Submitted by Norm Roulet on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 15:58.
The EPA Environmental Justice grants announced below would fit nicely with lead poisoning eradication needs and objectives in Northeast Ohio, as funded by HUD. The Federal Government wants to attack environmental injustice at the core, through collaboration among Federal agencies, like HUD and EPA, with environmental justice organizations in local communities, like in the overly-lead-burdened Cleveland, so proposals to build EPA environmental justice programming to leverage impact of HUD Lead Eradication funding would make sense and likely appeal to grant review committees. Unfortunately, a community must recognize it is victim of ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE to apply for this grant money, and Cleveland has not yet made that recognition. We're the Green City by the Blue Lake.
Let's see if any local Environmental Justice organizations (are there any?) apply for and receive funding from this Federal EPA program for environmental justice, developing programs addressing lead poisoning here, in leverage of the $4.5 million just provided by HUD for lead poisoning eradication, as Obama has determined is a priority here. Let's see if anyone admits we have any environmental injustice here and applies at all.
From the EPA:
Environmental Justice Mailing List
EPA Seeks Applicants for $1.2 Million in Environmental Justice Grants to Address Local Health and Environmental Issues
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is accepting grant applications for $1.2 million in funding to support projects designed to research, educate, empower and enable communities to understand and address local health and environmental issues. Eligible applicants from non-profit, faith-based and tribal organizations working in the community of the proposed project are encouraged to apply.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 02:09.
I'm pleased to see the Cleveland Plain Dealer giving coverage to HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims presenting a $4.5 million Federal Grant to Cuyahoga County to Protect Citizens from Lead Poisoning... on Cleveland.com, at least. Here is their advance story... Cuyahoga County gets $4.5 million to curb lead in homes. Especially insightful, from this coverage: "HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims is traveling to Cleveland on Friday not only to present the grant to Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald but also to formally announce the nearly $127 million HUD will spend for the communities nationwide with the highest rates of lead poisoning. Cuyahoga County and the city of Cincinnati received the largest of six grants awarded in Ohio. The city of Lorain is getting $2.1 million."
Most alarming, in coverage on Cleveland.com, is the feedback of trolls and readers registered there. As the parent of lead poisoned children, I now know what it is like to be a rape victim blamed for being raped. I have corrected some of the misinformation of truly despicable posters there - at least until Cleveland.com for some reason FROZE MY ACCOUNT.
I will say, for any poor behavior on realNEO - at the user and Admin level - it does not begin to compare with the wretchedness of life on Cleveland.com. I've posted below the comments up until I was blocked access, to protect them and save me the effort of rewriting my thoughts for you... I guess they own my voice and words on Cleveland.com now, and they don't want the world to know the truth about lead poisoning in their fair city.
And that is why there is such serious lead poisoning in their fair city...
jmsullivan January 27, 2011 at 11:06PM
I don't care about being an ignoramus about lead paint. I will venture to guess that over 90% of us were raised in homes built prior to 1978 which means they had lead based paint in them. My mom did not allow me to chew on the window sills, the house was meticiulously maintained and I have never known one person, not one, have any problems with lead poisoning. This is about common sense. For those that think we are ignorant, have you paid $13,000 on your personal dwelling to eliminate lead paint. If not, then why are you expecting us to spend our money on something that we thing is just plain STUPID and a WASTE
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Thu, 01/27/2011 - 14:03.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 27, 2010
CONTACT: Tom Angell (202) 557-4979 or media//at//leap//dot//cc
In YouTube's "Ask Obama" Contest, Drug-Legalizing Cop Comes in First Place
Obama Previously Laughed Off Marijuana Questions, But Can He Ignore a Cop?
WASHINGTON, DC -- A video question about legalizing drugs from a former deputy sheriff has come in first place in YouTube's "Your Interview with the President" competition, where users submitted and voted on questions to be posed to President Barack Obama.
Obama is scheduled to answer the top-voted questions today, Thursday, Jan. 27, at 2:30 PM EST in an interview that will be streamed live online at http://www.youtube.com/askobama
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Thu, 01/27/2011 - 04:40.
Google Analytics of weekly realNEO visits and pageviews from December 01, 2008 to January 26, 2011
As I've reported over the past year, while sharing realNEO site statistics with members - most recently, in November, marking our 7th year - realNEO traffic demonstrates very consistent month-to-month and year-to-year growth for visitors, visits and pages viewed. Where there are dips, like each Christmas holiday season, there is year-to-year growth - we've always had strong, consistent, steady performance as illustrated above, since December 2008 (the first month we had reliable Google analytics).
Enact medical-marijuana laws in Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, and New York. (If we don’t succeed in some of these states in 2011, the progress we make will bolster our efforts in these states in 2012.)
Expand Vermont’s existing medical-marijuana law by authorizing the sale of medical marijuana through dispensaries.
Enact marijuana-decriminalization laws in Rhode Island and Vermont.
Assist our allies in Hawaii, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, and Washington state to protect and expand these five states’ existing medical-marijuana laws.
Implement the new medical-marijuana laws in Arizona and the District of Columbia.
Assist our allies in Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin with building support for medical-marijuana legislation, with the hope of passing bills in some of these states in 2013.
LAUNCH STATEWIDE INITIATIVES FOR THE NOVEMBER 2012 BALLOT
Nicole Foss will be speaking on A Century of Challenges: Building Local Resilience in an Era of Economic Turmoil & Resource Depletion. She writes at www.TheAutomaticEarth.blogspot.com under the pseudonym Stoneleigh. The talk will be held at First Church in Oberlin,106 N.
Submitted by sharragin on Tue, 01/18/2011 - 20:31.
01/25/2011 - 13:00
01/25/2011 - 16:00
Etc/GMT-4
CLEVELAND – Gray’s Auctioneers kicks off 2011 with an eclectic Furniture, Paintings and Decorative Arts Auction on Jan. 25. This auction features paintings and drawings from the 17th century to the 20th century, furniture from Charles II to Mid-Century Modern, antique rugs, and many delightful decorative lots including a collection of Chinese and Japanese bronzes and porcelains.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 01/17/2011 - 12:05.
The day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2011, AlterNet highlights the reality that the mainstream media in America is incompetent in its duty to inform the world about affairs in America, if it is not worse and directed by media and government leadership to deceive the people of the world into believing America is right and good, when we are not. As a resident of Northeast Ohio, subjected to the incompetency and/or deception of our regional mainstream media in not-covering and/or covering-up real news of Ohio and our region (e.g. covering up for local political corruption, environmental crimes, and theft of public funds and opportunity from the poor for the rich), the harm caused my family is realized in lead poisoned children and the waste of family resources and loyalty to a place and leadership that are undeserving, if not evil.
Here is how things are working out in the rest of America, for the rest of the world, in the era of the most ineffective, corrupt and despicable "free press" imaginable:
Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on October 24-27, 1991, in Washington DC, drafted and adopted 17 principles of Environmental Justice. Since then, The Principles have served as a defining document for the growing grassroots movement for environmental justice.
PREAMBLE
WE, THE PEOPLE OF COLOR, gathered together at this multinational People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to begin to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities, do hereby re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth; to respect and celebrate each of our cultures, languages and beliefs about the natural world and our roles in healing ourselves; to ensure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and, to secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our peoples, do affirm and adopt these Principles of Environmental Justice:
1) Environmental Justice affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction.
This Forum was the public interface, and culmination of a year of expansive activity in the White House, throughout the Obama Administration, and nationwide, to advance EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s priority to “expand the conversation on environmentalism and work for environmental justice” in America, in clear recognition of harm caused disadvantaged citizens by current Environmental Injustice (aka Environmental Racism... Environmental Genocide... from the mouths of victims), and showing clear US government concern over "Climate Gaps" (e.g. in Heat Islands), and over those worsening, causing more environmental injustices, to be exacerbated by future Climate Change and resulting Climate Injustices that will harm life on Earth, in this age of human-caused global warming.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 01/03/2011 - 08:22.
I have compiled a summary outline list of 15 "Top 10ish Environmental lists of 2010" found on the Internet - these are drawn from diverse, largely US-oriented environmental media services and organizations - many focus on organizational objectives - most feature positive and negative developments. I have summarized all but the last list - A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice - by Joe Romm, as that should be read in its' entirely, including linked reference material.
Romm points out: "The last year or so has seen more scientific papers and presentations that raise the genuine prospect of catastrophe (if we stay on our current emissions path) that I can recall seeing in any other year." "Any one of these would be cause for action — and combined they vindicate the final sentence of Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe: “It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”
Romm concludes: "Unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases threaten multiple catastrophes, any one of which justifies action. Together, they represent the gravest threat to humanity imaginable. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the mainstream media ignored the overwhelming majority of these studies and devoted a large fraction of its climate ‘ink’ in the last 12 months to what was essentially a non-story (Climategate) is arguably the single greatest failing of the science media this year."
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 12/27/2010 - 00:36.
Fisheye view of KushCon2 Marijuana Industry Convention in Denver, Colorado, December 17-19, 2010
December 17 - 19, 2010, the Colorado Convention Center hosted the world's largest marijuana lifestyles convention TO-DATE - KushCon2 - offering those active in the legal global marijuana industries a place to meet, collaborate, learn and grow their new-economy enterprises, together. In one convention hall, in one weekend, mingled 10,000s of cannabis entrepreneurs and their stakeholders - nurturing $ billions in new GREEN, taxable economic opportunity for America - and their truly Green Revolution is just taking off.
Meet America's Greenest Revolutionaries ever... Mom and Pop Mainstreet, Small Town, Middle America!
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Fri, 12/17/2010 - 04:51.
Entrance to Press Briefing Room and media facilities at the White House (seen in the distance)
On December 15, 2010, Obama administration officials convened the first-ever White House Forum on Environmental Justice, and I felt it was important to attend. As an environmental injustice victim, and activist for environmental justice, I wanted my voice to be heard... and as a media representative of real NEO, where the mainstream media does not cover environmental injustice, I wanted to listen, learn, and help other citizens here and worldwide understand what is being planned in Washington to combat environmental injustice in Cleveland, America, and globally.
While I was covering what was happening inside the White House, I thought I'd share a few snapshots of the backstage workings of the "White House" itself, which is certainly one of the best known and most important places in world history... and a spectacular architectural masterpiece.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sat, 12/11/2010 - 14:24.
Did You Pay Homage and Taxes To One Of The Most Heinous Humans Ever To Walk The Earth, Today? Did You Turn on Microsoft today! If you use Microsoft, you turned on the Bill Gates fortune and all the harm that causes the world, today and forever hereafter. If you use a computer running any Microsoft products, you must know how your Microsoft addiction and dollars work for the world today, via perversely enriched micro-psychopath Bill Gates... from AlterNet's "5 Awards For the World's Most Heinous Climate Villains":
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet
Misdeeds: Pretend to be friends while engaged in a vicious competition to see who ends up with the most expensive coffin. Flew together to inspect the Alberta Tar Sands and ponder investments, looking to add to Buffet's $34 billion Burlington Northern Santa Fe coal-hauling railroad purchase and the Gates Foundation Nigerian oil portfolio. Gates is dumping cash into geo-engineering as a way to "hack" the climate, instead of getting off oil and coal. The duo insist that the government should be responsible for clean energy development, but that we need to tax our citizens to pay for it. They can't be bothered, since they're too busy banking on sure things like fossil fuels.
Corporate Teat: They're the tits, not the pups. Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway, much of it tax sheltered by the Gates Foundation.
November 30, 2010 -- The National Research Council, at the request of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has launched a study to strengthen the scientific basis for incorporating sustainability concepts into EPA’s decision-making. “Today I am formally requesting President Cicerone and the National Academies convene a committee of experts to provide to the U.S. EPA an operational framework for sustainability that applies across all of the agency’s programs, policies, and actions,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at an event held at the National Academy of Sciences’ Koshland Science Museum. NAS President Ralph Cicerone and Bernard Goldstein, chair of the committee that will conduct the study, made remarks as well.
Wow! November 30th was an amazing day for the EPA. Not only are we in the midst of commemorating four decades of accomplishments in protecting the health and the environment, but Administrator Jackson also made a landmark speech at the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Science on the future of the EPA. That future is sustainability. The Administrator laid out her vision to a packed house of luminaries from across the spectrum, from academia to industry, to environmental groups.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 12/01/2010 - 11:25.
2010 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement
"Well-conceived, effectively implemented environmental protection is good for economic growth… A clean, green, healthy community is a better place to buy a home and raise a family; it’s more competitive in the race to attract new businesses; and it has the foundations it needs for prosperity." – EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, March 8, 2010
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Tue, 11/30/2010 - 20:29.
More valuable than all the steel we mill, Cleveland has forged from our blighted, industrial, rustbelted, toxified, sprawling fruited-plains some of the most innovative, transformational music ever heard on Earth, since long before we gave birth to Rock and Roll.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 11/29/2010 - 05:43.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported today Birders to lose favorite perches, birds lose havens when 2 power plants close, whereby the PD takes some of the best economic development and public health news of Clevelanders' lifetimes - "plans by FirstEnergy Corp. to close lakefront power plants at East 72nd Street in Cleveland and in Eastlake in Lake County" (and two others on Lake Erie, apparently) - and presents that as bad news for bait shops, birds, ecotourism and the region.
The PD doesn't even mention that what this news really means for Clevelanders is NOT BEING EXPOSED TO 148,141 pounds of toxic chemicals spewed by Lakeshore into the air Clevelanders breathe each year, and that will save lives and make citizens smarter, healthier and more productive in Northeast Ohio. Better air quality will lead to higher property values and reduced public health costs, and that will make this region wealthier and more attractive for residents, who will have a higher quality of life here with cleaner air quality. People will have fewer reasons not to move to the region, and more reasons not to leave.
