Tag: water

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Elizabeth Warren wants to stop water from being traded for profit

Water Protectors foto

Access to clean and affordable water is a basic human right and must be protected

Washington, D.C. — Today, Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) led a bicameral group of colleagues in introducing the Future of Water Act to amend the Commodity Exchange Act to prohibit futures trading of water or water rights and protect our country’s water. Water is a basic human right that must be managed and protected as a public trust resource. 

As climate change has increased the severity and frequency of drought in our country, large corporations should not be profiting off of water or water rights. Water should be affordable, easily accessible, and guarded from markets prone to manipulation and speculation that could cause real-world price increases. The announcement of the water futures trading received condemnation from the global water community, including the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Water who stated: “Water is already under extreme threat from a growing population, increasing demands and grave pollution from agriculture and mining industry in the context of worsening impact of climate change. . . I am very concerned that water is now being treated as gold, oil and other commodities that are traded on Wall Street futures markets.” read more

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Truly scathing excerpts from NYT writer’s article on Cory Booker, circus barker

cory, legend in his own mind
Source: campaign photo

Michael Powell of the New York Times totally kicks butt in this scathing 2014 report on former Newark mayor Cory Booker, whom Powell comes just short of actually calling a circus barker. The short article is worth reading in its entirety but I especially loved these little treasures:
Cory A. Booker talks of his adopted city of Newark as if it were his very own Wild West … This makes for excellent commencement speech fodder … But a recent state audit underlines that the former mayor might have paid more attention to the prosaic business of running his city. Instead of shoveling driveways — he loved on snowy days to run about Newark with his shovel — he could have attended a meeting, just one, of his Newark Watershed Conservation and Development Corporation.

It turns out this corporation, which the mayor championed and empowered, was pilfering from Newark.

…Mr. Booker is a splendid retailer of his narrative, but after a while there is a Barnum & Bailey quality to it. His maiden speech in the Senate went on for more than 30 minutes and ranged from the founding fathers to slavery to his own story to, oh yes, unemployment benefits, which was his ostensible point.

He talks, tweets and travels relentlessly. But what’s left behind is troubling. His former deputy mayor was convicted of extortion in 2011. The year before that, Mr. Booker laid off police officers. Arrests plummeted and, like a dying fire given oxygen, homicides flared. read more