Pennsylvania labor activists marched on Capitol Hill yesterday in protest against the shutdown of three refineries in the state. Politicians from both sides supported them in their call to stem the job losses and address the imminent threat to the nation’s energy security that the loss of gasoline production in the east coast now poses. The refining companies (Sunoco and ConocoPhillips) were quick to respond with the lame retort that some of these...
A prominent climate change skeptic told Congress on Monday he no longer doubts that global warming is real and caused by humans, and joined other scientists in urging action to stop it. Physicist Richard Muller, director of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, whose two-year research was funded in part by a foundation formed by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, said he could find no bias in other studies. “We confirm that over the...
by: Pat Garofalo via http://thinkprogress.org Earlier this year, the USDA made an attempt to bolster the nutrition guidelines for the federal school lunch program. Under the new guidelines, for instance, school lunches would be limited to one cup of starchy vegetables a week and the ability of schools to count tomato sauce on pizza towards their fruit and vegetables requirement would be scaled back. But House Republicans, in a new spending plan unveiled...
by: Ted McLaughlin via jobsanger.blogspot.com There’s a political divide in this country over what to do about the poor and disadvantaged. Some people think we are our brother’s keeper and that means it is our responsibility to take care of people who have fallen through the cracks in our society. And the best way to do this is to use government to help them (through education, welfare, food stamps, job training, etc.). Others...
by Paul Nurse via newscientist.com IF YOU respect science you will probably be disturbed by the following opinions. On evolution: intelligent design is “a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science class”. And don’t believe in “a theory that human beings – thinking, loving beings – originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea or from monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.” On the use of...
‘In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American. There...
A rider inserted into the federal budget bill strips away protection for endangered gray wolves. The move has left environmentalists both seething and admitting defeat after years of legal wrangling over the fate of the wolves. The political tussle over U.S. spending has ensnared an unlikely victim, the gray wolf, whose long-time status as an endangered species will likely be axed due to a late addition to the budget deal. The annex, or rider,...
by Ralph Nader The unfolding multiple nuclear reactor catastrophe in Japan is prompting overdue attention to the 104 nuclear plants in the United States—many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, some on the west coast exposed to potential tsunamis. Nuclear power plants boil water to produce steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. Nuclear power’s overly complex fuel cycle begins with uranium mines and ends with deadly radioactive wastes for which...
Opposing Republican efforts to forbid climate regulations, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said Tuesday that the science of human-made climate change is “unequivocally true.” Rockefeller, a strong defender of his state’s coal industry, spoke out on the Senate floor against an amendment submitted to a small business bill by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of the ability to regulate greenhouse pollution. // McConnell introduced the amendment, drafted by...
Washington looks pretty clean: white marble monuments, broad, tree-lined avenues, the beautiful, green spread of the Mall. But its inhabitants—at least those who vote in Congress—can’t see any more clearly than the smoke-shrouded residents of Beijing, China. Their view, however, is obscured by a different kind of smog. Call it money pollution. The torrents of cash now pouring unchecked into our political system cloud judgment and obscure science. Money pollution matters as much as...
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