A few months ago, the New Castle Generating Station, an hour northwest of Pittsburgh, was named one of the most contaminated coal-fired power plant sites in the country. Polluted with arsenic and other toxic chemicals, the facility sits between the village of West Pittsburgh, population 821, and the Beaver River, a tributary of the Ohio River, which serves as a drinking water source for more than 5 million people.
Although the plant, owned by GenOn, largely replaced coal with natural gas in 2016, the site still retains 3 million tons of ash, a mixture of feather-light dust and rock-laden material left over from burning coal. Over the last century, U.S. coal-powered electricity generation has produced at least 5 billion tons of coal ash, enough waste to fill a line of rail cars reaching the moon.
Nearly 60 percent of U.S. annual coal ash production was recycled in 2021, mostly for cement and concrete, according to the American Coal Ash Association. But massive amounts still fill at least 746 coal ash impoundments in 43 states nationwide, with waste sites mostly […]
Trump Theater has completely overwhelmed American media, and all kinds of things are getting little or no coverage. One that I am watching and that I find increasingly alarming is the growing violence of the Trumper White boys. They are actively trying to provoke civil violence, and there is nowhere near enough public attention paid to what they are doing. Here is an account of just what is going on in the Northwest.
Proud Boy Dan Tooze, center, chases anti-fascist counterprotesters. Credit: Jonathan Levinson / OPB
Dan Tooze spent most of the day on Aug. 22, 2021, sporting a Proud Boys T-shirt and body armor. Like many in the group, Tooze was armed—a wooden baton in hand and a pistol on his belt. He was in Portland’s Parkrose neighborhood for a rally held by the violent, extremist group whose emblem was emblazoned on his chest.
The rally began with speeches, including several defending the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol and others rife with transphobia.
The Proud Boys have made a habit of coming to the city to incite clashes and when counterprotesters arrived, the demonstration quickly turned violent. The Proud Boys pursued them toward Parkrose Middle School. Tooze led the pack, pointing his baton toward the anti-fascists and screaming over his shoulder for others to charge. Tooze and others in his group smashed the windows of a minivan and at one point, he swung and hit someone from behind with his baton. Other Proud Boys went on […]
Here is the latest Republican saying out loud what they all seem to believe. They do not like democracy. This trend is causing real damage in the United States, and I urge you never to vote for anyone who does not openly and seriously support democracy, not just by their words, but their actions. Democracy is fragile.
During debate on an omnibus spending bill in the Minnesota state legislature, a Republican lawmaker said that expanding democracy in the United States is “not a good thing.”
The comment was made by Rep. Matt Bliss (R), who opposed elements of the bill during debate within the Minnesota State House Elections Finance and Policy Committee on Friday.
The bill deals primarily with funding for state and local elections, but also includes a number of election reforms — among them, granting 17-year-olds the ability to register to vote in upcoming elections if they will be 18 by Election Day, as well as instituting an automatic voter registration system.
Another aspect of the bill that Republicans objected to was signing Minnesota on to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement by many U.S. states to award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, no matter the outcome of their own jurisdictions.
I have been telling you for years now that as a result of climate change, and the wars it will stimulate, there are going to be massive migrations between countries and within countries and that not a single country on earth is properly preparing for this. Some estimates suggest the number will be on the order of 350 million men, women, and children. It is going to create a level of chaos never seen before in history. Now is the time to start preparing for what is coming, and it will have to be a planetary-wide effort.
After the earthquake, Syrian refugees trapped in Turkey have faced a double tragedy: displacement, then disaster. Credit: Diego Ibarra Sanchez / The New York Times
When a fire broke out last week at a Mexican detention center for migrants and asylum seekers in Ciudad Juárez, just across the border from El Paso, it seemed like cosmically bad luck, a double tragedy: People forced — by political instability, criminal violence, climate change or economic deprivation — to flee their homes, faced a devastating fire while trying to seek refuge. At least 39 people died. The world took notice. Mexican authorities launched a criminal investigation.
But was it really so random? Or was this double tragedy a portent of what’s to come in a world where seemingly unsolvable conflict and climate change are already creating disasters across the globe?
Here is some very good news not just for Wisconsin, whose supreme court has now been radically changed in a progressive wellbeing fostering way, but also for the United States. The 2022 election showed that even though christofascist oligarchs poured hundreds of millions in support of Republican elections to shift the United States away from democracy and into an White Supremacy anocracy, the Red Wave they sought did not happen. Particular to Wisconsin Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, two of the country’s largest conservative political donors, who gave more than $5 million to groups seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential electio also spent more than $5 million backing the campaign of former. MAGAt Republican Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly. As this articles describes, he also lost. That leaves me modestly optimistic about the 2024 election, and I think Trump Theater will help with this as well. The Trumpist soap opera is going to drag on for months, and I think it will help the majority of Americans to get clear in their minds that they want nothing to do with the White supremacy christofascists.
Janet Protasiewicz, who won the Wisconsin’s supreme court race. Credit: Jeff Schear / Getty
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz is projected to win the vacant seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, marking the first time in 15 years that the court will have a liberal majority, according to The Associated Press.
Protasiewicz and her challenger, former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, were seeking to replace outgoing conservative Justice Patience Roggensack on the court. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has a 4-3 conservative majority, but with Roggensack’s retirement, the partisan lean of the court hung in the balance.
The election will have clear consequences for a host of issues in the state, including a contested 1849 abortion ban that offers very limited exceptions, redistricting and even possible challenges to the 2024 election results.
Though the judicial race is technically nonpartisan, Protasiewicz and Kelly were seen as the liberal and conservative contenders, respectively. The two made it into the Tuesday race after they became the two top vote-getters during the initial February election, which featured four candidates […]
