New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit

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Bill Maher
July 24, 2009 - Huffington Post

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How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are.

Did you know, for example, that there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? But now our war zones are dominated by private contractors and mercenaries who work for corporations. There are more private contractors in Iraq than American troops, and we pay them generous salaries to do jobs the troops used to do for themselves ­-- like laundry. War is not supposed to turn a profit, but our wars have become boondoggles for weapons manufacturers and connected civilian contractors.

Prisons used to be a non-profit business, too. And for good reason --­ who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition you're going to have trouble with the tenants. But now prisons are big business. A company called the Corrections Corporation of America is on the New York Stock Exchange, which is convenient since that's where all the real crime is happening anyway. The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That's why America has the world;s largest prison population ­-- because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line.

Television news is another area that used to be roped off from the profit motive. When Walter Cronkite died last week, it was odd to see news anchor after news anchor talking about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it."

But maybe they aren't. Because unlike in Cronkite's day, today's news has to make a profit like all the other divisions in a media conglomerate. That's why it wasn't surprising to see the CBS Evening News broadcast live from the Staples Center for two nights this month, just in case Michael Jackson came back to life and sold Iran nuclear weapons. In Uncle Walter's time, the news division was a loss leader. Making money was the job of The Beverly Hillbillies. And now that we have reporters moving to Alaska to hang out with the Palin family, the news is The Beverly Hillbillies.

And finally, there's health care. It wasn't that long ago that when a kid broke his leg playing stickball, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun put a thermometer in his mouth, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.

But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America's largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O.

Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like "recision," where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you've been paying into your plan for years.

When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain." The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism.

And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what's wrong with firemen? Why don't they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks!

TOON

The Secret Evidence of Global Warming Bush Tried to Hide

Satellite images of polar ice sheets taken in July 2006 and July 2007 showing the retreating ice during the summer.

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Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer.

Suzanne Goldenberg and Damian Carrington
July 26, 2009 - The Guardian/UK

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Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.

The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanize Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.

The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic. More than a million square kilometers of sea ice - a record loss - were missing in the summer of 2007 compared with the previous year.

Nor has this loss shown any sign of recovery. Ice cover for 2008 was almost as bad as for 2007, and this year levels look equally sparse.

"These are one-meter resolution images, which give you a big picture of the summertime Arctic," said Thorsten Markus of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "This is the main reason why we are so thrilled about it. One-metre resolution is the dimension that's been missing."

Disappearing summer sea ice poses considerable dangers, scientists have warned. Ice shelves are used by animals such as polar bears as platforms for hunting seals and other sea creatures. Without them, they could starve. In addition, ice reflects solar radiation. Without that process, the Arctic sea could warm up even more. The phenomenon threatens to set off runaway heating of the planet, say climatologists.

The latest revelations have triggered warnings from scientists that they no longer have the funds to keep a comprehensive track of climate change. Last week the head of the US's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Professor Jane Lubchenco, warned that the gathering of satellite data - crucial to predicting future climate changes - was now at "great risk" because America's aging satellite fleet was not being replaced.

"Our primary focus is maintaining the continuity of climate observations, and those are at great risk right now because we don't have the resources to have satellites at the ready and taking the kinds of information that we need," said Lubchenco, who was appointed by Obama. "We are playing catch-up."

Even before her warning, scientists were saying that America, the world's scientific superpower, was virtually blinding itself to climate change by cutting funds to the environmental satellite programs run by the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA. A report by the National Academy of Sciences this year warned that the environmental satellite network was at risk of collapse.

In February, a NASA satellite carrying instruments to produce the first map of the Earth's carbon emissions crashed near Antarctica only three minutes after lift-off.

The satellite would have measured carbon emissions at 100,000 points around the planet every day, providing a wealth of data compared to the 100 or so fixed towers currently in operation in a land-based network.

The NOAA is under additional pressure to provide environmental data because of the re-emergence of the El Niño climate phenomenon, where warming of the tropical Pacific causes heatwaves, droughts and flooding around the world. June's land and sea surface temperatures were the second hottest on record, and scientists are predicting this will be the warmest decade in recorded history. The last major El Niño was in 1998, the hottest year in recorded history.

The Obama administration has already taken steps to tackle America's flagging scientific lead. The president's economic recovery plan allotted $170m (£100m) to help close the gaps in climate modelling. The NOAA is seeking an additional $390m in its 2010 budget to upgrade environmental satellites, and help make data more available to researchers and government officials.

Why Nuclear Energy Is Not the Answer to Climate Change

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Ben Williams
July 26, 2009 - Examiner.com

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It's funny. People really believe that nuclear power is emissions free. Powering cities with nuclear, they propound, is the panacea to climate change. And yet, if you really take a look at the fuel cycle, it is obvious nuclear energy is, in fact, emissions intensive.

First off the ore needs to be mined. This involves drilling, explosions, heavy equipment. Even at the EPA standard of 15 grams of carbon per break horsepower engine hour, this translates to a lot of carbon. Then the ore needs to be shipped to a processing facility, or mill.

Here, twenty-four hours a day, heavy equipment loads the ore into a hopper, the intake into the semi-autogenous grinding mill. This grinding mill uses electricity (coal) to turn an enormous steel drum filled with metal tumbling balls. Additionally, tons -- yes tons -- of concentrated sulfuric acid are needed to help leach the uranium from the ore, among quantities of other highly caustic chemicals, all of which must be prepared on industrial scales and shipped to the facility.

After a number of other mechanical operations, all of them energy intensive, the ore must be dried in an oven, where, twenty-four hours a day, countless kilo-watt hours are burned heating the rock to temperature.

Finally, the processed ore, now 'yellow cake', has to be boxed up, sealed in steel drums (refined and produced industrially), and then shipped to market.

Then, of course, it needs to be reacted with hexaflourine, or some other chemical, to be refined and turned into the uranium rods that are used in the reactor core. Only now can the power be said to be emissions free: once the rods are installed and operational, powering generators with their nuclear heat.

Of course, after a few months the rods are spent. They then need to be safely disposed of -- or, more accurately, buried somewhere where no one will notice them, contained for 1,000 years, after which they become someone else's problem (probably the DOE or EPA). They must be safely interred for over four billion years. Yes, they need to be baby-sat for an amount of time that exceeds the current age of the Earth.

Because a nuclear core demands fresh, refined uranium, there is a constant use-cycle -- an unstoppable appetite -- that, ultimately pollutes in manifold ways:

1.The diesel burned in extracting the ore produces CO2, CO, NOX, SOX, dioxins, VOCs among the other expected particulates from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels.

2.The dust produced from mining becomes airborne and settles on downwind communities, increasing the cancer rate noticeably.

3.The diesel burnt in shipping the heavy rock to processing produces the same slew of pollutants as the heavy mining machinery, while trailing radioactive dust along the way.

4.The mill itself burns up millions of KWh every year, KWh generated, in this day and age, almost exclusively from burning coal -- high SO2, H2SO3 and H2SO4 meet heavy metals like Hg with the clouds of greenhouse gases.

5.The mill must vent many toxic gases as it processes the ore. It must store radioactive slurry in the ground, hoping it will evaporate so the tailings can be capped. Groundwater and runoff pollution occurs. Once capped, the tailings are radioactive for billions of years. Future contamination becomes a certainty. (Just, the mill operators hope, not in their lifetime.)

6.Shipping the yellow cake to market. There are only two enrichment plants in the Northern United States, and one of them is in Canada. Long trips equal large emissions. Much of the yellow cake will be shipped overseas, adding emissions from large container vessels and potential maritime spills to the list.

7.The enrichment facility then vents toxic gases from the reagents used in reducing the yellow cake to weapons-grade uranium.

8.The rods are shipped to power plants, necessitating the fourth round of distribution-related emissions.

9.The rods are used, then spent, sealed up, and transported to a nuclear waste dump -- more emissions, more radioactive decay along public roads and waterways.

10.Countless emissions result from policing the waste site.

Of course, none of this includes the emissions from the industrial-scale production of the reagents needed by the uranium refining cycle. Not to mention their weekly delivery to processing mills and enrichment facilities.

Nor does it take into account the 'depleted' uranium used as munitions (which, despite what you might infer from its name, is actually enriched -- it is depleted of the less radioactive isotopes). That causes enough pollution to contaminate our armed-forces personnel before it's even fired! Let alone the land where it is unleashed.

The whole thing is utterly non-sustainable. And no model on which to base future, responsible energy production. So why all the hoo-ha? Simple. Uranium allows, not so much for clean energy, but centralized energy production. Centralized energy production -- aside from being grossly inefficient from the distribution angle, losing more than 7% of all energy generated -- means centralized profits. Same, boring story we're all tired of hearing about. Corporate profits should no longer trump the public right to choose viable, alternative energy. Making the right choice means sharing the benefits of energy production: Not letting a small group of corporate elitists eat the whole pie while pushing the future costs (which approach infinity) onto every subsequent generation of human beings, ever.

Wake up. This is madness. And it won't stop until we hold CORPORATE GREED accountable. Haven't you had enough of this yet?

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Ben Williams is the executive Director of the Colorado Renewable Energy Cooperative and Manager of the Energy Services and Consulting company, Getting Climate Change Handled, LLC (GCCH). He lives in Southwest Colorado, in San Miguel County, at the fork in the road – between a sustainable future & the wreckage of an unchecked energy agenda.