All posts by carldavidson

Green Energy, Green Jobs, Solar

One Small Step Nearby Giving Us a Glimpse of a Green Future

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Example of solar charger in Sofia, Bulgaria

Mall at Robinson to debut solar car-charging stations

Tim Schooley
Beaver County Blue via Pittsburgh Business Times

The Mall at Robinson on July 24 will unveil new electric car-charging stations powered by solar panels located above the entrance of the mall’s food court.

With the chargers donated by Wesco and Eaton, the new stations are a partnership between the mall’s owner — Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises — Green Roads Energy LLC and Day & Night Solar.

The charging stations are free to use for mall guests.

A kiosk will be installed in the food court within the next week so shoppers can monitor the energy created by the solar panels, according to a release issued by Forest City Enterprises.

The mall also expects to offer loyalty promotions to shoppers who use the chargers, including the chance to earn a $25 gift card for using the station ten times.

The unveiling of the station is scheduled for Thursday, July 24, at 11:30 a.m.

Austerity, Banks, Poverty, unemployment, Wall Street

Five Ways Wall Street Continues to Screw Up the Economy for the Rest of Us and How to Fix It

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By Robert Kuttner

Beaver County Blue via Huffington Post

July 2, 2014 – The shocking thing about the financial collapse of 2008 is not that Wall Street excesses pushed us into the worst economy crisis since the Depression. It’s that the same financial system has been propped back up and that elites are getting richer than ever, while the effects of that collapse are continuing to sandbag the rest of the economy. Oh, and most of this aftermath happened while a Democrat was in the White House.

Consider:

  • The biggest banks are bigger and more concentrated than ever.
  • Subprime (subprime!) is making a comeback [2] with interest rates of 8 to 13 percent.
  • Despite Michael Lewis’s devastating expose of how high speed trading is nothing but a technological scam that allows insiders to profit at the expense of small investors, regulators are not moving to abolish it [3].
  • The usual suspects are declaring the housing crisis over, even though default and foreclosure rates in the hardest hit cities and states are upwards of 25 percent.
  • The deficit is falling, now just 2.8 percent of GDP [4], thanks to massive cuts in social spending. Isn’t that reassuring?

Meanwhile, back in the real economy, good jobs are far too scarce, incomes are stagnant, while 95 percent of the gains go to the top one percent.

Continue reading Five Ways Wall Street Continues to Screw Up the Economy for the Rest of Us and How to Fix It →

Environment, Fracking, Marcellus Shale

Western PA: Fracking Study Finds New Gas Wells Leak More Than Old Ones

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By SETH BORENSTEIN

Beaver County Blue via Associated Press

WASHINGTON DC, July 3, 2014 — In Pennsylvania’s gas drilling boom, newer and unconventional wells leak far more often than older and traditional ones, according to a study of state inspection reports for 41,000 wells.

The results suggest that leaks of methane could be a problem for drilling across the nation, said study lead author Cornell University engineering professor Anthony Ingraffea, who heads an environmental activist group that helped pay for the study.

The research was criticized by the energy industry. Marcellus Shale Coalition spokesman Travis Windle said it reflects Ingraffea’s "clear pattern of playing fast and loose with the facts."

The Marcellus shale formation of plentiful but previously hard-to-extract trapped natural gas stretches over Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York.

The study was published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A team of four scientists analyzed more than 75,000 state inspections of gas wells done in Pennsylvania since 2000.

Continue reading Western PA: Fracking Study Finds New Gas Wells Leak More Than Old Ones →

Organizing, Pittsburgh, trade unions

Union Victory! Point Park Adjunct Faculty Votes to Join AFA-USW Union

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ppark2

University’s Part-Timers Seek to Improve Education, Working Conditions

CONTACT: Randa Ruge: (412) 562-6967, rruge@usw.org

PITTSBURGH (June 25, 2014) – Part-time faculty members at downtown Pittsburgh’s Point Park University have voted to join the Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steelworkers (AFA-USW).

The group filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in April to hold a mail ballot election. A total of 314 part-time Point Park instructors were eligible to vote, and the ballots were counted this morning at the NLRB’s downtown offices.

“The adjunct instructors have spoken very clearly with this vote,” said USW International President Leo W. Gerard. “Now it’s time for the Point Park administration to work with them to craft a fair collective bargaining agreement that provides the faculty with the benefits and basic protections that all workers deserve.”

Among the issues the instructors hope to address are: a decade of wage stagnation as well as their lack of benefits, job security, office space and other tools needed to provide the quality education that Point Park students deserve.

Point Park instructor Sharon Brady said the vote was a victory for the university’s teachers and their students.

“I am looking forward to working with the administration, with the support of the USW, to enhance both the adjuncts’ experience and their effectiveness for the students they serve,” said Brady, who has taught theater arts at the college for 13 years.

The Point Park instructors are the second group of adjuncts to join the AFA-USW. Instructors at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University voted overwhelmingly in the spring of 2012 to join the AFA-USW, and the university at first agreed to abide by the election results before quickly reversing that decision, claiming a religious exemption.

The USW is the largest industrial union in North America, representing workers in a range of industries including metals, mining, rubber, paper and forestry, oil refining, health care, security, hotels, and municipal governments and agencies.

Green Energy, Green Jobs, Infrastructure

New Castle Firm Takes the Green High Road

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Battery technology grows to meet demands of renewable energy

By Michael Sanserino
Beaver County Blue via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

June 24, 2014 – Those skeptical of renewable energy as a viable power source often note that the wind doesn’t always blow nor does the sun always shine.

But advancements in battery technology are helping keep energy flowing on those dark, windless days.

“It’s happening at a record pace,” said Lisa Salley, vice president and general manager of energy and power technologies at Underwriter Laboratories, a Northbrook, Ill.-based independent safety consulting and certification organization.

The goal is to increase the usability of renewable energy, which currently accounts for 21 percent of all electricity generated worldwide but just 11 percent of consumption, according to the Energy Information Administration.

“One of the areas that’s been neglected in the past has been the storage component of renewable energy sources, and that includes wind and solar, of course,” said Tom Granville, CEO of Axion Power International.

That, however, is changing. Power, chemical and material science companies, locally and elsewhere, are investing heavily in battery technology. Some are improving existing technology while others are developing new chemistry to create entirely new battery structures.

Continue reading New Castle Firm Takes the Green High Road →

Infrastructure, Organizing, Pittsburgh, Racism

Economic Justice Battle in Pittsburgh

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12 30 Civic Arena

The site of the former Civic Arena in the lower Hill District of Pittsburgh.

Hill District leaders urge affordable housing, funding in Penguins’ arena redevelopment

By Tim Schooley

Beaver County Blue via Pittsburgh Business Times

June 12, 2014 – It wasn’t written in as part of the agenda for the Pittsburgh Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting.

But a court-required status update by the Sports & Exhibition Authority on the progress of the former arena site redevelopment by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Lower Hill District came with a call by community groups for more affordable housing and for funding applications to include more of the neighborhood.

The leadership of the Hill Community Development Corp., the Hill Consensus Group and One Pittsburgh used what was otherwise a routine update on the process of applying for grants and building roads and sewer systems into a call for the Pittsburgh Penguins to meet more of their demands and concerns.

Carl Redwood, a community organizer for the Hill District Consensus Group, criticized an established variance approved by the ZBA for the Pittsburgh Penguins that allows the team to generate private revenue from the publicly owned arena site while the SEA applies for state and federal grants and loans to subsidize development plans for the 28 acre property.

In reiterating a call for a $1 per car fund from the parking revenue to invest in community improvements, Redwood expressed a concern in the city’s African American community that new development will result in displacing established residents who lack the income to be included in them.

Continue reading Economic Justice Battle in Pittsburgh →

Economy, Manufacturing, Poverty, trade unions, unemployment

Income Gap Widens as American Factories Shut Down: the Case of Reading, PA

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Beaver County Blue via AP

June 15, 2014 – READING PA – In August 2008, factory workers David and Barbara Ludwig treated themselves to new cars – David a Dodge pickup, Barbara a sporty Mazda 3. With David making $22 an hour and Barbara $19, they could easily afford the payments.

A month later, Baldwin Hardware, a unit of Stanley Black & Decker Corp., announced layoffs at the Reading plant where they both worked. David was unemployed for 20 months before finding a janitor job that paid $10 an hour, less than half his previous wage. Barbara hung on, but she, too, lost her shipping-dock job of 26 years as Black & Decker shifted production to Mexico. Now she cleans houses for $10 an hour while looking for something permanent.

They still have the cars. The other trappings of their middle-class lifestyle? In the rear-view mirror.

The downfall of manufacturing in the United States has done more than displace workers and leave communities searching for ways to rebuild devastated economies. In Reading and other American factory towns, manufacturing’s decline is a key factor in the widening income gap between the rich and everyone else, as people like the Ludwigs have been forced into far lower-paying work.

It’s not that there’s a lack of jobs, but gains often come at either the highest end of the wage spectrum – or the lowest.

“A loss of manufacturing has contributed to the decline of the middle class,” said Howard Wial, an economist with the Brookings Institution and the University of Illinois at Chicago. “People who are displaced from high-paying manufacturing jobs spend a long time unemployed, and when they take other jobs, those jobs generally pay substantially less.”

Continue reading Income Gap Widens as American Factories Shut Down: the Case of Reading, PA →

Austerity, labor, Organizing, trade unions

In Pittsburgh’s New Economy, Organized Labor Reorganizes in Unconventional Ways

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Organizers Robin Sowards and Clint Benjamin at USW headquarters in downtown Pittsburgh, two blocks away from the campus of Point Park University. PPU adjunct faculty are voting this month on whether to join the Steelworkers. Credit Josh Raulerson / 90.5 WESA

Steelworkers organizing Professors

By Josh Raulerson

Beaver County Blue via NPR Pittsburgh

Like any English professor, Clint Benjamin spends a lot of his time grading papers.

“There’s a mountain – a teetering Matterhorn of papers at the end of the weekend, or during the week,” Benjamin said. “You’ve just gotta get through them.”

By his own estimate, Benjamin spends 30 to 40 hours a week on grading alone. He also has to attend meetings, answer emails, keep office hours, and commute between the Community College of Allegheny County and Duquesne University campuses, where in a typical week he prepares and teaches five sections’ of English and writing classes.

For his troubles, Benjamin earns between $25,000 and $30,000 a year and no benefits – if he’s lucky enough to get the maximum number of appointments each institution offers. As a contingent employee, Benjamin is compensated at a fraction of what his similarly credentialed tenured and tenure-track colleagues earn. (Adjunct faculty normally hold a terminal degree in their field: typically a PhD or, in Benjamin’s case, an MFA.)

Benjamin recently took on a third job as an organizer with the United Steelworkers’ Adjunct Faculty Association, which recently led a successful effort to organize part-time faculty at Duquesne.

The campaign drew national attention last year, when the death of 83-year-old adjunct professor Margaret Mary Vojtko became a cause célèbre for the higher-ed labor movement. Vojtko was broke and facing homelessness when she died shortly after being let go by Duquesne, her employer of 25 years.

Many adjuncts, like Benjamin, saw in Vojtko’s story a glimpse of their own possible future – and that of their profession.

"I do love what I’m doing, but that’s how the administration gets us," he said. “It’s a crisis.”

Continue reading In Pittsburgh’s New Economy, Organized Labor Reorganizes in Unconventional Ways →

2014 Election, Education, GOP, trade unions, Youth and students

Six Arrested in Philly Protest at Corbett, Christie Campaign Stop

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Teachers, Parents and Students Spotlight School Cuts

By Allison Steele and Julia Terruso
Beaver County Blue via Philly Inquirer

June 10, 2014 – As many as 1,000 protesters, many angry about school funding, blocked traffic and waved signs in Center City on Monday afternoon, hoping to disrupt or at least deflect attention from a fund-raising stop by Govs. Corbett and Christie.

"Our members are here because they’re being mistreated," said Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.

Six people were arrested for obstructing the highway – a summary offense – after sitting down on 17th Street. Police did not use handcuffs as they led them away.

The names of those arrested were not available Monday night, but a statement from the coalition group Fight for Philly identified them as "parents, activists, and retired teachers."

The two Republican governors were scheduled to appear Monday evening at a private fund-raiser hosted by the Republican Governors Association. The association did not release details of the event, including its location.

Continue reading Six Arrested in Philly Protest at Corbett, Christie Campaign Stop →

Environment, Fracking

Reasons to Dump Corbett, Strengthen Regulators and Tax Frackers—If You Needed Them

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Central Pa. firm charged with improperly disposing drilling waste

Beaver County Blue via The Associated Press

June 6, 2014 – HARRISBURG — A north-central Pennsylvania waste cleanup firm and its owner improperly disposed of toxic natural gas drilling waste, the state attorney general’s office said in charges filed today.

Minuteman Environmental Services and Brian Bolus, who owns the Milton-based company, were charged in Union County with unlawful conduct, while Mr. Bolus was also facing conspiracy charges, prosecutors said.

Mr. Bolus, 43, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Witnesses told a grand jury that between 2010 and 2013, employees washed out trucks or equipment containing drilling wastewater, mud or cuttings onto the ground at company properties in Harrisburg and Milton. Prosecutors said they have evidence it drained into a small waterway by the Harrisburg property. They also said drilling waste was stored in leaking containers on company properties.

State environmental regulators said they had not issued permits for the activity.

“Brian Bolus and Minuteman blatantly exploited hard-working employees, dozens of businesses and the environment,” Attorney General Kathleen Kane said in a statement.

A 48-page grand jury presentment also recommended other charges against Mr. Bolus, two related firms and his mother, father, brother, sister and father’s fiancee stemming from other alleged conspiracies that do not involve environmental crimes.

In one alleged conspiracy, prosecutors accused Mr. Bolus and Minuteman of overbilling clients, including many of the major natural gas exploration companies that have flocked to Pennsylvania in the last five years to explore the Marcellus Shale, the nation’s largest-known natural gas formation. The alleged overbilling reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, prosecutors said.

Meanwhile, in a separate alleged conspiracy, Bolus family members were essentially ghost employees at firms owned by Brian Bolus or his father, allowing them to submit a half-million dollars in fraudulent health insurance claims and drive up insurance premiums for company employees, prosecutors said.

All told, three companies owned by Brian Bolus and three companies owned by his father were charged, prosecutors said.

The investigation became public in May 2013, when the FBI and state Department of Environmental Protection searched Minuteman’s office in Milton.

Gov. Tom Corbett visited Minuteman in 2012 as part of an effort to drum up support for his state budget proposal, calling the company “an American success story.” The Central Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce named Minuteman its business of the year in 2012.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/#ixzz343DPtiGl