WASHINGTON — ExxonMobil Pipeline Company has agreed to pay a civil penalty for a violation of the Clean Water Act stemming from a 2012 crude oil spill from ExxonMobil’s “North Line” pipeline near Torbert, Louisiana. Under the consent decree lodged Tuesday in federal court, ExxonMobil will pay $1,437,120 to resolve the government’s claim, according to…
Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – You are here. No closer. I keep paying attention to this. I keep pointing it out. There is just enough to keep the women and kids all fired up. Just enough to make us all afraid of things we don’t understand. Things they aren’t about to explain. We…
Earth’s atmosphere contains an unexpectedly large amount of an ozone-depleting chemical compound from an unknown source, surpassingly, decades after the compound was banned worldwide, according to new research out from NASA published in the Aug. 18 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), once used in dry cleaning and fire-extinguishers, was regulated in 1987…
By Robert Reich – Americans are sick of politics. Only 13 percent approve of the job Congress is doing, a near record low. The President’s approval ratings are also in the basement. A large portion of the public doesn’t even bother voting. Only 57.5 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in the 2012 presidential…
Super Lawyer Donald Watkins Thinks So – The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – I’ve been following with some interest the stories about the arrest of U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller, sharing some of the links on Facebook and Twitter. But it seemed like a stretch to me that his arrest on misdemeanor battery…
By Glynn Wilson – The Sierra Club filed a petition Friday with the U.S. Department of Transportation requesting an emergency order prohibiting the use of DOT-111 rail tank cars for transporting flammable Bakken and other volatile fracked crudes. The National Transportation Safety Board has repeatedly found that DOT-111 tank cars are prone to puncture on…
Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – I get it she says. I understand she tells me. All those hoses and belts, all the tubes and valves, all those wires and lines that are leaking and spraying so much sorrow and doom and that man thought four or five times more and four or five…
A new NASA field campaign will begin flights over the Arctic this summer to study the effect of sea ice retreat on Arctic climate. The Arctic Radiation IceBridge Sea and Ice Experiment (ARISE) will conduct research flights Aug. 28 through Oct. 1, covering the peak of summer sea ice melt, according to a release just…
By Glynn Wilson – The controversial Keystone XL pipeline being constructed from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast could produce four times more global warming causing carbon pollution than the U.S. State Department estimated earlier this year, according to a new study out from scientists at the Stockholm Environment Institute published Sunday in the journal…
By Robert Reich – In recent weeks, the managers, employees, and customers of a New England chain of supermarkets called “Market Basket†have joined together to oppose the board of director’s decision earlier in the year to oust the chain’s popular chief executive, Arthur T. Demoulas. Their demonstrations and boycotts have emptied most of the…
Guest Editorial Amazon Books Just before World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was 10 times cheaper. Readers…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – With a couple of decisions in 2001 and 2006, the Supreme Court managed to break the Clean Water Act by calling into question what Congress meant by “the waters of the United States.” The existing law had been working just fine for almost 30 years. When the Clean…
By Nick Sheppard – From The Sheppard Post – There is an increasingly openly-stated view amongst the Israeli leadership that the conflict with the Palestinians can only be managed, not resolved by the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. In a recent press conference, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “I think the Israeli…
The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Richard Milhous Nixon hated the limelight, perhaps for good reason. When it shined down upon him like a police cruiser spotlight on a rabid dog, what it showed was not something to make the American people proud. He would have been a more powerful and successful politician…
If Union Members Were Not So Politically Conservative – By Berry Craig – PADUCAH, Ky. — Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes says Bluegrass State union members are her “secret weapon” in her quest to unseat arch conservative Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and help the Democrats keep a majority hold on the…
Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – I guess I’m naive. It was obviously a mistake to open my head and heart and share my thoughts on something as profoundly controversial as the Israeli Palestinian conflict. A mistake to speak out against war in general and this one in particular. In hindsight it occurs to…
Social Media in This Case Seems to be Having No Measurable Results – ANALYSIS – By Glynn Wilson – More Americans predictably support Israel over Hamas in the latest fighting in Gaza, and those views have not changed measurably in spite of claims by some that the growth in use of social media such as…
By Robert Reich – What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society. Does anyone seriously believe hedge-fund mogul Steven A. Cohen is worth the $2.3 billion he raked in last year, despite being slapped with a $1.8 billion fine after his firm pleaded guilty to insider…
By Bob Wells – I said no more Alaska Posts and while this post has Alaska as a backdrop, it isn’t about Alaska, it’s about “Finding Yourself” and being true to yourself. This trip to Alaska clarified a lot of things about myself and I want to share it with you. The great majority of…
By Heather Gray – In 2005, I attended the National Media Reform Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. While there I visited the historic St. Louis courthouse and the huge Gateway Arch by the Mississippi River that symbolizes St. Louis as the gateway to the west. It was here that U.S. corporate agribusiness, the U.S. occupation…
