Environment and Health
Crime Pays for BP
It turns out crime pays. Big time. BP, the oil company responsible for what may become the largest oil spill of all time in the United States has been breaking the law, again and again. And each time, the company formerly known as British Petroleum has learned its lesson: Keep breaking the law. Corporations can get away with murder and environmental devastation, and make billions doing it.
Assessing the BP Oil Disaster
“This disaster is a wakeup call,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said during a visit to the Gulf Coast. “We need to stop the expansion of offshore drilling, immediately.”
Mothers Shouldn’t Have to Fear for their Lives
Perhaps it is because the birth of my child was such a joyous occasion that I am struck by the latest statistics about maternal health around the world. While my biggest fear during pregnancy was that I wouldn’t master breastfeeding, in many parts of the world pregnant women fight against appalling odds that they–or their babies–won’t survive labor and delivery. More than 526,000 women die during pregnancy and childbirth every year. That’s one death every minute.
Congress: Rescue the Clean Water Act
The Clean Water Act protected the nation’s waters for decades, from the Great Lakes and Mississippi River, to small headwater streams and associated wetlands. Yet Congress and the Supreme Court have allowed the act to falter for the past nine years.
Warning: Shopping May Prove Deadly to Miners
One of the many lessons we must learn from the 29 miners who lost their lives in Montcoal, West Virginia is that our patterns of energy use, as well as how we shop, are intimately tied to those who risk their lives each and every day deep beneath the Earth’s surface.
What’s so Great About Freedom from Health Care?
The tea party is made up of a lot of disparate elements–anti-abortion, anti-taxes, anti-immigration, anti-health-care expansion, anti-government in general. If it weren’t for guns, they wouldn’t be pro anything.
Senate Emissions
Getting Sick Can Be Darned Risky
We all know who the real bad guys are in the health biz. They’re the insurance companies, the drug companies, and the lawmakers who serve them. Those are the easy ones. After them it’s murkier. Some doctors and hospitals also cheat and steal or are incompetent, but most do the best they can to try to cure us. Unfortunately “best they can” often isn’t that good.
Rushing to Universal Coverage
Last year, before Rush Limbaugh pledged to emigrate to the jewel of Central America, I lived and worked In Costa Rica for six months.
Limbaugh Loves Universal Health Coverage
For Rush, the health-care fight was personal. In January, suffering with chest pains, the yackety-yacker was rushed to a hospital in Hawaii. After his recovery, he used the experience to embellish his rhetorical assault on reformers: “Based on what happened here to me,” he bellowed, “I don’t think there’s one thing wrong with the American health care system. It is working just fine, just dandy.” Well gosh, Rush–that’s because Hawaii has had a form of Obamacare since 1974, including a statewide mandate that employers provide health coverage for full-time workers. Why shouldn’t all Americans get what you got?
