Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

A Cancer Drug’s Big Price Rise Disturbs Doctors and Patients

On Feb. 3, Joyce Elkins filled a prescription for a two-week supply of nitrogen mustard, a decades-old cancer drug used to treat a rare form of lymphoma. The cost was $77.50.

On Feb. 17, Ms. Elkins, a 64-year-old retiree who lives in Georgetown, Tex., returned to her pharmacy for a refill. This time, following a huge increase in the wholesale price of the drug, the cost was $548.01.

Click here for link.

It is one of the most puzzling mysteries of the AIDS epidemic: Why did blacks, in little more than a dozen years, become nine times as likely as whites to contract a disease once associated almost exclusively with gay white men?

Two researchers say they found the answer in an unlikely place: prison.

Click here for link.

The Scuderi Group will unveil its air-hybrid engine at the world congress of the Society of Automotive Engineers next month in Detroit.

The air-hybrid engine supplements its gasoline engine with compressed air. Compressed air is a very efficient way of storing energy and has been suggested for intermittent sources such as solar and wind. A French company announced last year that they would be unveiling a compressed air driven car this year, but so far, no word on that.

The Scuderi Group claims its engine achieves 60% fuel efficiency, almost double the standard gasoline engine, and cuts toxic emmissions by 80%. The company hopes to license the engine to interested companies to get it into production more quickly.

http://www.mdgreens.org/montgomery/blog/2006/02/06/513/#comments

Capitol Hill Blue, an online news source, proclaims that they “don’t play favorites … don’t shill for any political party, philosophical group or idealogical point-of-view. ”

But they do have opinions.

And their opinion of the Democrats’ capitulation before the Homeland Security Act is decidedly negative:

The next time some loudmouth partisan puke Democrat gets in my face and starts yapping about how much better things would be if his party were running the government in Washington, I’m going to pull out the vote tally sheet for the USA Patriot Act in Thursday’s Senate session and ram it down his lying throat.

Where was his party when it came time to take a stand for freedom in this country? Hiding like a coward, that’s where. Only nine Democrats and one independent - former Republican Jim Jeffords - had guts enough to vote against reauthorizing the fascist piece of crap called the Patriot Act.

I’ll leave out some of the more graphic comments…

This is the opposition party? This is the party that partisans claim will save this country from the abuses and excesses of too many years of Republican domination? Christ, these losers couldn’t lead a Cub Scout pack on an overnight camping trip in a suburban back yard.

I expected Republicans to fall in lockstep behind their power-mad President and sell out their country. That’s what Republicans do in the name of control, even though a few made a token show of resistance last year by joining Democratic efforts to filibuster passage of the act. But I held out faint hope that the Dems wouldn’t cave and join in the feeding frenzy on the Constitution. Serves me right, I guess, for trusting any politician — Democrat or Republican.

Only these 10 voted against the act: Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Carl Levin (D-MI), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), James Jeffords (I-VT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Patty Murray (D-WA), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Robert Byrd (D-WV). The rest voted with Bush and against freedom.

These people need to be given an alternative!

Some 180,000 American homeowners live off-grid, according to Richard Perez, publisher of Home Power magazine. Approximately a quarter live in California, and each year the national number grows 33 percent, according to the publisher’s database of known off-gridders and estimates of those unreported.

The off-grid movement is increasingly mainstream, propelled by Americans’ desire to eliminate electric bills, keep homes juiced during blackouts, minimize U.S. dependence on fossil fuel and, for activists, send a gesture of defiance to the power companies.

The strongest sign yet of the movement’s liftoff is a reality-TV series, due out this fall on the Discovery Channel. Production for “Off the Grid” — its tentative name — is to start in May.

A recent study by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C., found that an increase in America’s alternative-energy investment, after 15 years, would create almost 150,000 jobs, increase wages nearly $7 billion, reduce carbon-dioxide emissions roughly 30 percent and save close to $30 billion in electric and gas bills.

The green movement is growing all around us. The Green party needs to be on the its cutting edge.

22 years after one of the worste industrial disasters in history, 150 survivors of the leak of toxic gas by Union Carbide at Bhopal are beginning a 800 km walk to bring attention to their plight. While Union Carbide’s new owner, Dow Chemical, continues to make profits in India, the survivors of Bhopal have to beg for medical services. The marchers make the following demands:

1. National Commission on Bhopal: Set up National Commission on Bhopal with the necessary authority and funds to provide facilities for health care, medical research, social support and economic rehabilitation of survivors and their children for at least next 30 years. This commission must have active participation of non-government doctors, scientists and representatives of survivor’s organizations.
2. Provide Safe Drinking Water: Commit funds for and agree to time-bound plan for delivery of piped Kolar water to communities affected by Union Carbide’s contamination.
3. Prosecute Union Carbide and Anderson: Set up a Special Prosecution Cell in the Central Bureau of Investigation with representatives from the Ministry of External Affairs for speedy prosecution of Union Carbide Corporation, Warren Anderson and other accused in the criminal case of the December ‘84 disaster.
4. Make Dow Clean Up and Pay: Ensure scientific assessment of depth and spread of contamination in and around the Union Carbide factory and make Union Carbide’s current owner The Dow Chemical Company pay for clean up of contamination and compensation for related health and environmental damages.
5. Blacklist Dow and Union Carbide: Stop government purchase of Dursban and other Dow products and halt any expansion of Dow’s business in India till it accepts the pending liabilities of Bhopal.
6. Remember Bhopal: Include representatives of survivors organizations in the creation of a memorial to the disaster; declare December 3 rd as a National Day of Mourning for Victims of Industrial Disasters and Pollution and ensure that the Bhopal disaster and its aftermath are included school and college curricula.

Please sign a petition to support their demands.

Knight Ridder has learned that the Bush administration was warned early on of the possibility of a worsening insurgency or civil war.

A National Intelligence Estimate completed in October 2003 concluded that local conditions were driving the insurgency, not foreign jihadists as the administration maintained. This and other reports were received coolly by the administration according to former White House officials.

Robert Hutchings, chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2003 to 2005 said that a steady stream of intelligence reports warned the administration that the insurgency was intensifying and expanding. But White House officials “simply weren’t ready to pay attention to analysis that didn’t conform to their own optimistic scenarios,” Hutchings said.

Roscoe Bartlett’s (R-MD) progressive stance on peak oil has been previously commented on in this blog. Here is an article by him that gives you a sense of how seriously he takes the issue: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/022806EB.shtml