** Organized labor has taken credit for defeating Schwarzenegger Administration compacts with Indian casino tribes because, unlike earlier Schwarzenegger deals with casino tribes, they did not include new provisions for union organizing. “Workers in Indian casinos are uniquely vulnerable because they are not protected by federal and state labor laws, like minimum wage, overtime, health and safety or anti-discrimination laws,” said Art Pulaski, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the California Labor Federation. “Stopping this rushed compact by the governor is important to protect workers at casinos across the state.”
** To a certain lack of surprise, here is the statement from Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata killing the huge casino tribes compacts negotiated by the Schwarzenegger Administration.
“While at the end of every session some major issues are able to be resolved quickly, because of the late date that the legislature received the gaming compacts that the administration has been working on for months (well past the Senate deadline), and because of the importance and complexity of these compacts, the Senate cannot act on them until the 2006-2007 session begins in December. We regret the disappointment and any financial burden to the tribal nations due to the lateness of the administration.”
** With big moves in store against global warming, what do you all think these days about nuclear power?
** Will the big expansion of Indian casinos negotiated by the Schwarzenegger Administration succeed in the Legislature? Or will the free-spending casino tribes find most of their plans shockingly blocked by labor-backed Democrats?
** “We’d all like to see California one day be carbon free.” Er, we would? That was Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, commenting yesterday to the New York Times. (Which didn’t catch it.) As all, uh, Star Trek fans know, human beings are carbon-based life forms.
** Track global and national energy prices in near real time via Bloomberg. Crude oil prices are hovering around $70 a barrel.
** Continuous coverage of the new global insecurity on Pajamas Media (PJM). A terrorist incident at the British Embassy in Tel Aviv prompted its storming by Israeli forces.
Read 
| Comments (18) |
Turn on the reactor, free Mars! lol
Global warming math:
AB 32 + 10 years = nuclear power
There is no way to meet the AB 32 goals without emissions-free nuclear power. Conservation, renewables, research and new products do not add up to increased energy demands and planned generation plant retirements.
Gray gave away the store to the tribes, Arnold is just trying to get a little $$ for the state but he is negotiating from a position of weakness. what a mess.
Perata just killed all the pending compacts.
And we are shocked, shocked, shocked …
We should house convicted sex offenders right next to nuclear plants. They could shower with the “safe” coolant water that’s released into streams, etc. Then, parents with kids can be given geiger counters.
The counter goes off, you take your kid the hell away. No need for any of that GPS stuff when you solve the tracking issue by irradiation.
I call it the Half-Life for Sex Offenders Program.
Phil should endorse it to prove he would go nuclear on crime.
If implemented, the Half-Life for Sex Offenders Program would reach criticality in no time.
This is the sort of interdiscliplinary thinking that is very impressive.
If nuclear power was a valid artform and music was a source of energy, we’d be attacked by aesthetics, mudered in museums and powered by melodies and rhythms.
Yes, that is true.
It really is sad what the casinos have done to California, in the rural areas outside LA & SF. Particularly silly is how a tribe can eminent domain Yolo county land. But that’s not in LA, so who cares.
Anyway, GREAT news today for legal residents of the state who don’t live in soverign nations. The casino deal is dead, and the gov has rejected the law giving licenses to people who sneak in from other countries. Yesterday I was angry now we are happy. Go figure.
only here can you read interdisciplinary thinking…..great phrase that says it all….Vlad your idea is just amazing:)
I spoke with a nuclear engineer at the World SF Con in Anaheim this past weekend, at a panel on the future of energy; he claims that there’s a new viable design for a reactor cycle that doesn’t breed the worst forms of waste — the stuff that can be reprocessed into bombs. (I think thorium was involved? Not my department…) Interesting, if true. My big concern on nukes is that we make sure they’re not vulnerable to bad guys who might like to take potshots at them with shoulder mounted rockets, make off with the waste to build a dirty bomb, or engineer a US Chernobyl.
(Sidenote: Also saw Kevin Drum, and a few other lesser-known, but interesting, political bloggers, at the con. And hey, you’re referencing Trek! Though I can sorta forgive the guy for using carbon as synecdoche for carbon dioxide. Though even there, if you think it through, there’s no reason we should be upset with CO2 emissions from, for example, biofuels, which take their carbon out of the atmosphere in the first place.)
Entropy Production, an interesting, and lay-accessible blog about energy issues, did an analysis a couple months back showing how the power demands of TX could be met with zero fossil fules. He of course included nuclear in the mix. (He used TX because they basically have a separate grid from the rest of the US, and publish their data.)
RM ‘Auros’ Harman
Chair, Santa Clara County Grassroots Steering Committee, Angelides ’06
(in no way speaking for the campaign — nuclear power hasn’t come up as a major campaign issue, that I’ve noticed)
Thanks, Auros. Very interesting stuff. This is what I like.
RE: “With big moves in store against global warming, what do you all think these days about nuclear power?”
Nuclear Power is not a solution until there are safe ways to store or dispose of the toxic radioactive waste. In addition, nuclear plants release high levels of carcinogens into the water and air, including tritium, during their routine operation.
If nuclear power is so safe, then why do taxpayers sunsidize their insurance through the Anderson Act? In the event of a meltdown, we’ll pay for the clean up, not the toxic polluters General Electric, Westinghouse, Entergy, et al.
The nuclear industry writes the rules governing their ‘regulation’ through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It is engaged in a PR campaign to cover up the history of radioactive pollution, taxpayer subsidies, and leaking plants with embrittled reactor domes (or tombs). Now they want to ship the poison across the US in unmarked trucks with casks (caskets) filled with radioactive waste. As long as Nevada politicians stand in the way of turning their state into more of a dump than it already is, we’ll avoid the risky transport of the nuke trash through our cities. Meanwhile the waste remains onsite at old, unsecure plants, vulnerable to a terrorist attack.
An attack on San Onofre or Indian Point in New York would kill tens of thousands of people and make a huge portion of the northeast U.S. uninhabitable.
NO NUKES!
Whatever happened to CONSERVATION!?!??!
For real information on nuclear power, check Citiens Awareness Network at http://www.nukebusters.org or the Nuclear Information Resource Service, http://www.nirs.org
Alternatives to Nuclear:
http://www.nirs.org/alternatives/alternativeshome.htm
Here’s more good info
From Nuclear Information and Resource Serv ice
Nuclear Power: No Solution to Climate Change
http://www.nirs.org/climate/climate.htm
The nuclear power industry and its governmental allies are spending tens of millions of dollars annually to promote atomic power as a “clean air” energy source and to encourage the construction of new nuclear reactors in the U.S. and worldwide. With Russia’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, thereby putting this important agreement into effect, this industry initiative is expected to increase. If successful, we can expect to see a revival—we would call it a “relapse”– of reactor construction across the globe. There already are numerous proposals for new reactors on nearly every continent.
Yet nuclear power is not only ineffective at addressing climate change, when the entire fuel chain is examined, nuclear power is found to be a producer of greenhouse gases. Adding enough nuclear power to make a meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would cost trillions of dollars, create tens of thousands of tons of lethal high-level radioactive waste, contribute to further proliferation of nuclear weapons materials, result in a Chernobyl-scale accident once every decade or so, and, perhaps most significantly, squander the resources necessary to implement meaningful climate change mitigation policies.
In November 2000 the world recognized nuclear power as a dirty, dangerous and unnecessary technology by refusing to give it greenhouse gas credits during the UN Climate Change talks in the Hague. The world dealt nuclear power a further blow when a UN Sustainable Development Conference refused to label nuclear a sustainable technology in April 2001.
This section includes background information on nuclear power and climate change, documents from the COP 6 meeting of the Kyoto Protocol held in the Hague and other materials. This issue is a high priority for the international NIRS/WISE network, and you can expect to see more materials added here in the coming months.
http://www.nirs.org/
Krav Maga all the way…
[...]I do enjoy Jeet Kwan Doe, but Krav Maga is just another level altogether[...]……