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Protest the restarting of Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant!

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and FirstEnergy just can't seem to learn the most important lesson, safety-first.  Despite safety problems and an ongoing criminal investigation, the NRC on Monday signed-off on FirstEnergy restarting the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant.

Ohio PIRG will continue to be a watchdog of FirstEnergy and the events at Davis-Besse.   Demonstrating to our state and local officials that we expect them to stand-up to powerful special interests like FirstEnergy is an important step. Thank you to the over 400 activists who sent letters last week asking state officials to oppose restarting Davis-Besse.

Please send an e-mail to the NRC and express your disappointment in their decision.  Then, ask your friends and family to help by forwarding this e-mail to them.

To take action, click on this link or paste it into your web browser: pirg.org/alerts/route.asp?id=590&id4=OHFreep

For more information on the Davis-Besse nuclear plant, visit:

Another culture

Protect Medicaid and America's uninsured!

Late Wednesday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles (R-OK) put forward a budget resolution that, if enacted, would cut Medicaid by at least $11 billion over five years.  

If enacted, this will result in an increase in the number of uninsured and even more severe cuts to Medicaid than we have seen over the past few years.  In addition, this comes at a time when most states are still suffering from the recession and the increased federal relief is scheduled to expire on June 30, 2004.  The inclusion of this provision in the budget resolution will make the extension of temporary fiscal relief (or FMAP) even more difficult.

We must move quickly on this issue as the full Senate is scheduled to debate and vote on the Budget Resolution this week (week of March 8.)  

I know what I like

Evil Liberalism

(Another update from my friend John, who had this interesting and telling observation. I personally, am left with the profoundly obvious realization that Sean Hannity is nothing other than, quite simply stated, an idiot).

I was at the Wright-Pat BX yesterday and I looked at the new "nonfiction" book section. Lots of neocon war-against-evil stuff there, including Richard Perle's "An End to Evil". But the most ridiculous title was Sean Hannity's (sp?) book called...

Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism

Wow. Interesting axis of evil he identifies there. If you defeat both despotism and Liberalism, what remains?

LIBERALISM - Webster's Dictionary....

"A political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of man, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties"

Sounds despotically treacherous to me. I'm glad ol jacked up frat boy Sean Hannity is doing his part to remove it from our planet. - A

VP Cheney Helped Cover-Up Pakistani Nuclear Proliferation In '89 So US Could Sell Country Fighter Jets

When news of Pakistan's clandestine program involving its top nuclear scientist selling rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea, blueprints for building an atomic bomb was uncovered last month, the world's leaders waited, with baited breath, to see what type of punishment President Bush would bestow upon Pakistan's President Pervez Musharaff.  

Bush has, after all, spent his entire term in office talking tough about countries and dictators that conceal weapons of mass destruction and even tougher on individuals who supply rogue nations and terrorists with the means to build WMDs. For all intents and purposes, Pakistan and Musharraf fit that description.

  Remember, Bush accused Iraq of harboring a cache of WMDs, which was the primary reason the United States launched a preemptive strike there a year ago, and also claimed that Iraq may have given its WMDs to al-Qaeda terrorists and/or Syria, weapons that, Bush said, could be used to attack the U.S.  

Burn the Maps and Get Lost in the Territory: Review of Jeffrey St. Clair's Been Brown So Long...

Politics leaves its boot-print on almost every aspect of our lives. From our schools to health care, jobs and the environment, it seems we can never win when up against the powers that be. Casting our votes for the evil of two lessers, as dutifully citizens do every election cycle, surely leaves us with a lesser by the end of the day. So you would think "hope" should be brushed to the waste side as naïve optimism, clamored to by only the most stubborn of idealists.

If this is how you feel, you have yet to pick up the latest book by environmental writer Jeffrey St. Clair, Been Brown So Long it Looked Like Green to Me: The Politics of Nature, where St. Clair masterfully shatters the myth that all hope should be abandoned. Perhaps the most clairvoyant writer of our times, St. Clair understands the environmentalist plight like no other living writer. He recognizes that neither major political body in the US sides with those that seek to protect our diminishing natural landscapes. He dutifully dissects the "Big Green" cabal, which claims to be the voice of nature, but instead drools at the feet of their foundation

Not any smarter

AUSTIN, Texas -- Living proof that the Democrats haven't gotten any smarter since the last time they ran a candidate for president. Much huffing (and a huffy Democrat is a terrifying sight) over the fact that George W. Bush used images of 9-11 and of the firefighters at Ground Zero to tout his candidacy in his first campaign ad. How crass, said the D's. Exploiting a national tragedy for political purposes -- oh, how tacky.

Dammit, the problem is not that the ad is in bad taste, the problem is that Bush screwed the firefighters in a famous case of his favorite bait-and-switch tactic, and now he has the chutzpah to exploit them anyway and that, my friends, is gall. Bait, switch and then claim credit anyway.

Democracy vs. Corporate 'Free Speech'

Think of corporate influence peddlers and you might envision distant figures working the halls of Congress and state capitols. But more and more, they roam city halls, municipal offices and even local shopping malls attempting to snuff the growing trend of communities setting limits on corporate activities. But regardless of location, the goal of the corporate lawyers and lobbyists remains the same: to use the enormous wealth of their employers to get what they want -- even if it means trampling democracy.

California evidenced this trend with last Tuesday's elections, in which three different communities faced corporate attempts to spend their way to victory on ballot initiatives.

'No Doubt' Human Activity Is Affecting Global Climate, Top Scientists

BOULDER-Two of the nation's premier atmospheric scientists, after reviewing extensive research by their colleagues, say there is no longer any doubt that human activities are having measurable-and increasing-impacts on global climate. Their study cites atmospheric observations and multiple computer models to paint a detailed picture of climate changes likely to buffet Earth in coming decades, including rising temperatures and an increase in extreme weather events, such as flooding and drought. The study appears December 5 in Science as part of the journal's "State of the Planet" series.

The coauthors-Thomas Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, and Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)-conclude that industrial emissions have been the dominant influence on climate change for the past 50 years, overwhelming natural forces. The most important of these emissions is carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps solar radiation and warms the planet.

"There is no doubt that the composition of the atmosphere is changing

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