Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is HELP WANTED, sneak into America and work for Trump!
• EPI: CEO pay has risen 940% since 1978. The typical worker’s pay has risen 11.9%: The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute reports that CEO compensation continues to be very high compared with typical worker compensation (by a ratio of 278-to-1 or 221-to-1). That ratio has soared over the past half-century. The CEO-to-typical-worker compensation ratio with stock options realized was 20-to-1 in 1965 and 58-to-1 in 1989.
• Seattle city leaders launch an ambitious version of their own Green New Deal:
It's a nonbinding resolution, and like the national Green New Deal manifesto that's being promoted by Democrats in Congress, presidential hopefuls and the young activists in the Sunrise Movement, it's still mostly aspirational.
But it begins to sketch out a roadmap for Seattle's future as the city tries to both adapt to climate change and cut emissions in line with what the world's scientists say is needed.
The resolution envisions free public transit, a limit on new fossil fuel construction, 100 percent electric vehicles for ride sharing, and an infrastructure plan that takes sea level rise into account, among other ideas.
• Neiiiiiiiiigh! Guidelines issued today by the U.S. Department of Transportation approve of taking miniature horses aboard flights as service animals. Especially when the animals are exotic, there’s been considerable debate for years over what service animals should be allowed on planes. The miniature horses stand two to three feet tall and weigh around 100 pounds. The guidelines don’t legally require airlines allow therapy miniature horses, but if they choose not to they might be penalized.
MIDDAY TWEET
• EPA expected soon to implement new rule that won’t regulate methane emissions from their existing operations: Only new upstream facilities will fall under the rule, meaning that some 84% of the petroleum’s sector’s methane emissions won’t be covered, according to research by the Environmental Defense Fund. Over the short run, methane is many times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
• Ocean City, N.J., puts together a team of winged assassins to deal with its gull problem: The gulls are notorious for their aggressive theft of food, snagging french fries and other food right from hands of some of the 150,000 visitors who come to the beach every summer. “It’s reached a point where you can’t eat on the boardwalk or beach without birds flying at your hands and face. It truly has become a safety hazard,” according to Ocean City’s mayor, Jay A. Gillian. The city decided to put four hawks, two falcons, and an owl to work curbing the gulls. It’s paying $2,100 a day through Labor Day for the use of the trained raptors, which are provided by East Coast Falcons. The raptors could easily kill the gulls, but they have been trained just to scare them away. They have been effective enough at this to get their hours of duty each day extended.
• Automaker says “first Porsche” Sotheby’s hopes to auction for $20 million isn’t a Porsche.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: ALL-NEW KITM World HQ construction day show, with an international flavor! Tying together Moscow Mitch McConnell's Russian-backed aluminum plant, the right-wing YouTube-ification of Brazil & int’l support for the rise of Sweden's anti-immigrant right.