Reps. Matt Huffman of Lima and Andy Thompson of Marietta said Monday that Ohio made a mistake four years ago in pursuing the standards and their legislation would seize back state control over the process.
…their legislation would seize back state control… (from President Barack Hussein Obama). Where were these anti-federal-education-standards folks when President George W. Bush came up with No Child Left Behind?
This is my exercise in shoveling out the blogpile…
Rule No. 27 – Eating What Stands on One Leg [Mushrooms and Plant Foods] or No Legs [Fish] Is better Than Eating What Stands on Two Legs [Fowl], Which Is Better Than Eating What Stands on Four Legs [Cows, Pigs and Other Mammals]. Simplified: The Fewer the Feet, the Better the Meat.
From Food Rules, an eater’s manual by Michael Pollan
Found in my electronic chapbook. See also Eating Mindfully by Jan Chozen Bey.
Local News
Post office options
Eyes on online sales tax surplus
Safety concerns raised about Open Horse Fun Show
MHS receives Gold Improvement Award
Levy is official in Frontier districtTop Headlines Poll: Is reducing hours at smaller post offices the best way to keep them open?
And I would ask: best way compared to what? JH
This is my exercise in shoveling out the blogpile…
Rule No. 26 – Treat Meat as a Flavoring or Special Food. (Jeff’s corollary: double the veggies and halve the meat.)
From Food Rules, an eater’s manual by Michael Pollan
Found in my electronic chapbook. See also Eating Mindfully by Jan Chozen Bey.
Local News
Harmar moments
New ER in Belpre opens
Tons of fans at Comic Con
Devola woman jumps right in
WSCC announces four new/updated programsTop Headlines Poll: Do you agree with the plan to make the VA more accountable and to help the department recruit more doctors, nursing and other health care professionals? (This may be the Times’ worst poll question ever.)
Congressman Bill Johnson (R-6th District OH) is touting a verbosely titled item called the REINS Act (“Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny”) designed to accomplish the allegedly lofty goal of curbing what a July 15 News-Sentinel editorial-writer called “runaway government of the type favored by President Barack Obama.” This goal is “lofty” only in the sense that it is mostly hot-air!
Johnson and his right-wing cohorts in Congress have deluded themselves into thinking that every piece of legislation can be re-litigated after passing both Houses. This was not the founders’ intention. Since 1787, The Constitution has given U.S. Presidents considerable leeway in issuing Executive Orders that facilitate their implementation of laws passed by Congress. President Obama has issued only 183 Executive Orders since taking office in 2009. Compare this with the 291 from George W. Bush, 364 by Bill Clinton, and 381 by Ronald Reagan. Eisenhower issued 484, and FDR issued a whopping 3,522.
The REINS silliness is the latest phony ploy in a non-stop campaign of misinformation that Johnson and his aides have conducted since his “Gerrymandered” election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010. He’s also been claiming that he and his extremist colleagues have passed “over 40 job-creating bills” that have allegedly been “stalled by Harry Reid and Democrats in the Senate.” Balderdash! If one examines these bills, most contain “poison-pill” provisions like the anti-labor elements inserted into the recently-passed “Workforce and Innovation Opportunity Act,” or the pension-stripping provisions attached at the last minute to the purposely delayed Highway and Infrastructure Trust Fund Extension Act. Bill Johnson has made it no secret that he wants to deregulate and privatize almost everything, including Social Security. He favors unlimited “corporate welfare,” and his definition of “small-business” is restricted to the Fortune 500 energy-development companies (AEP, Murray Energy, NiSources, Magnum-Hunter Resources) that contributed heavily to his campaigns. In 2007, Bill was the managing director of Stoneridge Inc. a northern Ohio IT firm that fired 300 workers and shipped their jobs to Mexico, Estonia, and China. Yet Bill always turns up to claim credit for “creating jobs” in the MOV—even jobs that have been created by others without his assistance, or even despite his actions in Congress. It is no wonder that Johnson wants to avoid any kind of one-on-one debate with his Democrat opponent this fall, preferring instead to put out his message via heavily-staged “town hall” events where only tea-party supporters will be allowed to ask “friendly” questions.
It’s time for Johnson and his fellow-comedians to pass some REAL legislation. Let’s call it the BRAINS Act (“Better Representation and Intelligent National Stewardship.”) It would be designed to force lawmakers to become better educated on the issues, and to drop silly stunts like REINS, forego costly and nonproductive witch-hunts, and scrap endless attempts to “repeal Obamacare,” and to finally begin working in the best interests of this nation and its citizens.
Fred O’Neill, Marietta, Ohio
This is my exercise in shoveling out the blogpile…
Rule No. 25 – Eat Mostly Plants, Especially Leaves.
From Food Rules, an eater’s manual by Michael Pollan
Found in my electronic chapbook. See also Eating Mindfully by Jan Chozen Bey.
Local News
Commemoration
Officials seek agricultural boost in MOV
Vets to Agriculture program seeing early success
OVU names Morris VP of external relations
Graduation Test shows improvementTop Headlines Poll: Will your children be up to date on vaccinations in time for the start of the new school year?
This is my exercise in shoveling out the blogpile…
Rule No. 24 – When You Eat Real Food, You Don’t Need Rules.
From Food Rules, an eater’s manual by Michael Pollan
Found in my electronic chapbook. See also Eating Mindfully by Jan Chozen Bey.
2008 and (mouse over) 2014 USGS maps of peak ground acceleration for 2-percent probability of exceedance in 50 years and VS30 site condition of 760 meters per second.
This morning I’m looking at the United States Geological Service’s report: Documentation for the 2014 Update of the United States National Seismic Hazard Maps and the first bit that caught my eye was a change to the 2014 map (mouse over the image above to view) to include areas where suspected nontectonic earthquakes have been deleted.
According the report (page 32), the USGS maintains:
a manually edited, “special-case” catalog of suspected erroneous or nontectonic events (explosions, mining-related events, etc.) identified from special studies. For the 2014 update, nontectonic events compiled by the CEUS–SSCn are added to this file. These special-case events are deleted from the final catalog.
Locally, notice the deleted section in Northeastern Ohio. What nontectonic event have we experienced in that area marked as deleted?
Earlier this year, Reddit Los Angeles hosted an Ask Me Anything with Dr. Lucy Jones, USGS Seismologist and Science Adviser on Seismic Safety to LA Mayor Eric Garcetti. During that session, fracking entered the discussion when a participant asked Dr. Jones:
stewie2552: How seriously are you taking the fracking debate? There’s a lot of controversy with it, and I know just recently the USGS is increasing its research into it as a source for earthquake activity. I’m not from the area so I’m unaware how much fracking actually occurs in California, but is it a concern for you and your office? I’m not really sure where I stand on the issue, but would love your input.
Jones: Fracking itself does not cause earthquakes – it is happening at shallow depths and the earthquakes begin farther down. However, after fracking, there is a noxious brew of water and chemicals that must be disposed of, and they generally pump it deep into the earth to get it below the water table. That is setting off earthquakes on the East Coast where the rate of M equal-to-or-greater-than 3 earthquakes has increased from 23/yr to 200+/yr. [Emphasis mine, JH]
It is not clear how much fracking is happening in California. The oil companies report how much oil they extract from the ground but not the techniques they use to get it.
It’s hard to be sure whether earthquakes in California have been affected by oil extraction. We were pumping oil before we started recording earthquakes, so we don’t have a baseline.
Allow me to be clear. I do not believe that the USGS is covering up these earthquakes (there are plenty of others who see conspiracies here, particularly as reporting pertains to the super volcano under Yellowstone National Park, but I’m not one of them) but rather see these marked areas as a way that the USGS is actually high-lighting these events.
Local News
All(ey) Access
Working out kinks in texting ban
Burglars hit pharmacy in Williamstown
Donations needed for Devola rec areas
Keeping streets cleanTop Headlines Poll: Have you ever been fishing locally?
This is my exercise in shoveling out the blogpile…
Reader Fred O’Neill alerted me to this Mother Jones story:
On the morning of June 28, a fire broke out at a Halliburton fracking site in Monroe County, Ohio. As flames engulfed the area, trucks began exploding and thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals spilled into a tributary of the Ohio River, which supplies drinking water for millions of residents. More than 70,000 fish died. Nevertheless, it took five days for the Environmental Protection Agency and its Ohio counterpart to get a full list of the chemicals polluting the waterway. “We knew there was something toxic in the water,” says an environmental official who was on the scene. “But we had no way of assessing whether it was a threat to human health or how best to protect the public.”
This episode highlights a glaring gap in fracking safety standards. In Ohio, as in most other states, fracking companies are allowed to withhold some information about the chemical stew they pump into the ground to break up rocks and release trapped natural gas. The oil and gas industry and its allies at the American Legislative exchange Council (ALEC), a pro-business outfit that has played a major role in shaping fracking regulation, argue that the formulas are trade secrets that merit protection. But environmental groups say the lack of transparency makes it difficult to track fracking-related drinking water contamination and can hobble the government response to emergencies, such as the Halliburton spill in Ohio.
According to a preliminary EPA inquiry, more than 25,000 gallons of chemicals, diesel fuel, and other compounds were released during the accident, which began with a ruptured hydraulic line spraying flammable liquid on hot equipment. The flames later engulfed 20 trucks, triggering some 30 explosions that rained shrapnel over the site and hampered firefighting efforts.
Mariah Blake writing in Halliburton Fracking Spill Mystery: What Chemicals Polluted an Ohio Waterway?
Rule No. 23 – It’s Not Food if It’s Called the Same Name in Every Language (Think Big Mac, Cheetos or Pringles.)
From Food Rules, an eater’s manual by Michael Pollan
Found in my electronic chapbook. See also Eating Mindfully by Jan Chozen Bey.
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