May 22, 2013

Maryland: Capital Area Commuters Increasingly Relying on Transit

MD: Capital Area Commuters Increasingly Relying on Transit

Kelsi Loos
Source: The Frederick News-Post
Created: May 20, 2013


More capital-area workers are ditching their cars and taking transit to commute, according to a study of regional commuter patterns released Wednesday.

The city of Frederick has worked to stay on top of the trend by listing TransIT needs in the city's annual priorities letter and supporting events promoting commuter options, city planner Tim Davis said.

"TransIT is very good for our community to get people to jobs and other activities," he wrote in an email. "Suffice to say, we support transit growth as it is good for the environment, reduces congestions, and saves people money."

The portion of commuters driving to work alone in the region decreased from 67 to 66 percent between 2000 and 2011, the National Capital Regional Transportation Planning Board reported. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.masstransitmag.com/news/10945629/md-capital-area-commuters-increasingly-relying-on-transit

May 22, 2013

WA: Party Lines Blur at Transportation Rally

WA: Party Lines Blur at Transportation Rally

Jordan Schrader
Source: The News Tribune
Created: May 21, 2013


At least three Republican state lawmakers rallied Monday on the Capitol steps with backers of a gas tax and fee increase that would pay for roads, ferries, mass transit and other transportation improvements.

Democrats such as House Transportation Committee Chairwoman Judy Clibborn, Gov. Jay Inslee and U.S. Rep. Denny Heck want it approved in the Legislature this year. The only action so far has been a party-line vote in Clibborn's committee. But organizers promoted the rally's bipartisan flavor.

Rep. Hans Zeiger and Sen. Bruce Dammeier, two GOP advocates of extending state Route 167 from their hometown of Puyallup to the Port of Tacoma, spoke to the crowd of a couple hundred people, many of them union workers.

Zeiger, 28, told the advocates that when he talks about finishing SR 167, people laugh and tell him, "They've been talking about that since before you were born." ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.masstransitmag.com/news/10946442/wa-party-lines-blur-at-transportation-rally

May 22, 2013

Senator bets the farm against Monsanto

from Grist:


Could the Monsanto Protection Act get repealed?
By Claire Thompson


Smuggled into the bill President Obama signed to avert a government shutdown in March was a sneaky little rider called the “farmer assurance provision.” It’s since come to be known as the Monsanto Protection Act, being very assuring to the biotech giant, if no one else. It allows farmers to plant genetically modified crops before they’ve been declared safe by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in defiance of court orders suspending planting until environmental reviews can be completed.

Once food-advocacy groups and then the general public found out about the quietly passed provision, outcry against it spread, in the form of petitions and even rare displays of bipartisan solidarity. On Monday, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) announced that he’s introducing an amendment to the Senate version of the farm bill that would repeal the Monsanto Protection Act in its entirety.

“The Monsanto Protection Act is an outrageous example of a special interest loophole,” said Merkley in a press release. “This provision nullifies the actions of a court that is enforcing the law to protect farmers, the environment and public health. That is unacceptable.” ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://grist.org/news/could-the-monsanto-protection-act-get-repealed/

May 22, 2013

The Chained CPI Is Bad for Seniors and for Accuracy

from Dollars & Sense:


The Chained CPI Is Bad for Seniors and for Accuracy
BY John Miller | May/June 2013

The word “thuggish” comes to mind. “I’m not a number,” says the older man in a television ad funded by the seniors’ lobby AARP. ... “But I am a voter. So Washington, before you even think about cutting my Medicare and Social Security benefits, here’s a number you should remember: 50 million.”

This unyielding position, undergirded by a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, is as wrongheaded as the equivalent line-drawing of Grover Norquist and the no-new-taxes crowd. ...

The brutal fact is that Social Security cannot pay all promised benefits, and a debt discussion is a useful place to make reasonable tradeoffs.

—Washington Post, “Congress should reject AARP’s self-centered appeals on Social Security,” Nov. 4, 2011.

That AARP television ad sure raised the hackles of the Washington Post editors back in 2011. The editors called AARP’s threat—to vote out any politician who supported a reduction in the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security benefits—”thuggish,” “self-centered,” in denial about the crisis of Social Security, and as “wrongheaded” as conservative power-broker Grover Norquist. That last one had to hurt.

Back then, the proposal to reduce the Social Security COLA by switching to the “chained” Consumer Price Index (CPI) didn’t come to pass. But now it’s back, this time as part of the 2014 Obama budget proposal and going by its technical economic name—the “superlative CPI.” Make no mistake, though. It’s the same idea now as then, and would reduce the COLAs for Social Security and veterans’ benefits, as well as the inflation adjustment for income-tax brackets.

What’s all the fuss about? The Social Security Administration currently uses the CPI–W, a measure of the price of a basket of goods and services typically purchased by urban wage-earners and clerical workers, to calculate COLAs for Social Security recipients. The “chained CPI-U,” as it is officially designated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), grows at a slower rate than the CPI-W. Therefore, calculating the COLAs using the chained CPI will reduce future Social Security benefits by more and more each year. If that sounds to you like a roundabout way to hold down spending on Social Security, you’ve got it right.

The proposal is meant to establish Obama’s deficit-reduction bona fides and to lure Republicans and conservative Democrats into a “grand bargain” boosting tax revenues and cutting entitlements spending. For good measure, the Obama administration is selling the superlative CPI as just that—“a more accurate measure of the average change in the cost of living than the standard CPI.” And the Washington Post is once again on board, endorsing the Obama proposal for “Social Security spending restraint” as part of the “worthy end” of entitlement reform. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2013/0513miller.html

May 22, 2013

How a Radical Group of American Nuns Shook Up the Vatican to Better the World

from YES! Magazine:


How a Radical Group of American Nuns Shook Up the Vatican to Better the World
“Band of Sisters” shows why a humble group of women fell under Vatican investigation for seeing the causes—not just the symptoms—of injustice.

by Valerie Schloredt
posted May 21, 2013




How did American nuns move from the traditional confines of convent life to the social activism that has them under Vatican investigation for being too radical and feminist? Blame (or credit) Vatican II in the early 1960s, which instructed Catholics to take their religion out into the world and make it relevant. According to Mary Fishman’s new documentary, Band of Sisters, American nuns eagerly took up the call to serve where there is greatest need. That work led them to seeing the causes, not just the symptoms, of injustice.

Going out into the world brought more than just a change from the black and white nun’s habit to ordinary clothing. There were intellectual, emotional, and spiritual transformations too, as the numerous sisters interviewed in the film explain. Many of the interviewees are old enough to have experienced the changes of role and attitude over the decades since Vatican II. Their testimony gives this film authenticity and gentle authority.

The work of Sisters Pat Murphy and JoAnn Persh is one example. Fishman shows them as they prepare to go out into a dark Chicago winter morning to hold a vigil outside an immigrant deportation center. They want the authorities to let them inside to bring support and comfort to the deportees. In successive scenes, we see that they eventually do get inside the center, even though it takes time, organized lobbying, and a change in state law. Their determined action achieves results. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/love-and-the-apocalypse/film-review-band-of-sisters

May 22, 2013

Bill Moyers/Michael Winship: Enabling Greed Makes U.S. Sick

Enabling Greed Makes U.S. Sick

May 20, 2013
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship


At the end of a week that reminds us to be ever vigilant about the dangers of government overreaching its authority, whether by the long arm of the IRS or the Justice Department, we should pause to think about another threat — from too much private power obnoxiously intruding into public life.

All too often, instead of acting as a brake on runaway corporate power and greed, government becomes their enabler, undermining the very rules and regulations intended to keep us safe.

Think of inadequate inspections of food and the food-related infections which kill 3,000 Americans each year and make 48 million sick. A new study from Johns Hopkins shows elevated levels of arsenic — known to increase a person’s risk of cancer — in chicken meat. According to the university’s Center for a Livable Future, “Arsenic-based drugs have been used for decades to make poultry grow faster and improve the pigmentation of the meat. The drugs are also approved to treat and prevent parasites in poultry… Currently in the U.S., there is no federal law prohibiting the sale or use of arsenic-based drugs in poultry feed.”

And here’s a story in The Washington Post about toxic, bacteria-killing chemicals used in poultry plants to clean more chickens more quickly to meet increased demand and make more money. According to Amanda Hitt, director of the Government Accountability Project’s Food Integrity Campaign, “They are mixing chemicals together in these plants, and it’s making people sick. Does it work better at killing off pathogens? Yes, but it also can send someone into respiratory arrest.” ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://billmoyers.com/2013/05/20/enabling-greed-makes-u-s-sick/

May 22, 2013

Bison Baby: First Wisent Born in German Wild

from Der Spiegel:




After being released into the wild in Germany just last month, a herd of wisents has welcomed its first calf. The first European bison to be born free in Germany in centuries has been named "Quintus," and appears to be healthy.

For the first time in centuries, a European bison, or wisent, has been born in the wild in Germany, conservationists announced on Tuesday. The calf, which arrived early this month, belongs to a herd that was released in April.

The young wisent seems "perky," said Jochen Born, a ranger at Wisent Welt Wittgenstein, the forest sanctuary surrounding the western German town of Bad Berleberg that is home to the animals. But any hikers hoping to catch a glimpse of the typically shy bison should keep their distance, he added, because the species is known for fiercely protecting its young.

The calf is the fifth to be born since the sanctuary began its project to reintroduce European bison to their native habitat. The fact that it was born outside of a corral in the Rothaar Mountain region is a "great success," its website said. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/species-reintroduction-first-wisent-born-in-the-wild-in-germany-a-901114.html

May 22, 2013

Teahad !!!!

WASHINGTON -- Two prominent old-line Senate Republicans threw down the gauntlet to their more conversative colleagues on Tuesday, challenging them to stop obstructing the passage of a budget.

Led by tea party Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), Republicans have been preventing the Senate from sending the budget it passed earlier this year to a conference committee with the House, at which major differences between the two chambers' budget bills would in theory be worked out. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been supportive of the blockade.

But on Tuesday, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) blasted the obstruction in a Senate floor showdown with Paul.

McCain went so far as to call his fellow senators' actions "bizarre."

.........(snip).........

The tea party trio, however, want to require that the Senate conferees named to the joint committee be barred from agreeing to any compromise that would raise taxes or hike the nation's debt ceiling. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/john-mccain-rand-paul_n_3315328.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037

May 22, 2013

How Silver Spring’s transit center plan grew into a fiasco

from the WaPo:




At the low point in the boom-bust-boom history of Silver Spring, the biggest downtown in the Washington suburbs was in desperate straits. From the mid-1960s through the next decade, storefronts emptied out fast. Some morphed into low-rent adult bookstores or churches catering to immigrants. Crime spiked.

Even when Metro opened its first suburban station in Silver Spring in 1978, little changed. The subway was sparking development in the District, but in Silver Spring, the station sat alone, surrounded by body shops and vacant lots.

If Metro was going to be the game-changing investment that planners had promised, something more had to be done. Montgomery County hatched a plan: The Silver Spring Transit Center — a snazzy terminal that would link Metro, the MARC commuter train and the county’s bus system — would cost $26 million, but it would connect to a new residential-retail complex, fill in a crucial gap at the core of the business district and help lure pedestrians to new shops and arts facilities.

Today, 23 years after the county spent $8 million to buy the land for the transit center, two decades after the federal government provided the first $1.5 million to design it and more than six years after construction finally began, the Silver Spring Transit Center sits behind chain-link fencing, its new bus benches still shrink-wrapped. Although the facility is supposedly 95 percent finished, it is crippled by major structural flaws. Dangerous cracks in the building are warning signs that chunks of concrete could fall onto pedestrians, and all sides agree that complex lawsuits lie ahead for the worst building fiasco in county history. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-silver-springs-transit-center-plan-grew-into-a-fiasco/2013/05/20/7f2fb1c6-b986-11e2-aa9e-a02b765ff0ea_story.html?tid=pm_local_pop

May 21, 2013

Sweden Framing Assange, British Spy Messages Said to Say

via truthdig:


Sweden Framing Assange, British Spy Messages Said to Say
Posted on May 21, 2013


The WikiLeaks founder revealed internal conversations among employees of Britain’s intelligence agency in which agents apparently speculate that he is the target of a “fit-up” by Swedish authorities seeking his extradition on rape charges.

Assange, who remains in London’s Ecuadorean Embassy to avoid arrest and extradition to Sweden, explained Sunday night in an interview with the Spanish television program “Salvados” that a run-of-the-mill request for information gave him access to instant messages that remained unclassified by the Government Communications Headquarters agency.

Assange said a September 2012 message read: “They are trying to arrest him on suspicion of XYZ . ... It is definitely a fit-up. ... Their timings are too convenient right after Cablegate.” ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/british_spies_say_sweden_is_framing_julian_assange_20130521/?ln


...............

(Guardian UK) Authorities at GCHQ, the government eavesdropping agency, are facing embarrassing revelations about internal correspondence in which Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is discussed, apparently including speculation that he is being framed by Swedish authorities seeking his extradition on rape allegations.

The records were revealed by Assange himself in a Sunday night interview with Spanish television programme Salvados in which he explained that an official request for information gave him access to instant messages that remained unclassified by GCHQ.

A message from September 2012, read out by Assange, apparently says: "They are trying to arrest him on suspicion of XYZ … It is definitely a fit-up… Their timings are too convenient right after Cablegate."

The messages appear to contain speculation and chatter between GCHQ employees, but Assange gave little further explanation about exactly who they came from. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/may/20/julian-assange-gchq-messages-extradition?CMP=twt_fd