As President Obama ponders the fate of health care reform, he would do well to review the mother-of-all-strife between government and private enterprise, the New Deal. Franklin D. Roosevelt's battle with the electricity industry over the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was an uncanny template for the recent health care hostilities. And it might suggest a strategy better than "bipartisanship" for any future administration plans to afflict the powerful.
McWhorter, an Alabama native herself, brings the piece home ...
The relatively progressive TVA areas of Alabama produced the powerful Democratic congressman-turned-senator John Sparkman — Adlai Stevenson's 1952 running mate. But laurels are perishable. Last year, the representative from Sparkman's old district, Parker Griffith, became the first Democrat to defect to the Republicans. Perhaps if Obama had not given up on the public option, the Democrats might have made medical care a right as attainable as the TVA rendered electricity. And the late Ted Kennedy, avatar of health care reform, would not be yielding to the 41st Republican senator.
Wouldn't it be delicious if Senator John Sparkman's grandson replaced that defector Griffith in Congress? Unfortunately, the health care debate will probably be over before that can happen.
Update - Last night we reported on a train derailing that was carrying coal ash from the Kingston site to the Perry County landfill. We followed up on that story and found out that it was a lot less spectacular than it sounded. Four fully load cars simply came of the tracks before they departed Kingston while switching.
We will stay posted if any new developments occur. There will be a TVA board meeting later this afternoon so I'm sure that the AP desk out of Knoxville will have a report. Our understanding is that in light of the death the cleanup at Kingston would resume today.
in an unrelated incident a truck driver delivering pipes to the site of the spill in Tenn was also killed over the weekend.
Both incidents highlight the danger involved in both the cleanup, the transport and the storage of the toxic coal ash. Will Perry County and State of Alabama officials try and stop the rest of the transport?
Sorry for this being such a short diary, but I think that both of these incidents are very important. I did not want them to just get hidden in my diary about the TVA changing "hazard ratings" that I posted yesterday. Interesting again to note the timing of the decision to self-regulate just last week.
An Iowa truck driver died Monday after being crushed by a load of pipe he was delivering to the cleanup site of a massive coal ash spill in Tennessee, authorities said.
Larry LaCroix, 55, of Fort Madison, Iowa, died at University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, Tennessee Valley Authority spokeswoman Barbara Martocci said.
LaCroix was injured Monday morning while unloading pipe for dredging machines at the TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant, she said.
The cleanup was temporarily halted so safety procedures could be reviewed with the hundreds of workers at the site. More than 5 million cubic yards of coal ash spilled into a river and lakeside homes near the plant on Dec. 22.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration was notified and TVA officials promised a full investigation.
"We need to know what happened and why, as soon as possible, so that everyone touched by this accident can make the necessary changes to prevent a recurrence," Anda Ray, TVA's top environmental executive, said in a statement.
LaCroix was releasing a hold-down strap on his flatbed trailer when the 20-inch-diameter pipe came loose and rolled on top of him, Martocci said.
LaCroix had worked for WW Transport for about seven years, a spokeswoman for the West Burlington, Iowa-based transportation company said.
Meanwhile, rail shipments of coal ash from Kingston to a landfill in Perry Co. in Alabama already had been halted by another incident. Four cars loaded with ash derailed while switching tracks at the site on Saturday. The cars remained upright and no ash was released, but 200 to 300 feet of track had to be repaired by TVA and Norfolk Southern railroad.
Martocci said some work at the site was expected to resume Tuesday and grief counselors were being made available to help workers.
Last week, the EPA approved a plan for the TVA to move coal ash from a spill in Kingston, Tenn to a landfill in Perry County, Alabama. Despite a number of concerns from residents, environmentalists and public officials a public hearing was never scheduled on this matter. Every two days for approximately a year 85 rail cars, containing coal ash containing heavy metals and other hazardous compounds, will trek from Eastern Tennessee through Birmingham all the way to Perry County, Alabama. This is at a minimum a 350 mile distance. While local officials contend that this will produce jobs and economic development in this poor community, others are not so sure of the long term impacts to the health and safety and even economic stability of this decision. Local residents have begun to weigh in with their concerns about the long term effects. Despite these vast objections the EPA issued this statement
Prior to approving the Arrowhead Landfill as the disposal site for the coal ash, EPA visited the landfill and met with local leaders and members of the surrounding community to review the disposal plan and answer questions.
So despite this plan being approved, it appears that this controversy is far from being over and rightfully so based on some legitimate questions about the process. Here's an interesting video clip of residents asking EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to protect them from the coal ash. Notice the diversity in the residents being interviewed.
Just how bad has the coal ash situation gotten in the United States? So bad that the Department of Homeland Security has told Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that her committee can't publicly disclose the location of coal ash dumps across the country.
The pollution is so toxic, so dangerous, that an enemy of the United States -- or a storm or some other disrupting event -- could easily cause them to spill out and lay waste to any area nearby.
The personal financial reports, due late last week from members of Congress, show that many lawmakers hold investments in insurance, pharmaceutical and prescription-benefit companies and in hospital interests, all of which would be affected by the administration’s overhaul of health care.
A “small herd” of rightist Black politicians is seeking statewide office, further mangling Black politics in the process. In practice, this trend allows white voters “to decide which kinds of Black politicians rise to state and national prominence.” Among the latest entries is Congressman Artur Davis, running for governor of Alabama. Rep. Davis is consistently ranked among the worst members of the Congressional Black Caucus – which is the source of his white, corporate appeal.
Sorry folks, but this President is not fighting for real health care reform. It's nibbling that leaves insurance companies still running the show. And the banks, the banks that brought us to financial ruin and then got bailout money, are laughing at us about how easy it was to get back to 'business as usual.' And scientists keep saying that if we want to keep living, you know, on Earth, it's kind of essential we reduce carbon dioxide by 40% in the next ten years. Obama's bill calls for 4%.
This is not getting the job done, and this is not what I voted for.
That will tell you the mailing address and other instructions. Comments or a request for a written hearing must be submitted soon, at least by 35 days from the posting date of June 3.
It's called Enviromental Racism and it's coming to poor communities in sweet home Alabama. Surprised?
The Tennessee Valley Authority has begun shipping toxic coal ash from the massive spill that occurred last December at its Kingston power plant in east Tennessee's Roane County to landfills in the neighboring states of Georgia and Alabama as part of a test to determine a final resting place for the waste.
The counties where the ash is going have large black populations and high poverty rates, raising questions about environmental justice.
With Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III set to lead the Republican opposition against whoever President Obama's nominates to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, and with the still unresolved concerns about his racist past, we can now add the possibility that he's a homphobe.
Per a new CNN/Opinion Research poll, 69% of Americans do not want the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade. That result comes as other recent polls have suggested that more Americans are pro-life rather than pro-choice on the contentious issue of abortion.
The article also detailed the relative costs of these sources. Solar, according to TVA, runs ("in this country") around 40 to 60 cents per kilowatt-Hour (kwH), wind power is in the range of 8 to 12 cents per kwH, and methane is 4 to 6 cents per kwH.
Well, that's probably to be expected, since methane is the main constituent gas in "gas" - in other words, flatulence. In even plainer words - farts.
Just so we're all singing from the same hymnal - a kilowatt-Hour is the energy equivalent of one thousand watts expended over an hour's time. Think of 10 100-watt bulbs left on for an hour. Or, if you grew up in the disco era, as I did, think of a 1500 watt blow drier running for 40 minutes. That's the amount of energy in a kilowatt-Hour.
"Whoa!" you say - "I have never gotten a single moment's illumination from methane! How can this be?"
Well, putting aside for the moment any "enlightenment" arising from adolescent science investigations on the behavior of "gas" in the presence of ignition sources, (you know what I'm talking about!), many electric utilities have operated natural gas-fired plants for years. And natural gas is 70 to 90% methane - so the utilities have been generating electricity from ancient flatulence (aka old farts) for years.
Just so we have that out in the open...take a deep breath and pass over the fold...
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