• WW MLK, Jr. D?
• The torture will continue ... Human rights abuse in the U.S.
• Economics and the Environment, Part 1, by TommyWonk

  We need to look more closely at the assumptions underlying the way we think about economics and the environment.

• China's boom is killing sea that gives it life; the sea could be dead within 12 years The Independent, 2006-03-10
• GREENS CALL A NEW DIRECTION IN NATIONAL HEALTH POLICY
• Government Kills Blacks With AIDS Virus, The real AIDS conspiracy revealed
• Immigration: The loser party sees its advantage in culling votes from the exploited masses

1. Soaring hundreds of trillions in derivatives contracts that have never been tested in a major financial crisis.
2. Soaring tens of trillions in medical and Medicare costs as far as anyone can pretend to see.
3. Soaring social security and pension system costs and bankruptcies.
4. The Chinese-American bubble is the greatest financial bubble in history and is the result of the unsustainable imbalances of currencies, currency manipulations, debts, investments, and much else.
5. Soaring energy costs threaten us with soaring inflation, decreasing competitiveness, loss of all energy-intensive production here, declining investment returns and more.
6. The great real estate bubble will sink one way or another and take much of our consumption with it.
7. Debts of all forms have soared in the U.S. and much of the world and savings have hit sub-zero in real terms in the U.S.
8. We have a great stock market bubble and all the obvious signs of speculative excesses in financial markets.
9. We face soaring long-run costs from pollution control to prevent global warming and other catastrophes.
10. The U.S. faces soaring military and security costs of all forms in its permanent world war against roughly sixty Muslim nations with one and a third billion (and soaring) enemies.
11. We face soaring education costs with no clear idea of how to resolve the education crisis.

Motiva...Premcor...Valero

WITT: reject the YOYO infrastructure -- the personnel with a vested interest in the continued dominance of these policies -- will not leave the building with Bush. Unless, that is, we recognize the damage being done and make some major changes.

You owe $145,000...

A chorus of economists, government officials and elected leaders both conservative and liberal is warning that America's nonstop borrowing has put the nation on the road to a major fiscal disaster _ one that could unleash plummeting home values, rocketing interest rates, lost jobs, stagnating wages and threats to government services ranging from health care to law enforcement.

The abysmal environmental and safety record of the Delaware City refinery is clear evidence of that philosophy at work. This 48-year-old refinery reminds me of a high-mileage, badly-abused used car that has had five careless and indifferent owners: in other words, a worn-out junker.

The petroleum refinery capacity in the U.S. is currently very tight, largely due to a combination of increased demand for gasoline and the fact that the oil industry has not built a major new refinery in this country for several decades, and probably never will. The capacity problem will only get worse in the coming years. Therefore, there are very strong economical, political and (some might even say) national security reasons why the state will never shut down the Delaware City refinery, regardless of how many violations the new owner racks up. One might say that the oil industry has us over a barrel.

Edmund Dohnert, Wilmington

US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board report on Motiva disaster

News Journal continuing coverage

Are fines enough?

Coalition calls 1/24/03 for suspension of DNREC consideration of Motiva Air Permit Application

DE Audubon calls for members to contact DE delegation to Congress on Motiva

GPDE CC endorses the efforts of the Clean Air Council and Green Delaware in starting an air quality monitoring campaign around the Motiva refinery

Each typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 33 tons of radioactive waste per year. More than 80,000 tons of this waste sits in cooling pools next to the 103 U.S. nuclear plants, awaiting transportation to a facility yet to be found.

After spending $5 billion on the Yucca Mountain site, its safety is now seriously questioned. Even if finally approved, the capacity for future waste is totally inadequate.

A recent study by the National Academy of Sciences shows that the cooling pools at nuclear reactors are easy targets for international terrorists.

But the Achilles' heel of the nuclear industry is the Price Anderson Act. which must be renewed this year.

The exclusion clause in homeowners insurance policies, "not applicable in a nuclear power accident," was the incentive given to the industry almost 50 years ago, since no company in the world would insure it.

Several studies on the results of a serious accident by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were commissioned over the years. The last study in 1982 by the NRC and Sandia Laboratories lists Salem, N.J., consequences in case of a severe accident as follows:

• Early peak fatalities: Salem I, 100,000; Salem II, 200,000
• Early injuries: Salem I 70,000; Salem II, 75,000

Frieda Berryhill, Wilmington

• The Future of Power? Coal Plants Could Be Much Cleaner: Integrated gasification combined-cycle plants can chemically strip pollutants -- mercury, CO₂, SO_x, NO_x -- from gasified coal more efficiently and cost-effectively, before it is burned. Gasification technology has been widely used in the chemical industry for decades.
• The Future of Power? A wind energy conversion device capable of generating electricity at less than 2.5 cents/kWh is impressive...especially at a relatively low wind velocity. The guys in the Coal industry won't like this news very much...Coal-fired power plants generate electricty in the 3 to 5 cent/kWh range.

Energy Source Comparison

I think about what type of space are we creating for entreprenuership: the knowledge and skills to recognize opportunities that others overlooked; the insight, self-esteem and willingness to act where others have hesitated.

In an environment where the Wal-Martization of employment is the norm, I wonder what our political leaders are doing to help recognize business opportunities, marshal resources in the face of risk, and foster business ventures.

One of the great things about Delaware is folks knowing each other since childhood, relating to one another as their grandparents did, and continuing to bring up their families in that type of closeness.

As an immigrant, I appreciate the value of small business and the hard work my father did in order to raise our family while the owner of a painting business in Argentina. As a Latino, I am drawn to the family ties and sense of community in Delaware, which are found throughout Latin America.

As a business student, I recognize the need to create strong economic infrastructure nurtured by equally strong education initiatives. As a U.S. citizen, I dream of seeing economic opportunities available to all residents of Delaware in an effort to reduce crime, create wealth and promote a higher quality of life.

I think Markell's article spoke of the attainable opportunity to create upward mobility and the American dream. Both have been nearly nonexistent in a generation.

Cecilia M. Cardesa-Lusardi, Philadelphia

Dr. King was spied on intensely by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, so he may have been aware of the issues of right to privacy. Alito's defense of the Nixon administration's illegal wiretaps gives a clue to his choice by Bush, who is conducting ongoing illegal spying on Americans without obtaining warrants as the law requires. Alito is committed to intrusive government, from wiretapping to opposing a woman's right to choose.

Dr. King would certainly be strongly opposed to Alito's nomination, for Alito's record indicates he will move the court towards support of right-wing authoritarianism. Alito is a radical who "has frequently gone to the right of even his Republican-appointed colleagues," according to a new study by the Alliance for Justice.

I call on Senators Biden and Carper to do everything in their power to stop this nomination, which is part of a plan to support power and privilege against our rights as citizens. I demand that they employ the filibuster to defend the our interests. For Senators Biden and Carper to fail to do so would be to abdicate their responsibility to defend our rights. We need protection from this right-wing radical, who, among other atrocities, argued strenuously to support the strip search of a young girl who was not even accused of a crime.

The surge in black AIDS patients -- particularly women -- since the early 1980s closely tracked the increase in the proportion of black men in America's prisons.

Far too many African American men returning from prison are bringing back with them the undetected burden of HIV.