Posts
PNN 4/19 - Don't Frack me BRO
7:01 - 7:09 - RWS
7:10 - 7:16 - UNSUNG
7:17 - 7:30 - Mark Pafford
7:30 - 8pm - Brook Hines
8:01 - 8:21pm - Karen Dwyer
8:22 - 8:38pm - Jennifer Hecker
8:39 - 9:00pm - Richard Silvestri
1. GYRO vs BURNIN UP - either way... Unmentionable
When 64 yr old Vietnam Vet John Constantino burned himself to death on the DC Mall in October of 2013 I couldn’t stop thinking about this man and his act. Who was he? What compelled him? What was his life’s story? What were his political views, his life’s station, etc? I wanted to write a blog then but didn’t. “Tax The 1%”
The police captain on the scene who addressed the news cameras eerily avoided the question, mumbling that it was “something about social justice,” as if he were annoyed to address any specifics. So, we know nothing else. Not even a name was given. A dog run over by car might have gotten more respect and news coverage than this unknown man.
What kind of a society have we become? A man decides to commit suicide as an act of political courage, and is dismissed by both the police and media as unworthy of further examination?
When a man in Tunisia set himself on fire in protest of the draconian taxation and intimidating police enforcement of the state (not unlike in Ferguson and most American racially and financially-motivated policing toward Black Americans) it led to the Arab Spring.
How would Americans react if these stories were given a full airing on the news?How many could relate to the sheer despair, his plea in addressing squarely the plight of economic inequality, or the implicit message that our present an economic system has a savage inhumanity as its core feature, and that feature grinds people down in the most undignified of ways and that the rich must stop gaming the system and pay their fair share? Our media chose to look the other way in speculation about any of these salient truths.
It is not unclear that these two men brought their grievances to DC and in spectacular fashion attempted to connect with our deepest consciences.
John Constantino was a 64 yr old Vietnam Veteran living in Mount Laurel, N.J. when he came to DC to kill himself. His family declined to comment, choosing instead to release a stiff statement through a lawyer saying only that he had mental problems, as if that would suffice to explain his planned act away.
Of these issues the two addressed we continue to bury our heads in the sand about. Wall St gets bigger and more intoxicated with greed and power. Their omnipresence exerts a dark cloud over all of our lives with respect to pretty much every facet of our lives, including student loans, consumer debt, fortified positions in the real estate and financial markets, and the fact that our electoral politics are officially an auction completely hijacked by their unopposed position as the highest bidders. Now we have the ostentatious spectacle HRC’s Presidency, already anointed by the Power Elite brokers. The whole charade is a mockery to anyone with a sense of morality, dignity and righteousness. This is not democracy. It’s plutocracy. The man with the Tax the 1% sign was saying something most people deeply resonate with: the current system of unbridled capitalism, concentrating wealth in the hands of the very few, is manifestly unfair and is destroying the lives of too many.
2. Fracking Bills Action Required
Fracking regulation bills have moved through the House and Senate in a manner we could not predict!
That's why Jim and I wrote this article.
Anyone that understands what fracking is would be opposed to it in Florida. Anyone else supporting it is benefiting from our vulnerable natural resources.
This is a dire statewide issue for Florida's water and must be stopped with solidarity on all water fronts throughout the state.
Please consider, while it may not happen directly underneath the ground we stand on, it will happen underneath the ground our neighbors live on, unless we can stop it now before it gets rooted through regulations. And we all know, under us is our water, all of our fresh water supply.
Senator Richter, bill sponsor, has been saying that we cannot stop technology, we must regulate it. Not true, we can stop a technology that has been known to cause harm throughout the world; there is no such thing as safe fracking. We already have laws, rules and mandates in place that protect our water and land resources and we will use them until fracking is banned outright in Florida. Clean Water act of 1972, Florida Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act (United States).
Last committee meeting ( Government Appropriations) is on Tuesday to make a decision on whether or not fracking regulations should move forward and be voted on by the entire Senate (and House).
I will be there, will you stand with me, stop regulations and work to ban fracking outright in Florida.
Sign the petition and make phone calls or write emails.
Call additional influential people on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Meeting on Tuesday, April 21, 2015 in Tallahassee.
SW Florida Conservancy
3. STOP TPP AGAIN
Congress just introduced a troubling "fast track" bill that would trade away clean air and water while increasing gas exports and fracking. Under fast track, environmentally destructive trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are rushed through Congress with no oversight or accountability.
We've been down this road before. More than 20 years ago, Congress fast-tracked the approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).1 The climate impact of NAFTA has been enormous -- it empowered corporate polluters to challenge environmental protections, boosted destructive mining in Mexico, and contributed to the rise of Canada's toxic tar sands industry. The TPP represents more of the same.
The TPP is often referred to as "NAFTA on steroids." This massive trade pact, being negotiated behind closed doors by a dozen countries, would cover roughly 40 percent of the world's economy. The climate impact of an agreement this large cannot be underestimated.
If approved, the agreement would open the floodgates to even more fracking
.............
Just today, a bill was introduced in Congress that would fast track the approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — attempting to further limit public input on this massive, pro-big business trade deal.
The TPP is being called NAFTA on steroids and has been negotiated in secret since 2008 among some of the world's most powerful corporations. But leaked documents have revealed just how terrible this trade deal is, including a key provision that would allow companies to sue local governments over democratically enacted laws that they claim hurt their profits.¹
That means that if the TPP goes through, local initiatives like GMO labeling laws and fracking bans could be challenged in international trade courts.
Pro-big business trade deals like the TPP are designed to boost the profits of multinational corporations, but they do so at the expense of the working class, our environment and our democratic rights. And while Big Business and Wall Street banks have been writing the deal behind closed doors, our elected representatives and the public have been shut out.
4. Adoption Restrictions too!
Hi everybody! In another shocking turn of events the Senate has decided to hear the Indiana-style Adoption Discrimination bill after all Monday at 1PM in Senate Rules.
While it is true that the House and Senate have now both passed a bill repealing the 1977 ban on gay adoption (a bill that still has not been signed by the governor), anti-gay extremists now view this bill as an opportunity to reintroduce discrimination into the adoption process.
Please help us call and email Senators on the list below. They are getting pressured by their base to support this measure. If passed, even with the repeal of the gay adoption ban which has not been enforced since 2010, our child welfare crisis will get worse at the expense of Florida’s vulnerable children. ‘
PLEASE HELP!!!
Thanks!
---
Carlos Guillermo Smith
Public Policy Specialist
404-934-4944 mobile
5. Hilary the Newly Patented POPULIST
NEW & IMPROVED - What's Warren thinking?
Politico talked to some of Hillary’s “former” constituents on Wall Street about the “populist” rhetoric now coming from the former Senator from New York. Hillary has even gone so far as to praise Wall Street’s main nemesis, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), as a “progressive champion.” But Wall Street isn’t worried. They know she’s just saying what she needs to say to get elected. - WHO WHAT WHY
ITS NOT THAT DANGEROUS CHEMICAL PLANTS ARE SITUATED NEAR MINORITY COMMUNITIES
6 POLLUTED RACISM - They told Prof. Tyrone Hayes
Its just that Minorities tend to choose economically blighted areas to LIVE!
7. BRAIN's CHEAP & POOR and oh yeah under nourished under stimulated and culturally poor too
Why do poorer children consistently lag behind their richer peers? Neuroscientists studying the achievement gap found that the brains of children in families earning less than $25,000 per year had surface areas 6% percent smaller than those whose families earned $150,000 or more. They scored lower on cognitive tests, too. So, instead of blaming “failed teachers” and “failed schools,” maybe it’s time to blame afailed economic system that denies the poor kids basic requirements necessary for proper physical development and growth.
8. John Olivers proves that AMERICANS DO CARE ABOUT THEIR PRIVACY
show their sacred places to uncle sam
9. BP LIES - Activists Tied
Cherri Foytlin and other New Orleanians and other activists go to BP HQ in Houston and are arrested
10. FUKUSHIMA NEWS
too dangerous for ROBOTS!
via Japan Times / April 11, 2015 / A remote-controlled robot inserted to survey the inside of the No. 1 reactor at the damaged Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has stopped functioning, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.
As a first step in the utility’s effort to remove melted nuclear fuel from the bottom of the unit’s primary containment vessel, the shape-shifting robot was sent in Friday morning to find the exact location of the highly radioactive debris.
Set to cover some 20 meters of the first floor on the first day, the robot began its trip at around 11:20 a.m. but halted at around 2:10 p.m. after completing two-thirds of the route, Tepco said.
The utility said footage from the robot’s camera shows it passed an opening leading to the vessel’s basement, where the molten fuel is believed to have ended up after the core meltdowns occurred after the March 2011 quake and tsunami.
11. West Coast Fisheries Closed
NY Times, Apr 15, 2015 (emphasis added): [Regulators] approved an emergency closure of commercial sardine fishing off Oregon, Washington and California… Earlier this week, the council shut down the next sardine season… [R]evised estimates of sardine populations… found the fish were declining in numbers faster than earlier believed… [Stocks are] much lower than estimated last year… The reasons are not well-understood.
Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting, April 13, 2015: Ben Enticknap, Oceana senior scientist (1:08:00 in) — “We’ve seen a significant change in recruitment [Recruitment: The number of new young fish that enter a population]. There’s been practically no recruitment in recent years, and this was not expected.”
Undercurrent News, Apr 14, 2015: [A]ccording to the report on the emergency action from the PFMC… “the total stock biomass of Pacific sardine is declining as a result of poor recruitment“… [A California Wetfish Producers Association official said] “little recruitment was observed in 2011-2014.”
Oregonian, Apr 13, 2015: Pacific coast sardines are facing a population collapse so severe[fishing] will be shut down… [The] downward spiral in spite of favorable water conditions has ocean-watchers worried there’s more to this collapse than cyclical population trends. “There are a lot of weird things happening out there, and we’re not quite sure why they aren’t responding the way they should,” said Kevin Hill, a NOAA Fisheries biologist… Fishery managers are adding it to a list of baffling circumstances off the West Coast… NOAA surveys indicate very few juvenile fish made it through their first year. “The population isn’t replacing itself,” Hill said.
SFist, Apr 14, 2015: [T]he population appears decimated… As the Council writes, “temperatures in the Southern California Bight have risen in the past two years, but we haven’t seen an increase in young sardines”… Sardines typically spawn in warmer waters, with cold water decreasing their numbers.
SF Chronicle, Apr 14, 2015: Sardine population collapses… [There's] evidence stocks are going through the same kind of collapse [seen in the 1950s]… The sardine population along the West Coast has collapsed… Causes of crisis — A lack of spawning… was blamed for the decline… Severedownturn… things recently took a turn for the worse… because of a lack of spawning due to poor ocean conditions in 2014… The collapse this year is the latest in a series of alarming die-offs, sicknesses and population declines in the ocean ecosystem along the West Coast. Anchovies… have also declined [due to] a lack of zooplankton… Record numbers of starving sea lions… Brown pelicans, too, have suffered from mass reproductive failures and are turning up sick and dead… Strange diseases have also been proliferating in the sea…
Monterey Herald, Apr 13, 2015: For the first time in 30 years [sardine fishing] will be banned.
KPCC, Apr 1, 2015: The first time that sardine fishing has been banned since federal management of the fishery began… Many are worried a… catastrophic crash is happening.
TUNE IN Sunday at 7pm (Eastern)
Listen in as PNN's News Director Rick Spisak brings you the latest FRACKING FACTS direct from the leaders of the ANTI-FRACKING ACTIVISTS fighting to protect our water resources. While the legislature is distracted cashing checks, and the regulators charged with protecting our water are asleep at the switch.
Mark Pafford D. Minority Leader [District 86] in the Florida House give us his Legislative report with two weeks remaining in the session
Jennifer Hecker Director of Natural Resource Policy of the Conservency of Southwest Florida gives us a Legislative Update
Dr. Karen Dwyer of the StoneCrab Alliance gives the news about the SETBACK at the Collier County Commission - PROTESTORS SILENCED
Richard Silvestri VP of the Treasure Coast Progressive Alliance talks about the GRASSROOTS response to inattentive Legislators and Sonambulistic regulators, who never saw a spill that could worry them or a polluter that deserved a serious looking into.
A special appearance of Brook Hines who will give us her Report and Tallahassee Update
Tune in Sunday at 7pm
E.G. VILLIANATOS Author of Poisoned Spring
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