Top 5 Under the Radar Stories

 

Here's another installment of our popular Under the Radar series. Check out the new "Under the Radar" online magazine to read even more stories that may have been under-reported.

 

1)      Surging Foreign Arm Sales:  Sales surged 36% in 2015 and are set to remain strong in the coming years. ISIS has fueled demand among our allies for US missile defense equipment, helicopters and munitions. 10 years ago, the focus was on fighter jets. Europe, the Pacific and even Centcom have provided the demands. The total value of sales in the works is around 500 billion dollars.The Pentagon vets all requests, including those from countries with weak human rights records.

 

2)      139 Countries get power from Renewables:  There is a blueprint released within the last few years giving details of how all 50 US States may run on renewables by the year 2050.  The plans include wind turbines, solar farms, and hydroelectric dams. The point being that there is a path forward, without being dewy eyed or thinking that this is some kind of a “pipe dream”.

It may be quite feasible to propose a set of numbers to aim towards the type of power structure laid out in these proposals. That is the purpose of the Paris Summit! To begin to look at actual concrete numbers and “do-able” proposals.

3)      What’s killing the bees? Colony Collapse Disorder is a real threat, and honey bee colonies have been collapsing for a while now from this very real threat. The cause has been traced by many beekeepers to a class of pesticides that weaken the entire system of a honey bee. The mega-corporations that control the manufacture of the pesticide may be getting away with murder.

4)      Weakening Dodd-Frank:  Attaching Financial Regulation Amendments to spending bills erodes it.  Things masquerading as technical changes-per Jack Lew…. In Dodd-Frank, banks had to be subjected to annual regulatory tests to assess their ability to withstand stress in a down market. If they fail, regulators could put restrictions on them. Dick Shelby of Alabama, Chairman of Senate Banking, wants to effectively exempt most of the large banks from the test. Shelby wants to raise the definition of large banks from 50 billion to 500 billion. The compromise may be support of a 100 billion dollar threshold.

Also, the Financial Stability Oversight Council is in the crosshairs of GOP. A regulatory entity set up by Dodd-Frank, this council was set up to give a range of financial advisors the ability to assess whether or not dangerous risks were beginning to build up within the banking system once again. In other words, oversight. The new legislation would lengthen the process of designating at-risk institutions, with critics pointing out that AIG’s bets were at a dangerous level in less than four years, which is the time the new legislation recommends for evaluating risks.

5)      According to Washington, these are the worst schools in the US: The network of schools which administer education to Native American children is run by an obscure branch of the Interior Department. Washington has known this for going on eight decades. To date, there has never been a successful reform of this agency.

There are 183 schools for Native Americans in reservations interspersed in 23 states. They report to the federal Bureau of Indian Education, a small agency deep within the Department of the Interior.

Approximately 48,000 students attend these schools, and they produce some of the lowest test scores and graduation rates in the country.

Bill Clinton and George W Bush both made concerted efforts to improve the BIE schools. Obama recently became involved after visiting a reservation and seeing the plight of the schoolchildren.

One of the main problems is attracting good teachers to stay. The teacher vacancies are chronic at the BIE schools. The plan to overhaul the system is moving “at a crawl”. There is only some glimmerings of hope that a system that has been broken almost eighty years will change anytime soon.

 

Stay tuned as we are going to provide up-to-date lists on a bi-weekly basis that will help make sense of the news stories that are often missed or at least not given more than a cursory mention on the nightly news. We update the news constantly on our online site: "Under the Radar". Check it out!