Americans for Prosperity is planning seven rallies in California and Nevada from June 15th to June 17th, 2010. Know as "November Is Coming", these fake events attack Senator Boxer and claim her support for cap-and-trade climate legislation will result in much higher prices for gasoline and electricity and less jobs. See http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity#November_Is_Coming .
The Americans for Prosperity is the third largest recipient of funding from the Koch Family Foundations. Koch Family Foundations is funded by Koch Industries. According to Forbes, Koch Industries is the second largest privately-held company, and the largest privately owned energy company, in the United States. Koch industries has made its money in the oil business, primarily oil refining. Presently, it holds stakes in pipelines, refineries, fertilizer, forest products, and chemical technology. Americans for Prosperity is also connected to oil giant ExxonMobil. According to ExxonSecrets, between the years 1998-2001, Citizens for A Sound Economy and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation received $380,250 from ExxonMobil. See http://www.desmogblog.com/big-money-behind-americans-prosperity .
"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace - business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred."
-President Franklin D. Roosevelt, October 31, 1936, Madison Square Garden Speech
Read the entire speech at http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/text/us/fdr1936.html
I like Rand Paul's honesty, however these massive accidents could have been prevented. Such as the Massey Coal Mine Explosion where 25 miners died. Then there's the on going Gulf of BP, or the Gulf of Mexico, oil leak. Rand Paul opposes regulating businesses. Let's all turn back the clock to the 19th century. Anyone in Wall Street want to be a robber barron? Welcome to capitalist utopianism, which is the political orientation of a capitalists who believes in impossibly idealistic schemes of perfection.
You can find it in columns by George Will and other pundits who dismiss the preponderance of scientific literature that global climate change is happening, and that human activities are contributing to it.
You can find it in the propaganda of front groups funded by fossil fuel industries that have a financial stake in maintaining their ability to dump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, unrestricted.
You can see it here in California, where certain politicians and trade organizations – ever eager to find a scapegoat for the state's economic woes – are trying to suspend a landmark environmental law that hasn't even been implemented yet."
"...Sensible risk management today dictates that atmospheric carbon should be stabilized at 350 parts per million of CO2 equivalent, not the current pathway of 450-500ppm CO2e. This requires emission reductions of 45-50% in industrialized countries by 2020, and almost complete de-carbonization by 2050, not the levels of 15-25% by 2020 and 60-80% by 2050 that are now on the table. Major developing countries must also commit to nationally appropriate mitigation actions. But the rich must move first. Their inaction over the last 20 years does not give them the right to point fingers."
First of all what would a successful agreement look like? The goals were to set legally binding limits on greenhouse gases. That failed to happen! The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has the objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
What is dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system? Already over 150,000 people die a year from climate change and 80% of them are 5 years old or younger. Most of the glaciers will disappear this century. The ice sheets on the earth’s poles are shrinking. Climate change will result in more droughts, flooding and extreme weather for Sacramento and many other locations. These conclusions have been established by World Health Organization and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Any successful international agreement requires months or years of negotiations to find common ground among the parties ahead of time. That didn’t happen. What did happen was the fossil-fuels industries' lobbyists effectively blocked any meaningful agreement.
Here are my favorite quotes from the 12/27/09 Sacramento Bee.
"California has the opportunity to be a leader in the green revolution – by showing how to make buildings more energy efficient, designing more efficient transmission lines, developing a better battery, reducing the cost of solar power, being a pioneer in technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a hundred other possibilities."
- Stephen Levy is director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto.
- Special to The Bee, Published Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009
- http://www.sacbee.com/198/story/2420552.html
Everyone has their favorite reason for the continue occupation of Afghanistan. I also have my explanation.
Since WWII, United States has attempted to control other country’s policies with the use of diplomacy and threats, violence, or war. Every President since FDR has threatened to use nuclear weapons at least once. United States has become more than the world’s policeman. The current phrase is “all options are on the table”. How that came about is another matter.
Of course, threats can not be used without violence or war, else the threats would not be taken seriously by the country being threatened. If the United States is defeated in a war then the threats also lack creditability.
The following editorial was published Dec. 7, 2009 by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like The Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.
They say that everyone who finally gets it about climate change has an "Oh, shit" moment--an instant when the full scientific implications become clear and they suddenly realize what a horrifically dangerous situation humanity has created for itself. Listening to the speeches, groundbreaking in their way, that President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao delivered September 22 at the UN Summit on Climate Change, I was reminded of my most recent "Oh, shit" moment.
Monday November 30, 2009
Open at 6:30pm; Program at 7 pm
Garden and Arts Center in McKinley Park
3330 McKinley Blvd-Enter off Park Drive on south side
Free refreshments provided
September 26 - October 3, 2009 marks the 27th annual Banned Books Week. Authors, artists and musicians will gather in San Francisco on Oct. 1st to protest against the banning of books in schools and libraries in the US. The American Library Association reports that And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell was the most banned from 2006 to 2008.
This Preschool to Grade 3 book is based on a true story about a charming penguin family living in New York City's Central Park Zoo will capture the hearts of penguin lovers everywhere. The main characters are Roy and Silo, two male penguins, that are "a little bit different." These birds cuddle and share a nest like the other penguins, and when all the others start hatching eggs, they want to be parents, too. However they have little luck, until a watchful zookeeper decides they deserve a chance at having their own family and gives them an egg in need of nurturing. Then the dedicated and enthusiastic fathers do a great job of hatching their funny and adorable daughter, and the three can still be seen at the zoo today.
We wrote the book to help parents teach children about same-sex parent families. It's no more an argument in favor of human gay relationships than it is a call for children to swallow their fish whole or sleep on rocks. co-author Justin Richardson, New York Times (2005)
