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A study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found detectable levels of arsenic in chicken from grocery stores in 10 American cities, including in organic chickens. If the drug were fed to all chickens, over 100 US deaths would result from arsenic-related lung and bladder cancers, report the authors.
The National Chicken Council, which represents the firms that produce 95 percent of US meat chickens, dismissed the study as reflecting "very low levels of arsenic," reported the New York Times.
This is not the first time arsenic levels in poultry have made the news. In 2011 Pfizer announced it would stop selling arsenic-treated chicken feed after the FDA found inorganic arsenic, a carcinogen, "at higher levels in the livers of chickens treated than in untreated chickens." Other poultry feed products with arsenic remained on the market, however. The FDA has approved arsenic in poultry feed for years to control parasites in birds, promote weight gain and feed efficiency and improve "pigmentation." Like artificial dye in farmed salmon and gasses used to keep grocery store beef red, the FDA apparently puts public health risks below helping industry move its products.
In 2006 in the same journal, Environmental Health Perspectives Dr. Ellen Silbergeld raised questions about arsenic levels in poultry including "additional exposures to arsenic from confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) wastes via land disposal, which may reach human populations though soil." Such runoff from megafarms is now indicted for high levels of arsenic found in US rice. A Consumer Reports investigation last year found concerning arsenic levels in the food supply and recommended federal action.
At the time of the article, Dr. Silbergeld was assailed by Big Ag for raising the alarm about arsenic levels in poultry as having a "political agenda" but reports since 2011 suggest she was right.
The levels of arsenic reported this week in Environmental Health Perspectives are below federal limits and were also obtained before Pfizer withdrew its widely used feed product in 2011. But the researchers point out that the danger levels of arsenic for humans were established in the 1940's. Nor is the National Chicken Council a reassuring voice.
An article in the now discontinued Gourmet magazine says the National Chicken Council admits that 10 percent of chickens by the time they are hung from shackles at the slaughterhouse have had a wing dislocated, fractured, or broken from rough handling. It also admits that 2 percent of the birds are awake as the blade cuts their throat or boiled alive because they miss the stunner that is supposed to spare them. Richard L. Lobb, a spokesman for the Council said of the estimated 180 million a year who perish this way, "This process is over in a matter of minutes if not in seconds," in Gourmet.
Both arsenic in birds and bird feed and the deaths described in Gourmet magazine stem from the cult of cheap food perpetrated by US factory farms. It is a cult food consumers are increasingly rejecting.
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Written by Adele Stan for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times. -- Niccolo Machiavelli
At a gathering of Catholics in his archdiocese last year, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, uttered a strategic point that would have done Machiavelli proud. The bishops, he said, are perhaps not the church's best messengers.
"In the public square, I hate to tell you, the days of fat, balding Irish bishops are over," he told his flock, according to the New York Times, at a diocesan convocation on public policy. Reporting for the Times, Tim Stelloh and Andy Newman wrote of an example he gave the crowd, an apparent reference to the hiring of Helen Alvaré by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1990:
[Dolan] told a story about bishops hiring an "attractive, articulate, intelligent" laywoman to speak against abortion and said it was "the best thing we ever did..."
Dolan, as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), decided this week to operationalize his assessment by hiring Kim Daniels, a former operative for Sarah Palin's political action committee, as his spokesperson -- a new position with a much broader mission than that covered by Alvaré in the 1990s.
An attorney and youthful mother of six who echoes the bishops' disdain for contraception and abortion, Daniels is a smart cookie with an appealing personality. In other words, an "attractive, articulate, intelligent" laywoman.
When the USCCB announced Daniels's appointment, the thing that grabbed reporters' attention was her work in 2010 as an operative for Sarah Palin's political action committee, SarahPAC -- a résumé entry conveniently omitted from the bishops' announcement about their new hire. If there was any doubt remaining of the bishops' total alignment with the most right-wing part of the Republican Party, that data point should lay it to rest. But the rest of Daniels' career is far more interesting -- and troubling.
Flowers, candy, breakfast in bed, and beautiful kid-drawn cards. But if any of those mothers happens to be low income with a serious health issue, they might be celebrating their last Mother’s Day with their families.
“Stacy,” of my widely circulated March 11 Hard Times story, recently shared gruesome news with me. She’s been diagnosed with cervical cancer and needs surgery, an $8,000 procedure. Trouble is, New Mexico is one of those budget-conscious states that thinks they can balance their budget on the cervixes of mothers who scramble stalwartly to keep their kids alive and out of child protection custody.
Stacy and her mother-dependent young children are mired in that category despite her exemplary parenting skills. Single adults and parents with “too much” income are ineligible for medical care.
Motherhood and apple pie don’t hold any importance in NM, and too many other states, if the mothers are poor. The Nation’s Greg Kauffman observes, “With so many employed single mothers earning poverty wages, the lack of income support programs and health care in the US completes what is seemingly a perfect storm of financial insecurity.” When you look at full-time mothers like Stacy, who cares for her 7 children with aplomb but limited income, meager child support and minimal welfare, the storm intensifies.
My web research for leads or answers for Stacy got bogged down in Obamacare dysfunction. Maybe the Affordable Care Act will be fine and dandy, but finding info on what states offer for people in poverty is less than satisfying. “Health care, coming soon!” boasts the New Mexico government website. Yeah, soon, just what you want to hear when you have a medical crisis today.
State governments, rebelling over the fed’s intrusion into their statewide healthcare fiefdoms, are working hard to thwart the inevitable, a semblance of affordable health care availability to those who fall outside the Medicaid boundaries. Caught in this power struggle: millions of parents and adults whose lives evidently mean nothing.
Infuriating me further were the websites that lure the desperate seeker in by their promises. If you’re not overwhelmed by crisis and you have a modicum of ability to ferret out truth from sales pitches, you get spoon-fed pabulum that a sixth grader could have compiled with a tad more honesty. “The only problem is that healthcare insurance plans are not always the most affordable and are actually often overly priced and expensive. Because of this, you may not have insurance for you and your children but there are options. You can apply for Medicaid in the state of New Mexico which would ultimately help you to get health insurance for your children and yourself.” Bull feathers.
Do the math: $8,000 “retail” for the procedure by the doctor who’s not telling my friend about the possibility of getting Medicaid assistance. She’ll check with Planned Parenthood and the NM Human Service Department that boasts “Serving 1 in 3.” What does that mean? I’m not going to even guess. Worst case, Stacy gets no treatment and dies. I’m sorry, but that’s what happens when cancer runs rampant.
Then the state has 7 children to place in foster care. What cost to the state? What cost to her children?
The U.S. ranks so embarrassingly low when it comes to health care for women in poverty that our national knuckles drag. Kaufmann points out that “Prior to welfare reform in 1996, for every 100 families with children living in poverty, sixty-eight received cash assistance; but by 2010 that ratio dropped to just twenty families. States have discretion to determine eligibility and time limits, so there are virtually fifty different systems. In a majority of states, the benefit levels have fallen below 30 percent of the official poverty line—so less than $6,000 for a family of three.”
OK, upside. Let’s see. Well, Stacy has a support network of sorts, a mother and friends who will take care of her kids while she recovers from surgery, if she gets it. And they have a humble home. That’s better than homeless families who struggle to cope with a medical emergency that knocks the parent down for the count. Although some places are starting to put together a plan to keep the kids out of foster care, you can bet the “perfect storm” that Kaufmann refers to brews in the stormy seas of homeless and impoverished Motherly Love.
A century ago, workers were a lot more “flexible” than they are now. Veritable Gumbies in the mills and mines and factories they were, distorting their lives to slog 10 or 12 hours a day, six –even seven – days a week.
Then came the 40-hour week. And weekends. And eventually sick days. And paid vacation days. Now, bosses at mills and mines and factories regard these rules as coddling and consider the workers accustomed to them as unyielding to corporate demands.
The GOP has an app for that. It’s called the Working Families Flexibility Act. This legislation that the Republican majority in the U.S. House is expected to pass this week would force some old-time flexibility into 21<sup>st</sup> century workers. The forced flexibility act would award bosses the power to “offer” compensatory time off instead of overtime pay. Bosses, not workers, would determine when the comp time could be taken. The proposal puts control in corporate hands, obliging wage earners to bend over backward for bosses exactly like their Gumby ancestors were compelled to.
<a href="http://blog.usw.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/sad-gumby.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-20825" title="sad gumby" src="http://blog.usw.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/sad-gumby-300x210.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="210" /></a>
Trade unionists and labor rights activists died to achieve the goal of eight-hour days and 40-hour weeks. They were<a href="http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3192"> shot and beaten in the streets</a> during demonstrations organized by the eight-hour movement. <a href="codyjhunter">Their slogan was</a>: “Eight hours for work; eight hours for rest; eight hours for what we will.”
Finally, <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/issuebriefs_ib190/">in 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act</a> (FLSA) as part of the New Deal, which gave workers and families rights and security that previously had been exclusive to the wealthy.
<a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/issuebriefs_ib190/">FLSA enforces the 40-hour week with a simple measure</a>. It requires employers to pay time and a half to wage earners for each hour worked beyond 40 in a week. That creates a financial disincentive for bosses to order work beyond 40 hours. That also creates a financial incentive for companies to avoid overtime pay by hiring more workers. That was a significant bonus during the Great Depression.
Employers still could require overtime when they needed it, but it cost them, the way it costs workers who must pay extra for child care or miss coaching a Little League game or forego Sunday dinner with parents.
Now, Republicans want to relieve corporations of their share of the cost. In fact, the GOP scheme <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/issuebriefs_ib190/">enables corporations to profit on overtime at the expense of workers</a>. It would reduce the financial disincentive of requiring work beyond 40 hours, which means it would also reduce the financial incentive to hire more workers. That would be a tragedy during the Great Recession.
The forced flexibility act would enable employers to give workers comp time off instead of overtime pay. Republicans contend it would be the worker’s choice, but in reality bosses foreclose options when they make it extremely clear they want comp time selected.
And they’ll want workers to “choose” comp time. That’s because <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/issuebriefs_ib190/">workers won’t be able to specify when they’ll take the compensatory time off</a>. Bosses will have veto power on those requests. And as workers accrue more and more hours of overtime – <a href="http://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/35373/house-bill-would-offer-empl... to 160 a year</a> – to be compensated later as time off, the corporation retains an increasing share of the value of their work.
With overtime pay, the worker gets the money in the next paycheck and spends or saves it as he pleases, earning interest if he banks it. Under the GOP forced flexibility proposal, the boss can deny time off requests for as long as a year, after which the company must pay the wage earner for the extra time worked. By then, <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/issuebriefs_ib190/">the corporation has kept the workers’ earnings</a>, and the interest on them, for 12 months.
And if the company goes bankrupt before paying for the accumulated overtime, the GOP provides no protection for workers. Workers would lose the earnings that they would have received immediately if they had been paid time-and-a-half in the next check.
The GOP is hyping their forced flexibility bill as a measure to help women. <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/04/30/house-gop-mommy-b... websites and blogs popular among women, the GOP bought ads</a> asking Democrats if they will “stand up for” working moms by forcing women to contort themselves to employers’ whims. The same party that defeated equity measures for women like the Equal Rights Amendment and the Paycheck Fairness Act now wants the women who voted against them big time in the last election to believe the GOP forced flexibility act is good for them.
Republicans are right that women need flexibility it their work lives. The flexibility to earn 100 percent of what men do in the same jobs, instead of 23 percent less, would be great. But not so great would be a federal law giving bosses the flexibility to force women to work extra hours with a vague promise of compensatory time off some day in the future if the boss feels like granting it.
The GOP forced flexibility act is part of a list of proposals House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, calls <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/us/politics/majority-leaders-quest-to-... Life Work.”</a> That’s right, Republicans intend to make life nothing but work. No eight hours for sleep. No eight hours for anything you will. Just work, Gumby, just work.
But as a resident of post-Katrina New Orleans, the one decision point that really has me fired up is how your library represents the choices you faced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. According to your exhibit the main problem you faced was how to restore law and order. The big issue that visitors are asked to resolve, is whether or not you should have invoked the Insurrection Act to control the looters. … And you were trying to figure out whether or not to quell an insurrection? These people were Americans, Mr. President. Homeowners, taxpayers, voters. Your people and you were vacationing while they drowned. The decision you should have been making, sir, wasn’t on how to quell them. It was how to save them.Anytime you get a letter from Dr. Harris-Perry, that says "Dear *blank*, It's me, Melissa … " just pack your things and leave. Also on #TWiB!Radio, Dr. Boyce Watkins teaches us about the "Most Racist Commercial in History" and the movement to #FreeTheTwerkTeam. Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher| Direct Download | RSS And this morning on #amTWiB: L. Joy forgets how to start the show, regulating 3-D printed guns, and LGBTQ folks need to wash the stain of sin before entering the catholic church. Subscribe on iTunes| Subscribe On Stitcher| Direct Download| RSS Folks wishing to engage directly with #TeamBlackness should direct their comments to the Original Post.
What was the climate like the day Allison and the others were shot?
Well aside from the fact that it was the first beautiful day after weeks of rain, the political climate was anything but clearing. Just 4 days earlier President Richard Nixon announced the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. He struggled to justify his decision to further escalate the conflict in south east Asia even as he worked to conceal the fact that he had authorized the illegal bombing of Cambodia for more than a year.
Domestically the clouds were gathering as well. Two years and one month earlier Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated after turning his attention on the evils he perceived were associated with the Vietnam War. His voice had added to the growing number of young voices speaking out across the nation calling for an end to the war and an elimination of military conscription, better known as the draft.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had compiled surveillance tapes and documents on everyone from the Kennedy family to MLK, Jr. and while his top secret files were destroyed upon his death, there is no reason to believe he did not run a series of intelligence programs based at monitoring and curtailing the efforts of young people on campuses all across the nation who he felt "seek to destroy our society."
For these and other reasons Laurel Krause and her organization,The Kent State Truth Tribunal (KSTT), filed a petition on Feb 9, 2013 with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), asking them to review their claim that Vietnam War protesters were intentionally targeted by Hoover's FBI and the Department of Defense. On April 5th, the UNHRC agreed to hear the case.
Laurel and the other members of the KSTT have a lot to say on what they believe has been a 43 year cover up and spin job. From the time headlines broke that called the shooting victims "bums" and portrayed them as an unwashed violent rabble of questionable morality until this year when the UN became the first governing body willing to dig a little deeper into the official story, Laurel has keenly remembered the details of the day her sister died.
Time will tell what will come of Laurel's struggle to get justice for her sister and the other victims. And justice for Laurel means that the government will one day acknowledge the truth. Until that day comes and on this anniversary of Allison's death, it's illuminating to know exactly how the day unfolded for the rest of the Krause family.
At 12:24 p.m. 28 Ohio National Guard soldiers - after hearing what they later called sniper fire - opened fire on unarmed protesters at Kent State University. Most of the protesters were more than the length of a football field from the soldiers. The soldiers had live rounds in their guns and must have been cautioned that they may need to shoot to kill the college kids.
At about 3:00 p.m. 15 year old Laurel Krause got off the school bus and started walking to her home. A neighbor ran up to Laurel and told her that the radio had announced that Allison had been hurt in a shooting at Kent State.
Laurel called her mom and dad who were at work.
Laurel's mom came home and called the Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna, Ohio and was told over the phone that, "she was DOA." Doris Krause collapsed on the floor.
Laurel's dad, Arthur Krause, worked as a middle manager for Westinghouse and his co-worker brought him home. Arthur had received a call from his brother saying that the local radio station had announced that Allison was dead. When he arrived home, Doris confirmed it, and the family friend drove them from their home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to the hospital in Ohio.
Laurel recounts that no one from the University or the U.S. government was there to assist them. When the door swung open to the room where Allison lay dead, Laurel could see her sister's body. When her parents went into the room to identify Alliston, Laurel waited in the hall where two armed men wearing no uniforms were standing. One of the men muttered behind her, "They should have shot more."
These are the memories Laurel Krause has carried 43 years. These are the memories that motivate her to make regular calls to the Department of Justice and ask when her sister's murder will be investigated and solved. And every time Laurel calls, she is referred to the civil rights department. Laurel says, "She was nothing more than garbage to them. They don't want to investigate her murder. The DOJ has no department for the killing of students by the government."
The day after his daughter's death, Arthur filed a lawsuit he refused to drop regardless of how much money he was offered. Arthur died never receiving the justice he was after. Laurel has continued his fight. She says the battle can get unpleasant but that won't stop her. She's not surprised that she hasn't gotten answers, and she's not daunted by the obstacles in her way. Laurel says, "Anytime the FBI kills a member of your family, they are gonna to be up your ass for the rest of your lives."
Crossposted on Tikkun Daily
The Pew Research Center this week revealed another extensive and newsworthy piece of research: The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society. The results of the survey, which consisted of more than 38,000 interviews of Muslims in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia in approximately 80 languages, reveals many things on many topics. Some revelations are interesting, others curious, and a few even downright alarming. As an American Muslim, though, I was mostly interested in the appendices, which discuss the attitudes of U.S. Muslims and compared them to similar themes among Muslims of other countries. Here’s my take:
First and foremost I was happy to read that American Muslims are some of the most moderate and peace loving in the world. For instance, 81% American Muslims say suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilian targets are never justified. That’s not to say Muslims of other countries overwhelmingly agree with violence, in fact most Muslims worldwide also reject this type of violence, but have a lower rate of rejection than Americans. Interestingly, it seems that America Muslims also are more moderate in cultural and societal aspects of their lives. 63% say there is no inherent tension between being devout and living in a modern society; nearly identical proportion of American Christians (64%) agree. On the other hand, fewer worldwide Muslims share the view that modern life and religious devotion are not at odds (global median of 54%).To me, that’s a telling comparison, because modern culture is often cited as pulling people of all faiths away from religious practices. That Muslims in the United States are able to balance their American experience with their religious traditions says much about their resilience, flexibility and open minds.
For those curious about the reasons for these differences between Muslims here and abroad, I think the survey itself points out to a critical one: interaction with other faiths. The surveys reports that although almost half of U.S. Muslims say that all (7%) or most (41%) of their close friends are other Muslims, another half say that some (36%) or hardly any (14%) of their close friends are Muslim. I believe that we as American Muslims receive a huge benefit from befriending and ultimately learning from other religious groups. Whether you talk about religion or not, having a friend, neighbor or acquaintance who believes differently from you will factor enormously in your world view. People who have multicultural friendships also have fewer stereotypes and fewer negative feelings about other religious groups. By contrast, the surveys showed that Muslims in other countries nearly universally report that all or most of their close friends are Muslim (global median of 95%). Even Muslims who are religious minorities in their countries are less likely than U.S. Muslims to have friendships with non-Muslims. For example, 78% of Russian Muslims and 96% of Thai Muslims say most or all of their close friends are Muslim.
It’s no surprise to interfaith activists such as me that interfaith dialogue and relationship building between groups can pave the way towards peace and prosperity. Americans of all faiths would do well to remember this important fact: ignorance breeds hate, and who wants to be ignorant? Look outside your own social circle, make a new friend, one who looks and prays differently. Join or start an interfaith discussion group, such as a book club or a student’s study group. Read a book about another faith, ask questions, understand and celebrate each other’s differences. In the long run, we will all be better off with an open mind and an inclusive attitude.
To read more pieces like this, sign up for Tikkun Daily’s free newsletter , sign up for Tikkun Magazine emails or visit us online. You can also like Tikkun on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Written by Editor-in-Chief Jodi Jacobson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
There are two roles anti-choicers like to play for which they are ill-equipped. First, they like to play doctor. And second, they like to play God. In doing so, they spread outright lies about both abortion and contraception to mislead and whip the public into a frenzy about sex, pregnancy, and childbirth. And then, believing themselves to be the righteous ones, they seek to capitalize on their self-created panics to make public health and medical policy for the country based solely on emotion, facts be damned. Their end goal, as they make clear, is to outlaw abortion and contraception no matter the costs to public health, women's lives, or society writ large.
The trial of Kermit Gosnell provides anti-choicers and their allies with a perfect platform for their efforts. In Gosnell, they have an unethical, unscrupulous criminal acting as a doctor. He preyed on women too poor to seek early, safe abortion care, ran a filthy "clinic," and conducted illegal abortions during which, it is alleged, some infants were born alive and killed. In their quest to make safe, legal abortion care as inaccessible as possible, anti-choicers are now seeking to sway public policy by conflating safe abortion care with Gosnell's atrocities, to tar all legitimate providers of safe abortion care as Gosnell clones, and to use a criminal case as a justification to drive legitimate providers out of business.
One recent example of this effort comes courtesy of Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who, in a column Wednesday, suggested several ways to further diminish access to safe, legal abortion care in the United States through what she calls a "Gosnell amendment." If you read the piece, it is clear she has no idea what she is talking about.
"Unintentional poisoning killed 838 children in the US in 2010; more than 90 percent of them were teenagers, ages 10-19," says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Child Injuries page. "130,000 children visited emergency departments for unintentional poisoning-related injuries in 2011… About 80 percent of these calls were for children under 6, and roughly half of them involved exposures to medications."
But search for similar statistics about gun deaths of children on the CDC website and you will find a big back hole, thanks to NRA lobbying. The NRA has succeeded in getting legislation passed that blocks government health agencies from studying gun violence lest it lead to tighter laws. In fact, you will find more entries for "nail gun" safety on construction sites on the CDC site than for the 5,000 plus children killed by guns every year in the US, which is almost six times that of poisoning deaths. Thank you, NRA.
Gun lobbyists and the legislators whose strings they pull enacted this legislation the same way they have prevented a registry of gun owners or retention of background check information by authorities for more than 24 hours. They tack it on to appropriation bills which receive little debate or discussion because they are viewed as "must pass," mandatory legislation. The riders prohibit the CDC and also the National Institutes of Health from spending funds to "advocate or promote gun control," says the Center for American Progress in a
Why? Because gun violence is a law enforcement issue and government research agencies should not be participating in policy debates, bluster NRA lobbyists. Don't confuse us with facts! The NRA doesn't mind gun violence being a law enforcement issue because it personally pushed through most of the EZ gun laws we are living with like the prohibition of registries, record retention and prohibition of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from requiring dealers to conduct annual inventories.
Thanks to "no inventory laws," a single dealer had 997 guns that were unaccounted for and 93 that were not logged in, during an inspection last year reports, the Center for American Progress. 1,300 illegal Chicago guns were traced to one dealer, Chuck’s Gun Shop since 2008. And Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply in Tacoma, Washington lost 238 guns in three years–one of which surfaced as a gun used during the 2002 Maryland/Washington D.C./ Virginia sniper murder spree that left 10 dead. What's a little unaccounted for inventory?
The NRA-driven riders against studying gun violence and deaths are not overt bans, but are perceived as a warning to government agencies that their funding will be cut if they tread into gun violence terrain. Since the prohibition against spending funds to "advocate or promote gun control," funding for the CDC to study firearms injury prevention has fallen from over $2 million to around $100,000, says the Center for American Progress report--that's 95 percent.
"Most of these poisoning-related deaths and injuries are predictable and preventable," says the CDC website, announcing its 2012 National Action Plan for Child Injury Prevention (NAP), an initiative developed "with more than 60 stakeholders to spark action across the nation." No such action plan exists for the six times as many children killed by gun violence. "Predictable and preventable" gun violence like the 2-year-old Kentucky girl who was killed by her 5-year-old brother with a rifle he had been given as a gift, this week. And the 4-year-old who shot and killed his 6-year-old his playmate in New Jersey, last month.
END
Use your economic power to force gun laws.
Make the Tell and Compel pledge
Within hours of renowned climate scientists announcing a staggering milestone in carbon dioxide emissions, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn rolled out the booster wagons for Big Coal and celebrated his state's five-fold increase in record coal exports.
Gov. Quinn, once hailed by the Sierra Club as "the clear choice for Illinois voters who want to move to a clean energy economy and protect our drinking water and wild places," despite the fact that he had received huge contributions from the coal industry, declared:
"Illinois coal is in high demand overseas and we have the resources and infrastructure to take advantage of this opportunity for economic growth," Governor Quinn said. "Our rail lines and river ports, which we continue to improve under the Illinois Jobs Now! capital construction program, give us a unique export advantage over other states in the region."
Never mind that climate destabilizing torrential rains and floods, along with coal barge accidents, tied up the Mississippi River last week.
Never mind that CO2 emissions will reach an alarming 400 parts-per-million (ppm) for the first time in 3 million years.
Never mind that last year's historic drought and climate destabilization had nearly brought the Mississippi River to a standstill.
Never mind that world coal consumption, thanks in part to U.S. coal exports, will keep coal-fired plants as the lead source of CO2 emissions, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Never mind that Illinois' own rogue coal industry and state regulatory agencies have failed to protect coal miners, waterways and watersheds, farms and forests, and communities from deadly and costly toxic pollution.
Never mind that the job-robbing union-busting heavily-mechanized economic-diversification-blocking coal industry has left Illinois' historic coal mining counties at the bottom of the charts in entrenched poverty, hopeless unemployment and ruin.
As Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity Assistant Director Dan Seals said, "It is truly an unbelievable achievement."
As a historian, I do give Gov. Quinn credit for following in the great tradition of coal exports in Illinois. In 1810, an enslaved black man named Peter Boon shoveled and loaded the outcroppings of coal along the south bank of the Big Muddy River in Jackson County, Illinois. Pushing off toward the Mississippi River in their flatboat, William Boon, a captain in the mounted rangers, and his slave Peter transported the first commercial barge of coal in the heartland.
In effect, Illinois' coal industry was launched with legal slavery--not that Gov. Quinn's notoriously shameless "Coal Education Curriculum" teaches that to Illinois students and teachers, as part of the state coal marketing slush fund.
Despite Peter Boon's presence on the slave schedules, virtually every history book and modern news report of this historic event failed to recognize his enslavement, or the fact that William Boon purchased a "voluntarily indentured" servant as late as 1822. One text geared toward children referred to Peter as Boon's African American friend. As a former lead miner from Kentucky and Missouri, Boon engineered the first commercial slope mine in Illinois.
He and his slave embarked on six epic voyages down the Mississippi to New Orleans, where they were paid in European currency for coal and loads of forest and farm products. Boon's efforts attracted attention. As the first state legislator from southwestern Illinois, he also played a role in shaping the laws that allowed for slave labor to assist his work. He would also set the precedent for the entrepreneurial coal foundations in government office--effectively, the first coal lobby in cahoots with the statewide government.
And the coal ships move on.
Author of Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland, Jeff Biggers can be followed on Twitter @jeffrbiggers
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