Monday, February 8th, 2010
7:19 pm
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posted by Robert McClure
on
Dateline Earth
I’ve always been just a hair skeptical about all those admonitions to consumers to save the world — you know, the “Live simply, that others may simply live”-type instructions. They felt a little too much like guilt-tripping to me, with perhaps not enough corresponding actual environmental good being done. It seems like a way for [...]
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Monday, February 8th, 2010
2:47 pm
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posted by Rita Hibbard
on
From the Field
InvestigateWest added its reporting muscle to ProPublica, the investigative reporting organization based in New York, for a report detailing which members of Congress benefited from their status as high-ranking public officials to obtain sought-after tickets to yesterday’s Super Bowl.
As ProPublica found, with the help of InvestigateWest, many other media organizations and citizen journalists around the [...]
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Monday, February 8th, 2010
10:15 am
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posted by Rita Hibbard
on
Western Exposure
Op-ed by Mark Trahant
President Barack Obama answered an important philosophical question last week: How will the federal government fully fund a starved Indian health system?
The answer is budget by budget: The administration boosted spending by 13 percent in fiscal year 2010 and is proposing another 9 percent increase for 2011. But this budget does not [...]
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Friday, February 5th, 2010
8:59 pm
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posted by Robert McClure
on
Dateline Earth
In what its authors admit is almost certainly an underestimate, a new study says the catastrophic climate changes coming to the Arctic will cost at least $2.4 trillion by mid-century. (To put that into perspective, President Obama just proposed a $3.8 trillion federal government budget for next year.)
The true cost is likely to be a [...]
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Friday, February 5th, 2010
8:22 pm
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posted by Jennifer Privette
on
Western Exposure |
1 Comment
Sitting before a Senate subcommittee is a young mother. She is slim, pretty, intelligent . . . and full of dangerous chemicals.
Molly Jones Gray of Seattle testified this week in Washington, D.C., regarding human exposure to toxic chemicals. After participating in a study conducted by the Washington Toxics Coalition, a pregnant Gray was horrified to learn that [...]
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Friday, February 5th, 2010
9:13 am
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posted by Rita Hibbard
on
Western Exposure
It’s time to stand up for education funding.
What with a judge telling the state it’s been failing in its constitutional duty to fund K-12 education, and college students and staff across the state walking out of the classroom to speak out against budget cuts in higher ed, it’s heady stuff.
“State funding is not ample, it [...]
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Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
9:23 am
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posted by Rita Hibbard
on
Western Exposure
There are a lot of homeless people living in cars or camping out under overpasses in Lake City. So many that the Seattle neighborhood has its own task force on homelessness. But this is a task force that helps turn words into action.
John, a Vietnam veteran who lived on the streets of Lake City for [...]
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Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
8:23 pm
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posted by Robert McClure
on
Dateline Earth |
3 Comments
There were two pretty big developments on the autism story today. You’ve no doubt heard that for a while there it looked like a preservative in vaccinations given to children for measles, mumps and rubella was responsible for the increasing incidence of autism in American kids.
Not so much, it seems. Today the Lancet medical journal retracted [...]
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Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
1:11 pm
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posted by Rita Hibbard
on
Western Exposure |
1 Comment
Just say no.
To paper and plastic.
An Oregon lawmaker is backing legislation to ban plastic bags. A big fight is shaping up, with plastic bag makers pointing to the harmful effects of paper, and asking ‘who can say paper is worse than plastic?’ In Seattle last year, voters bowed to big spending by big plastic and [...]
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Monday, February 1st, 2010
8:48 pm
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posted by Robert McClure
on
Dateline Earth |
1 Comment
I’ve been hearing for some years now about unreasonable environmental activists fighting against resurrecting the use of DDT in Africa to control the malaria scourge, and meaning to check out the story. Michael Crichton, for example, charged that the ban on DDT has killed more people than Hitler. Hard to ignore.
My interest was further piqued when I met malaria sufferers [...]
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