Parents and grandparents buy 529 college savings plans as safe investments,
so VA529 chose poorly in Spectra Energy,
1-804-371-0766
Toll-Free: 1-888-567-0540
9001 Arboretum Parkway
North Chesterfield, VA 23236
Spectra is so risky it just sold itself so Enbridge would take on about $22 billion of Spectra debt. Debt especially racked up since Continue reading
Front page today in the newspaper of record in the largest city in the Suwannee River Basin: the WWALS protest against DAPL and Sabal Trail at the US 84 Withlacoochee River bridge last Saturday, between Quitman and Valdosta, GA.
Desiree Carver, Valdosta Daily Times, Friday, September 23, 2016, front page,
Sabal protests continue,
The WWALS Watershed Coalition stood on the bridge between Brooks and Lowndes County Saturday to show solidarity with Dakota Access Pipeline opponents in Dakota and to continue its battle against the Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline.
That’s the US 84 bridge over the Withlacoochee River, on the Continue reading
See the power behind FERC get it very wrong.
About China emissions, about energy and economy, about solar power, and all in one speech.
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), YouTube, 3 December 2009 (posted 15 Dec 2009), U.S. Senator John Barrasso speaks at ALEC in December 2009 in DC. Part 3,
Just look at China, Continue reading
Before the names of the dead were read by 50 of the crowd that numbered at least three times as many; before the moment of silence and the prayer and the thanks to all the first responders and police who assisted at the scene in Orlando; this evening at St Barnabas Church on Bemiss Road one speaker said we could choose to focus on the person who did this horrible thing in Orlando, or we could choose to focus on fear, but as for her and her house, she chooses love: go out and do something for your neighbor.
The gathering also served as Continue reading
Only the smoke stack remains, yet Remerton Mills still took up most of the
Remerton City Council agenda when Gretchen videoed there this month.
The Humane Society wants to house dogs temporarily and house an adoption site for cats. This also requires a variance.
Yes, apparently Remerton has more room for animals than Valdosta.
Here are links to the LAKE videos of each item, from the agenda. Also notice Remerton has Citizens to Be Heard first, like both Lowndes County and Valdosta used to have only a few years ago. Continue reading
Papers forged, fire and oil leak into the Hudson River, fracked methane pipeline planned next door, oh, yet built on a fault line,
and people are surprised
there’s radioactive tritium leaking from Entergy’s Indian Point nuclear plant?
Just like at
Plant Farley on the Chattahoochee River,
Plant Hatch on the Altamaha River and Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River?
How about surprised if there are any nukes that don’t leak tritium?
AP, 6 February 2016, Radioactive Material Found in Groundwater Below Nuke Plant, Continue reading
Many people these days think name-calling is argument (thank you, Newt Gingrich*), so here’s a handy picture of seven levels of disagreement.
Image by
abagond 26 July 2010, from How to Disagree, by Paul Graham, March 2008.
There’s nothing like a good discussion, with actual arguments on facts, theories, or context. But we really don’t have time for name-calling or ad hominem here on the LAKE blog. As noted in our submissions policy, you can submit anything you like, but “LAKE reserves complete discretion to select, edit, and annotate submissions, and to delete blog or facebook comments that are spam or personal attacks, or for any other reason whatever.” Name-calling and ad hominem are personal attacks.
The source of the above image includes some useful examples, and Continue reading
Thirty-six years ago, Three Mile Island turned public opinion against nuclear power.
The worst in history, right now still spewing after three months
and Los Angeles County and the state of California have declared emergencies
at Porter Ranch,
is the “natural” gas industry’s Three Mile Island.
Nuclear, too was touted as safe, clean, and infamously “too cheap to meter”. It turned out to be none of those things, and neither is fracked methane. Three Mile Island alone didn’t stop the thousands of nukes President Nixon promised, but it sure helped. The Porter Ranch disaster has already lasted far longer, had worse direct effects, and is in the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area.
Plus TMI was the first U.S. civilian nuclear accident.
The “natural” gas industry has leaks, corrosion, fires, explosions, and now earthquakes monthly and sometimes daily.
Sure, the shadow of nuclear war hung over the nuclear power industry, but the monthly fireballs from methane explosions hangs over the natural gas industry.
The 2010 San Bruno, California explosion is back in the news because, says AP 13 January 2015:
PROSECUTORS: PG&E RESISTED RECORD-KEEPING CHANGE AFTER SAN BRUNO BLAST.
It’s time for a complete moratorium on all new natural gas projects,
like the moratorium on all new nuclear projects after Three Mile Island.
Instead, let’s get on with what we didn’t have back then:
solar and wind power already less expensive than any other sources of power,
far cleaner and safer, much faster to deploy, using no water, and requiring no eminent domain.
In 1962 President John F. Kennedy famously said: Continue reading
A local elected official recently confused “crisis” with “important”.
Yet a crisis is something that is both urgent and important,
and if we spend more time on things that are important and not urgent,
such as planning, we won’t have as many crises.
Instead, the corporate media and social media
would have us spend most time on interruptions that are urgent but not important
(traffic slowdowns or obstructions) or, worse, trivia that is neither urgent nor important
(which celebrities are seeing whom).
This confusion affects everything from attracting jobs to electing candidates to clean air and water.
Dwight D. Eisenhower had a solution:
In a 1954 speech to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was quoting Dr J. Roscoe Miller, president of Northwestern University, said: “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” This “Eisenhower Principle” is said to be how he organized his workload and priorities.
— Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle: Using Time Effectively, Not Just Efficiently by Mind Tools; see also Quote Investigator for several variant versions.
Even though it often seems to be forgotten, this has to be one of the most popular business and personal improvement methods ever, so there are plenty of graphics and explanations.
First Things First, book by Stephen Covey, 1994, described in Wikipedia
Do we really want to spend all our time putting out fires? If not, maybe we should Continue reading
Sinkholes, explosions, and other risks to our rivers, lands, and wildlife for no benefit from the Sinkhole Trail, plus FERC and its environmental contractor are paid by the pipeline companies, but still we can win, said local landowners and others to FERC in Valdosta last night, as you can see in these LAKE videos.
And you can come to the
Kayaktivism Day this Saturday
several Valdosta State clubs are holding on the Withlacoochee River.
Meanwhile, the FERC circus moves to Columbia High School in Live Oak, FL tonight. Continue reading