Courtesy of The Mills River Progressive

Top 6 things Republicans consider more important than job creation

From Raw Story:
WASHINGTON – Republicans won dramatic victories last November by promising to mitigate high unemployment. "This coming election is about one issue: jobs," soon to-be Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said weeks before election day. "It's about jobs that were promised to the American people by the current administration, and were never delivered."

But in the three months since taking over the House and expanding their voices in the Senate, Republicans have yet to pass a jobs-focused bill, instead prioritizing numerous social and cultural issues that are unrelated to job creation -- and have little or no chance of becoming policy.

Here are six such legislative goals they've been hard at work on:

1) Curtailing Abortion Rights
2) Defunding Planned Parenthood
3) Defunding NPR
4) Investigating American Muslims
5) Declaring English As America's Official Language
6) Reaffirming The "In God We Trust" Motto

Check out the details at Raw Story.

Are you kidding me?! Millions of Americans are losing their homes, kids' programs are being slashed, millions are unemployed, and this is the shit they're wasting our time and money on?!!
And I love how the righties are always screeching about "big government", and "government interference", yet feel it's entirely appropriate for government to decide what birth control we're allowed to use, what medical procedures we're allowed to have, what plants we're allowed to use, who we're allowed to marry, etc., etc...
These are the people who think that the government should have no authority to regulate industry, or to protect the safety of consumers - but demand that the government monitor what's happening inside a woman's uterus. Incredibly, a number of these folks actually claim to be "libertarians". It would seem that the meaning of the term has changed significantly over the past couple decades!

A little education for the little educated Tea Bigot and Deficit Hawks out there.
The Corporate States of America fired 20 Tomahawk missiles into Libya for whatever reason. Before you start the ridiculous "We're defending freedom" or "We have to fight them over there" bullshit, I know it's difficult for most of you but try to think for a minute.
You are complaining that the Corporate States of America is spending too much money on stupid things like education and food and help for those (Americans only!) who lost jobs, their pensions and life savings because of the two Bush/Cheney illegal wars (Obama inherited them, they're not his so don't cry about how he continues them. If they weren't there in the first place, Obama might have spent that money on something else...like infrastructure, road repair, better schools, etc.) yet not one of you room temperature I.Q.'d geniuses has complained about the cost of these missiles.
It costs $569,000 to fire ONE freaking missile! 20 were fired. Now I know most of you Tea Bigots and Deficit Hawks can't do basic math and that's one of the reasons you're so against better education in schools (you don't want your kids to learn or know more than you) so I'll do it for you.
20 missiles at $569,000 each is $11,380,000! That's just the compliment on one ship! And I'm sure we have more than one! Duh! Can't understand that amount because you lack any kind of basic math rationale? Let me put it to you this way.
NPR , which you anti first amendment asses want to defund because it's too expensive gets $100,000 per year from the government. That means one Tomahawk Missile fired could fund NPR for 5 years!
It also means those 20 just HAVE to be replaced (so we can kill more people who aren't a threat to us - like Iraq) at a higher cost estimate of $15,000,000 (thanks to rising costs of everything but wages).
That $11,000,000 (not counting replacement costs) would fund public food banks in Pennsylvania for 5 years!
That money could repair a lot of potholes and bridges here. It could provide increased police protection, something most of you fools don't realize we'll lose when Tommy Corbett Space Cadet's budget cuts mean local municipalities and school districts will have to cut their budgets to compensate for the lost taxes you already pay to Harrisburg. But you can't think that far ahead. Let's just cut spending, you scream. Fools! Who will pay for your water, subsidize your fuel, your electricity, the fleeing safety of your food? Yep! Let's cut spending and reduce corporate taxes so business can make more money...off of you.
I could go on , but what's the use? Those of you fools couldn't possibly open your minds to anything new until you or your family need help. Then you'll be the first to bitch and complain that the government didn't do anything for you.
Please contact our wonderful representative, Jason Altmire, and send a letter to our Space Cadet Governor thanking them for the cuts to everything we need but bailing out business.
Remember! According to Republican policy, cutting taxes on business means more jobs! And since our government instituted the Bush/Cheney tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 for business, we've created...no jobs! At least in America. But you don't care about that do you? Just that you think you're spending too much of your tax dollars on wasted programs.
So I agree with you. Let's cut everything! No more road repair, no more public anything, no mail delivery, no police or fire protection, no food safety...no nothing for your living standard. Then let's see how long it is before you blame someone else. I know i could hold my breath that long!

You have to wonder where the heads were of the previous school board when they caved on the current teacher’s contract.

I have been harping for years on the fact that the teachers are draining the tax base of this district. Recently, (like this morning) I got an email asking what the hell was going on with this idiotic governor and his band of hoods.

The email went on to question how this POS can cut education funding so much. There was a blurb in the local TP about it. Since I don’t subscribe (pay) to yellow journalism, I checked out the article on their wonderful and unbiased site. For those who may have missed it, here’s a brief summary:

Tommy Corbett, Space Cadet, wants to grade schools on merit!

From the VND:
“"We're not just going to give funding without results," Benefield (research director for the Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg policy group) said, summarizing his interpretation of the governor's message for education.
The cuts to education come with recommendations to eliminate several mandates that limit school districts' ability to cut costs. Several legislators, most of them Republicans, are working on legislation that would end some state requirements, such as bidding for contracts below $25,000 and additional certification for school nurses.

"We want to help our school districts to be as competitive as they can be while keeping the costs under control," said Sen. Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon, vice chair of the education committee and sponsor of a bill that would allow school districts to curb costs by furloughing teachers.

Folmer called this year's budget shortfalls "an opportunity to look at how we've been misspending."

"They've had the time, and they've had the money, but how have they done?" Folmer said. "I think, in a sense, we've created an education industrial complex. I'm not going to say it's become only about the people who work in it, but it should be about the children."

Folmer and other supporters of Corbett's proposal stop short of criticizing teachers unions, which are under fire from Republican administrations in Wisconsin and other states. Though Corbett's budget seeks concessions from teachers, such as a one-year pay freeze, it would not change the nature of unions' collective bargaining agreements with school districts.

However, it’s ok to give taxpayer funds to businesses that have consistently shown no interest in creating Pennsylvania jobs. Our Space Cadet has also taken money from the tobacco settlement, which has gone to help education, and is going to redistribute it (sound vaguely familiar all you tea bigots?) to businesses so “they will have an incentive to create jobs.” [Probably more low paying, no benefit jobs.]

And while Tommy Boy wants you to dig deep into your wallets and sacrifice to pay down this debt, while he gives even more tax breaks to businesses, he has magnanimously decided not to tax the (mostly out of state) Marcellus Drillers. That money alone could replace what this Ass-or-not from Mars or Shaler or wherever is making us pay. Guess what? We wouldn't have to have any tax increase! Make sense? Yep! To you and me it does. But not to Tommy's business buddies, the ones who gave him millions of dollars to buy the governorship! Oh, and it seems Tommy didn't cut a penny from his staff, their salaries, benefits or retirement packages. Guess they're more important than you and me...and more privileged

Which brings me to the main point that since the Space Cadet is fulfilling his promise not to raise taxes guess who will have to raise taxes to pay for the taxes Tommy doesn’t raise? Yep. The people of the state. But I’ve already heard from the terrible uneducated Right Wing that at least he’s keeping his promises.

I guess that means it’s ok if our current overall state taxes don’t go up but it’s sure ok if the locals fatten theirs to make up for Tommy Boy's promises.
As for our district, there are a couple of choices:

Layoff and/or fire teachers (The Space Cadet never said anything about cutting the wages or benefits of those in management positions, like superintendents, etc. Kewel!)

Get rid of the unions (They claim they won’t do this but if you believe that you are stupider than I’ve ever imagined)

Increase the local taxes to make up the lost revenue.

If you “listen between the lines” those are the only solutions you’ll hear. BUT…there is another, as Yoda once said. The residents of this district and most other districts are paying the salaries of the teachers. The average salary is around $55,000 and the shills for the teachers, the union reps, claim they are worth it. I don’t doubt they are worth the $55,000. What I doubt is they are worth us paying for their benefits.

In case you have had your head in the sand for the last 5 years, the average health care benefit of a Highlands teacher is over $1200 per month or an extra $14,400 in their(not your) pockets. 220 teachers times $14,400 equals $3,168,000 PER YEAR or just about what Tommy wants to cut from the local district budget.

Now I’m not the math wiz like my colleague on this blog but doesn’t it make sense to make the teachers pay their fair share? Because if they don’t, we’re talking about a huge, and I mean a really huge property tax increase.

Fair is fair. It’s about time the residents woke up and realized the gravy train for the teachers has to end.

Oh and by the way, there’s an interesting article in the TP about the wonderful extra benefits teachers get that most of us didn’t or don’t know. Click here to read it. After reading this I contacted a former board member, who happens to edit this blog, and he confirmed the facts. Teachers who show up for work for 15 years get an automatic “bump” in their salary provided they earn a Masters Degree (usually paid for by the residents, believe it or not!) approaching 80% of their current pay! Yep! A teacher making $40,000 with a Masters Degree in their 14th year (although that amount is so unlikely because they would be making MUCH more than that!) can look forward to a possible $30,000 plus pay increase. And those making $55,000 could go to $100,000. And don't forget what this does to their retirement benefits...that we end up paying for! But they claim they deserve their health care benefits paid by us.

So now this poor soul who was only making 40k per year (with us paying 14k of their benefits), now is making $70,000 for doing no additional work! Nice gig for them. Screwing for us. But the union reps say the teachers deserve it.

Remember all this when Highlands raises your property taxes through the roof.

Remember this when you hear a Tea Bagger or any Republican tell you that liberals are bad because they want to raise taxes.

Remember this when someone tells you we need to cut the budget problem those in Harrisburg (Republican controlled for the last thousand years and who wanted to cut the budget last year by 1 billion when Rendell said no) blame on you.

Remember this when you go to vote; those of you who know how to vote; those of you who care to vote; and those of you who try to learn about issues before you vote rather than listening to partisan hacks like the local newspaper, anyone of the Right or even a number of traitorous Democrats (much like our own Jason Altmire).

You have questions? Contact us here. You’ll get answers. You may not like them but you’ll get facts not bullshit.

Before you end up with more health problems, learn a new thing that the so-called Marcellus Shale Drilling is causing. When you're finished, see if you still believe that drilling for this fuel is worth your drinking water.
And even if you do, the increased cost of what will be necessary to purify your water will offset any imagined saving in the cost of natural gas.
By the way, those "jobs" the drillers keep saying Marcellus Shale will create...75% of the workers are form out of state, namely Texas and Ohio. And they don't pay any taxes to Pa. And the drilling companies will NOT pay any tax to Pennsylvania while funding is cut fr education. Make sense?

This is a long read from the Post Gazette. I don't imagine you'll ever see anything like it in the Valley News Dispatch.
One last thing. Newly elected governor, the man you all put in office instead of Onorato, has removed State Control of the discharge of Marcellus Fracking Water into the Rivers and Streams of Pennsylvania and appointed a man who is a known anti environmentalist and has contributed hundreds of thousand of dollars to Corbett since 2004. Coincidence


******************


Bromide: A concern in drilling wastewater
Sunday, March 13, 2011
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11072/1131660-113.stm#ixzz1GUuq3e9O


Ballooning bromide concentrations in the region's rivers, occurring as Marcellus Shale wastewater discharges increase, is a much bigger worry than the risk of high radiation levels, public water suppliers say.
Unlike radiation, which so far has shown up at scary levels only in Marcellus Shale hydraulic fracturing wastewater sampling done at wellheads, the spike in salty bromides in Western Pennsylvania's rivers and creeks has already put some public water suppliers into violation of federal safe drinking water standards.
Others, like the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, haven't exceeded those limits but have been pushed up against them. Some have had to change the way they treat water.
Bromide is a salty substance commonly found in seawater. It was once used in sedatives and headache remedies like Bromo-Seltzer until it was withdrawn because of concerns about toxicity. When it shows up at elevated levels in freshwater, it is due to human activities. The problem isn't so much the bromide in the river but what happens when that river water is treated to become drinking water.
Bromide facilitates formation of brominated trihalomethanes, also known as THMs, when it is exposed to disinfectant processes in water treatment plants. THMs are volatile organic liquid compounds.
Studies show a link between ingestion of and exposure to THMs and several types of cancer and birth defects.
"Our biggest concerns are about bromide, which has become a problem over the last six months or so," said Stanley States, water quality manager with the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, which draws water from the Allegheny River for its 400,000 customers. "Trihalomethanes are strictly regulated because of the health risks. We've seen levels that are threatening the standards."
The federal safe drinking water standard for THMs is 80 micrograms per cubic liter, and removing them from finished drinking water is difficult. Keeping bromide levels in raw water sources low is a much easier way to address the problem.
Mr. States said the elevated bromide levels in the river could be coming from municipal sewage treatment plants and brine treatment plants handling Marcellus Shale drilling and hydrofracking wastewater or from discharges by coal-fired power plants water discharges. He said four municipal sewage facilities and four brine treatment plants are handling and discharging Marcellus Shale wastewater upriver from Pittsburgh's drinking water intake pipe in Aspinwall.
"Something's changed and it could possibly be related to the treating of Marcellus Shale drilling wastewater," Mr. States said. "There will be a lot more Marcellus Shale wells operating in the region before there are a whole lot less and our concern is in providing safe drinking water. We're not anti-Marcellus Shale. We're anti-bromide."
Problem through the region
Pittsburgh is not alone. The Wilkinsburg-Penn Joint Water Authority issued a notice to its customers in January informing them of the bromide problem and said it was necessary to change its water treatment methods to stay in compliance with state and federal drinking water standards.
"Due to the sudden increase in bromide concentration in the Allegheny River, all water suppliers are beginning to have a problem controlling this trihalomethane formation," the authority wrote on its Web page. "All water purveyors on the Allegheny River System are working together to try and find out the source of the elevated bromide levels."
Mr. States said a study is under way on the Allegheny River and its tributaries to identify sources of bromide in the river.
The Department of Environmental Protection is participating in that river sampling study and another in the Monongahela River watershed.
Katy Gresh, a DEP spokeswoman, said the department plans to order the industrial brine plants, sewage treatment facilities and coal-powered power plants on the rivers to conduct sampling at their discharge pipes.
"We will get and review those results," Ms. Gresh said. "If we can control the largest contributors, that will help solve the problem."
Jeanne VanBriesen, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of civil and environmental engineering, said testing there showed an unusual spike in bromide levels in July and August. Although they've tapered a bit since then, they remain higher than normal, said Ms. VanBriesen, who has been studying water quality in the Monongahela River since fall 2009.
She said the two biggest sources of bromide in the watershed are Marcellus wastewater from sewage treatment facilities and wastewater from new smokestack scrubbers at coal-fired power plants. The plants cannot remove the bromide in wastewater.
Bromide levels vary in discharges from both sources, but bromide is generally found at higher concentrations in Marcellus wastewater.
"It's difficult to make a definitive statement about where it's all coming from, but we do know it's going into our drinking water treatment plants and affecting the treatment of our water," Ms. VanBriesen said. "The most logical way to fix that is to reduce the amount of bromide in the rivers and creeks."
Millions of gallons
Marcellus Shale drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations use an average of 4 million gallons of water to drill and "frack" each well. The drilling industry says it recycles approximately 70 percent of the wastewater from its well fracking operations, but millions of gallons are still funneled through 11 sewage treatment facilities and five brine treatment plants, then discharged into the state's rivers and streams.
Together, the eight facilities on the Allegheny and its tributaries are allowed to discharge an average of 1.5 million gallons of Marcellus drilling wastewater and hydraulic fracturing fluid a day, according to state Department of Environmental Protection records. Marcellus discharges from three treatment facilities on the Monongahela River total 185,000 gallons a day. Another 650,000 gallons a day flow into the Ohio and its tributaries.
Drilling companies and the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an advocacy and lobbying organization representing most of the companies doing shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania, said the industry isn't to blame for higher bromide levels.
"When you look at the amount of Marcellus Shale wastewater that is being discharged it's low" compared to the river flows, said Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for Range Resources. "So those [bromide] increases are not an impact of Marcellus Shale." Range Resources recycled 90 percent of its wastewater last year and has set a goal of 100 percent for 2011.
"We certainly see this as a non-Marcellus issue," said Steve Forde, a shale coalition spokesman, who cited a 2010 U.S. Geological Survey study that noted higher bromide levels nationwide, especially in urban areas. "Road salt use has been identified as one of the culprits for that."
Ms. VanBriesen said that's not likely because road salt contains more chloride and little bromide, and her water testing didn't find a corresponding spike in chloride levels. Plus the bromide spike in the rivers first occurred in the summer.
"So to implicate road salt, well, I wouldn't buy that," she said. "The bromide spike happened in July and August when you wouldn't be applying road salt. So that wasn't a factor."
Changing treatment process
Whatever the origin of the bromide spike, Jerry Schulte, manager of source water protection for the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, said bromide is "absolutely an issue" for water treatment plants.
"We've identified bromide as a compound of concern," Mr. Schulte said, adding that ORSANCO's triennial review of pollution control standards in April will focus on developing a new, first-time standard for bromide in the watershed.
Discharges of bromides and bromide levels in rivers or streams are not now regulated by ORSANCO or by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Josephine brine treatment facility, also known as Franklin Brine, on Blacklick Creek in the Allegheny's watershed, discharges an average of 120,000 gallons a day of Marcellus wastewater that, at peak levels, contains high concentrations of bromide, chlorides and total dissolved solids, according to sampling done by the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Healthy Environments and Communities.
"There's pretty high bromide going into the creek. Certainly it is a public health threat," said Conrad Dan Volz, director of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities. "And to remove brominated THMs, that's going to break the bank for public water systems."
Water treatment plants can get around the bromide problem by changing their treatment methods -- substituting chloramines for the chlorides they normally use in the disinfection process. That's what the Wilkinsburg-Penn water authority did.
The chloramines produce different, less toxic, treatment byproducts, but those can produce other problems, including causing lead and copper to leach out of old water pipelines and into drinking water as happened in Washington, D.C., when it made such a switch in 2000.
Ms. VanBriesen said water utilities making such a change can add phosphate to their finished water to prevent lead from leaching out of the pipes.
Another way to avoid THMs, she said, is to change the way water utilities mix, aerate and store their finished water, and a number of suppliers are considering that.
One water treatment facility that has had problems with keeping THM concentrations in finished water below the 80 parts per billion federal standard is Beaver Falls, in Beaver County, which was required to notify its 50,000 customers in 22 municipalities of the problem for the first three quarters of 2010.
The authority changed its treatment methods, from chlorine to chloramines, which don't form THMs, at a cost of approximately $15,000 last year. That allowed the water supplier to meet the standard for the last three months of the year, said Jim Riggio, general manager of the water system.
Although testing done by the state DEP hasn't been able to pinpoint a cause of the higher bromide levels in the Beaver River, Mr. Riggio said they coincided with upriver discharges of treated Marcellus Shale fracking wastewater.
"We went from non-detectable levels of bromide to increased levels a couple of years ago," Mr. Riggio said. "When I see the whole frack water thing taking off and the same time we start to have problems, well, until you can tell me different, that's what I assume it is. And it seems like a lot of the water suppliers on the Beaver and Mon rivers had similar problems to what we did."



Bruce F

The next time you read some bullshit opinion (by the editors or letter writers) in the Valley News Dispatch or especially from our turncoat Representative, Jason "vote for big oil subsidies" Altmire and other idiot(s) who claim that we need to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid and the deficit and spending or that "WE" have to sacrifice to pay for the excesses of the Bush Administration, show or send them this.
Ask his honor, Jason, how he can defend this.


Click the image to enlarge to really piss you off.

from kos

John Boehner calls for cuts to Social Security, Medicare

by Jed Lewison

We really have to focus in on that two-thirds of the budget that’s really driving the deficit and the debt to the levels that we see. I’ve said for months that it’s time to have an adult conversation with the American people about the big challenges that face us. When you look at Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, these are important programs for tens of millions of Americans. But they’re not sustainable at current levels. They’re not affordable for our kids and grandkids. We’re going to have to make some changes. But I think the first step is laying out the size of the problem, and here in the coming weeks, I expect you’ll see more and more from our team laying out just how big this problem is.

If Boehner really wanted to have an adult conversation, he'd acknowledge that Social Security is in solid shape, and that simply raising the payroll tax cap would secure it's solvency for the forseeable future. And Boehner would also admit that it was President Obama and the Democrats who took the first step towards reducing Medicare costs through the passage of health care reform. Yet instead of working with Democrats, Boehner and his gang attacked them for reducing the cost of Medicare. Even though those cost reductions will not reduce the quality of care, Boehner and the GOP claimed they had reduce benefits.

But now here he is, barely three months after the election, telling the public that the Republican Party thinks now is the time to cut not just Medicare, but also Medicaid and Social Security. Who knows, maybe he wants to return to being minority leader, because falsely claiming that we need to cut Social Security to balance the budget is exactly the kind of thing that should cost him the Speakership and Republicans the majority.

from kos

The great Lightbulb War goes on, funded by energy companies

by Joan McCarter

So you thought the that the House Republicans' obsession with incandescent lightbulbs had something to do with their love of the 19th century. Nostalgia for the days of Dredd Scott, child labor, no collective bargaining, few effective means for women to control their own destinies, and when coal was king.

While it's true that they do seem to have an unnatural attachment to those things, it does seem to come down to that coal being king bit. What's really behind the Republicans' war to keep America from saving money on energy by using more efficient lightbulbs is that the saved money would be going in the wrong pockets.

The real answer as to why the bill’s sponsors are itching to extend the shelf life of incandescent bulbs may not be so ideological. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that in one year, replacing just one 60-watt incandescent bulb with an equivalent CFL results in $7 in energy savings (Microsoft Excel file). Other Department of Energy figures (PDF) state that the average U.S. household has 45 light bulbs across 30 separate fixtures and that there are 116,900,000 households in the country. This means there are 5.26 billion light bulbs across the United States. At present, CFLs hover at a market share just under 30 percent. If that were to go up to 100 percent as a result of the EISA mandate, power companies would stand to lose almost $26 billion in revenue every single year.

Manufacturers like GE have little to lose by introducing and advocating CFLs, because they’re almost six times more expensive than traditional incandescents on average, meaning that over the long term, the decreased frequency with which consumers would have to buy them would be offset by the higher price — and in the short term, such companies would get a massive burst in revenue from Americans switching over. But the energy industry has billions to lose in the conversion — and it’s appealing to its friends in Congress to try to keep that from happening. [emphasis mine]

Yep, that's the good ol' GOP. Always looking out for the little guy who just loves the warm glow of his incandescent bulb.