per dollar of real GDP (measured in constant 2009 dollars) was 14,500 BTUs in 1960 vs. 5,700 in 2017.
• Electricity net generation on a per person basis was 4.202 kWh in 1960, had more than tripled to 13,475 kWh by 2000, but since then has declined to 12,326 kWh in 2017. 
• The share of electricity generation from renewable sources was 19.7% of the total in 1960, fell to 8.8% by 2005, and since then rose to 17.1% of the total in 2017.

Eating can be worse than smoking

That's what the Lancet found. Our diet results in 11 million of us dying early each year. The study found that our diet is involved in one in five deaths around the world. The biggest cause is salt; too much results in three million deaths. But, we don't eat enough whole grains (also leading to three million deaths) and fruit (two million). And we should eat more nuts, seeds, vegetables, omega-3 from seafood and fiber.

The vast majority of the 11 million deaths is due to cardiovascular disease. Too much salt raises blood pressure and that in turn raises the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Whole grains, fruit and vegetables have the opposite effect - they are "cardioprotective" and lower the risk of heart problems.

Mediterranean countries, particularly France, Spain and Israel, have some of the lowest numbers of diet-related deaths in the world. Countries in South East, Southern and Central Asia are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Israel has the lowest diet-related deaths - 89 per 100,000 people a year. Uzbekistan has the highest diet-related deaths - 892 per 100,000 people a year

Economic Indicator #5

Security and Safety

• The murder rate was 5.1 per 100,000 people in 1960, rose to 10.2 per 100,000 by 1980, but had fallen back to 4.9 per 100,000 in 2015, before nudging up to 5.3 per 100,000 in 2017..
• The prison incarceration rate in federal and state institutions was 118 per 100,000 in 1960, 144 per 100,000 in 1980, 519 per 100,000 by 2010, and then down to 464 per 100,000 in 2016.
• Highway fatalities rose from 37,000 in 1960 to 51,000 in 1980, and then fell to 33,000 in 2010, before nudging up to 37,000 in 2017.

Economic Indicator #4

Health

• Life expectancy at birth was 69.7 years in 1960, and 78.7 years in 2010, and 78.6 years in 2017.
• Infant mortality was 26 per 1,000 births in 1960, and 5.8 per 1,000 births in 2017.
• In 1960, 13.4% of the population age 20-74 was obese (as measured by having a Body Mass Index above 30). In 2016, 40% of the population was obese.
• In 1970, 37.1% of those age 18 and older were cigarette smokers. By 2017, this has fallen  to 14.1%.
• Total national health expenditures were 5.0% of GDP in 1960, and 17.9% of GDP in 2017.

Ban the Confession of Judgment

Bring your sick turtle to the Burj Al Arab Hotel

Economic Indicator #3

Socioeconomic

• The share of 25-34 year-olds who are high school graduates was 58.1% in 1960, 84.2% in 1980, and 90.9% in 2018.
• The share of 25-34 year-olds who are college graduates was 11% in 1960, 27.5% in 2000, and 35.6% in 2017.
• The average math achievement score for a 17 year-old on the National Assessment of Educational Progress was 304 in 1970, and 306 in 2010.
• The average reading achievement score for a 17 year-old was 285 in 1970 and 286 in 2010.

A big hit in China

Some national security concerns

Per the Washington Post:

• He blurted out a highly classified piece of information to Russian leadersthat risked jeopardizing a key foreign policy alliance.
• He has engaged in multiple highly secretive face-to-face meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin where even top national security officials were in the dark.
• He kept Michael Flynn on as national security adviser for weeks despite warnings that Flynn could be susceptible to blackmail because he had lied to the White House.
• He turned a dining room at Mar-a-Lago into an open-air situation room, strategizing about a North Korean missile launch with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
• There have been reports that Trump has disregarded advice from security experts about his cellphone use and even that he has pressed forward with an unsecured phone we know the Russians and Chinese can listen in on.
• Multiple top White House aides have reportedly used private email to discuss White House matters, both potentially flouting records laws and posing unnecessary security threats.

What do you make of this?

The following is from an analysis of Barr's memo by Daily Kos:

Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks … But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.

You do see the difference between "Russian government actors" and "Russian-affiliated individuals."

Economic Indicator #2

Demographic

• The foreign-born population of the US was 9.6 million out of a total of 204 million in 1970, and was 44.5 million out of at total of 325.7 million in 2017.
• In 1960, 78% of the over-15 population had ever been married; in 2018, it was 67.7%.
• Average family size was 3.7 people in 1960, and 3.1 people in 2018.
• Single parent households were 4.4% of households in 1960, and 9.1% of all households in 2010, but slightly down to 8.3% of all households in 2018.