greenwashing
Wanted: New County Executive; Requirements: Must Be Democratic
It is important to remember that Charlie Dooley wasn’t initially elected into office, but rather he was to take over office after the sudden passing of George “Buzz” Westfall in 2003. Westfall did not live to see his 60th birthday due to a staph infection.
As much as Dooley has done a fair job picking up the reigns of Westfall, it is not without an agenda that Dooley has taken this job.
In recent years, Dooley, like so many other people in St. Louis County, has seen North St. Louis County (District 4), as this “dangerous” community. I wouldn’t call North County “dangerous” per se, but rather a tough community with a soft marshmallow center.
The past couple of years, outsiders from the City (St. Louis City and County are two different entities) thought getting away with their crimes out near the Florissant Area or in the St. Louis County Police Department’s 1st Precinct would mean that they would be getting away with their heinous crime. However, most of those criminals were caught expeditiously thanks to our outstanding tough-as-nails police force.
But in terms of respect for the area, the politicians in Clayton literally don’t understand–or care to for that matter–about the environment north of I-270.
Such is the case with two specific areas of North County: The West Lake Landfill and the Columbia Bottoms.
The Westlake Landfill was one of three places in North County where the Mallinckrodt Corporation had illegally dumped radioactive wastes. Two of these places are under the juristiction of the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) as part of the Former Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). The Two FUSRAP sites in North County that were cleaned up by the USACE were the St. Louis Airport Site (SLAPS) and the Hazelwood Interim Storage Site (HISS). Cleanup was made possible by transferring responsibility of the cleanup from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the USACE.
However, there is one site in North St. Louis County that has not been cleaned up: The Westlake Landfill.
The urgency of cleaning up Westlake would not have been so much of a problem, if a liner was put in place to prevent the raidoactive wastes from seeping into the groundwater then finding their way into the river. It also wouldn’t be so urgent if the Monarch and Howard Bend Levees were not reenforced, or if urban sprawl near the Monarch Levee had not occured since 1993, or if the Riverport and Earth City Levees had received the same treatment as the Monarch and Howard Bend Levees. Thanks to the breach of the Monarch Levee in 1993, the water supplies in Florissant and North St. Louis City were not contaminated. But if flooding like in 1993 were to occur again, there would be no second chances as the water would topple the Riverport Levee, wash hot particles into the Missouri River, and contaminate the water supplies in Florissant, North St. Louis City, and possibly further downstream.
A recent talk with Mr. Dooley stated that clean up of the Westlake Landfill would be “impossible” due to what he says would be the risk of kicking up hot particles. When the wind blows in a thunderstorm or a blustery day, doesn’t that just as equally kick up those hot particles?
However, Dooley is in favor of plans for building the Riverview Casino near Spanish Lake along Riverview Boulevard, an area which for years has been a quiet refuge, hidden in the farthest north part of the St. Louis City neighborhood or Riverview at the Northeastern Part of St. Louis County. This area is not only quiet country, but it is wetlands, created by the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers in the Columbia Bottoms.
Dooley’s justification for the establishment of the casino is that it would generate $400 Million in revenue, and that if St. Louis County didn’t acquire the only casino license (which belonged to the President Casino on the Admiral Riverboat), that St. Louis City would try to take it back.
But North County does NOT want a casino to be a source of income or as a place of economic development. We already have the Harrah’s Casino in Maryland Heights. The Casino is in a flood plain protected by the Howard Bend Levee, much like Boone’s Crossing in Chesterfield has been established near the Monarch Levee under the foolhearted assumption that the levee will make the floodplains into safe areas to create new neighborhoods. This is wrong!
There are far better industries that St. Louis County (particularly North St. Louis County) needs to not only generate revenue but establish sustainable economic development.
However, Charlie Dooley doesn’t want to encourage high tech companies into the St. Louis Area. It would be cheaper to build a casino in a wetlands area. He says it would be OK, because the casino would be “environmentally friendly”. I have yet to see a casino in the St. Louis Area that was considered “environmentally friendly”. Look at the Ameristar Casino, as it expands into the Missouri River. I wouldn’t call that “environmentally friendly”. The Harrah’s Casino in the flood plains of Maryland Heights, is that “environmentally friendly”?
How on God’s green Earth will putting a casino into a wetland area be “environmentally friendly”?! Because it is not!
Because if Dooley’s headstrong, foolish believes that it is too dangerous to clean up Westlake Landfill by transferring cleanup responsibility from the EPA to the USACE while at the same time believes that a wetland is a good place for a casino which he says is “environmentally friendly”, Charlie Dooley has pretty much set a course for the end of his tenure as St. Louis County Executive…if only there was someone worthy enough to replace him.
It is clear that the GOP in the St. Louis County is suffering from the same incompetence and nearsightedness as any Republican Party at this time. Bad decision making, and support for big businesses to make bad decisions, as well as a laundry list of other terrible, ignorant, and stupid platform decisions and supports had what made me cease any support for the Republican Party since 2006. Switching to the Democratic Party was probably the best decision I had made politically considering the people who are leading the GOP now both at federal and state levels.
But the County has now caught this irrational fever, and had nearly considered Chris Arps to spare against Dooley, unaware of Arps criticism of the NAACP then suddenly needing the NAACP’s help just after the Kenny Gladney incident. You could probably imagine how eager anyone at the NAACP would want to help someone who had criticized them beforehand.
The fact that the St. Louis Young Republicans even know the former staffer of Jim Talent, drop his name then decided to take it back, proves the ineffectiveness of having a GOP county executive at a time when the last thing St. Louis County needs is a fiscal conservative to derail many of the program and projects that need to be done in the area over the next few years to climb out of recession, attract real economic sustainability (NOT a casino!), protect the environment and ourselves, and to bring technological innovation to the St. Louis County region. (Thanks to Dooley, County-Wide WiFi is now off the table.).
Unless we want, Republican Bill Corrigan as the new St. Louis County Executive, a new Democratic challenger must toss their hat into the ring!
Climate Change is still very, very real
Despite the leaked information this week by a few scientist stiffling dissent and doctoring data, the information that is now public does NOT prove that skeptics were right.
However, when the mainstream media, with corporate sponsors and ownership by large energy conglomorates or stock in the obsolete technology that is continuing to be used and wreck havoc not just on climate but on agriculture, property, maritime safety and physical well being.
Skeptics assume that because this data is now public, they now have proof that climate change caused by humans is a myth, but they are very, very wrong!
Even though there is scandel brewing over climate change brough on by the University of East Anglia, the fact that the leading scientists tried to slience decent and exagerate the truth, there are many other institutions in the world with their own independent research and data to prove that climate change is still very real and does not only threaten the environment but economic interests.
Many climate change skeptics deny the existance of climate change not because of ignorance but because they fear that if action is taken to curb climate change it will mean that government regulation will be imposed to reduce the amount of manufacturing thus driving down profits.
The fact that economic liberalism (often supported by conservative political parties) has already allowed free trade to move manufacturing to countries with lax environmental regulation or to punch exceptions into laws than make existing pollutors to be exempt from new environmental laws has not only contributed to environmental damage but agricultural disaster, economic recession, unemployment, and poverty.
The status quo believes that it is unsulated from these problems because they have the wealth to afford to establish themselves where it will effect them the least. The problem is that despite isolating themselves from the outside world, the outside will always find a way in.
So if skeptics believe that because they have released the quibble of a few scientists trying to cover up dissent that talks in Copenhagen will fail, the skeptics are wrong!
It should be noted that eariler this year, News International was caught hiring hackers to break into private telephone and compuyter systems to dig up private conversations and personal information then used the stollen data to sensationalize it senationalize news in tabloids owned by News International.
News International is the corporation in the United Kingdom controlled by Rupert Murdoch who also owns News Corp (Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, MySpace.com) in the United states as well as News Limited in Australia.
Murdoch’s senationalism and biased news coverage has invoked all sorts of anarchy for all the wrong reasons.
In the United State, Murdoch’s “Fixxed News” has destablized the Republican Party by forcing out moderate, center-right conservative supporters in order to cater to the Republican base and far-right. Because Republicans emphazies the values of ONLY their base while abandoning and expelling everybody else, the Republican party has lost control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the 2008 Presidential Election not to metion many state and general elections through out the country.
As if that weren’t enough, the base and the far-right then developed misguided protest in the form of the what is now the T.E.A. Party Movement which has polarized American politics. One of the many things people notice about the T.E.A. Party is that it is composed mostly by white upper class individuals who for nearly the past 25 years (complements of former president Ronald Regan) have gotten away with alot of deregulation that created a barrier between the upper class and the middle class and has constantly pushed the middle class into becoming part of the working poor or into poverty.
With the rise of the Internet, a growing resistance has developed. So much so that in 2008, America elected President Obama through a grass roots campaign and community organization efford.
While the base and the far-right claims it has developed their own “grass roots efforts”, the discovery of who is really part of their grass roots campaigns denotes that they are not grass roots and only used the name “grass roots” as a buzzword which also has liberal activists on the look out for other things like greenwashing, disinformation, and of course counterhacktivism.
The counterhacktivism this week is a sign that conservative base and far-right are desperate to keep the status quo, even as going as far as to make it appear that the real hactivists are throwing their support behind skepticism. Of course, the mainstream media doesn’t know the difference between counterhacktivism and hacktivism. So who takes the credit for revealing this e-mails at East Anglia? The hacktivists.
Don’t be surprise to see more attacks by counterhactivists on issues such as the National Healthcare, Network Neutrality, Alternative Energy, Unionization, and fighting against Telecom Immunity and Factory Farming.
It is up to the hacktivist to fight back against the corporate and neo-conservative counterhacktivists.
This is our world. We have to defend it!
Welcome to St. Louis!
The following post is for the visitors of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
Welcome to St. Louis, Missouri! Home of the TEN TIME World Champion St. Louis Cardinals. (When we win more World Series titles than the New York Yankies, you can thank us for shutting down Major League Baseball. Believe us, once someone better whose not from New York out does the so-called “best team in baseball”, Bud Selig will have fire sale.)
Home of McDonnell Douglas, Trans World Airlines, GrandPa Pidgeon’s, May Department Stores, Peavely Dairy, Monsanto, Peabody Energy, Patriot Coal , Arch Coal (Don’t those last four companies just “love” the environment?) and our biggest hometown staple Anheuser-Busch. Home of an industrial workforce such as the Hazelwood Ford Plant where they make the Ford Explorer, the Fenton Chrysler Plant where they make the Dodge Ram, and the Wentzville GM Assembly Plant.
If you’ve come from out of town, you may be interested in visiting the Ballpark VillageEmpty Lot complements of our good friends at the Centene Corporation. Mayor Slay invites you to visit the new Ballpark VillageEmpty Lot before and after the All Star Game and the Home Run Derby. (Most of you who are visiting and going to the game have spent about a grand per baseball seat. I would hate to see it get rained out. Not to put a jinx on the event, but I’m just being honest.)
While in St. Louis, visit our many tourist attractions using our Metro Transit System which can take you to places such as the The Gateway Arch, The St. Louis Zoo (No service in this direction), The Missouri History Museum (to which is near the Forest Park Metrolink Station), The St. Louis Art Museum(No service), The Science Center(No service), The Muny(No service, from what I can tell), The Kiel Opera House(What opera house?), The Bevo Mill (Closed. You can thank Carlos Brito of InBev for this one.), The Delmar Loop (lofts), The Central West End (lofts), Washington Avenue (and more lofts), Union Station (assuming there are stores still there), Laclede’s Landing, The Missouri Bontanical Gardens (I might be wrong about this one), The Hill (this one is also a little iffy), Grant’s Farm (No service, and Carlos Brito reduced the hours.), The Magic House (This makes me sad that there are no busses. Your kids would have loved it!), The City Museum (I wish I could have crossed out this one), and Lambert-St. Louis International Airport (word of advice to Mr. Shaquille O’Neal or anyone over 7 feet, watch your head when entering the main terminal).
But St. Louis is not the only place in the area where the excitement is! Why not use Metro to visit our surrounding cities such as Clayton, Bridgeton Lambert-Airport W1W Runway, Kirkwood (nothing to write home about), Ferguson (I hope there is still service here), Chesterfield (No bus service), Florissant (you are better off using a bike!), St. Charles(They don’t want to pay taxes to support it, but mostly they don’t want “certain people” there. Why visit them anyway? New Town is in a SWAMP!), the Recplex and Mid Rivers Mall in St. Peters(More people who didn’t want to pay taxes. Never mind most of the people who they don’t want there have these things called “cars” so they can DRIVE out there and work.), O’Fallon (Another city that won’t pay taxes for bus service, though it’s urban development caused all sorts of controversy a couple of years ago. Did we metion it is also where good Christian women who think “hunger can be a positive motivator” come from to represent the state of Missouri but follow around an crazy ambulance chasing dentist/lawyer who will some day become the Crazy Cat Lady from The Simpsons?)
While in Downtown St. Louis enjoying the Ballpark Village Empty Lot be sure to visit the new City Garden, located between Chestnut and Market and 8th and 10th Streets across the street from the Peabody Energy Corporate Headquarters. Feel free to ask them how are things in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. 
.
Don’t forget to try some Imo’s Pizza and some Ted Drewes’ Frozen Custard, Toasted Ravioli (though I personally prefer regular ravioli), Schlafly Beer and Fitz’s Root Beer and Gus’ Pretzels. Because the food alone is worth the trip out to our city.
So on behalf of the people of St. Louis: WELCOME!
The Great DINGY, DIRTY White North
It is true that the Toyota Prius is NOT a green car. In fact, during it’s production, severe environmental damage was inflicted on the local environment in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
As conservative causes move to north of the Border from the mining of oil sand and mountain top removal in Alberta, to nickel smelting polution in Ontario being used to test moon rovers for NASA caused by a factory so large it is called “The Superstack”, we are starting to see a dingy (din-jee) Great White North.
The industrialists have taken their business north and south, as American health and environmental laws that had been ignored for so long suddenly become serious. (I can’t believe the press and government officials are acting so flabbergasted as to how quickly the Obama adminstration managed to take care of the creating a budget. They were hoping it would would take him five years…it took him less than five months thanks to these things called COMPUTERS. Something that Clinton nor even either Bush bothered to use. Of course, a little planning a head during the campaign or even before that probaby helped.)
You can tell that it is OUR G.O.P. wearing the tuque and trading in their Starbucks for Tim Hortons because when Bush was president, there was this pressing issue to activate Columbian Free-Trade (nothing “free” about it) with North America. Being the astute little patriotic disident that I was, I noticed that when Bush wanted this passed, there was propaganda on American government websites demanding Congress pass similar legislation (which thankfully did not). It was propoganda because during some exploration to Cuban website (sites ending in .cu), there was pleanty of propaganda demainding the United States return five Cuban fugitives being held in Texas.
It is clear that under any neoconservative or far-right leaning regeme we become like our rivals. Rather than being better than our rivals and not stoop to their level, the Bush Adminstration posted this Columbian Trade nonsense even on websites for the Environmental Protection Agency and NOAA. Why scientific agencies got involved was clearly the work of a higher authority.
The real reason why Columbia Trade is an issue in any country. The Drugs!
Clearly, the Bush Adminstration had no reguard for the environment let alone the economy. It was clear when a family in Colorado turned on the water in their kitchen to find methane drilling near their home had caused methane to seep into their drinking water made the water catch on fire due to drilling near their home. Why a disaster FORTY TIMES WORSE than the Exxon-Valdez dumped over 70 million cubic feet of coal sludge in eastern Tennessee last year. It is why natural gas drilling is causing earthquakes in Texas that Gas Companies hope a royality check for damaging the geology will make residents feel better for making the earth unstable. But why burn down the house, when you can start a FIRE in the basement and cause a global pandemic.
Canada has drawn many industrialist to strip her of her resources, take advantage of her immigration policies by trafficing “outsourced labor” (which as the Kansas City Star discovered it to include “modern day slavery”) and narcotics, polluting and destroying the image of Canada being a pristine environment, and hoping that there will be pleanty of laws to make sure that their brief high-flying druged-up weathy lifestyle continues despite their breif time on earth.
Your average industrialist: Loves making money, long walks on oil covered beaches, feeding stray kittens to ATM machines, shooting friends with no remorse, cocaine, and ruling the free world as Vice President with an iron fist. (See also Dick Cheney.)
But how did the Prius fit into all this? Think of it as the backdoor plan for anyone who was not interested in buying a Hummer.
We have been living in a world of extremes, not moderates. These forces were separated and pulled out of balance. The polarization of the world that turns neighbors into enemies. A plan not to develop the future but to destroy the present to relive the past.
Their influence has set off the development of clean cars that are dirty, unaware that the fair trade of scientific ideas will change a car that is suppost to look like it is green into one that truely is without harming the environment or looking like the fugliest car on the road.
"Unless"
The way of the industrialist is terse, closed, and creates boundries that limit the mind and the imagination. It is easy for their world to come crashing down. The bank may collapse. The oil derick may run dry. And the factories may shut down. Unless industrialists can find moderation rather than forcing extremes, they will lose everything. No money, no religion, no power will save them or reenforce their their power. For all of that is but an instant in time, but the damage from the methods they want to use lasts forever.
Callaway County Nuclear Plant Bill Nuked!
After spouting off untruths like “Greenpeace [rather Patrick Moore who was kicked out of Greenpeace] approves of nuclear power” and “Nuclear Power is renewable energy”, the State Capitol killed the Missouri Clean and Renewable Energy Construction Act.
First off, nuclear power is NOT a renewable source of energy. It can be advertised as an “alternative” to coal, oil, or natural gas, but it is certainly NOT renewable.
Secondly, nuclear power is NOT clean energy. Aside from the waste produced by nuclear reactors, there is the radiation. Science tells us that pretty much everything is radioactive to a certain degree. The human body produces radiation but at very low levels. This non-ionizing radiation is given off as body heat. But the radiation given off by enriched uranium, a common fuel used in nuclear reactors, is poisionous due to the ionizing radiation released the various isotopes. So much so that when it is handle, it is packaged in layers of concrete. Until there is some way to scrub out the radiation, be it from peaceful usage of nuclear power or the horrors of nuclear weapons, nuclear material will remain the most dirty form of energy next to coal.
Finally, nuclear power is NOT green energy. There is nothing “green” about radioactive waste. The tranportation of it is also not green. While it chance that the truck carrying it to the waste being stollen or in an accident are very low, the waste still has to be packed up in concrete again and transported to someplace underground where it could seep into a water table. It also takes many years for some of the leftover isotopes to decay. Many of the half-lifes of the most hazardous elements have half-lifes that are couted in centuries. Most garbage in a common landfill would decay many times over compared to the waste. Even the concrete that contains them would crumble before the waste decays.
But business men do not understand that. All they see is a way to make money over a relatively short amount of time.
In recent months, we have seen the work of their ilk, even watch as some of them die off from thier addiction to greed. I’ll admit, I’d like to be rich some day, but at a much slower rate.
Unless you are willing to pay the burdens of higher taxes that come with the luxtury of a higher income, what is there to complain about?
These $400,000 per year executives moaning over a 33% income tax by the federal government have no reason to complan, especially since the math is in their favor. 33% of $400,000 is $132,000 in taxes. Keep in mind they still have 66% of that $400,000 to keep. Which is $264,000 to do whatever the heck they want. More than likely, have of that will go into investments that still make them money. Still, that is $132,000 of money they can still spend annually, while if for some instance they put the other half of that $132,000 in an Investment Savings Account with a rate of 0.15%, it would take atleast 7 years for them to make a million dollars in comparison to a person making $40,000 per year, who is taxed 10% (leaving them with $36,000 depositing half of that into savings each year) it would take 53 years. For someone making $100,000 being taxed 25%, it would take 26 years. Of course, these figures don’t account for pay raises or other stuff taken out of a paycheck.
Overall, they’re living a pretty good life. So what do they have to be unhappy about? Not enough sand near their vacation house in the Hamptons?
It’s one thing to write out one of those giant checks to a foundation, it is another to go out of your way and actually do something good for others.
What good is it being rich when you don’t do anything to help those who aren’t. I don’t mean work at a soup kitchen. If you’re running a energy company and are making even in your sleep, why aren’t you investing in affordable RENEWABLE energy, of which you can make more money since the system pays for itself when properly maintained?
There are people who have been laid off in Grantie City and Ameren wants to build a nuclear plant? Why don’t they build it out of steel made in India and anger hundreds of steel workers while they are at it?
Ameren will attempt to sneak this bill in again, just wait and see.
And if that doesn’t work, they will attempt to make it appear like we are running out of energy by imposing rolling blackouts for a power shortage that does not exist. Didn’t someone else try doing that? *cough*Enron*cough*
We don’t need a bill to change the rules. We need a bill that creates REAL renewable energy and creates new jobs in an area that need it.
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