US steelworkers form unlikely alliance as renewables reinvigorate rustbelt

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/26/us-renewables-coal-steel

US steelworkers form unlikely alliance as renewables reinvigorate rustbelt

Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania look to electric cars, solar and wind power after death of coal and steel industries

Suzanne Goldenberg in Pennsylvania
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 May 2009 15.18 BST

…

"My biggest concern is not to have happening to this generation what happened to mine — where you end up 10 years here, 10 years there, and then you are like me 54 years old, and five different careers and no seniority anywhere," said Bernat, who heads the chapter of the United Steelworkers of America union at the wind turbine plant. "I want to see the longevity of this thing."

Those hopes provide a powerful impetus for an alliance between the environmental and labour movements that could prove critical to the course of Barack Obama's hopes to transform America's energy economy.

The convergence of interests between greens and labour has grown stronger as Congress takes up climate change legislation. The house of representatives passed a key cap-and-trade bill through committee last week , despite Republican opposition.

Last month, the steel and communications workers unions teamed up with environmental campaigners at the Sierra Club to campaign jointly for climate change and a workers' rights bill. The Sierra Club urged its members to support a bill before Congress that would remove obstacles to forming a union. Foster's group, meanwhile, has spent $500,000 on ads in support of the climate change bill.

…

[azul]

1. Jobs, and green ones is the ticket.

And all those working for this change should make up the main base of the democratic party. Not corporatists and plundering fools.

People who want to work greenly for a stable and peaceful population, and a nice place to live should be the powerful force of change. Most all of us see what a mess the culture of greed and selfishness has wrought, and want to work to clean it up.

Working at jobs that kill the world just ain't where it's at anymore. How fun is that living in a bunker rolling around in riches that you hoard in your petty greediness while others suffer from the results of your activities? Role models are changing, the younger generations seem to be forced to get the picture.


And thank you JustMe for keeping at this basic angle so diligently.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. How fun is that living in a bunker rolling around in riches that you hoard in your petty greediness

Personally, I think that we, as a society, have been, and are being, sold a myth about the basic decency of humanity. Night after night, we watch programming designed to shock us, to make us scared of each other. The stranger only wants to kill us.

We need guns and security systems to protect ourselves and our stuff. It's a dangerous world out there. It's us or them.

With repetition, we accept what they tell us as truth.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2009-rst/5276.html

CSI:Mayo Clinic Researchers Find Two Popular Television Shows Inaccurately Portray Realities of Violent Crime

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO — Researchers at Mayo Clinic compared two popular television shows, CSI and CSI: Miami, to actual U.S. homicide data, and discovered clear differences between media portrayals of violent deaths versus actual murders. This study complements previous research regarding media influences on public health perception. Mayo Clinic researchers present their findings today at the http://www.psych.org/Events/AnnualMeeting.aspx">American Psychiatric Association annual meeting in San Francisco.

VIDEO ALERT: Additional audio and video resources, including excerpts from an interview with Dr. Lineberry describing the research, are available on the http://newsblog.mayoclinic.org/2009/05/19/mayo-clinic-researchers-find-two-popular-television-shows-inaccurately-portray-realities-of-violent-crime/">Mayo Clinic News Blog.

Previous studies have indicated television influences individual health behaviors and public health perceptions. Timothy Lineberry, M.D., a psychiatrist at Mayo Clinic, says "We make a lot of our decisions as a society based on information that we have, and television has been used to provide public health messages." Researchers chose to compare the crimes on CSI and CSI: Miami to real homicides because of the shows' combined audiences of more than 43 million viewers annually. They sought to determine how representative the portrayal of violent death crimes on the two series compared with data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) National Violent Death Reporting System.

When researchers compared the shows to the CDC data, they discovered the strongest misrepresentations were related to alcohol use, relationships, and race among perpetrators and victims. Previous studies of actual statistics have shown that both perpetrator and victim were often under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs when the crime occurred, differing from what the shows portrayed. Also, CSI and CSI: Miami were more likely to have described the victim and the attacker as Caucasian, which is misrepresentative. Finally, according to the CDC data, homicide victims typically knew their assailant; however, the television series were more likely to have portrayed the perpetrator as a stranger. All of these findings were significantly different when compared to the data.

Dr. Lineberry says, "If we believe that there is a lack of association with alcohol, that strangers are more likely to attack, and that homicide doesn't represent particular groups of people, it's difficult to create public health interventions that the general public supports." Other authors contributing to this study included Christopher Janish and Melanie Buskirk, both from Mayo Medical School.

###

[NYC_SKP]

2. Wow. A comeback for the middle class in America. No wonder the right hates green energy.

I can't help but think that globalist-NAFTAists wanted to see the end of a strong middle class, the end of manufacturing and other jobs in the US because it was so predictable and nothing was done about it.

Yay for these green jobs, for energy independence, for a new stronger middle class with real jobs.