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Healthcare and pharmaceutical costs are a major factor in expenses of American retirees. The Cost of Living adjustment of 8.7% in Social Security payments for 2022 will help retirees meet the cost of living crisis with high inflation in food and energy costs in 2022, and the continued rise in medical costs.

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Edison's learning mindset and his persistence has lessons in work today.

These lessons apply to individuals as well as countries and groups, to create a thinking mindset. Will this plan work, what are the assumptions and what is it based on, test it out. If it fails try changing it. Test again. Does it work. What were the assumptions and what is it based on, what if we change this part. Try again. In this way Edison found answers to difficult problems in his inventions. 

The search for a vaccine, other problem solving at the individual, small group, and national level, can be done in this way. For the vaccine there is the added factor of time- how quickly can we do this? The Oxford vaccine works with an approach that has worked for other types of coronavirus in the past research efforts, what component can be changed or inserted so that a tested approach can be used instead of starting from scratch in this case.

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US president Biden campaigns in Nevada. His focus is on the cost of living actions and has proposed 15,000 affordable housing rental units on underused federal land repurposed for housing, action which can be taken on presidential orders. Other cost of living action is being prepared by Biden and he closely follows the mortgage rate increases from 3% to 8% that are leaving families stuck without owning an home. Biden is also focussing on the threats to democracy coming from the former president's rhetoric and actions, something that he devoted time to in his address in Philadelphia's Independence Hall, where the founders of this Union gathered together to draft the Constitution. This happened early in his first presidential term and in the 2020 campaign Biden focused on this threat to democracy. Peter Baker points out that Biden is best qualified to convey a sense of hope to America, yet what the NYT, W. Post and WSJ, and the television news channels -that are not watched as much by the core 25-54 years with a shift to digital- fail to do is to do their own introspection on how Biden has forged the consensus in Congress from his vast experience and wisdom to make the multi trillion dollar investments in America's future through infrastructure, job creation, manufacturing, chips and science. Not since FDR has America seen this happen and it shapes 2030. ...

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Germany leads in balcony solar installation- 1 million installed in 2023-2025 ($200 to $1200 solar modules installed on baconies. The boom is the largest in Europe for solar balcony installations. Japan is sending a delegation to learn from Germany. Renewables overtook coal for first time worldwide. In Germany the cost of this electricity from soalr balcony installs is half that of electricity from the grid. Berlin University Applied Sciences says it pays for itself in 4-7 years, after that the electricity has no cost. Solar modules life is 30 years, batteries life is 7-10 years. With 4 modules about half the needs for electricity for a household can be met.

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That is not since Lake Placid in 1980 has the US won Olympic gold in men's hockey. It is now about half a century for that Jack Hughes goal in overtime against Canada.

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Following the executive order by U.S. president Trump reversing Obama administration policies on climate change and clean energy, BBC correspondent points out that the strategy of the Trump administration and Republicans is to change the narrative to job creation and with court challenges let the Clean Power plan be delayed. This would be followed by a different plan with less regulation of the coal industry. The clean energy policies were unpopular in states where Republicans had support.

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Instead of normal appropriations process $140 billion for DHS funding to be secured by Republicans using simple majority by May 2026. It takes longer yet accomplishes the same goal of ending DHS shutdown and paying DHS people.

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ECP acquisition of Calpine  in 2017 for $5.6 billion and sale to Constellation for profit of $25 billion. In 2017 the market seeing the shift to renewable energy missed that it would take 20-30 years to make the transition and in the meantime natural gas had a big role to play as a low cost less polluting fuel than coal. ECP in 2017 saw good cash flow and an opportunity to improve it with some changes. Blackstone's $16 billion made on buying Hilton Hotels is the second best deal ever for such a sale, buying of private companies and making improvements to sell them at a profit.

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India's modernization efforts for ports terminals and logistics looking ahead to 2047- key to Vikshit Bharat Developed India. For the US and EU this is key to the goal of reducing concentration of manufacturing in China. This goal goes beyond the DJT administration tariffs on China of 48%. It is about common sense and reason not to get stuck with importing everything from one country in Asia, not Japan, not China, but spreading the production. The reason this gets concentrated is that one country gets an overwhelming advantage and only state or national policy of US or EU can change that which is what the DJT administration is doing. India is the only nation that has the potential to make this happen over the next 10 years to 2035.

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The Biden vaccination target of 70% of American adults at least partially vaccinated with one dose by July 4, 2021 remains elusive as vaccination rates have dropped. From a high of 2 million a day vaccinations have dropped to 400,000 a day during the first week of June 2021. Vaccination skepticism particularly in the south and western part of the US is making it harder to vaccinate the rest of the US population. This poses increasing risks as the new variants of the virus such as the Delta variant found in India, and now the most widely prevalent strain of virus in the UK, remain a serious problem. The unvaccinated population in the US is too large for any degree of safety in numbers vaccinated. Consider that at the press briefing given by the White House on June 3, 2021, only 28 states out of 51 states have fully vaccinated 50% or more of their population. There is a large variation between different states with states in the south such as Mississippi as low as 34% at least one dose and a similar situation in Alabama. In Arkansas, Georgia, Carolinas, and Louisiana  it is higher at about 50% with at least one dose. Even these figures are deceiving as in some parishes in Louisiana only 20% have even one dose. Studies show that only after the second dose are enough antibodies released to protect well against coronavirus. This is why vaccine experts at Baylor College of Medicine cited in NYT foresee a second wave in the southern US because of the South so underachieving in the case of vaccination.  ...

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Climate control groups estimate that about 75% of coal projects were cancelled following the Paris climate change agreement. 44 countries no longer have any coal projects. Remaining coal power plants are spread over 33 countries with half of these countries having no more than 1 coal project.

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Price of coal has tripled from $44 to $140 a ton for Central Appalachian coal. Exports and production constraints have further exacerbated the supply situation.

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Mr Obama's vision of a nuclear weapons free world going back to his days at Columbia University. There as a senior he took Prof. Michael Baron's seminar on international politics and American policy. In a paper for that course Mr Obama analyzed how a President might go about negotiating nuclear arms reductions with Russia. Baron says Obama has been thinking about these issues for a long time. About this time Obama wrote an essay in the Columbia Sundial student newspaper. This was the time when the Greens movement for a nuclear weapons free world was strong in Germany, and Reagan was pushing for a nuclear arms development race with Russia. The article was titled "Breaking the War Mentality." As a senator Obama joined Senator Dick Lugar -who has worked hard for non-proliferation- on a trip to Russia to monitor efforts by Ruusia to scrap nuclear arms and secure atomic materials from theft or diversion. He allied himself with four Reagan period veterans Kissinger, Shultz, Perry and Sam Nunn, who in a 2007 WSJ op-ed article, argued that it was time- as the headline for the article said -to work for "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons." The steps in practice Obama plans to take are the following. A Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would bar all nations signing it from making fuel for their atomic bombs. Rewriting crucial provisions of the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, strengthening inspection provisions and closing loopholes that let N. Korea drop out in 2003. Countries would have to give up the freedom to make fuel for reactors and instead buy it from an international fuel bank. Global consensus and prevention when it comes to deviant states hoping to enhance their own security, or regimes or terrorist groups, will be crucial in setting up a new system for a nuclear weapons free world....

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Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center says about the decision by the Obama adminisration to stop contributing to World Bank financed coal power plants- including one in South Africa- does not take into account the simple fact that 1.2 billion people living in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia have no access to electricity. In the sub-Saharan region of Africa (excluding S. Africa) the entire electricity generating capacity is about 28 gigawatts, or about the same as Arizona with a population of about 9 million compared to 860 million in the region. He says China was able to lift 680 million people out of poverty with urbanization and industry powered by coal. There is no alternative to low cost fossil fuels for the poorer regions of the earth. This is why the International Energy Agency esimates fossil fuel generated energy to remain about the same percentage in 2035 as it is today- 81%. Shale based naural gas can make a difference for air pollution and China is begining to make the shift away from coal- for sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, this goal will take time. ...

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Idea that control over Straits of Hormuz is US goal is repudiated by DJT in his Address to the Nation, yet it finds its way into the media. There is no war for US to win, it is only about removing a nuclear and ballistic missile threat, nothing to do with oil. MAGA base, US public has rejected these wars in remote countries of the Middle East, when reindustrialization is the goal, not repeating the mistakes of Bush and Obama who by fighting these wars for 8 years in Iraq wasted resources and pursued policies that deindustrialized the Nation and weakened the heartland of America. Beyond limiting the threat of nuclear weapons and long range ballistic missiles that could hit US, Europe and other nations there is no other goal. US and DJT repeatedly pointed out that being self sufficient it does not need Iranian or Iraqi or Saudi oil. The president even said in his Address that the US wanted to supply other countries with oil as it produced more than Saudi and Russia combined, and not counting Venezuelan oil production ramp up expected by 3-4 million barrels a day. Behind this is the known fact that China and Japan get 90% of their imports from Hormuz Straits, so it is up to these nations and India and Britain to find solutions to Hormuz not the US. ...

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New restrictions were placed on housing buyers in Beijing and Shanghai, in an effort to cool housing prices. Beijing municipal government now allows unmarried persons to buy only one home, increases the minimum down payment on a second home, and puts a 20% capital gains tax on sellers of homes. In Shanghai a similiar tax was placed. The tax replaces a 1-2% tax on housing sales. A government survey shows housing prices up 3.1% in Feb 2013. The central government is preparing a national property registration system by the end of 2014. This will make it possible to place annual taxes on residential property.