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US Chamber of Commerce fighting climate regulations

The US Chamber of Commerce has spent $488 million in the past 11 years on lobby efforts. Now they’re throwing their weight and cash behind trying to block regulation that will cap carbon emissions. Now they want the Environmental Protection Agency to hold hearings to prove

that greenhouse gases pose enough of a danger to public health to justify regulations controlling their emissions under the Clean Air Act.

It’s fortunate that William Kovacs, the chamber’s top environment specialist, isn’t buying into this tactic to stall environmental change so companies can continue to make financial profits at the risk of the world’s health. When he said as much this triggered a series of defections by the chamber’s eco-sensitive members read more

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Pension system failure

Recently I was thinking about how much stress pensions cause to the social and economic systems in the United States. After looking at this issue for a while I concluded that pensions are a major contributor to social inequality, and they create unreasonable (and maybe unpayable) financial burdens on future generations of employees and citizens. Here’s how:

Promise now, others pay later

When I began talking to people about pensions I learned that they may also be unsustainable: that is, pensions are promised to employees by a generation of company execs and union bosses who aren’t going to be around the day pension payouts start to come due. This is the same sell-the-future-short ruse that politicians employ when they’re able to get public commendation for voting a law into being although they make no provisions to fund the law’s enactment. New Jersey’s Amistad Legislation which became law in 2002 but is still waiting for funding to bring a racially balanced historic perspective to classrooms across the state is a good example of this. The Racism in Higher Education paper sheds some light on this sujbect. read more

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Paulo Coelho. An accessible sage.

My current hero is Paulo Coelho. If you want access to a positive and empowering perspective on life that can be easily adopted by anyone breathing, take a look at his website and learn more about what Paulo does and says. Paulo’s a Brazilian guy possessed of a mountain stream of beautiful wisdom and comments, for example

The moment we set off in search of love, it sets off in search of us.

You ask if love wins over anything. The answer is yes if you don’t try to possess the subject of your love. read more

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Eat and support mental health care

On October 28 present this coupon at Blue Moon Mexican Café in Englewood and 20% of your bill will be donated to Advance Housing, Inc. I’m an Advance Housing board member so I totally think you should treat all of your family members and work colleagues to a meal at Blue Moon in Englewood on the 28th!

Valid only in the Englewood location
Good for any food and drink
Anytime from 11:30am-11:00pm on October 29, 2009
Blue Moon Mexican Café
21 E. Palisades Avenue, Englewood, NJ 07631
201 541-0600 read more

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How does Starbucks free wifi work?

Background: Starbucks offers Starbucks cardholders two hours of free wifi every day through the AT&T network. A friend has a Starbuck’s card and registered it on the Starbucks site, but she can’t log in.

I checked with an AT&T support rep who said there are a couple of ways to register a Starbucks card on their website and not all of them will get you signed up for the free AT&T wifi service. Next I spoke with Starbucks wifi support. The information they gave me (along with a couple of things I know from experience that they didn’t) should hopefully get my friend connected. read more

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1 million dollars for a junk car!

I admit that my title is misleading. I wasn’t offered a million dollars for junking my car today, but relative to its cash value what one company did offer me seemed like almost that much.

I want to junk my Chrysler LeBaron 1992 auto, or sell it. Several junkyards including reputable places I’ve dealt with in the past offered me modest amounts of money – GI Salvage in Pine Brook, NJ will pay nothing if they come to tow it, Deb & Dot in North Bergen will pay $75 if they tow it or $125 if I drive it over there. A nice guy in Newark offered me $100 guaranteed and up to $150 if original catlytic converter and other features are present. read more

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Real-time news with WordPress and RSS Cloud feed

Today a revolution occurred both in the way millions of web users can receive news and news portals and bloggers can push information out to followers and the web. Dave Winer’s RSS Cloud feed makes the information exchange happen in realtime. Today WordPress enabled all of its blogs with the technology.

With the installation of a simple plugin available in your WordPress control panel, your blog can now push content out to the cloud and individual users as fast as you can click, “Post.” In fact, just as fast as Twitter messages go out. The technology used is the same simple RSS used by popular feed aggregators like googlereader, netnewswire and other over the web and computer-resident applications that gather news you’ve subscribed to receive through RSS feeds. read more

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Hunger & Charity Now Crimes in the US?

A friend sent me this link to a fascinating and distressing op-ed piece in today’s New York Times on the increasing criminalization of poverty. An excerpt:

“The viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent can be breathtaking. A few years ago, a group called Food Not Bombs started handing out free vegan food to hungry people in public parks around the nation. A number of cities, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, and several members of the group were arrested. A federal judge just overturned the anti-sharing law in Orlando, Fla., but the city is appealing. And now Middletown, Conn., is cracking down on food sharing.” read more

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Disney: The Plasticizing of America

America has been transformed by marketing magic and a steady trend away from traditional values (a connection with the land, communities where people know and take an interest in their neighbors, respect for wildlife). We’ve assassinated deer populations and replaced their woodland homes with grass-lawned housing developments named Deer Run and Deerfield.

Many of us think of such wordly trends as being inevitable moves due to some nameless, shapeless “progress”. Doesn’t it bear pondering, though, that many of the most formative progressions of modern times have been merely a result of artificially engineered marketing strategies designed to give us the experiences that will make it easiest for corporations to separate the American people from our money and give up our senses of independence, creation and adventure? read more

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Many without TV after switch

It seems my family is just one of many with much less access to television since the switch to digital. Bush’s government kept telling us that all we needed to do to continue to watch TV after the switch to digital was buy a converter box with the free government coupon. Well, this wasn’t any more true than some of Mr. Bush’s other stories.

Thanks to President Obama postponing the switch date my family and many others were able to get a digitial converter box in time but that’s the end of the good news in this story. read more

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Swing and more at CMDE studio in Hackensack

My favorite Bergen County dance studio offers all kinds of fantastic dance classes for teens and adults (my own family’s make up) and is now offering a swing workshop. Looks fun! Swing is a one-time workshop but my boys and I have taken CMDE’s (free) family Latin dance classes and love them and I took African dance, another completely free class, alone.

Saturday, August 15, 2009
Swing Fundamentals with Lisa Skates 4:00-6:00 PM
Ages 16 to Adult
$20.00 Per Person
Sign up by contacting Lisa Skates by phone at 201-694-7087
or email lbskates at optonline dot net read more

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Bush occulted climate change data

Revealed: the secret evidence of global warming Bush tried to hide
Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer. The effects on the world’s weather, environments and wildlife could be devastating.

Jump to full Guardian article

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Woman jailed for noisy sex – what about husband?

This is a bit odd to me. An English woman’s been fined, and now jailed, for noisy sex which included the bed banging into the wall. I can understand why her neighbors don’t want to hear the lady screaming and moaning and having the bed banging when she and her husband get into it.

But what about husband Steve? Why isn’t he being held responsible for any of this?

BBC News article