wade norris's blog

Last week, concerned citizens gathered outside an EPA hearing in Denver to demand a change in the EPA's 'Haliburton' loophole.

Testifying with them, was
former EPA official Wes Wilson who filed a Whistleblower lawsuit against the EPA.
Mr. Wilson was there specifically to testify about the EPA allowing Oil and Gas companies to inject toxic chemicals into the ground for the purpose of Hydraulic Fracturing, without disclosing those chemicals for public review as required by the Safe Drinking Water Act. This is known as the 'Haliburton loophole' passed in 2005.

Wes Wilson, who was featured in Josh Fox's 'Gasland', had a lot of community groups with him including What the Frack and Food and Watch as well as families - many of whom have suffered directly from fracking fluid contamination on their land.

On September 21, 2009,
the Second Circuit made an important decision on a case known as
Connecticut vs American Electric Power.
Without going into too much detail, this was a case where several groups like the Audubon society were trying to stop coal plant emissions because it was harming the value of their land trusts. The lower court ruled as other courts have, that Climate Change was part of the political realm, not the courts.
However, the appellate court overturned this decision on the grounds that the Energy company were causing a public nuisance, and nuisance cases have been heard by courts for decades.

In September of 2009, just after back to back earthquakes in Samoa and Indonesia, I wrote an article entitled "Climate Change: A whole lot of shaking going on" where scientists have theorized that earthquakes are increasing due to an unlikely cause: Climate Change.

The theory is that while earthquakes on different tectonic plates do not cause others to occur, for instance the Samoan and Indonesian quakes happened within one day of each other, they can be correlated to other quakes and seismic activity, specifically to 'glacial quakes' caused by fast melting and moving multi-ton glaciers on Greenland.

Blackwater has been THE mercenary outfit of choice by the Bush - Cheney Whitehouse to conduct operations in the Global War on Terror.
Recently the Justice department and FBI discovered Blackwater had committed unjustified homicides or perhaps outright assassinations in conjunction with the CIA under Dick Cheney's orders.

Furthermore, Blackwater paid millions in bribes to local officials to remain silent after a bloody massacre of civilians in Iraq.
Now, Erik Prince is moving to United Arab Emirates, a country with no extradition policy with the U.S. coming on the heels of further investigations.

Think about this, what if this oil spill, as tragic as it is, provides us with the wake up call about how we power our world? My first thought when the spill happened was, what if we had not gotten rid of the electric car of the 1990's (from the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?) and electric cars had grown in usage for the past decade? Would the drilling platform catastrophe still have happened?
No one can be sure, but what we can be sure of, is that it will keep happening until we change our cars from gas/oil powered to electric powered.

That's why this petition is so important - the Gulf Oil Spill Electric Car Credit. It asks for legislation to give a substantial credit for purchasing an electric car, and it has key provisions to put a lot of people to work, immediately, in a midterm election year. But we need to get support for this idea in the US House and Senate. That's where you can help.

Monday, Feb.22nd,2010 - The White House and President Obama's announced Healthcare bill proved my worse fears - that there was never any intention by Democratic Leadership or the President to support the Public Option.
And along the way, the base of the party was once again strung along with glimmer of hope in the form of the 'Bennet letter.'
Today's Healthcare Bill not only signals an end to the Public Option, but the Bennet letter can only be characterized as the worst form of manipulation of the democratic voters by the White House.

a message to the Blue NC community

The Discussion Group gathering on NC's 2010 US Senate race will be next Tuesday evening, February 16, 6:30pm to ~8pm at the Players' Retreat in Raleigh. The discussion will also touch on control of the NC General Assembly and on Congressional races in North Carolina. As always, the discussion is open to all, no fee or membership required. Bring your friends and see below for additional details.

The North Carolina Coastal Resource Commission just finished the first study of sea level rise in the United States. The most significant part of the study was what the report said about what the market has decided about sea level rise.

... even if the public and governments drag their feet on reacting to a changing coast, others aren't waiting to adapt. State Farm, for example, announced this week that it will no longer write or renew insurance policies for structures on barrier islands to reduce its exposure in areas prone to catastrophic events like hurricanes.

Is fiscal responsibility good if it creates a filibuster proof commission with the final say on cuts to Medicare and Social Security?

It seems that a dozen Conservadems (including Hagan) think so and signed a letter supporting the creation of a fiscal responsibility board.

...it would create budget legislation, including deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare. As Conrad has written the proposal, the Senate could only have simple majority (upperdown) votes on this legislation--no filibusters. It would hand over a huge amount of Congressional authority to an unelected, unaccountable commission, all in the name of "fiscal responsibility." Sadly, a dozen Democrats signed onto a letter to Harry Reid yesterday, stressing their concern over deficits.

I was just reading several blogs and saw this great diary from Icebergslim, (good to see you) and I noticed the back and forth about Olbermann and Obama.
While surfing the blogs related to this, I was alarmed by this story on Huffington Post
about the Comcast takeover of NBC and by that I also mean, progressive television on MSNBC.
So you are thinking "Comcast, so what?"
Well, there have been diaries here about Comcast removing MSNBC from the regular cable line up - in favor of Golf TV or Food Network or for whatever is not the outlet for our progressive voices.