Leading edge Carbon Capture Technology ..... U guessed it => Brought to you by China!!!

See the nice thing about being an Agnostic State like China is your politicians don't waste time and money talking about make believe friends and instead focus on real issues like ... hhmmmmm ... Climate Change!!!

It’s a tantalizing promise that one day “carbon capture” will remove greenhouse gases from the smoke made by coal-fired power plants. After all, these plants, which provide 45 percent of electricity in the U.S., account for more than a third of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. 

Small-scale experiments have been successful enough that, at this point, engineers have little doubt the technology can work. Yet efforts in the U.S. to advance it are stalled. What was to have been the nation’s first commercial-scale project -- at Mountaineer, a coal-burning electricity plant in New Haven, West Virginia -- has been put on hold.

Meanwhile, in China, carbon capture marches steadfastly ahead, as an article in the May issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine reports. A pilot project by China Huaneng Group Corp. has been able to remove carbon from coal-plant exhaust for about $39 per ton of captured CO2, which is a little more than a third of what it costs in the U.S. 

The work has been so impressive, as John Lippert and Chua Baizhen report, that Duke Energy Corp., the largest U.S. energy company, has signed a research agreement with Huaneng to study its technology. Duke wants to learn how much it would cost to retrofit its largest power plant, in Gibson County, Indiana, to capture carbon.

Lies, Lies and more Lies

The Senate on Thursday could not produce the 60 votes necessary to pass a bill eliminating $2.5 billion a year of oil industry subsidies. This is a minuscule amount for an industry whose top three companies in the United States alone earned more than $80 billion in profits last year.

In the last year, the oil industry spent more than $146 million lobbying Congress. In Thursday’s vote, senators who voted to preserve the tax breaks received more than four times as much as those who voted against.

Voters in Michigan, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado will hear a 30-second spot peddling the oil industry’s misleading arguments against the Obama administration’s energy policies — including the fiction that those policies have led to higher gas prices: “Since Obama became president,” it says in part, “gas prices have nearly doubled. Obama opposed exploring for energy in Alaska. He gave millions of dollars to Solyndra, which then went bankrupt. And he blocked the Keystone pipeline, so we will all pay more at the pump.”

Four sentences, four misrepresentations. Gas prices, tied to the world market, would have gone up no matter who was president. Mr. Obama has not ruled out further leasing in Alaskan waters. Solyndra, a solar panel maker, is the only big failure in a broader program aimed at encouraging nascent energy technologies. The Keystone XL oil pipeline has nothing to do with gas prices now and, even if built, would have only a marginal effect.

American Apartheid? The Republican "Dream" Scheme!!!

The Senate GOP seems to be banking on the assumption that Latino voters are stupid, or don't read the fine print -- or are not paying any attention at all.

Panicking from a series of polls that show their years of bashing Latinos haven't been endearing them to Latino voters, prominent Republicans are scrambling for a solution. They seem to have found one, at least for now, in a new attempt by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to rewrite the DREAM Act, the widely popular bill that the Senate GOP derailed in late 2010.

Rubio has come up with a "non-citizen-for-life" concept as he rejiggers the DREAM Act to make it pretty much dream-free. It's a tough trick: how do you create the illusion of a law that looks like it's giving something to Latinos, but which the Tea Party know means nothing?

The authentic DREAM Act offers a path to citizenship for children who were brought to the country without documentation, who graduate from high school and go on to college or the military, allowing them to create a stable life and give back to the country that they call home. Rubio's dream-free proposal gives these young people a nebulous legalized status, so that rather than become American citizens, they will have permanent second-class status - allowed to live, work and pay taxes in the only country they have ever known, but never permitted the ability to vote or exercise any of the rights of full citizenship.

The real cruelty of this Republican proposal is that it seeks to take advantage of the desperation of some DREAM Act-eligible youth to avoid deportation. The Republican proposal offers them that in the short term, but at the price of second-class status for the rest of their lives.

They deserve better. Of course, it doesn't have to be this way: not long ago, before the Tea Party drove the GOP's agenda, the authentic DREAM Act enjoyed the support of many Republicans in the Senate. The GOP has paid the price for abandoning the authentic DREAM Act and promoting numerous anti-immigrant policies. Senate Republicans are living in a fantasy land if they believe they can win back Latino voters by inventing a new second-class status for these young people.
  

Republicans have perfected a method of legalizing discrimination by inventing new classes of citizenship for those on whom they don't want to bestow full rights, creating a unique and disturbing American Apartheid.

• Republicans want gay people to have a form of citizenship that doesn't include marriage rights -- and if they had their way gay Americans wouldn't be allowed to serve their country in in the military either.

• Muslims can be citizens, but must fight legal and PR battles just to exercise their First Amendment right to the freedom of religion. 

• People who have served their time in jail for felonies are citizens - but in many states, they aren't allowed to participate in our democracy by voting. 

• And Republican-controlled state legislatures pass laws that make it harder for young people, the elderly, and low-income people to vote -- again, all citizens, legislated out of one of their fundamental constitutional rights.

How about an America with equal rights and equal justice for all and a fair path to citizenship for hard-working people who play by the rules?

With the new dream-free DREAM Act, Republicans are trying to create one of their patented new levels of citizenship while pulling a fast one on Latinos and others who care about the fate of immigrants.

FDA says not enough people have contracted cancer for them to regulate BPA in canned foods and beverages.

Manufacturers of baby bottles and cups have stopped using polycarbonate containing BPA (bisphenol A)  in response to consumer concerns it may affect children.

Sarah Janssen, a senior scientist at the NRDC, said the FDA’s denial of a ban shows “a major overhaul” of chemical regulation is needed. The Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based advocacy group, said consumers can no longer trust the FDA to protect the health of their families.

“The agency has veered dangerously off course,” Jane Houlihan, the group’s senior vice president for research, said today in a statement. “Pregnant women and new parents should no longer think FDA has their backs.”

Mitt Romney: A presidential candidate for the very few. Cut TAXES for the RICH and PISS on the POOR!!!

A Cruel Budget

In February, after embarrassing himself by saying he was “not concerned about the very poor,” Mitt Romney explained that the government’s safety net would take care of them, and he promised to repair any holes in the net. That promise didn’t last very long. On Thursday, House Republicans approved, on a party-line vote, a disastrous new budget that would leave millions of struggling families desperate for food, shelter and health care — and Mr. Romney has embraced it. 

The budget, developed by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, would cut $3.3 trillion from low-income programs over 10 years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, even more than the $2.9 trillion in Mr. Ryan’s first disastrous budget last year. 

 

“It’s an excellent piece of work,” Mr. Romney said. (Rick Santorum said it didn’t cut enough.) 

The biggest of the cuts would be to Medicaid, the joint federal and state program that is already gasping for money in many states that put a low priority on health care for low-income people. Mr. Romney often talks casually about turning the program over to the states entirely and simply writing a check to dispose of a half-century federal commitment. The Ryan budget exposes just how paltry that check would be: a cut of $810 billion through 2022, one-fifth of current spending, which would lead states to drop coverage for an estimated 14 million to 28 million people. 

By eliminating the expansion of Medicaid in the health care law, cutting $1.6 trillion, it would leave another 17 million low- and moderate-income people uninsured. 

Just as revealing is the acceptance by Mr. Romney and the other Republican presidential candidates of the Ryan plan to cut food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The budget would cut 17 percent of the SNAP budget, or $133.5 billion over a decade. As the center points out, there are only two ways to achieve that savings: Mr. Romney could simply take the benefits away from 8 million of the 47 million who now receive them, or he could cut everyone’s benefits. For a struggling family of four, that would mean a loss of $90 worth of food a month. 

Already, most people who get SNAP benefits use them up in the first two weeks of a month, and many turn to food banks by month’s end. Cutting benefits so sharply would lead to a significant increase in hunger, particularly among children, which would quickly create dangerous ripples through the health and education systems. 

At the same time, though, those families would find themselves unable to pay for health care, and they would also face reductions in housing assistance, job training and Pell grants for college tuition, all of which Mr. Ryan wants to cut, with Mr. Romney’s approval. 

In all, 62 percent of the budget’s cuts come from low-income programs, and that’s on top of the substantial cut in spending already in place from last year. But the Ryan budget does contain a substantial tax cut for the rich, which is one of the reasons Mr. Romney said he was “very supportive” of the plan. 

“It’s a bold and exciting effort,” he said, “and it’s very much consistent with what I put out earlier.” It is also consistent with his stated lack of concern for the very poor.

RNC alters Supreme Court Tapes

A Republican Party Web-based advertisement uses altered audio from U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments to attack President Barack Obama’s health-care law.

Canda hopes to KILL 400,000 baby seals this season!!!

 Canadian government still allows sealers to slaughter what surviving pups they can find. In fact, they have set this year’s harp seal kill quota at an extreme 400,000 seals!!!