Some readers had a problem with the
issue this morning. This is a repost. JmG
“It isn’t
pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our
air and water that are doing it.”
Dan Quayle, former US vice president
Before we dive into
the world around us this morning please do me a favor:
Pass a copy of this newsletter on to people you
know who do not receive it either by subscription or who
do not read it on the
website. Let’s spread the news around a bit and grow our readership.
Then hop on over to your Facebook
account and become a fan of the News That Matters
page that’s been created there or click on the link over there in the
right-hand column.
Finally, click on the “donate”
button above ~ and you know what to do after that. It is
that time of year again.
Good Monday Morning,
Some attendees at an arts class at the Cultural Center at Lake
Carmel reported seeing a bald eagle, one I’ve been watching
and commenting on for a couple of years now. It’s nice to know they’re
making the lake a home.
The State has decided that its new license plate
program was an error in judgment and
will no longer pursue the plan and instead will find, as the Governor
put it, “real, recurring savings that will replace the revenue.”
 Yesterday
afternoon I attended a “Country Concert” at the Tompkins Corners
Methodist Church in Putnam Valley.
Over the years attendance at the church has dwindled until the
congregation has gotten so small that it’s difficult for them to
maintain their historic landmark building. Jan and Kate Hoekstra who
live directly across Peekskill Hollow Road from the building have
conceived the idea that the church could be maintained as a performance
and gathering space for western Kent and eastern Putnam Valley and to
that end yesterday’s concert was prepared to begin the process of
raising funds to do just that. A talented assemblage of local musicians
gathered before the audience and entertained for two hours on a gray,
late fall afternoon and as would be expected, a wonderful time was had
by all. The Hoekstra’s then hosted an intimate dinner party which ran
late into the evening capping off what was a wonderful Sunday.
From the New York League of Conservation Voters:
New York State Legislators are expected to come to
Albany for a special session. On their to-do list is an important piece
of legislation that represents a huge clean energy opportunity.
Called the “Municipal Sustainable Energy Loan Program
Legislation,”
this bill authorizes towns and cities to set up loan programs for
energy efficiency and retrofits on residential and commercial
buildings. The goal is to make it easier for property owners to pay for
these upgrades by allowing them to pay back the cost over 15 or even 20
years. The legislation will also help meet national goals for
greenhouse gas emission reductions.
Albany will need to act quickly. More than $450 million in
federal
grants will be awarded in the coming months and if the state passes
enabling legislation on Tuesday, New York will be well positioned to
get a large portion of that funding. Click
here to get more information.
Smoking cessation programs across the nation are
finding they’re not
as effective as they once were.
Overall rates of smokers quitting are virtually unchanged over the past
few years even as taxes charged on cigarettes continues to climb. In
New York, $2.75 (the highest in the nation) of the price for cigarettes
reflect the state portion of taxes. New York City adds an additional
$1.50 per pack. The Federal government adds another $1 onto all that
bringing the total tax on a pack of Marlboro’s in NYC to $5.25, surely
the highest taxes item in America. The national pre-tax average price
for a pack of smokes is $4.32. So, why aren’t people quitting? The
Center for Disease Control claims that for every 10% increase in the
price of a pack of cigarettes consumption is reduced by 3%-5% but this
hasn’t happened in the last couple of years.
The argument that higher taxes on cigarettes reduces the
health effects caused by smoking through reduced usage is an
interesting one. In America today, about 440,000 people die each year
from smoking related causes, a number that has been slowly decreasing
for quite some time.
But also in America today nearly the same number of people
are dying from heart disease, mostly caused by our consumption of red
meats, fatty and salty foods.
If the true goal of high cigarette taxes is to promote less smoking and
thereby reduce the numbers dying, why not equally tax that Quarter
Pounder and reduce the number
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has
launched a major worldwide tree planting campaign. Under the Plant
for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign,
people, communities, business and industry, civil society organizations
and governments are encouraged to enter tree planting pledges online
with the objective of planting at least one billion trees worldwide
each year. In a call to further individual and collective action, UNEP
has set a new goal of planting 7 billion trees by the end of 2009. The
campaign strongly encourages the planting of indigenous trees and trees
that are appropriate to the local environment.
If you’re wondering why you’re supporting the Taliban…
oh… wait! There’s something wrong with that sentence. You’re not
supporting the Taliban, are you? Well, yes you are! Read this:
In this grotesque carnival, the US military’s
contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American
supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics
operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces
American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these
funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. “It’s a big
part of their income,” one of the top Afghan government security
officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military
officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the
Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists
of payments to insurgents.
See the article
below for more.
I could not agree more.
And now, The News:
- The
2009 Leonids Are Coming!
- Cub
Scouts free trees from vines’ grip
- Which
states are innovative in education? A new report card.
- People
to Watch: Dan Shapley, Environmental Journalist
- Lake
Carmel’s bravest saved the day
- Study:
2,266 Veterans Died Due to Lack of Insurance in 2008
- Natural
Gas Drilling Produces Radioactive Wastewater
- Justice
Dept. Asked For News Site’s Visitor Lists
- Marine
reservist attacked Greek priest he mistook for terrorist
The 2009 Leonids Are Coming!
Most meteor showers vary from year to year, but the Leonids
are
particularly capricious. Many years they chug along producing just 5 or
10 meteors visible per hour. But at the Leonids’ historical greatest,
in 1833, meteors were seen to fall “like snowflakes in a blizzard,”
with estimated rates of several dozen per second!
This year is expected to be better than
average. The “traditional,” most reliable part of the shower should
peak around 4 a.m. EST (1 a.m. PST) on the morning of Tuesday, November
17th. You might see 20 or 30 meteors per hour under ideal dark-sky
conditions. (Remember, if you want to stay up late instead of getting
up early, you’ll be staying up Monday night. It’s easy to get
the date wrong for events that happen after midnight!)
A second, briefer, but very intense outburst is expected about
12
hours later — during the early-morning hours of November 18th in Asia.
(See “Will the Leonids Roar Again?”.)
There’s only an off-chance that some activity from that burst will
still be going on by the time the Earth turns halfway around and the
Leonids become visible in the Americas on the morning of the 18th.
Read
More
Cub Scouts free trees from
vines’ grip
By Theresa Juva • tj...@lohud.com
• November 9, 2009
HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON – Ecologist Sven Hoeger explained to a
group of Cub Scouts how to spot an invasive vine.
“They have different-shaped leaves and tendrils here that hook
onto
the tree and grow up to the sun,” Hoeger said Sunday, holding up a
leafy stem.
The Cub Scouts eagerly got to yanking the pesky intruders to
help
with a Saw Mill River Coalition project to save trees from Oriental
bittersweet and porcelain berry vines. The goal is to create a
wildflower meadow along a section of the Saw Mill River. The coalition
is part of Groundwork Hudson Valley.
Saw Mill River Coalition coordinator Ann-Marie Mitroff
organizes the
monthly “Free-a-Tree Vine Cutting” near Farragut Avenue on the South
County Trailway.
Read More
Which states are innovative in
education? A new report card.
The report card aims to highlight the sorts of innovations
in
education – such as an extended school day – that lead to better
schools.
By Amanda Paulson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
If states truly want to improve their education systems, they
need
to do away with the rules, regulations, and bureaucracies that stymie
innovation.
That’s one message from a new report that measures states on
how
well they foster education innovation, grading them in areas ranging
from finance and school management to how well they hire effective
teachers and remove ineffective ones.
Ultimately, say the report’s authors, they hope not to
prescribe new
fads or “silver bullet” solutions, but to highlight the sorts of
innovations that are leading schools where they need to go.
“A lot of the states have tried some things, but they haven’t
tried
all the things we argue would be useful to creating a more innovative
environment for success,” says John Podesta, president and CEO of the
Center for American Progress, one of the report’s authors. “States have
a lot to learn from each other.”
Read
More
 People
to Watch: Dan Shapley, Environmental Journalist
By: John Ferro
Photo by Gloria Dawson
Dan Shapley didn’t start out wanting to become one of the most
respected environmental journalists in the Hudson Valley.
“I wanted to be a poet,” he says of his college days. “I
didn’t have a practical idea in my head about what I would do.”
Since then, Shapley has spent his career reporting on
practical
solutions to complex environmental problems. The 32-year-old resident
of Port Ewen is the top editor of The Daily Green, an award-winning
environmental Web site based in Manhattan and published by Hearst
Digital Media, a unit of Hearst Magazines. Founded on Earth Day 2007,
the site aims to foster environmentally sound living practices through
news, features, tips, and awards.
“The term ‘green’ can mean anything and nothing,” Shapley
says. “For
the Web site, it means a lifestyle that is concerned about health, not
only in the way everybody thinks about it — exercise and eating well —
but also in terms of the quality of the food you are eating and how it
was grown, how processed it is or isn’t. I think food is a really big,
really growing part of the whole idea.”
The Daily Green won a “Best New Site” award from
minonline.com, a
media industry Web site. In April, it hosted its first “Heart of Green
Awards,” honoring people who were taking the “green” message to a
mainstream audience. Among the honorees were actress Alicia
Silverstone, a vegan and longtime animal rights activist; and Roger
Doiron, founding director of the nonprofit group Kitchen Gardeners
International. Doiron led a campaign that encouraged the Obamas to
plant a garden at the White House.
Read
More
Lake Carmel’s bravest saved the
day
On Nov. 10 I had a scare of a lifetime. I went to go sit
outside on
my front patio to enjoy the beautiful night we had, when I realized
that there were flames coming out my chimney. In the house was my wife,
Susan, and my 4-year-old grandson Eric James. I immediately ran inside
to inform my family and to call 911. The Lake Carmel Fire Department
and Kent Police were at the scene within minutes. If it were not for
the brave men and women of the Lake Carmel Fire Department, my family
and I might have ended up homeless.
I want to reach out and give a big thank-you to the Lake
Carmel Fire
Department. The brave men and women who risk their lives every day for
our community deserve a thank-you from my family and me. I appreciate
the speed it took them to get here as well as everything they did for
us.
Read
More
Study: 2,266 Veterans Died Due
to Lack of Insurance in 2008
Tuesday 10 November 2009
by: Maya Schenwar, t r u t h o u t | Report
More than 2,200 veterans under the age of 65 died last year
due to
lack of health insurance, according to a study out of Harvard Medical
School released today. This number – 2,266 in one year – is more than
14 times the number of US troops who died in Afghanistan in 2008.
The researchers also found that, in 2008, 1,461,615 veterans
between the ages of 18 and 64 lacked insurance.
Steffie Woolhandler, one of the study’s authors, pointed out that most
uninsured veterans fall into a common coverage gap: they aren’t poor
enough to qualify for Medicaid or special VA benefits, but earn to
little to pay for health care on their own.
“Uninsured veterans have the same problems getting the care
they
need as do other unsinsured Americans,” Woolhandler said in testimony
before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. “Moreover, many
uninsured veterans have serious illnesses requiring extensive care.”
Many veterans cannot receive care from the VA, even if they’ve
been
through combat, according to Woolhandler. Generally, VA facilities only
treat medical problems or disabilities specifically acquired during
military service.
The Harvard researchers stressed that the health care bill
that
recently passed the House would do little to address veterans’ health
care woes, and that the “solution that works for all veterans” would be
a single-payer health insurance plan.
Read
More
Natural Gas Drilling Produces
Radioactive Wastewater
Wastewater from natural gas drilling in New York state is
radioactive, as high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the
environment and thousands of times the limit safe for people to drink
By Abrahm Lustgarten and ProPublica
As New York gears up for a massive expansion of gas drilling
in the
Marcellus Shale, state officials have made a potentially troubling
discovery about the wastewater created by the process: It’s
radioactive. And they have yet to say how they’ll deal with it.
The information comes from New York’s Department of
Environmental
Conservation, which analyzed 13 samples of wastewater brought thousands
of feet to the surface from drilling and found that they contain levels
of radium-226, a derivative of uranium, as high as 267 times the limit
safe for discharge into the environment and thousands of times the
limit safe for people to drink.
The findings, if backed up with more tests, have several
implications: The energy industry would likely face stiffer regulations
and expenses, and have more trouble finding treatment plants to accept
its waste — if any would at all. Companies would need to license their
waste handlers and test their workers for radioactive exposure, and
possibly ship waste across the country. And the state would have to
sort out how its laws for radioactive waste might apply to drilling and
how the waste could impact water supplies and the environment.
What is less clear is how the wastewater may affect the health
of
New Yorkers, since the danger depends on how much radiation people are
exposed to and how they are exposed to it. Radium is known to cause
bone, liver and breast cancers, and the EPA publishes exposure
guidelines for it, but there is still disagreement over exactly how
dangerous low-level doses can be to workers who handle it, or to the
public.
Read
More
Justice Dept. Asked For News
Site’s Visitor Lists
Posted by Declan McCullagh (AP / CBS)
In a case that raises questions about online journalism and
privacy
rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an
independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader
visits on a certain day.
The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based
Indymedia.us Web site “not to disclose the existence of this request”
unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents
an unusual quandary for any news organization.
Kristina Clair, a 34-year old Linux administrator living in
Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she
was shocked to receive the Justice Department’s subpoena. (The
Independent Media Center is a left-of-center amalgamation of
journalists and advocates that – according to their principles of unity
and mission statement – work toward “promoting social and economic
justice” and “social change.”)
The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in
Indianapolis demanded “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us”
on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to “include IP addresses, times,
and any other identifying information,” including e-mail addresses,
physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers’ Social
Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.
“I didn’t think anything we were doing was worthy of any
(federal)
attention,” Clair said in a telephone interview with CBSNews.com on
Monday. After talking to other Indymedia volunteers, Clair ended up
calling the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which
represented her at no cost.
Read
More
Marine reservist attacked Greek
priest he mistook for terrorist
By Alexandra Zayas and Demorris A. Lee, Times Staff Writers
 TAMPA
— Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of
his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.
That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios
Marakis,
speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.
What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to
the
head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as
the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a
terrorist.
Police say Bruce offered several reasons to explain his
actions:
The man tried to rob him.
The man grabbed Bruce’s crotch and made an overt sexual
advance in perfect English.
The man yelled “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” the
same
words some witnesses said the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last
week.
“That’s what they tell you right before they blow you up,”
police say Bruce told them.
Bruce ended up in jail, accused of aggravated battery with a
deadly
weapon. He was released Tuesday on $7,500 bail. Marakis ended up at the
hospital with stitches. He told the police he didn’t want to press
charges, espousing biblical forgiveness.
But Tuesday, Bruce wasn’t saying sorry.
Read
More |
