Dept. of Trust Us, We Wouldn’t Do Anything To Hurt You

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Fracking wastewater site

Imagine that. I suppose we’ll have to imagine, since by law, they don’t have to tell us what they’re using to pollute our water supply. From the University of Pennsylvania MedPage:

Surface and ground water samples taken from hydraulic fracking sites in a drilling-dense area of Colorado showed higher levels of estrogenic, anti-estrogenic and anti-androgenic chemical activity than reference sites with limited drilling, researchers found.

Evidence of endocrine-disrupting activity in a selected subset of chemicals used in the controversial oil and natural gas extraction process was also shown in a study published online ahead of print in the journal Endocrinology.

Fracking Spill Sites Had Twice the EDCs

Water samples from drilling sites in Garfield County, Colo. that experienced fracking spills or accidents showed moderate to high levels of the endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC) activity, while samples from sites with little drilling showed very little activity, wrote Susan C. Nagel, PhD, of the University of Missouri in Columbia, and colleagues.

“We found no significant anti-androgenic activity at any of our control sites and significant anti-androgenic activity at all of the spill sites,” Nagel told MedPage Today.

On average, water at fracking spill sites had double the amount of total endocrine-disrupting activity compared with control sites, she said.

Nagel characterized this association as strong, and said the study is the first to show an association between fracking and endocrine-disrupting activity.

Around 750 chemicals have been reported to be used in hydraulic fracking, including more than 100 known or suspected to be endocrine-disrupting.

Fracking Exempt From Water Protection Regulations

But the permanent underground injection of chemicals used in fracking is not regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency and has been exempted from multiple federal regulatory acts, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act.

Thanks to Karin Riley Porter.

For-profit colleges padding their job placements? We are shocked

~ susie

HS Computer class
No, not really, since I used to work at one of these scams places. Let’s just say that someone who graduates, gets a good job and is happy they went to one of these schools is the exception, and not the rule:

Eric Parms enrolled at an Everest College campus in the suburbs of Atlanta in large part because recruiters promised he would have little trouble securing a job.

He’d seen the for-profit school’s television commercials touting its sterling rates of job placement, and he’d heard the pledges of admissions staff who assured him that the campus career services office would help him find work in his field.

But after completing a nine-month program in heating and air conditioning repair in the summer of 2011 — graduating with straight As and $17,000 in student debt — Parms began to doubt the veracity of the pitch. Career services set him up with a temporary contract position laying electrical wires. After less than two months, he and several other Everest graduates also working on the job were laid off and denied further help finding work, he says.

Even that short-lived gig wasn’t secured on the strength of Parms’s degree. The college had paid his contractor $2,000 to hire him and keep him on for at least 30 days, part of an effort to boost its official job placement records, according to documents obtained by The Huffington Post. The college paid more than a dozen other companies to hire graduates into temporary jobs before cutting them loose, a HuffPost investigation has found.

Everest College’s $2,000-per-head “subsidy” program in Decatur, Ga., stands among an array of tactics used for years by the institution’s parent company, Corinthian Colleges Inc., to systematically pad its job placement rates, according to a review of contract documents and lawsuits and interviews with former employees.

Thanks, Edward Tayter.

Divide and conquer

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

When I was on Mark Thompson’s show last week, the fill-in host was one of these “let’s back the administration no matter what” kind of people. He was indignant that I said the budget deal was nothing to brag about, and he took umbrage at that.

Locking in austerity in order to prevent the Republicans from shooting themselves in the foot again is NOT a win, no matter how you slice it. Sounds like Digby’s on the same wavelength.