Former GM vice chairman says higher gasoline taxes would help wean us off our addiction to oil. I respectfully disagree: promoting alternative forms of travel (like public transportation) and rethinking our relationship to our living spaces (maybe we would like them more walkable or bikeable?) would help wean us off our addiction to oil. I'm not the biggest fan of gas taxes anyway; they hit the poor harder.

Sam Pizzigati examines why it's so tough to get a handle on CEO pay, even though publicly-traded corporations must by law disclose executive pay. Long story short: too much CEO pay is stock-related, which can fluctuate wildly in value. Of course, the big story, as you no doubt already know, is that CEOs make a lot more than workers, a lot more "more" than they used to.

Rhode Island state Treasurer demands givebacks from state employees to "save" their pensions -- but continues to pay out big fees to hedge fund managers who roll the dice with those employees' money. Take a good look at that kind of corruption, if it doesn't make you sick. And remember that the thing about a pension is that it's supposed to be there for you when you retire, not that it's supposed to make a killing in the stock market.

Snopes hasn't yet determined if that parochial school fourth grade science quiz -- you know, the one you saw on Facebook -- is real or not. I wondered that myself, even after all these years of right-wingers proving all my fears about them and worse. But n.b. the response the quiz tells children to give when anyone asserts that the world is "millions or billions" of years old: "were you there?" Like that can't be turned on a kid who asserts that the Bible is "the History Book of the Universe"! Seriously, that's a big worms-not-in-can problem.

Even in North Carolina, it's hard out there for a pimp: a right-wing bill that would have repealed the state's renewable energy standard got absolutely buried in a House committee. Because, dig this, folks understood that renewable energy standards actually create jobs for the people who help get businesses up to speed. Predictably, some teabagger whose name will go unmentioned here said Republicans who voted against the measure "need to be held accountable." And I suspect they will be -- by the voters who re-elect them. One day, maybe teabaggers will be tired of being wrong about everything.

A Pew Research Center study tells us that "(t)he U.S. economy has recovered for households with net worth of $500,000 or more" but "(t)he recession continues for almost everyone else." And THAT! IS THE MOST! SURPRISING! THING! I! HAVE EVER! HEARD!