skippy the bush kangaroo

have made some folks (i.e., republicans) absolutely lose their mind. bike riding apparently is a really, pinko commie sort of activity. lessening the air pollution is evil. losing weight is subversive. slowing down and enjoying life is un-american.

republican gubernatorial candidate dan maes is warning voters that denver mayor john hickenlooper's policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are "converting denver into a united nations community."

"this is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed," maes told about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in centennial.

maes said in a later interview that he once thought the mayor's efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were harmless and well-meaning. now he realizes "that's exactly the attitude they want you to have."

"this is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms," maes said. - denver post

could someone actually ask this whackadoodle "goobernatorial" candidate exactly which personal freedoms we would be losing?

Labels: colorado, environment, government, republicans, united nations

not the type of fireworks we want to ever see...again.

Labels: government, hawaii, space

terry gross talks dirt with some environmentally friendly folks about some things "unfresh". and it's terrifying

josh fox who made the documentary "gasland" which is being shown on hbo on june 21



and abraham lustgarden of propublica about his wapo article re: bp's internal documents that show they repeatedly disregarded environmental and safety laws.

Labels: bp, environment, government, movies, oil

the oily truth to our energy addiction. greed most often trumps sentient beings lives. the environmental story this sunday continues to be the disaster in the gulf of mexico.

gulf oil spill: bp has a long record of legal, ethical violations. - the causes of the disastrous blowout and gas explosion on bp's leased deepwater horizon offshore drilling rig are a long way from being determined. yet already bp's actions are facing unprecedented scrutiny. - mcclatchy

for bp, a history of spills and safety lapses. - bp continues to lag other oil companies when it comes to safety, according to federal officials and industry analysts. many problems still afflict its operations in texas and alaska, they say - nytimes

federal regulators haven't kept up with oil drilling expansion. - while oil and gas companies pushed the frontiers of offshore drilling into deeper, more dangerous waters over the last decade, government watchdogs stayed in the shallows, clinging to long-standing practices and failing to plan for new hazards. - latte times

bp is in the spotlight for now, but 3 other companies could share the blame. - as congress prepares to hold hearings into the april 20 explosion that sank the deepwater horizon oil rig, a billion-dollar question is bobbing on the oil-slicked waves: whose fault is it? -nytimes

alaskan fishers watch with horror and recognition as the catastrophe unfolds in the gulf of mexico. - two decades after the exxon valdez spilled almost 11 million gallons of crude oil into alaska's prince william sound, the herring still have not come back. - times picayune

boot on bp's throat. - those affected by the deepwater horizon explosion – from the government to rig workers and their families, fishermen to environmentalists – are demanding answers from bp, the british oil company that owns the well and employed transocean to drill it. - london times

spill could wipe seafood from shelves. this spring marks the 20th year that rob cameron has owned ward's seafood market. but instead of planning a celebration, the 48-year-old is focused on government websites and keeping tabs on the oil disaster in the gulf of mexico - st. petersburg times

is the us ready for a 24-hour coastal oil spill response corps? - with the deepwater horizon oil spill there’s new interest in a national coastal rescue corps to augment the kind of industry and us coast guard safeguards that haven’t adequately protected sensitive shorelines and economies. - christian science monitor

video: gulf of mexico oil spill seen from the air. - crews from the u.s. coast guard welcomed small groups of reporters onboard uscg planes saturday to participate in a flyover of the area over ground zero of the deepwater horizon oil spill in the gulf of mexico. - mobile press

another preventable disaster: a perfect storm of government, capitalism. - as with 9/11 and the financial crisis, the oil leak from the deepwater horizon rig appears to be a terrible but preventable event. - palm beach post

Labels: corporations, disasters, ecology, energy, energy crisis, environment, government, louisiana, offshore drilling, oil

All things to all people:

Corzine’s office reserved 57 tickets for U2, Springsteen and the Jonas Brothers at Giants Stadium and IZOD Center from July to October 2009

It was a long set of shows, but, hey, three bands of varying demographics.*

*Note for the record: Joe Jonas's band, "The Administration," are original members of the New Power Generation.

Labels: government, music, pop culture

but one that isn't on anyone's talking points list - workers compensation insurance and health insurance for the hundreds of thousands of contractors sent to the war zones. their healthcare is ultimately being paid for by taxpayers, too. and, like other americans, they battle their insurance companies for coverage and reimbursements. and, like soldiers, contractors too are suffering from medical issues when they return from the battlefields. medical issues like depression. and, many cases of severe depression, gone untreated, can end in untimely death.

....some families of civilian contractors who have committed suicide have tried to battle for help through an outdated government system designed to provide health insurance and death benefits to civilian contractors injured or killed on the job.

under the system, required by a law known as the defense base act , defense firms must purchase workers’ compensation insurance for their employees in war zones. it is highly specialized and expensive insurance, dominated by the troubled giant aig and a handful of other companies. the cost of it is paid by taxpayers as part of the contract price.

but the law, which is designed to provide coverage for accidental death and injury, blocks payment of death benefits in the case of almost all suicides. cases linked to mental incapacity are the lone exception, judges have ruled.

a joint investigation last year by propublica, abc news and the los angeles times revealed that contract workers must frequently battle carriers for basic medical coverage. while congress has promised reforms, there has been no discussion of changing the law when it comes to suicides involving civilian defense workers.

the military, by contrast, allows survivors to receive benefits in cases in which a soldier's suicide can be linked to depression caused by battlefield stress.- propublica and the daily beast

barb dill, a widow battling the system regarding her husband's suicide due to ptsd induced depression asks the question that we should all ask ourselves and our elected officials.

"shouldn't our government be responsible for the companies they hire?" dill said. "shouldn't our government take care of its own people, who are doing jobs our government, ultimately, wanted them to do?"

Labels: contractors, government, healthcare, insurance, soldiers, war

you think there might be a few more, well, "important" things to be working on. like, hum....job creation perhaps?

the state assembly passed a resolution thursday that would establish the first week of march as "cuss free week" throughout the state. if approved by the senate next week, the measure would take effect immediately.

the resolution includes no enforcement mechanism and is simply meant to promote greater harmony and connectedness, said assemblyman anthony portantino,
a democrat from la canada flintridge and co-author of the measure.- sfgate

i suggest calling your "favorite" california politico (say, like, the governator?) and "voice" your objection over this waste of time and our ever evaporating moolah.

Labels: california, government, politicians, sacramento

the interior department shuts a lobbyist back door entrance.

the scandal-ridden program that allows industry to provide oil and natural gas directly to the interior department in lieu of cash royalty payments will be killed, interior secretary ken salazar said today.

"the royalty-in-kind program has been a blemish, in my view, on this department," salazar said at a house natural resources committee hearing. "there were allegations of sex and drugs and a whole host of other inappropriate conduct. ... my decision is that it's time for us to end the royalty-in-kind program."

...natural resources chairman nick rahall (d-w.va.) has introduced a sweeping bill, h.r. 3534 (pdf), that would overhaul the federal royalty system and make other broad changes to interior's regulation of oil and gas drilling on federal lands and waters. rahall's bill would also eliminate the royalty-in-kind program.- nytimes/greenwire

Labels: government, greed, scandals

read the freakin' bill.

Labels: government, healthcare, internets

and cuts to the chase on the "healthcare reform" fiasco.

the reason a real health-care bill is not going to get passed is simple: because nobody in washington really wants it.

...it won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters. - taibblog

we, the american people, been pooched...again. don't let them tell you any differently.

Labels: congress, dc, government, healthcare, public health, senate

or pony up for your own lab tester...

water quality disclosure not government's job.
government agencies that oversee thousands of small water suppliers in california don't have to order the companies to notify their customers when their water is contaminated, the state supreme court has ruled. - sfgate

oh, freakin' come on. of course disclosure is the government's job. it oversees the supply and part of "overseeing" isn't just making money, but actually providing a life sustaining substance that won't harm the populace. the public is trusting that the water they are drinking is safe and, companies being for profit in nature will try any which way to save money, but it shouldn't come at the expense of the public. that's where the government comes in. it's there to protect its investment....its citizens. if the current government and its agencies can't do that, it needs to be replaced.

Labels: government, pollution, toxins, water

hey...let's start with paring down the 185 peeps who work for the governators chief of staff. oh, and help with the pollution problem, perhaps she can carpool into work instead of being driven alone.

...kennedy has 185 people on her staff, equivalent to a midsize company, with all the accompanying headaches and heartbreaks—on which she clearly thrives. “there isn’t a better job in all of politics,” she says. “bar none.”

a lesbian, recovering alcoholic and lifelong democrat, 48-year-old kennedy has been the republican governor’s chief of staff for two years. she commutes daily to sacramento from her hillside fairfax home.- marin magazine

Labels: budget, governator, government

we're so pooched. we've been had. this "crisis" was by design.

...people are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. the reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. they cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations. - rolling stone.

Labels: aig, criminal, financial markets, government, wall street

and everyone near the "ring of fire". he doesn't think that watching out for the public's safety by monitoring volcanos is a wise thing to spend government money on.

"i am dumbfounded that the governor of a state devastated by natural disasters would sneer at any effort to protect the public," said wynn, who is based at the cascades volcano observatory in vancouver."he probably picked the best example of the u.s. government spending money prudently to protect human life," said wynn, a research geophysicist with the u.s. geological survey."

mount rainier is considered by some very smart scientists to be the most dangerous volcano in america," wynn said.

in addition to monitoring mount st. helens, which killed 57 people in its 1980 eruption, the usgs keeps tabs on other volcanoes along the west coast.

...and, some of volcano monitoring gear will have other uses, wynn pointed out. stream gauges installed near mount st. helens can warn of a lahar — a mud slide caused by a volcanic flow. once that technology's developed, it can be used to monitor flooding, wynn noted: "in louisiana, for example." - columbian.com

way to go piyush! guess you'll not be accepting any money toward hurricane monitoring and research, now....right?

Labels: government, louisiana, natural disasters, republicans, volcano

if government is so inept and awful....why do y'all want to get and keep jobs in it? oh, yeah...and i thought you said government never created jobs....

Labels: corruption, government, republicans

lacking a moral backbone.

iowa's social-services agency acknowledged tuesday that it looked into a company's treatment of its mentally disabled meatpacking workers as early as the 1970s, but decided it lacked the jurisdiction or enough evidence to act.

...the men lived at a 106-year-old house that locals called the bunkhouse. the city of atalissa owned the home, and city officials recently acknowledged that some of its doors were padlocked, windows were boarded up and the heating system was broken, leaving only space heaters.

the men worked for henry's turkey service, a texas company that provided labor for a meatpacker near atalissa in west liberty. recent inquiries showed the company diverted much of the mentally disabled men's paychecks and government payments to living expenses, leaving them about $65 a month in wages. - ap

Labels: government, mental illness, slavery

due to one stubborn governator and the anti-american party.

in addition to shutting down public-works projects, schwarzenegger administration moves toward massive state layoffs as legislators continue to seek the one gop vote needed to pass a budget. - latte times

former governor gray davis is looking better and better these days.

brian over at calitics has some suggestions on what we can do...

The media has now taken notice that the Republicans are trying to bring the state down with them. But the media has little power if we aren't watching and if our leaders don't know we are watching them. So, here is what we need to do:

Call Senator Abel Maldanado (R-Monterey County, 916-651-4015) and tell him to give up his list of demands and end this hostage situation.

Call Senator Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks, 916-651-4001) and tell him that the state deserves better than a Senator who goes back on a deal when threatened by his own
party's extremists.

Tell as many people to do the same thing. Use every tool at your disposal, Twitter, facebook, or just word of mouth. The more people that know about this Republican extremism threatening our state, the better.

Labels: gop, governator, government, unemployment

and have the gop set up their own "shadow government."

in an interview with the conservative online publication newsmax, former florida gov. jeb bush said the gop must broaden its appeal to avoid becoming “the old white-guy party,” and recommended that republicans create a “shadow government” to work on its own agenda. - think progress

why does jeb and the gop hate america?

Labels: gop, government, treason

obama says the bailout rescue firewall government-sanctioned corporate fisting "thing" the senate passed yesterday can be amended later if it isn't being handled the right way. it'll have to be amended later. faced with the mounting costs of our military still having to fight in two incredibly badly mismanaged wars, we don't exactly have the cash on hand to pay for all this sheer recklessness and insatiable greed of wall street's biggest and emptiest business suits as well. hell, we don't have the slightest idea of just how far their recklessness and greed have gone, either -- who's to say we aren't looking at the tip of some really bad-assed iceberg here? and besides, if obama loses to mccain, then it doesn't matter what obama would do as president, does it? (dear senator obama: you talk too much. just win the f*&k#%. that'll suffice. sincerely, the yeagermeister.)

still, the senate had to pass something yesterday. and they did. i may be in a minority of one around here in thinking this, but i'm glad the senate version of the "thing" passed. i much prefer order to chaos, even when the order i get is visibly vulnerable to the ravages of chaos. seeing washington force wall street to crash and burn for its own mistakes, not to mention its rank predatory nature, instead of coming to its aid may have given most of us a tremendous amount of shadenfreude, myself included -- for a while. problem is, wall street has grown so powerful, and its tentacles have extended so deeply into the details of our personal lives, over a period of decades that whether we realize it or not (and, to the extent that we do, whether we like it or not), our own fortunes are tied to those of wall street. there has to be some sort of "thing" to make that happen, for now.

what? you say you can wash your hands of this disaster and are willing to watch it all come tumbling down? i envy you, then. i could never do that, sing one song before the collapse and not sing a totally different one afterwards. maybe i could if i harbored delusions of absolute immunity -- as well as the childish belief that not only is it better for me to put my opinions, beliefs, and principles ahead of the needs and well being of the country that has given birth to and nutrured my opinions, beliefs, and principles, but that this is the only way to save said country. but i don't. sorry.

by the way, getting back to this senate-approved "thing": me going off on a tangent for a paragraph or two doesn't change the fact that one cannot draw seven hundred billion pints of blood from an america-sized turnip, no matter how many senators vote "yes one can." you thought i lost sight of that for a moment, didn't you? ha. silly "thing."

my two cents...

Labels: bailout, government, life, politics, snark, wall street

i stopped for a bite to eat at a restaurant on the way home from work this morning. the television was tuned to cnn. and i don't remember what the exact headline i saw was, but it went something like this: "bailout: the new deal -- small businesses feel the pressure." and i almost choked on my home fries when i saw it.

to be fair, yes, small businesses are hurting these days -- i happen to work for one, so i know. and as luck would have it, before i started my shift tuesday night, we all had to attend a meeting. it was, after all, the end of the third quarter, and we have such meetings every three months. this one, however, was a bit different. it was part quarterly progress-slash-regress report, part come-to-jesus overture -- the end isn't near, but apparently someone in a position to know such things has seen the end looming on one horizon or another. on top of that, i know of at least two people who have already been judged unfit to wash jesus' sandals, so to speak -- they're in unemployment line purgatory right now. i've been there myself. so yeah, i got the message. loud and clear.

furthermore, unlike a lot of my fellow bloggers, i want some sort of bailout package to pass congress and to be signed by awol, and the sooner the better. not that i love the thought of it, given the nature of the plans that have been proposed thus far. it's just that, since everything that occurred on monday, i've come to the conclusion that even a $#!++y bailout plan dumped on us taxpayers is preferable to no plan at all -- at some point, we have to stop bitching about how much it sucks being bled dry by wall street and a complicit congress and incompetent administration when what we ought ot be doing is trying to get a damn tourniquet on this hemmorhaging economy of ours before it's too late to do anything else.

but... whatever is done, for cryin' out loud... do not call it a "new deal." okay? it will be nothing of the sort -- at best (and this is a wild hope), it will be a corporate safety net that will just happen to do less damage to the rest of us in the long run. for the last f*&k%@g time...

corporations are not people.

Labels: bailout, government, it is what it is, things that make you go hmmmm