Category: Class War

Our new role model is Texas

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Safe drinking water — or recall?

Pennsylvania has come under fire lately as pollution from drilling in the Marcellus Shale threatens water resources across the state. But instead of ratcheting up oversight, Gov. Tom Corbett wants to hand authority over some of the state’s most critical environmental decisions to C. Alan Walker, a Pennsylvania energy executive with his own track record of running up against the state’s environmental regulations.

Walker, who has contributed $184,000 to Corbett’s campaign efforts since 2004, is CEO and owner of Bradford Energy Company and Bradford Coal, which was once among Pennsylvania’s largest coal mining companies. He also owns or has an interest in 12 other companies, including a trucking business and a central Pennsylvania oil and gas company.

Walker was Corbett’s first appointee—he chose him to lead the Department of Community and Economic Development in December, before taking office. Now, as Corbett stakes much of the state’s economy on Marcellus Shale gas drilling, a paragraph tucked into the 1,184-page budget gives Walker unprecedented authority to “expedite any permit or action pending in any agency where the creation of jobs may be impacted.” That includes, presumably, coal, oil, gas and trucking.
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See no evil

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Pretty amazing, don’t you think?

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A months-long investigation into abusive mortgage practices by the Federal Reserve found no wrongful foreclosures, members of the Fed’s Consumer Advisory Council said Thursday.

During a public meeting attended by Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and other regulators, consumer advocates on the panel criticized federal bank regulators for narrowly defining what constitutes a “wrongful foreclosure.” At least one member of the panel voiced concerns that the public would not take the Fed’s findings of improper practices seriously, since the wide-ranging review did not find a single homeowner who was wrongfully foreclosed upon.

The Fed’s findings seem to support claims from the banking industry, which has admitted to sloppy practices but has maintained that the homeowners whose homes have been repossessed were substantially behind on their payments. The Fed’s report has not been released to the public.

All 50 state attorneys general joined together last fall to probe banks’ foreclosure practices after several companies halted home repossessions when improper paperwork practices — like the so-called “robo-signing” scandal — came to light. The law enforcement officers have said they’ve found banks violated numerous state laws. State and federal officials are considering a large-scale settlement with banks and mortgage servicers that could include penalties totaling up to $30 billion and requirements to modify more distressed mortgages

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Smell the freedom

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Republicans believe in only two rights: the right to be humble, and the right to be grateful!

On Wednesday night, Republicans in Wisconsin’s state senate rammed through a retooled version of Governor Scott Walker’s controversial “budget repair bill” with the 14 senate Democrats still in hiding in Illinois. The senate bill eliminates collective bargaining rights for most public-sector unions, a provision that has labor leaders and protesters up in arms. But there’s another explosive provision in the bill that’s received little attention: The bill authorizes state officials to fire any state employee who joins a strike, walk-out, sit-in, or coordinated effort to call in sick.

According to an analysis (PDF) of the Senate bill by Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB), the legislation gives state officials the power to fire workers during a “state of emergency” declared by the governor under several conditions. If a state employee misses three working days without an approved leave of absence, that’s grounds for being fired. State workers can also be dumped if, according to the LFB’s analysis, they participate in a “strike, work stoppage, sit-down, stay-in, slowdown, or other concerted activities to interrupt the operations or services of state government, including mass resignations or sick calls.”

Rerun

~ susie

We can’t have job-killing regulation! Instead, we get people-killing pollution:

HINKLEY, Calif. – At the end of “Erin Brockovich,” a housewife sick from toxic chromium weeps with joy as she’s handed her portion of a historic $333 million settlement between residents of this small desert town and the utility that poisoned their drinking water.

In real life, that woman is Roberta Walker. She still lives in Hinkley, using her share to buy a new home in what she thought would be a safe four-mile distance from the toxic plume of chromium.

Earlier this year, she and other residents learned that the pollution, which Pacific Gas & Electric was required to clean up, was once again moving and had seeped into their groundwater.

Now, Brockovich has returned to the town that made her famous and is once again rallying residents, sampling the water, and at a water board meeting on Wednesday, her associate is expected to announce that the contamination may be worse than the utility says.

For Walker and others involved in the original case, these developments are like stepping back in time and are a haunting reminder that a landmark lawsuit and a blockbuster movie are no guarantee of safety.
“We didn’t bring a giant to its knees, all we did was wake it up,” Walker said. “This is not happening again — I can’t believe it.”

PA fighting back

~ susie

I love this:

HARRISBURG – A three-story brownstone where former Gov. Tom Ridge has offices for his lobbying firm became ground zero Wednesday in the fight over Pennsylvania’s proposed new budget.
About 250 advocates from organized labor, environmental groups, and social services carried out a surprise ambush on Ridge’s firm, which represents companies drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale. They delivered this message: If the proposed budget will slice education funding, then it should also make big drilling companies pay taxes on the natural gas they extract.

Clutching signs and chanting slogans, most of the activists swarmed into the Ridge Policy Group, just a block from the Capitol, shortly after 2 p.m. They poured through the unlocked doors and began packing rooms on the first and second floors, demanding that someone from the lobbying firm come speak to them.

With their stomping feet causing the floorboards to creak and groan – and likely breaking fire codes – they finally got the attention of Mark Campbell, a partner in the firm and Ridge’s onetime chief of staff. He talked briefly to organizers and promised to tell his clients that activists wanted to speak with them.

“We’ll be back,” the activists warned as the group finally left about 15 minutes later with chants of “No Free Pass for Oil and Gas.” They left a mock invoice for the millions in taxes they say could have been collected from an extraction tax.

Can we leave now?

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Please?

The majority of American soldiers undergoing amputation for war wounds last fall lost more than one limb, according to data presented Tuesday to the Defense Health Board, a committee of experts that advises the Defense Department on medical matters.

Military officials had previously released data showing that amputations, and especially multiple-limb losses, increased last year. The information presented to the 20-member board is the first evidence that the steepest increase occurred over the last four months of the year.

In other news, Dennis Kucinich introduces a resolution to end the war…