"Environment News Service"- Industry Victory, Obama Withdraws EPA's Stricter Smog Standards

Published on Friday, September 2, 2011 by Environment News Service

 

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has bowed to the demands of U.S. manufacturers and asked the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw the draft Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

0n January 6, 2010, the EPA proposed to strengthen the national air quality standards for ground-level ozone. EPA proposed a range of 60-70 parts per billion (ppb), a much lower level than the current standard of 75 ppb.

President Obama said today that his administration has taken "some of the strongest actions since the enactment of the Clean Air Act four decades ago to protect our environment and the health of our families from air pollution."

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"Kai Wright"- Stocks Are Down! Obama’s Unpopular! Wait, Who Gives a F&*@?!

Published on Sunday, September 4, 2011 by ColorLines.com

http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/09/stocks_are_down_obamas_unpopular_wait_who_gives_a_f.html

by Kai Wright

Labor Day weekend began with a familiar whimper: The economy created exactly zero jobs in August. There’s not much labor to celebrate this year—but then again, that’s been the case for at least three years now. And in many black neighborhoods, it’s been the case since the 2001 recession. So here we are. Another monthly jobs report and another round of numbingly dismal forecasts.

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"Habiba Alcindor"- Six Hours With the Poverty Tour

Posted on September 4, 2011, Printed on September 5, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/152269/six_hours_with_the_poverty_tour

Poverty affects one and six Americans, yet remains an unpopular aspect of reality, occupying a darker corner of the collective American psyche than, say, breast cancer or drunk driving. It’s the half of the Great March on Washington that gets short shrift. Everyone remembers the dramatic battle waged by largely African American activists for the recognition of their humanity, but only the more historically inclined can readily cite the march’s alternative name -- the March for Jobs and Freedom -- or attest to the heavy involvement of labor unions in organizing the demonstration.

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"Mike Whitney"- Europe's "Troubled Assets" Bank Bailout, Germany's Chancellor Merkel Pushes for a Eurozone "Banktatorship"

Global Research, September 5, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26397

The Bundestag will have one chance to stop Angela Merkel's plan to provide hundreds of billions of dollars to underwater EU banks that made bad bets on sovereign bonds. If the German parliament fails to block Merkel on September 23,  then--under the "expanded powers" of the European Financial Security Facility (EFSF)-- insolvent banks will be bailed out and the costs will be passed on to eurozone taxpayers.  
 
Despite her populist bloviating ("We won't be bullied by the markets"), Merkel is a devout Europhile committed to a fiscal union ruled by bankers and bondholders, a Banktatorship. Presently, she is doing whatever she can to hurry the process along before hostile bond vigilantes roil the markets and bring the EU banking system crashing down. This is from Der Spiegel: 
 
 "In a situation of market panic, the EFSF has to act quickly," Holger Schmieding, chief economist of Berenberg Bank, told the Financial Times Deutschland. "It could happen overnight or on a weekend." Guntram Wolff of the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel agreed. Parliamentary approval "must not take too long." ("Parliamentary Influence over Euro Bailouts 'Naive'", Der Spiegel)

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"Robert Reich"- The Limping Middle Class

Published on Sunday, September 4, 2011 by The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html?_r=1

by Robert Reich

The 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.

When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt — which, as we’ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar?

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"Jim Hightower"- Why are we letting corporate Supremists steal our democracy from us?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-are-we-letting-corpora-by-Jim-Hightower-110905-992.html

September 5, 2011

By Jim Hightower

Roberts. Alito. Kennedy. Scalia. Thomas. Memorize these names!

Bill Watterson is Mark Twain -- with a drawing pen. He is a master cartoonist, but also a sharp-witted observer of the absurd, with an impish sense of humor. From 1985-1995, Watterson penned "Calvin and Hobbes," the truly marvelous comic strip that featured six-year-old Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes. In Calvin's inventive and iconoclastic mind, Hobbes was a genuine tiger (and his best friend) and they shared boundless adventures that challenged conventional thinking and defied authority, often crashing right through the prescribed social order of the "real" world.

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"Anneli Rufus"- Why the Breakfast Most Americans Will Eat Today Is a Corporate Scam

Posted on September 2, 2011, Printed on September 5, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152260/why_the_breakfast_most_americans_will_eat_today_is_a_corporate_scam

Breakfast in America is a corporate scam.

Not all of it. But nearly every breakfast staple -- cold cereal, donuts, yogurt, bagels and cream cheese, orange juice, frappuccino -- is a staple only because somebody somewhere wanted money. Wake up and smell the McCafé. 

Seeking to provide sanitarium patients with meatless anti-aphrodisiac breakfasts in 1894, Michigan Seventh-Day Adventist surgeon and anti-masturbation activist John Kellogg developed the process of flaking cooked grains. Hence Corn Flakes. Hence Rice Krispies. Hence a rift between Kellogg and his business partner/brother, who wanted to sweeten Kellogg's cereals in hopes of selling more. Guess who won. 

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"Dina Cappiello and Jeff Donn"- Earthquake Threat to Nuclear Reactors Far Higher Than Realized

Published on Friday, September 2, 2011 by the Associated Press

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44369172/ns/us_news-environment/#.TmVKxnYeD5k

WASHINGTON — The risk that an earthquake would cause a severe accident at a U.S. nuclear plant is greater than previously thought, 24 times as high in one case, according to an AP analysis of preliminary government data.

The nation's nuclear regulator believes a quarter of America's reactors may need modifications to make them safer.

The threat came into sharp focus last week, when shaking from the largest earthquake to hit Virginia in 117 years appeared to exceed what the North Anna nuclear power plant northwest of Richmond was built to sustain.

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"David Sirota"- China's Making Everything in the US From Bridges to Civil Rights Memorials: That's a Huge Problem and China's Not to Blame

Posted on September 4, 2011, Printed on September 5, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152280/china%27s_making_everything_in_the_us_from_bridges_to_civil_rights_memorials%3A_that%27s_a_huge_problem_and_china%27s_not_to_blame

Many economic Nostradamuses have long predicted that the epitaph on America's tombstone will ultimately read, "Made In China." But casual observers probably didn't think the funeral procession would happen this fast. In the last year, though, most have wised up. Thanks to a spate of mind-blowing headlines, we are learning that the Chinese invasion isn't just a distant possibility — it's happening right now.

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"Robert Fisk"- Lies We Still Tell Ourselves about 9/11

Published on Saturday, September 3, 2011 by The Independent/UK

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-for-10-years-weve-lied-to-ourselves-to-avoid-asking-the-one-real-question-2348438.html

Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears?

by Robert Fisk

By their books, ye shall know them.

I'm talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as "boys", almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.

Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?

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