Showing posts with label fracking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fracking. Show all posts

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Progress Queens issues endorsements in New York governor race, ballot proposals

Hawkins is endorsed over Cuomo

On ballot proposals, voting no on fake redistricting reform

Progress Queens has endorsed Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate, for governor of New York. The endorsement praises Hawkins's plans "to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, to roll out a single-payer health care program for all New Yorkers, and to support a clean energy plan that would create new jobs in a clean energy system, amongst other proposals." Progress Queens also applauds Hawkins' unconditional opposition to hydrofracking.

On Proposal One, regarding redistricting, Progress Queens recommends a vote of NO. On Proposal Two, regarding electronic distribution of legislative bills, Progress Queens recommends a vote of YES. On Progress Three, the debt financing of computer equipment for schools, Progress Queens recommends a vote of NO.

RELATED


For Governor of New York, Progress Queens endorses Howie Hawkins (Progress Queens)

On New York Ballot Proposals One, Two, and Three, the Progress Queens endorsements (Progress Queens)


Flatiron Massage | Massage Therapist NYC

Michael Hayes, LMT, has practiced massage for more than 20 years as a licensed massage therapist in New York City.

Monday, May 12, 2014

In the face of dooms-day science, The New York Times continues to publish pro-fracking editorial propaganda

PUBLISHED : WED, 30 APR 2014, 09:56 AM
UPDATED : MON, 12 MAY 2014, 03:30 PM

Science keeps showing mankind that we face of a dooms-day once the West Antarctic ice sheet collapses and melts, but The New York Times keeps publishing pro-fracking propaganda in its editorial pages, making one wonder if the newspaper's new angel investment objective must secretly involve investing in oil and gas companies as a way to make money, because obviously its editors have decided that it can't turn a profit while remaining objective about the environmental catastrophe caused by fracking and other environment-destroying industries. The newspaper's latest installment is an editorial co-written by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Environmental Defense Fund veal pen "Yes Man" Fred Krupp in which both men advocate fracking without one single mention of the earthquake consequences of the controversial and poisonous gas extraction procedure.

After many European nations panicked over Russia's hostility toward the Ukraine, threatening Russian petroleum sales and shipments to Europe, editors of The New York Times jumped on the opportunity to again advocate for more fracking in North America, so that gas could be shipped across the Atlantic to Europe, going so far as portraying fracking as a tool of diplomacy and rendering a financial windfall to the dirty and dangerous fracking industry.

In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary available in 2012, reporters for The New York Times proclaimed in January 2013 that fracking was safe in New York state.

Burning more fossil fuels will only further cause more greenhouse gases to build up in the atmosphere, leading to global warming, warns the National Wildlife Federation.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

If U.S. Fracks Gas For Europe, How Much Sooner Will We Poison Our Water Supply ?

The foolish drive to export liquefied natural gas to Europe overlooks the environmental hazards to the United States

Congressional pressure is building on the Obama administration to "quicken gas exports to Europe," The New York Times is reporting, in order to reduce the continent's dependence on dirty fossil fuels from Russia. Instead, U.S. oil companies want Europe to increase their dependence on dirty fossil fuels from the U.S.

For the U.S. to ship its gas to Europe won't solve the fossil fuel dependency problem in any permanent sense, but it will hasten the day when the U.S. poisons its groundwater supply as a result of fracking and may foreseeably force the U.S. to, as a consequence, import clean drinking water from Europe, if European nations are willing to sell it that precious commodity to us in the future.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Downtown Hospital Needs Lifeline ; Calls to Action on Single Payer and Fracking


From the Demand A Hospital (St. Vincent's activists) e-mail list : 

Begin forwarded message:

From: Demand A Hospital <demandahospital@gmail.com>
Subject: NEWS ALERT : Downtown Hospital on brink of collapse ; plus, CALLS TO ACTION on Healthcare and Fracking
Date: 28 janvier 2013 21:00:18 UTC-05:00
To: Demand A Hospital <demandahospital@gmail.com>

Dear All :

NEWS ALERT.  From our friend, Barbara Ruether, that Downtown Hospital has been on the verge of financial collapse and will be acquired by New York-Presbyterian.

This article points out how Downtown Hospital had to double the beds in the neonatal intensive care unit in 2010, which was when St. Vincent's Hospital was closed.  Downtown Hospital could not afford the expansion of maternity care, but the State Department of Health gave Downtown Hospital no extra support in the face of the closing of St. Vincent's.  In contrast, Medicaid reimbursement rates were cut by Gov. Cuomo.  It is almost three years since St. Vincent's closed, and we are still dealing with the severe effects to public health.  And the State Department of Health still has no plan to equally fund all of our hospitals and medical centers, so that each hospital can fully meet the needs of all patients.  


NY-Presbyterian to bail out Downtown Hospital
Lower Manhattan's last medical center on brink of collapse.
 
By Barbara Benson @Barbara_Benson
January 27, 2013 5:59 a.m.

The last remaining hospital in lower Manhattan, financially unstable after years of operating losses, is being bailed out by a wealthy uptown white knight, Crain's New York Business has learned.

New York-Presbyterian Hospital has asked state health officials for permission to acquire New York Downtown Hospital, the only institution below 14th Street since St. Vincent's Hospital closed in 2010. Downtown "has experienced persistent, significant financial difficulties that threaten its future viability," New York-Presbyterian officials wrote in December in a request to the New York State Department of Health. '[Downtown Hospital] is projected to have a significant operating loss in 2013, unless the current situation is changed."

Downtown will become the sixth campus of New York-Presbyterian. Currently a 180-bed community hospital, Downtown may look very different as a campus of an uptown owner, although it was not clear late last week what plans the huge health system has for Downtown. "[The facility will] transition into a sustainable and financially feasible model of care," according to New York-Presbyterian's application to the state.

The proposed deal seems similar to the transaction struck last week between Montefiore Medical Center and New York Westchester Square, a bankrupt Bronx community hospital. Both Montefiore and New York-Presbyterian are buying financially troubled community hospitals. Under Montefiore's ownership, Westchester Square will cease being a hospital and will have only emergency, surgical and primary care services.

Unlike its Bronx counterpart, Downtown will stay a hospital, simply because lower Manhattan can't do without one. Manhattan overall has 6.3 hospital beds per 1,000 residents. Lower Manhattan has a paltry 0.57. New York-Presbyterian executives believe they can save Downtown by improving the "quality, delivery and efficiency of the existing services."

"Our plan is for Downtown to remain a community hospital," said a New York-Presbyterian spokeswoman, declining to elaborate further. Jeffrey Menkes, Downtown's president and chief executive, declined to comment.

Downtown has been in the New York-Presbyterian health system's sprawling network since 2006 but is a separate corporate entity. Downtown has struggled for years, even selling off a parking lot to developer Bruce Ratner in 2004 to raise cash.

New York-Presbyterian, meanwhile, is a behemoth with nearly $4 billion in revenue. It employs some 20,000 workers, including 6,000 doctors, and has nearly 2,300 beds.

Heavily reliant on Medicaid
The uptown health system expects to be able to absorb Downtown's losses and assume all its outstanding debt. Under new ownership, Downtown would become a "financially viable division of NYP Hospital," according to the state filing.

New York-Presbyterian blames Downtown's financial collapse on federal and state reimbursement cuts and the hospital's inability to either boost revenue or reduce costs. Downtown is heavily reliant on revenue from Medicaid, the government program for low-income and disabled people, which covers 45% of the patients it discharges. Among patients treated in the emergency department, 20% are uninsured.

Downtown also has been forced into the red by maternity care. Between 2002 and 2011, the number of obstetric patient days grew about 3.3% a year, prompting the hospital to convert eight regular beds to maternity beds, for a total of 24. That move followed a doubling of beds in 2010 in the neonatal intensive care unit. Now the neonatal IC and maternity units lose more than $1 million a year, thanks to high staffing and operating costs, pricey medical malpractice insurance and low reimbursement rates.

Despite that shaky financial foundation, Downtown is the only hospital serving the 314,273 New Yorkers who live below Houston Street—not to mention the daily surge of 750,000 people who work in the area. And once the September 11 Memorial and 1 World Trade Center come online, those numbers will spike even more.

Downtown evacuated before Superstorm Sandy hit, based on the assumption that lower Manhattan would lose electrical power. It suffered no damage beyond the loss of revenue for about a week. And a good thing, too: In early January, more than 20 passengers from a ferry crash in lower Manhattan were treated at Downtown.

A version of this article appears in the January 28, 2013, print issue of Crain's New York Business as "NY-Presby to bail out Downtown Hospital".


CALL TO ACTION / HEALTHCARE.  Please contact the new State Senator Brad Hoylman.  He has been assigned to the Investigations and Government Operations Committee, which is charged with investigating the state's infrastructure collapse in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.  Please contact Sen. Hoylman with your concerns about the lack of adequate full-service hospital care in New York City : 


District Office
322 Eighth Avenue, Suite 1700
New York, NY 10001
United States
Phone: (212) 633-8052
Fax: (212) 633-8096

Albany Office
Room 413, Legislative Office Building
Albany, NY 12247
United States
Phone: (518) 455-2451
Fax: (518) 426-6846

Here is information to read before you contact State Sen. Hoylman :  please make a plug for the single payer bill that is being discussed and reviewed by the state legislature.  



CALL TO ACTION / FRACKING.  From our friends Barbara Ruether and Carol Yost come word about this invitation from CREDO Action :  Everybody is being asked to show up to an anti-fracking demonstration outside Gov. Cuomo's Manhattan offices : 

Governor Cuomo has until February 13 to decide whether he will lift New York's fracking moratorium.1 If he doesn't lift it, he will have to announce another major procedural delay.

That gives us less than a month to put overwhelming pressure on Governor Cuomo to maintain the current moratorium on fracking. Our friends at New Yorkers Against Fracking are organizing a rally at the governor's office in New York City to tell him to ban fracking forever. Will you join them?

What : Rally to ban fracking at Governor Cuomo's NYC office 
When : Friday, February 8, at noon 
Where : Governor Cuomo's office, 633 Third Avenue, Manhattan (between East 40th and 41st streets) 


Thank you for all that you do.


Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Ed Koch Endorses Fracking, Wants To Emulate Saudi Arabia

Scientific Study Links Flammable Drinking Water to Fracking

Ed Koch just called fracking the most ''liberating'' industry for New York State on NY1 tonight, because it would make New York into Saudi Arabia.

One of my Facebook friends wrote that maybe what Mr. Koch believes he sees as our future shared similarity is this : very little drinking water.

Protest Last Night Against Cuomo's Plan To Frack In New York State

From New York Newsday :

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 07: Anti-Fracking protesters demonstrate in front of the Waldorf-Astoria as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo visits the hotel for a function on January 7, 2013 in New York City. Fracking, a process that injects millions of gallons of chemical mixed water into a well in order to release gas, has become a contentious issue in New York as critics of the process believe it contaminates drinking water among other hazards. New York City gets much of its drinking water from upstate reservoirs. If the regulations are approved by Governor Cuomo, drilling in the upstate New York Marcellus Shale could later this year.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

The Committee To Frack New York ?

Update #2 : My blog post below was written independently last night, but I just found a more detailed investigation posted on the Internet with the same title : Shift by Cuomo on Gas Drilling Prompts Both Anger and Praise (Revised : Monday 1 Oct 2012 6:20 a.m.)

Update #1 : My blog post below was written independently last night, but I just found a more detailed investigation posted on the Internet with the same title : The Committee to Frack New York ? (Revised : Sunday 16 Sept 2012 8:20 a.m.)

Shady Pro-Cuomo Lobby Group Allowed to Hide Donor Names

Are there any "straw donors," who gave money to the Committee To Save New York ? Are there any donors, who are fracking lobbyists or shale oil companies ? We'll never know, because Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is on the cusp of either approving or rejecting fracking near the precious and irreplaceable Hudson River, exerts undue influence over the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE).

Giving JCOPE and voters full transparency and disclosure about the Committee to Save New York would be one way for voters to have faith in the integrity of the fracking review process.

It's been revealed that environmental groups, government accountability activists, and advocates of greater government transparency are worried that the Cuomo administration has been going out of its way to cuddle with special interests linked to the oil and gas industry.

"New York regulators gave natural gas drilling industry representatives exclusive access to draft regulations for shale gas drilling as early as six weeks before they were made public, according to records obtained by the Environmental Working Group through New York's Freedom of Information Law," reported the Environmental Working Group.

Gov. Cuomo is setting off all kinds of alarm bells, because it appears that the Cuomo administration isn't even going to order a healthcare study about the impacts of allowing fracking to pollute New York state.

To make matters worse, nobody knows what influence campaign contributions will have on the Cuomo administration's fracking decision. And to murky up the waters, the state ethics panel, JCOPE, recently ruled that the Committee to Save New York, a lobbying group that promotes Gov. Cuomo's political activities, can "keep secret the identities of a vast majority of millionaire donors" who have been financing the lobbying group, according to The New York Times.

Read the investigative report : The Committee to Save 1% New York.

Activists Tell Cuomo Don't Frack With Our Water

NYPD Arrest Protesters at Occupy The Pipeline demonstration ; Gov. Andrew Cuomo Fracking Decision Still Pending.

NEW YORK, September 6, 2012--At the 8:30 am protest against construction of a Spectra fracked gas pipeline at Gansevoort and Hudson River Parkway, Monika Hunken and Sandra were arrested by the NYPD.

They were among five activists who climbed over the low concrete barricade surrounding the drilling site and sat down in the dirt in front of a backhoe, thus blocking the machine from operating ; at first Hunken announced that they would leave the pit, but then she and Sandra Coponen changed their minds and returned to the pit facing arrest. The backhoe was adjacent to the drilling rig itself, which was fenced in by a high wire mesh fence. The rig had been in operation prior to the sit-down action.

The Spectra pipeline is delivering Marcellus shale potentially radioactive gas containing native radon; in addition, the hydrofracking process pumps 5 billion gallons of water laced with 600 toxic chemicals into the shale to extract the gas. The Henry Hudson Parkway is owned by the state and not the city ; Mayor Bloomberg's supposed "girl-friend" Diana Taylor known for her involvement with Bloomfield Properties graces the board of Hudson Parkway, too. The Spectra pipeline will run in the vicinity of a children's playground in the West Village. In the interests of clean air, clean water and public health, activists are urging Governor Cuomo to step up to the plate and ban hydrofracking in New York State and Mayor Bloomberg not to enable its arrival and dissemination In New York City.

Filmed by Liza Béar. Press inquiries: lizajbear@gmail.com; 646-246-1869.