To explain: The United States has something called a “debt ceiling” or the maximum amount that it can borrow to pay back debts that it owes. We will hit that amount on August 2, and then we won’t be able to pay our debts anymore. We’re not just talking about paying back interest on loans to foreign countries here – hitting the ceiling means the government won’t be able to pay military salaries and benefits, Social Security, Medicare or for any other social services. This obviously will have a serious impact on many Americans who rely on these programs, and both the domestic and global markets are freaking out.

But Republicans want to use the debt ceiling as another tool to force spending cuts, and on June 1st they pulled an interesting political move. Republicans in the House of Representatives introduced a bill to raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion – enough to keep the federal government financially solvent until 2012 – WITHOUT any spending cuts attached. Then, Republicans used their majority in the House to unanimously voted AGAINST the bill, forcing it to fail – the goal being to tell Democrats that spending cuts have to be a part of the conversation. The vote caused chaos in the stock market: The day it was held, the New York Stock Exchange plunged to its lowest point since the beginning of 2011.

Investors remain worried, because the government shut down battle from early spring demonstrated that Congress is more than comfortable driving this country to the brink to make a political point. But the debt ceiling debate is especially ridiculous considering that the ceiling has been raised 78 times since 1960, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, without any fanfare, debate or catastrophic predictions of doom.

So if raising the debt ceiling hasn’t ruined the economy the past 78 times, and NOT raising it now will harm Americans and ruin the economy, then why is there even a debate? Like I said earlier, the ceiling is being used as a tool. Republicans are insisting that every dollar added to the ceiling needs to come with a dollar in spending cuts to the national budget.

The biggest sticking point is Republican Representative Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan, which Republicans support and Democrats universally oppose. Right now, Medicare pays doctors directly. The new plan would change that to a voucher system: Seniors would get a certain amount of money from the federal government, but they would have to purchase private insurance. Republicans say this will save the government money, and a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office supports this claim. Of course, the same report also says that seniors will personally pay about $6,000 per year more if the plan is enacted. But hey, as long as the federal balance sheets look good, right?

The point that the Republicans have missed again and again is that while ideals are important, actions have consequences. Cutting spending is an ideal, and one that can be met in many ways. But cutting spending by increasing medical costs for seniors causes actual harm to actual people – not a good way to go about it. Forcing everyone to accept a spending plan by playing political chicken with the debt ceiling freaks out investors and stock markets, which has a ripple effect on the rest of the economy. These are all negative consequences to poorly thought out policies, to the point where even people who agree with Republican ideals can’t justify the party’s actions. Ideals can be upheld, but that needs to happen in a way that actually benefits society, not damages it.

This outdoor tunnel for a train that runs from Paris to Amsterdam was recently topped with 16,000 solar panels. Image from: Enfinity

Think about it: No one is going to NIMBY a train tunnel. A tunnel is not a pristine, untouched hillside - the kind that many groups say would be ruined by wind turbines. It also doesn’t have any artistic, architectural, or historical value to speak of, so putting solar panels on one won’t violate preservation laws.

The solar panels stretch along two miles of the tunnel, in Belgium, along a train track that runs from Paris to Amsterdam. The section runs through an ancient forest near Antwerp, a city in Belgium, and the tunnel was originally built so the tracks could be protected from falling trees and other debris without clear-cutting a wide swath of ancient trees along the line. Adding solar panels to the top of the tunnel will provide the equivalent of enough electricity to power all the trains in Belgium for one day per year. In reality, the electricity will actually provide about half of the power needed to run nearby Antwerp station on a daily basis.

Plus, since no one complained about the plan, the panels were up within a year. To compare, it’s been seven months since the U.S. government approved a proposal for a large-scale solar facility in the desert of Southern California, and the project has been held up repeatedly due to environmental concerns over the fragility of the land, and a lawsuit filed by the Quechen Native American Tribe, which objects to not being consulted after it was discovered that part of the facility would reach into their land.

The above wrangling is typical for many renewable energy projects, which is why breakthroughs like the solar train are increasingly important – they prove that renewable energy can be done on a large scale without negative impacts. All it takes is a little creativity.

In March, Obama ordered troops to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, after its leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi started massacring peaceful protesters, turning a demonstration against his harsh dictatorship into an all-out civil war. Since then, we’ve technically turned control of the situation over to NATO, but we’re still providing military intelligence, logistical support and armed predator drones.

Today, the House of Representatives voted 268 to 145 on a resolution that harshly criticizes Obama for acting without the approval of Congress. It gives the White House two weeks to provide detailed information about the cost and objectives of our military actions in Libya. The measure is nonbinding, and it beat out a stronger one that would have ordered troop withdrawals immediately. What’s interesting is the bi-partisan support that the resolution got, as normally ideologically-opposed Democrats and Republicans joined to rebuke the president. Anti-war liberals were upset at entering a third conflict that, so far, has no clear goals or exit date outlined, and conservatives want to reign in executive power and government spending.

The War Powers Act, passed in 1973, says that the President has to get congressional approval within 60 days of sending troops to war. That deadline passed on May 21, which means that military actions must be stopped within 30 days (by June 21). Congress still has the chance to approve the action before troops are withdrawn, but given the House’s actions, I doubt that’s going to happen.

The idea that the president has to obey the rule of law is one of the founding principles of our nation. I don’t know what’s going to happen come June 21, but if we continue to fight in Libya, it’s going to mean the end of that principle. It will be a fundamental shift of power over to the executive branch. While expressing distaste is an important first step, a nonbinding resolution is not going to be enough. Congress needs to act more strongly and hold the president accountable.  If this war remains unauthorized, then by June, our troops should be out of the country. Plain and simple.

An artist's drawing of what the first probe to collect samples from an asteroid will look like. Image from NASA.

In 2016, NASA will launch the first mission to mine an asteroid and send samples back to earth.

The mission will be unmanned, and will rely on a space probe with a robotic arm to pluck samples from the asteroid 1999 RQ36 (exciting name, huh?). It’s about 1,900 feet in diameter, and hasn’t changed much since it was created, meaning it can give us clues to how our solar system formed. It’s supposed to be carbon-rich, a key element for creating life as we know it, so there’s the chance we’ll find bacteria or other primitive life forms.

The probe is named OSIRIS-REx, for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer. It will take OSIRIS-REx about four years to reach the asteroid, and it will spend six months mapping and collecting samples. To see an animation of what the probe will look like in action, click here.

In addition to collecting physical samples, the probe will also study the asteroid’s path. Part of the reason we keep getting “asteroid X may hit us or may not sometime in the next 50 years or so” warnings is because researches still can’t accurately predict an asteroid’s orbit in the same way they can predict a planet’s. Asteroids’ irregular shapes and rotations (they don’t necessarily spin on an axis the same way that Earth does) mean that they interact differently with the sun’s gravitational pull. By studying the asteroid’s path up close, OSIRIS-REx will pin down some of these interactions, and allow us to better predict potential future collisions.

Okay, so it’s not every star – just the ones within 380 million light years of earth. This map was put together by scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and it took a whopping 10 years to complete. They used special infrared scanners to cut through dust and other debris that normally obscures readings, in order to pinpoint the precise locations of each star. If you’re looking for a cool new desktop, you can download a full high-resolution version of the map from here.

The report (full version here) concludes that the problem with drug use isn’t the buyers – it’s the sellers. And the best way to go after the violent criminal cartels that control much of the drug trade is through legalization, especially when it comes to weed. The report said that people who use drugs, but do no harm to others, should be left alone.

“Arresting and incarcerating tens of millions of these people in recent decades has filled prisons and destroyed lives and families without reducing the availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organisations,” the report said.

In America, poorly-thought-out drug policies have led to overcrowded prisons and major disparities in sentencing – something Attorney General Eric Holder is looking to correct. For example, the sentences given to crack cocaine users compared to powder cocaine users. Up until last year, if you were caught with five grams of crack, you went to jail for five years. To get the same sentence with powder cocaine, you needed to be carrying 500 grams.

What’s more, crack cocaine users are overwhelmingly black – African Americans make up 82 percent of convictions. Powder cocaine users, however, are usually white. Since these laws were passed in the 1980s, more than 91,000 people have been sentenced. Last year, Congress passed a law that brought the two drugs onto more equal footing, but didn’t say what to do with the prisoners who had already been sentenced.

Now, Holder is supporting a proposal that would allow crack cocaine users to shave an average of three years off of their sentences, to help close the gap. (The plan would apply to federal prisoners only, not state ones.) The plan is not without its critics – Republican Lamar Smith, a Representative from Texas, said that releasing the prisoners early would endanger communities. But Holder has said that he’s only willing to consider releasing prisoners whose crimes didn’t involve weapons, and who didn’t have long criminal histories. This makes about 5,500 prisoners eligible for early release. About 300 of those are held in California, which was recently ordered by the Supreme Court to release 30,000 inmates in its overcrowded prison system.

The crack vs. powder cocaine is a perfect example of jumping the gun. When the original laws were written, crack was new to America, and no-one, including legislators, really understood what they were dealing with. But their actions have impacted tens of thousands of individuals, their families, and their communities – all without reducing the rates of actual drug use.

Globally, about 250 million people use drugs that are deemed illegal in their home countries, according to the commission report. About 10 percent of them are addicts. For those that are worried that legalizing would increase use, and therefore addiction, so far that hasn’t been the case. In Australia, Portugal and the Netherlands – three countries that have legalized drugs like weed – drug use has stayed exactly the same as when it was criminalized.

On an individual level, drug addiction has always been more of a health issue than a criminal one – that’s why criminalizing it hasn’t stopped it. Instead, the War on Drugs has created an incredibly violent black market – eliminate one cartel, and another will pop up in its place, because the demand and the money are still there. Legalizing drugs would eliminate the cartels’ main lifeline – buyers – much quicker and cheaper than throwing buyers in jail will.

The system, called Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) takes the underlying logic of a lie detector – that people’s bodies change when they lie – cranks it to the max. It’s no longer one person, hooked up to a machine, answering questions designed to determine their guilt or innocence. It’s now more like a metal detector, scanning hundreds of thousands of people a day and pinging every time it detects a certain heart rate or body movements.

While it’s true that people’s heart rates DO go up when they lie, it’s because they’re nervous about getting caught. People can be nervous for all sorts of reasons aside from guilt – and end up with the physical symptoms to match. It’s because of this that forensic scientists don’t really solve crimes using lie detectors. In fact, they’re unpredictable enough that their results aren’t used in criminal trials.

I don’t think I can stress this enough. The big, huge, gaping hole in the Department of Homeland Security’s logic is the idea that only terrorists would be nervous at airports. Only terrorists would ever have an elevated heart rate. Only terrorists would have dilated pupils, or sweaty palms. People who are afraid of flying won’t show any of these symptoms. Nor will people who’ve just had a flight cancelled. Do you have a relative who’s sick in the hospital? Or are you on your way to speak at a major conference? You will set off this machine.

Even the people who made the machine are admitting that it’s not perfect – they did lab tests before it was released into airports, and it under perfectly-controlled lab conditions it still was only 70 percent accurate. That means for every 100 people it scans, it’s going to throw false results for 30 of them. That means that both people who aren’t even nervous will set off the machine and people who are nervous will slide on by – 30 of them for every 100 scanned. A metal detector with that kind of failure ratio would get thrown out as defective, and yet the Department of Homeland Security decided to take this thing out of the lab and start using it on real people.

This is the height of ridiculous security theater – and theater is the perfect word here, since only a perfectly scripted set of behaviors will get you through one of these things. It’s pseudo-science wrapped up in flashing bells and whistles. The debate between civil rights and national security has been hashed and re-hashed each time the TSA changes their airport security measures, and this time that very serious and important debate takes a back seat because the FAST doesn’t even work a third of the time.

It would be funny if I weren’t so convinced that the FAST will be in every airport by the end of the year.

Biofuels are causing major shortages and could double the price of food over the next couple of decades. Rising prices were already a major backbone to the unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, as more and more families couldn’t afford to buy food. A new study by Oxfam said the problem will only get worse.

In April, food prices were the highest they’ve been since the 1990. Now, there are several factors aside from biofuels at play here. For example, wheat supplies dropped dramatically after extreme weather in all the major exporter countries: Russia faced droughts and wildfires and Canada and Australia lost many of their wheat crops to flood. The study said this, plus population increases, ecological degradation and urbanization, will lead to higher and higher food prices.

But without a doubt, biofuels are the main culprit. Just consider this: Right now, biofuels only make up 1.5 percent of the global fuel supply. But a whopping 40 percent of the corn crop in the United States will go into cars instead of stomachs this year. This trend will continue as legislation passed worldwide starts to take affect. The European Union has mandated that by 2020, at least 10 percent of the fuel it buys must be biofuel.

Countries are starting to wake up to the problem. A report prepared for the G20 bluntly said that its member countries (including the United States) need to stop subsidizing and mandating biofuel production. Coincidentally, several U.S. ethanol subsidies are set to expire this year – and thanks to the constant push for spending cuts, they’re probably not going to be renewed. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D – California) and Tom Coburn (R – Oklahoma) introduced legislation to end the 45 cents-per-gallon tax credit for ethanol.

This doesn’t mean biofuels are dead in the water, though, as a particular water-based life form could pave the way to non-food-based energy. Experiments on algae – the red-headed step-child of the biofuels industry – are yielding better and better results.

Theoretically, algae should be a miracle product. It sits in water, absorbs sunlight, creates food for itself, and then releases pure, environmentally-friendly hydrogen as a result. Infinitely renewable. No toxic byproducts. The problem is that algae likes making food for itself much more than it likes making hydrogen fuel for people – its hydrogen production was irregular at best, and abysmal at worst.

But a joint effort between researchers at MIT, Tel Aviv University in Isreal and the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado have found a way to coax more hydrogen out of the algae. It’s a delicate process, because getting more hydrogen means limiting the food that the algae makes for itself. Get too greedy, and you kill your algae altogether. The researchers say they have consistently boosted hydrogen production by 400 percent compared to natural processes – a promising figure. From there, the hydrogen can be used to create electricity for a fuel cell in an electric car, or combined with carbon dioxide to create methane and other fuels.

The idea of biofuels isn’t a bad one – use natural products to create clean-burning energy with minimal environmental impact. But using food as a fuel source for machines will only increase global famine and poverty; any benefits we might see from easing our dependence on foreign oil or slowing climate change will be eclipsed by the human suffering it causes. Hopefully algae provides a way around this, so we can pursue biofuels while easing the pressure on food supplies.

The researchers behind the study (published here) said they picked the $2,000 figure because that’s the average amount for common unexpected expenses, like a car breaking down, a home repair, or medical emergency. Meaning these are things that could easily happen to any of us. Only 24.9 percent of us said that we definitely could come up with the money, and 25.1 percent of us said we probably could.

Meanwhile, 27.9 percent said they were definitely unable to come up with the money at all, and another 22.2 percent said they were probably unable. When asked about how they would get the money, 18.6 percent said they would have to resort to extreme measures – like pawning personal possessions or resorting to payday loans. (By the way, payday loans can be predatory to the point of basically being scams.)

What was most surprising to the researchers wasn’t that Americans were struggling financially – the current economic climate makes that a guarantee – but WHO was struggling:

“The more surprising finding is that a material fraction of seemingly ‘middle class’ Americans also judge themselves to be financially fragile, reflecting either a substantially weaker financial position than one would expect, or a very high level of anxiety or pessimism. Both are important in terms of behavior and for public policy.”

The bottom line? It’s not exactly news that people are still struggling. But I was shocked to learn that half the country is hanging by that thin of a thread. If the economy doesn’t improve soon, more and more of them are going to snap, and both state and federal budgets are slashing away at welfare programs and other social safety nets that could catch them. Meanwhile, politicians continue helping themselves to gifts and lucrative stock options, and playing buddy-buddy with major corporations, ensuring that the rich, at least, will come out of this perfectly fine.

They cited the cost of enforcement ($204,000 a year – or just a little more than the salary of ONE state assemblyman or senator) as the reason for abandoning the proposal. Of course, the costs could easily have been paid for by fining both the lobbyists and politicians – one for offering the bribes and one for taking them. But we wouldn’t want anyone actually getting punished for breaking a law like this, now would we? And I know that at least the lobbyists have the cash, since they collectively gave $637,000 in gifts – and that’s just last year’s total.

Of course, this is small potatoes compared to the federal level. Senators can own any stock in any company they want, even when they sit on, say, the Senate Armed Services Committee, and own parts of companies that get defense department contracts.

You can’t argue that this doesn’t create a gross potential for conflicts of interest. In fact, the Senators themselves realize that owning stock in a company that you’re handing out lucrative contracts to is a problem – that’s why they ban staff members and appointees to Pentagon posts from doing so. Back in 2010, one appointee had to ditch his stocks – a move that cost him $1 million, while the senators who oversaw his confirmation didn’t have to do the same.

Between 2004 and 2009, 28 senators held different positions within the Armed Services Committee. Nineteen of them held assets with companies that do business with the Pentagon, worth anywhere from $3.8 million to $10.2 million. The fuzzy numbers are because lawmakers fill out their public financial disclosure forms in broad ranges, so Senator X only has to say that he makes between $1 million and $5 million with Company A, rather than the exact amount. (Obviously, this serves no purpose other than to create uncertainty over who’s in who’s pocket for how much.)

Transparency is the best path to accountability

Where politicians are unwilling to stop their own gravy trains, it falls to us to stay educated and stay informed. While the internet makes it easier and cheaper to publish large swaths of data – like the financial details for every politician ever – the politician’s computer is not going to reach out and force its owner to upload the information. That’s where we come in.

Do you know about the Freedom of Information Act? It’s a law that states what information can and can’t be revealed to the public about government activities, and if you think that information is being kept secret when it should be shared, you can file a request to have it publicized. Notice I said “you”. While newspapers use these requests all the time, the law applies to everyone. Anyone can file a request. Click here for how to do it.

Meanwhile, another push for openness is coming, from of all places, the IRS.  For a while now, big donors like David Koch (who usually backs conservative candidates) and George Soros (who usually backs liberals) have been giving their money to nonprofit political advocacy groups. These groups usually get heavily involved in elections, and don’t have to publicly disclose any of their donors. This neatly sidesteps standard campaign finance law, which bans anonymous donations except for small (under $100) amounts.

These nonprofits are also known as 501(c)(4) groups – referencing the section of the tax law that regulates them. It turns out, one of those rules is that donors should pay taxes on the money they donated – which is what the IRS is using to go after five big donors. Soros and Koch haven’t said publicly whether they IRS has contacted them about the investigation yet.

The money at stake is unknown – part of the investigation involves getting the five donors to submit records of all their donations. But it could easily be in the millions, and anyone convicted would have to pay back the taxes. Plus, once filed, the information on who donated what to who will be public – as it should have been in the first place.