Environment and Health
The Pipeline from the Black Lagoon
Poor TransCanada. Everything looked so promising. The company had just finished drawing a line across Saskatchewan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, and Oklahoma, with hardly a peep of protest. The folks back in Alberta were solidly behind turning their valued forests into moonscape to harvest all those petrodollars and all those jobs. The provincial government, too, had already dismissed the environment and embraced the delicious expected profits.
The Freedom to Fear
Serious commentators are telling us not to assume that the Supreme Court is going to find “Obamacare” unconstitutional just because the conservative justices gave the government lawyer a hard time when the case came before the Court last month.
Keystone XL’s Dirty Little Secret
“It’s certainly true,” declared Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, “that having Canada as a supplier for our oil is much more comforting than to have other countries supply our oil.”
Congress Opts to Keep Poisoning Children
Yes, we certainly need to cut unnecessary and frivolous federal spending, because…well, because it’s unnecessary and frivolous.
Energy: Too Important to Leave to Corporations
In some nations, electricity is actually generated and distributed by the government itself. In some countries, oil and gas production benefits everyone, not CEOs.
Health Care Q & A
Not all the arguments about the Affordable Care Act take place in the Supreme Court. One major complaint from opponents is that they don’t want the government involved in their health care. I can imagine this conversation with a doctor:
Ryan’s Medicare Hot Air
Most of what the Wisconsin Republican calls “unfunded promises” are the future Medicare benefits that the government expects to have to pay through the late 2080s. To get a scare out of Medicare, you have look seven decades into the future.
Greening the Pentagon
The U.S. military is going green. Don’t take it from me. “[T]he Department of Defense…the world’s largest consumer of energy, will make one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history,” President Barack Obama declared in this year’s State of the Union address.
Avoiding the Next Arctic Oil Disaster
Exxon’s Valdez disaster illustrated not only the risks of offshore drilling, but also the difficulty of cleaning up a spill in Arctic conditions. After weeks of effort and several failed attempts, Exxon only managed to clean up a small amount of the oil.
Our Health Care Racket
In most countries, health care is aimed at curing the sick. Here, not so much. In the United States, health care is a profit center, one of our nation’s few growth industries. Young people are wisely counseled to pursue health-related careers. As a service, it’s harder to ship overseas.
