Tag Archives: government

Rick Perry Dismantled Texas’ Public Integrity Unit. Now He’s Facing a Grand Jury.

by EdmundHinson Posted on April 16, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Rick Perry—Republican Texas governor, failed 2012 presidential candidate, and potential 2016 retread contender—is battling legal trouble at home, thanks to his controversial veto that demolished the state office tasked with investigating political scandals. On Monday, a Texas judge convened a grand jury to probe Perry’s decision last year to axe funding for the state’s Public Integrity Unit. The special prosecutor investigating the case, Michael McCrum, has not filed any charges. But earlier this month he said, “I cannot elaborate on what exactly is concerning me, but I can tell you I am very concerned about certain aspects of what happened here.”

Perry’s troubles started when he attempted to to displace the government official in charge of the Public Integrity Unit, a state-funded watchdog agency that investigates charges of public corruption. The unit is led by whoever is serving as the Travis County district attorney, who is based in Austin. The Current DA is Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat. Last April, she was arrested for drunk driving.

After Lehmberg’s arrest, Perry called for her resignation, claiming that the public could no longer place its trust in an official who herself ran afoul of the law. But the governor has no direct control over her job, a locally-elected position, and a grand jury rejected a former opponent’s attempt to have Lehmberg removed from office. For her part, Lehmberg refused to resign, though she said she won’t run for reelection in 2016. That wasn’t enough for Perry. With Lehmberg holding on to her job, the governor decided to cut off the two-year $7.5 million in state funding for the watchdog unit with a line-item veto. “Despite the otherwise good work the Public Integrity Unit’s employees,” a Perry statement said after the veto, “I cannot in good conscience support continued State funding for an office with statewide jurisdiction at a time when the person charged with ultimate responsibility of that unit has lost the public’s confidence.”

Continue Reading »

Originally posted here: 

Rick Perry Dismantled Texas’ Public Integrity Unit. Now He’s Facing a Grand Jury.

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Rick Perry Dismantled Texas’ Public Integrity Unit. Now He’s Facing a Grand Jury.

Who Started the Culture Wars, Anyway?

by JuliannHook Posted on April 11, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A couple of days ago Paul Waldman wrote about Persecuted, a new movie that features a Christian evangelist who gets framed for murder by an evil senator and then spends the rest of the film running from government agents. It all sounds pretty silly, and it’s come in for plenty of mockery on the left. But after watching the trailer, I have to say that it didn’t sound much sillier than plenty of other movies and TV shows I’ve seen. In Hollywood, evil businessmen have done a lot worse than this to environmental activists and the CIA has done a lot worse to national security whistleblowers.

So fine. Why not make a silly movie about a persecuted evangelist instead of a persecuted journalist trying to expose the CIA? It’s not my cup of paranoid thriller tea, but all of us enjoy being paranoid about different things. And I was happy to see that, unlike many lefties, Waldman concedes that right-wing Christian paranoia isn’t completely ridiculous:

But liberals should acknowledge that for more fundamentalist Christians, there’s a genuine feeling that underlies their fears. In many ways, the contemporary world really has turned against them. Society has decided that their beliefs about family—in which sex before marriage is shameful and wicked, and women are subordinate to their husbands—are antiquated and worthy of ridicule. Their contempt for gay people went from universal to acceptable to controversial to deplorable in a relatively short amount of time. If you are actually convinced that, in the words of possible future senator and current congressman Paul Broun, “I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old,” then modern geology is an outright assault on your most fundamental beliefs. And so is biology and physics and many other branches of science.

And it’s not just changing culture. Over the last half century, various branches of government have also taken plenty of proactive steps to marginalize religion. Prayer in public school has been banned. Creches can no longer be set up in front of city hall. Parochial schools are forbidden from receiving public funds. The Ten Commandments can’t be displayed in courtrooms. Catholic hospitals are required to cover contraceptives for their employees. Gay marriage is legal in more than a dozen states and the number is growing rapidly.

Needless to say, I consider these and plenty of other actions to be proper public policy. I support them all. But they’re real things. Conservative Christians who feel under attack may be partly the victims of cynical politicians and media moguls, and a lot of their pity-party attempts at victimization really are ridiculous. But their fears do have a basis in reality. To a large extent, it’s the left that started the culture wars, and we should hardly be surprised that it provoked a strong response. In fact, it’s a sign that we’re doing something right.

As far as I’m concerned, the culture wars are one of the left’s greatest achievements. Our culture needed changing, and we should take the credit for it. Too often, though, we pretend that it’s entirely a manufactured outrage of the right, kept alive solely by wild fantasies and fever swamp paranoia. That doesn’t just sell the right short, it sells the left short too. It’s our fight. We started it, and we should be proud of it.

Continue at source – 

Who Started the Culture Wars, Anyway?

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Who Started the Culture Wars, Anyway?

Solar Power: Let Me Decide or Buy Me Off?

by Harriet34F Posted on April 11, 2014

Solar Power: Let Me Decide or Buy Me Off?

Throughout the energy conversation we’ve been having with the Nuclear and Coal articles, several readers have commented about the inclusion of solar energy. Solar energy is sold to us as the end-all-be-all solution to our energy needs, and I find it hard not to argue against very specific aspects of that sales pitch. It’s clean, it’s renewable, it’s somewhat readily available, and it has little to no long-term impact. The Department of Energy claims that a 100 square mile solar panel field in Nevada can generate 800 gigawatts of power. That’s enough to power the entire United States.

Now, let’s collectively pull our head out of the clouds and talk about the ugly side of the situation …
The national average for electricity runs at about 12.6 cents per kilowatt hour, and the average house uses about 1,000 kilowatt hours per month. Before taxes, regulatory, and administrative fees that makes for a $126.00 per month electric bill. You wake up, and decide that you are going green. You hop in your Prius and buzz down to “Solar Panels R US”, and buy your run-of-of-the-mill solar panel kit. After 10 panels, 10 brackets to mount them, and a power inverter, you’ve officially got everything you need to create a whopping 345kwh of energy. Price tag? A mere $8,300 for the BASIC hardware, which is on the low end; installation not included. Now you’ve got a roof full of solar panels that produce 345kwh of energy, or an average energy savings of $43.47 dollars a month …

At that rate, assuming you get 100% potential from your solar panel array, it will take you 15 years to break even on your investment, at the very minimum, based on national averages. Imagine what the break-even on the 100 square mile theoretical “Panel Land” would be.

“Okay, it’s pricey … but what about the ‘Large Scale’ solar industry?” Solar energy is twice as expensive as natural gas energy. It’s 67% more expensive than wind produced power, for that matter. The national average for solar energy is over 80 cents per kilowatt hour after factoring in all the associated costs. Now that doesn’t sound so bright …

Expenses aside, the solar power contribution to the current power grid tripled from 2012 to 2013. A staggering 29% of all new energy installations in 2013 were solar power related. So if it’s more expensive, and still grew, who footed that bill?
You did.The government provides extensive solar energy subsidies, as high as 96 cents per kilowatt hour. Those subsidies come directly from our tax dollars. For every single tax dollar spent on natural gas subsidies, $1,200 dollars were spent on solar subsidies. In 2010 solar energy subsides were $775.64 dollars per megawatt of solar energy added to the power grid. That adds up to about 37 billion dollars a year. To put it in perspective, that’s enough money to build six modern nuclear power plants.

So we just cut the subsidy right?

earth911

View original – 

Solar Power: Let Me Decide or Buy Me Off?

Posted in alo, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Omega, ONA, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Solar Power: Let Me Decide or Buy Me Off?

Amid ‘Exploding’ Houses and a Wave of Mud, a Maternal Instinct Flared

by Myrna Posted on April 9, 2014

When a landslide swept down on Oso, Wash., last month, it propelled Amanda Skorjanc and her infant son about 600 feet, with the couch they had been sitting on swept along with them. Original link:  Amid ‘Exploding’ Houses and a Wave of Mud, a Maternal Instinct Flared ; ;Related ArticlesWashington Landslide Deaths Rise to 33How to Think Like the Dutch in a Post-Sandy WorldOp-Ed Contributors: Global Warming Scare Tactics ;

More here:

Amid ‘Exploding’ Houses and a Wave of Mud, a Maternal Instinct Flared

Posted in alo, ATTRA, Bunn, Citadel, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, Mop, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Amid ‘Exploding’ Houses and a Wave of Mud, a Maternal Instinct Flared

Exxon Has 25 Billion Barrels of Fossil Fuel and Plans To Extract it All

by alka24 Posted on April 2, 2014

Mother Jones

ExxonMobil has 25.2 billion barrels worth of oil and gas in its current reserves, it’s going to extract and sell all of it, and isn’t expecting any meddling climate regulations to get in the way.

That’s the main takeaway of a report the company released this week to its investors, examining the risk that greenhouse gas emissions rules in the US and worldwide might pose to its fossil fuel assets. Exxon made headlines a couple weeks back when it promised to issue the report after facing pressure from shareholders led by Arjuna Capital, a sustainable wealth management firm.

If stricter limits on carbon pollution or high carbon taxes force energy companies to keep their holdings buried underground, the thinking among environmental economists goes, it could topple the companies’ value and leave investors holding the bag. The result, economists warn, would be a collapse of the so-called “carbon bubble.”

Some big energy companies (including Exxon) have already nodded to this problem, by building a theoretical carbon price into their projected balance sheets. But this report is the first time a large oil and gas company has published a detailed assessment of its own climate risk exposure, according to the New York Times.

The report doesn’t present a very optimistic view of the prospects for aggressive climate action by world leaders.

“We are confident that none of our hydrocarbon reserves are now or will become ‘stranded’,” the report says. “Stranded assets” is a term climate economists use to refer to fossil fuel reserves that could be stuck in the ground if countries around the world implement sufficiently stringent carbon regulations to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels—a threshold agreed to at the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen. The amount of carbon humans can release without exceeding this limit—roughly 485 billion metric tons of carbon beyond what we’ve already emitted—is often called the “carbon budget.”

Exxon’s report suggests that its planners don’t believe serious carbon limits will be on the books anytime soon, leaving the company free to burn through its reserves of oil and gas. That’s a disconcerting vision to come just on the heels of Sunday’s new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which predicted a nightmarish future if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t slowed soon.

“The reserves are going to be able to turn into money, because they’re assuming there isn’t going to be a policy change,” said Natural Resources Defense Council Director of Climate Programs David Hawkins. “They’re definitely saying that no matter how bad it gets, the world’s addiction to fossil fuels will be so overwhelming that the governments of the world will just suck it up and let people suffer.”

Continue Reading »

Original source: 

Exxon Has 25 Billion Barrels of Fossil Fuel and Plans To Extract it All

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, Hagen, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Exxon Has 25 Billion Barrels of Fossil Fuel and Plans To Extract it All

Christie Lawyers Engage in Special Pleading For Their Client

by BradlyYates Posted on March 27, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A couple of months ago, Chris Christie hired a legal firm to investigate whether Chris Christie knew about the September 9-12 lane closures on the George Washington Bridge. So they went off and investigated. Among other things, they investigated the charge from David Wildstein that he had mentioned the lane closures to Christie during a September 11 memorial ceremony. Check out the way Christie’s legal firm dealt with this:

There is, however, no evidence we have seen that the Governor and Wildstein actually had any substantive discussion of the Fort Lee lane realignment at that public event.

To begin with, it seems incredible that, in a public setting leading up to a 9/11 Memorial event, surrounded by other government officials and scores of constituents seeking photographs and handshakes, anything substantive or inculpatory would have been discussed.

Moreover, the context of Wildstein’s counsel’s claim that “evidence exists” of the Governor’s alleged knowledge of the lane realignment is critically important….Wildstein’s counsel’s letter was a not-too-subtle attempt to press the Port Authority into granting Wildstein indemnification while, at the same time, to induce federal authorities to grant Wildstein immunity in exchange for Wildstein’s information here.

….In any event, even if credited, any passing reference by Wildstein—made in a social, public setting at the time of a public 9/11 Memorial event—to a traffic issue in Fort Lee would not have been meaningful or memorable to the Governor. Indeed, it seems highly unlikely such a brief mention, even if made by Wildstein to the Governor, would have registered with the Governor at all. Only a more substantive conversation about the ulterior motive behind the Port Authority’s traffic study would have registered, and in that public setting, any claim that such a conversation occurred would lack credibility. In any event, the Governor recalls no such exchange.

Tell me: does this sound like a dispassionate review of the evidence? Or does it sound like the closing arguments to a jury on behalf of a client accused of corruption?

I have no real opinion about whether Christie knew about the lane closures. My guess is that he didn’t, though that’s mainly because I credit him with not being a complete moron. At this point, my guess remains that Christie set up a nakedly political operation in his office; made it clear what he expected of them; and then let them freewheel without much supervision. The result was a bunch of eager beavers who eventually decided they were invulnerable and started doing really stupid things.

But those are just guesses. My real interest in this passage is the tone of voice. And that tone is plain: these guys are going out of their way to spin the evidence to exonerate Christie. I suspect the entire report should be read with that in mind.

Original article:

Christie Lawyers Engage in Special Pleading For Their Client

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Christie Lawyers Engage in Special Pleading For Their Client

Administration Announces Yet Another Obamacare Extension

by Severynjg5 Posted on March 26, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This is about the least surprising announcement of the week:

The Obama administration has decided to give extra time to Americans who say that they are unable to enroll in health-care plans through the federal insurance marketplace by the March 31 deadline.

Federal officials confirmed Tuesday evening that all consumers who have begun to apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, but who do not finish by Monday, will have until about mid-April to ask for an extension. Under the new rules, people will be able to qualify for an extension by checking a blue box on HealthCare.gov to indicate that they tried to enroll before the deadline. This method will rely on an honor system; the government will not try to determine whether the person is telling the truth.

I suppose conservatives are going to throw their usual fit over this, but it’s neither unexpected nor very serious. Unlike the renewal delay and the employer mandate delay, which are both calculatedly political and of long duration, this one is merely an attempt to allow as many people as possible to enroll. It’s pretty justifiable, and it only extends the deadline by a few weeks. Nothing to get hot and bothered about.

Link:  

Administration Announces Yet Another Obamacare Extension

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Administration Announces Yet Another Obamacare Extension

Alaska Republican: “Birth Control Is for People Who Don’t Necessarily Want to Act Responsibly”

by MichaelMaddock Posted on March 21, 2014

Mother Jones

â&#128;&#139;

Fetal alcohol syndrome is a devastating problem in Alaska, so state Senate Finance Committee co-chairman Pete Kelly, a Fairbanks Republican, has made it his personal mission to stamp it out. This week, in an interview with the Anchorage Daily News, he described the ways he plans to clamp down on the problem, including spending “a lot of money” on media campaigns and providing publicly funded pregnancy tests in Alaska’s bars and restaurants, so that women will be discouraged from shooting whiskey if they find out they’re pregnant. But make no mistake: Kelly is not interested in providing state-funded birth control in public places. He says that “birth control is for people who don’t necessarily want to act responsibly” and that would amount to “social engineering.”

Providing pregnancy tests in bars isn’t an entirely new concept. In 2012, a pub in Minnesota got national attention for installing a vending machine that dispensed pregnancy tests at $3 a pop—but the tests weren’t state-funded. Kelly envisions the government contracting with a nonprofit to make the tests widely available at places that serve alcohol. As he explains, “So if you’re drinking, if you’re out at the big birthday celebration and you’re kind of like, ‘Gee, I wonder if I…?’ You can just go in the bathroom and there should be a plastic, Plexiglas bowl in there, and that’s part of the public relations campaign, too. You’re going to have some kind of card on there with a message.”

The interviewer asked Kelly whether he would also support offering state-funded birth control in bars. Alaska does not accept federal money from the government’s Medicaid expansion, which would fund contraception, and state Sen. Fred Dyson (R-Eagle River) recently spoke out against it, declaring that if people can afford lattes, they can afford birth control. In response to the birth control question posed by Anchorage Daily News, Kelly said he wouldn’t support it:

No, because the thinking is a little opposite. This assumes that if you know, you’ll act responsibly. Birth control is for people who don’t necessarily want to act responsibly. That’s—I’m not going to tell them what to do, or help them do it, that’s their business. But if we have a pregnancy test, because someone just doesn’t know. That’s probably a way we can help them.

When the interviewer pointed out that using birth control could be seen as being responsible, Kelly replied: “Maybe, maybe not. That’s a level of social engineering that we don’t want to get into. All we want to do is make sure that people are informed and they’ll make the right decision.” He then said that lawmakers would consider, down the road, discussing involuntarily commitment if someone “is damning her child to a lifetime of mental problems and physical problems.” But he added, “We haven’t gone down that road far enough to make a decision.”

Source – 

Alaska Republican: “Birth Control Is for People Who Don’t Necessarily Want to Act Responsibly”

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Alaska Republican: “Birth Control Is for People Who Don’t Necessarily Want to Act Responsibly”

White House to crack down on methane pollution

by MauriceMpi Posted on March 21, 2014

White House to crack down on methane pollution

By

Shutterstock

In his big climate plan released last June, President Obama promised new rules to reduce methane leakage during the production and transport of natural gas. Since then, we’ve learned that the problem of methane leaks is much larger than the government had estimated. 

Now the administration is poised to finally announce those regulations and help prevent the country’s natural gas industry from turning the world into a Dutch oven.

When burned, natural gas produces half as much carbon dioxide as coal. But methane, the main component of natural gas, is a much more potent greenhouse gas when released directly into the atmosphere, 86 times stronger than CO2 over a 20-year time frame.

Obama adviser John Podesta told reporters this week that the White House is “in the throes of finalizing” a government-wide strategy aimed at reducing accidental leaks of methane. The Washington Post reports that the new rules could be announced as soon as this month. They don’t require the approval of Congress.

Colorado, home to a booming natural-gas fracking industry, recently became the first state to clamp down on methane emissions. The state’s efforts were mostly supported by the natural gas industry, which stands to benefit financially by cutting back on the amount of product that wafts into the atmosphere instead of being sold to customers. Even frackers in Texas are starting to see that it might be smart to patch up those methane leaks.


Source
WH to unveil new methane strategy this month, The Washington Post

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

,

Politics

This article is from:  

White House to crack down on methane pollution

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Keurig, LG, ONA, oven, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on White House to crack down on methane pollution

Is it a good idea to pay farmers to store carbon in soil?

by Natalia681 Posted on March 20, 2014

Is it a good idea to pay farmers to store carbon in soil?

By

Haydyn Bromley

Climate protection is getting down and dirty Down Under.

Soil serves as a great reservoir for carbon, yet it’s often overlooked in climate protection efforts. That’s changing in Australia, where farmers will soon be able to earn cash for projects that store carbon in the soil — such as tree plantings, dung beetle releases, and composting. Aussie farmers are already eligible to make money by reducing greenhouse gas pollution from livestock, manure, and rice fields.

Australia’s environment minister announced Tuesday that farmers could start applying for payments for soil carbon storage in July.

The government considers the replenishment of carbon in soil to be one of the cheapest and best ways of reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions — although federal scientists recently concluded that it could only provide “low levels of greenhouse gas abatement.”

The money for payments to farmers will come from the country’s Emissions Reduction Fund — which is climate-denying Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s planned replacement for a nascent carbon tax. Having the government pay for projects that reduce CO2 might be a nice idea, but not when it comes at the expense of having polluters pay for their emissions. And the plan to make soil-storage payments to farmers been criticized by experts as a potentially ineffective corporate handout.


Source
Graziers now able to tap carbon farming, Reuters
Soil carbon storage incentive, The Land

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

View original post here – 

Is it a good idea to pay farmers to store carbon in soil?

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Keurig, ONA, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is it a good idea to pay farmers to store carbon in soil?