Maybe a return to Truth and Traditions will get the Earth to change its mind:
Following a recent series of disastrous floods along the Mississippi River and destructive tornadoes across much of the United States—as well as a year of even deadlier natural catastrophes all over the world—the Earth said its options for strongly implying that it no longer wants human beings living on it have basically been exhausted.
New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman filed a lawsuit against the federal government today for its failure to review the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the Delaware River Basin.
The Delaware River Basin includes a portion of the New York City watershed that provides most of the drinking water used by over nine million New York residents.
Who knows, maybe fracking in the Delaware Basin is part of a conspiracy by the brothers K to poison all those pesky liberals living in New York City.
Whoops! Gotta’ be careful about those propensities!
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said expressive dancing “falls into the spectrum” of prohibited activities—including demonstrations, picketing and speechmaking—at the memorial. The rules, the court said, ban conduct that has the “propensity” to draw onlookers. The court’s ruling is here.
via Appeals Court: No Dancing Allowed at Jefferson Memorial – The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.
There are significant privacy issues. A system that knows when people turn down their thermostats can surmise when they have left town, creating a theft risk. A savvy divorce lawyer may discover a wayward spouse recharging her electric car at the home of a man not her husband. …
Now utilities, which are not accustomed to handling data in the way Google and Facebook have, will know a great deal about people’s lives. They might let the information leak. They might package and sell it. They might leave it open to hackers or stalkers.
“Just because I’m getting electricity in my house should not mean everything going on inside my house is going to be exposed,” said Lee Tien, an expert in smart-grid privacy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
via Promise and Peril in Chicago Utilities’ Smart Grid – NYTimes.com.
Dear Rep. Chris Murphy:
Representative Edward Markey (D-MA) is introducing new legislation – the Nuclear Power Plant Safety Act of 2011.
As your constituent, I am writing to urge you to co-sponsor his bill to ensure a safer future for all Americans. Rep. Markey said:
A nuclear disaster could happen here in America just as it has in Japan, our technological equal. This legislation will ensure that the lessons to be learned from the nuclear meltdown in Japan are incorporated into U.S. regulations to ensure the safety of our nuclear power plants in the United States.
As these catastrophic events have unfolded, it has become clear that the meltdown did not occur primarily because of earthquake-related damage; rather, it occurred because of a prolonged loss of electricity to the reactor cores and their spent nuclear fuel pools. Such events could be caused not just by earthquakes or tsunamis, but by severe storms, terrorist attacks or other events.
The Nuclear Power Plant Safety Act of 2011 will impose a moratorium on ALL new reactor licenses, reactor designs or license extensions until new safety requirements are in place.
If you or your staff have questions or need more information – or if you would like to cosponsor the legislation, please contact Dr. Michal Freedhoff of Markey’s staff at 202-225-2836.
Yours truly,
Charlie Keil
PS: People in Connecticut will be chernobylized and fukushima’d by Indian Point, geologically the most dangerous nuke plant in America! There are plants on fault lines in California that are less likely to “blow” or go “china syndrome” than Indian Point. Haven’t heard you say one mumblin word about the dangers of Indian Point. Do you know which way the wind blows most of the time? From the West to the East?
Don’t think I will vote for a Senator or a Congressman who doesn’t know which way the wind blows.
You know what they say, oil and water don’t mix. Who knows, maybe this boom in oil fracking will destroy all the water in South Texas & they can use the newly fracked oil to burn it to a crisp:
But water remains a key issue. In addition to possible contamination of surface and underground water from fracking fluids, the sheer volume of water required poses challenges, especially in South Texas, which faces a severe drought and rapidly diminishing water levels in the local aquifer.
At the rate wells are being drilled, “there’s definitely going to be a problem,” said Bay Laxson, a local water official.
Dave Thompson, regional production superintendent for the oil company SM Energy said the industry knew that water issues were “an Achilles heel.” He said his company was building a system to reuse water in the field.
The Tea Party is going up-scale with the same Big Biz Money that owns everyone else in Washtington:
But when the base also realizes that the Tea Party Republicans they elected last November are already pocketing huge amounts of cash from the same bailed-out firms they once railed against, the sense of betrayal among the ranks could become venomous.
via The Tea Party Leads a Revolution Against Itself | The Nation.
Truth and Traditions anyone?
WASHINGTON – The closest nuclear power plant to tornado-ravaged Joplin, Mo., was singled out weeks before the storm for being vulnerable to twisters.
via ‘Tornado Alley’ reactor not fully twister-proof – Yahoo! News.
Surprise, surprise! How many US nuclear reactors will be in the way of major storms in the next 3 months, 6 months, year?
Signed, sealed, and delivered:
Chevron’s lobbyists are a Who’s Who of former government officials. DC’s rule of thumb: corporations ensure better access to lawmakers when they put their former colleagues from government on their payroll. Chevron pays the Breaux Lott Leadership Group of the law firm Patton Boggs $135,000 every three months to lobby members of Congress. That means former Senators John Breaux and Trent Lott hobnob with their Senate contemporaries, and ask whatever Chevron tells them to ask for. Chevron has lobbyist Richard Hohlt on retainer, close friend of Karl Rove, and the kingmaker of a monthly gathering of GOP leaders inside DC called the “Off the Record Club.” Chevron pays the law firm Akin Gump $90,000 every three months to take advantage of the firm’s Democratic stars, including Al From, and former top staffers to Senator Max Baucus and Rahm Emanuel.
via Tyson Slocum: Chevron Banks on Profitable Political Agenda.
Truth and Traditions 