All posts by carldavidson

Green Energy, Infrastructure, Manufacturing

The Blue-Green Alliance at Work at Lordstown, Ohio Plant

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World’s Largest LED Retrofit Saves 80% For GM, Sets Positive Energy Example

By Tina Casey
Beaver County Blue via Clean Technica

July 9, 2013 – GM’s clean tech cred is pretty well established in the public eye through its popular Chevy Volt, and the company is no slouch behind the factory gates, either. At its Lordstown complex in Ohio, GM can now lay claim to the world’s largest LED retrofit project of its kind. The project involves more than 1,600 fixtures so far with another 4,000 set for installation this summer, and it has already reduced energy consumption by more than 80 percent at one factory in the complex. That’s partly because the LEDs themselves are more efficient and partly because the new fixtures incorporate some advanced energy management bells and whistles.

New GM LED lighting by ALLED (cropped) courtesy of GM.

The World’s Largest LED Retrofit

Aside from that impressive savings of more than 80 percent (which translates into about $780,000 per year), this project caught our eye because it was implemented by the Ellwood City, Pennsylvania LED specialist ALLED Lighting Systems, Inc., formerly known as Appalachian Lighting Systems.

CleanTechnica first noticed the company under its former name back in 2010, when it performed an enormous LED retrofit for Pittsburgh International Airport. At the time, it was the largest project of its kind in the US. The project was noteworthy not only due to its size but because of the company’s potential for creating new green jobs in its tiny home town.

Continue reading The Blue-Green Alliance at Work at Lordstown, Ohio Plant →

Austerity, health care

Healthcare ‘Sick-In’ Storms Harrisburg

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Medicaid expansion proponents to sleep in the Capitol ‘until their voices are heard’

medicaid expansion.jpg

Proponents of Medicaid expansion will sleep in the capitol building Wednesday night. (Anna Orso)

By Anna Orso

Beaver county Blue via Pennlive.com

June 26, 2013 – Hannah Williams is a 21-year-old gregarious single parent who works full time and is studying to become a nurse. Her daughter, Grace, has medical needs like any other 3-year-old kid.

So when the cash-strapped Williams foots the bill for those needs, money gets tight.

“It’s a big burden,” she said. “When you’re a single parent, you are the provider, the nurturer and I’m stuck with next to nothing.”

Williams, of Pittsburgh, is one of about 500,000 people in Pennsylvania who don’t qualify for Medicaid, but would if lawmakers decide to expand the medical assistance program by accepting federal funding.

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Medicaid expansion supporters march to the governor’s residence Wednesday to stage a "sick-in."

The expansion, as proposed by the Affordable Care Act, would make all adults between the age of 19 and 64 who are at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level eligible to receive Medicaid.

Continue reading Healthcare ‘Sick-In’ Storms Harrisburg →

Civil Liberties, Racism, unemployment, Voting Rights

August 24, 2013: March for Freedom, Jobs and Voting Rights. We Need EVERYONE OUT to Defend the Dream

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Our 12th CD PDA Chapter is part of this Committee. We are working to make this an important national event. HELP US FILL THE BUSES!

Contact Tina Shannon if you want to go,

via email or 724-683-1925

 

"I HAVE A DREAM"

50th Anniversary

March on Washington

Come with the MLK 50th Anniversary Committee

to a March on Washington

August 24th 2013

to continue the fight for jobs and voting rights

Leaving from IBEW Hall, Sassafras Lane in Vanport/Beaver

Departure time : 3am Returning: 11pm

Austerity, budget crisis, GOP, trade unions, unemployment

Will Pennsylvania Take North Carolina’s Austerity Path?

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PA House GOP Budget Will Kill Jobs And Slow Economic Growth

Pennsylvania AFL-CIO

Beaver County Blue via Phillylabor.com

The state legislature will convene on Monday, June 3rd to begin crafting a final 2013-2014 budget. We need to make sure that the state budget supports all working families in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is facing a $500 million deficit. We rank 49th in the nation in job creation, which is reflected by our high unemployment rate. Governor Corbett has cut state funding by $1 billion to our school districts since he took office in 2011, while giving a $1 billion tax break to businesses. In February, Governor Corbett proposed yet another budget that is not in Pennsylvania’s best interest, making even more cuts in education and other areas necessary to keep our great state running. Corbett’s budget continues the phase out of the Capital Stock and Franchise Tax (CSFT), costing taxpayers approximately $365 million a year, and fails to expand Medicaid, which would insure half a million hard-working, low income Pennsylvanians at very little cost to the State.

On Wednesday, May 29, House Republican leaders introduced a 2013-2014 budget that is $100 million less than Governor Corbett’s budget that he proposed in February.

Continue reading Will Pennsylvania Take North Carolina’s Austerity Path? →

Cooperatives, Economy, Green Jobs, Steelworkers

‘Clean and Green’ Industrial Laundry Comes to Pittsburgh as a Worker Cooperative

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By CUNY CED

Pittsburgh, PA is the home of a new worker cooperative, the ‘Clean and Green Laundry.’  The industrial-scale cleaning firm was brought into being by a joint effort of the United Steel Workers and the City University of New York School of Law’s Community Economic Development (CED) Clinic, both of whom are in a new partnership with the Mondragon Cooperatives, the largest worker-owned cooperative in the world, located in Spain.

Under the new partnership, the CED Clinic, in collaboration with Pennsylvania-based Regional Housing Legal Services, will help launch the job-creating effort, an eco-friendly laundry based on Mondragon’s cooperative model.

Pittsburgh Clean & Green aims to re-employ 100 primarily minority laundry workers, who were laid off when their Sodexho Corporation laundry closed. They will work in a new state-of-the-art facility in Pittsburgh’s Central District.

 

Photo: Industrial laundry similar to ‘Clean & Green’

CUNY’s CED Clinic will provide legal support for a new model of unionized worker cooperatives—called “union coops”—recently launched by Mondragon, the United Steelworkers union (USW), and the Ohio Employment Ownership Center (OEOC).

“Union coops can create well-paying, democratically run workplaces in communities hard hit by the economic recession,” explains Carmen Huertas-Noble, associate professor and director of the CED Clinic. “The union component of the model provides front line worker-owners with the security of a collective bargaining agreement and leverages the organizational expertise and economic power of the labor movement.”

Continue reading ‘Clean and Green’ Industrial Laundry Comes to Pittsburgh as a Worker Cooperative →

Economy, Green Jobs, Infrastructure, Militarism

Military spending is not right way to boost America’s economic security

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By Michael Shank& Elizabeth Kucinich

Beaver County Blue via Fox News Opinion

May 15, 2013 – That Washington is holding defense cuts responsible for slow economic growth is a specious argument at best. War spending is unproductive and inflationary. Modern defense costs are capital intensive, not labor intensive, making the industry inefficient as a job creator.

The defense industry has a presence in congressional districts across this country, so cuts affect every member. But every district in the U.S. has pressing infrastructure, education, health and environmental needs, and the return on the taxpayer’s dollar is much higher when invested on these areas.
Instead of concentrating money on capital intensive, military hardware purposed for destruction, and causing long term economic drain, our very limited and valuable economic resources should be invested in building the true strength and capacity of our economy, our nation, and her people.

During the heightened banking crisis in 2009, Rep. James Oberstar, then Chair of House Transportation Committee, called for a massive Eisenhower-level of investment in transportation infrastructure. He was right.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the U.S. requires $3.6 trillion in infrastructure investment by 2020 to bring our grade D+ standards to safe standards.

This is exactly what we need: to put bridge-builders to work rather than funding technology and personnel to destroy bridges, and to take tank-making factories and repurpose them to build high-speed trains.
In prioritizing military spending, Congress is cutting the very programs that can actually strengthen our economy: Cutting federal assistance to the states, forcing them to lay off teachers, firefighters, and social workers; cutting opportunities for job creation, training, and placement programs; and eviscerating funding for children’s programs and assistance for seniors.

These actions make no economic sense.

Continue reading Military spending is not right way to boost America’s economic security →

Banks, Debt, Youth and students

Banksters Devouring Our Future: Student Loan Crisis is Coming to a Head

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BY JESSE JACKSON
Beaver county Blue via Chicago Sun-Times

May 13, 2013 – The student loan burden is reaching crisis proportions. Young Americans are being saddled with unsustainable debts. A New York Federal Reserve Bank study found that a stunning 43 percent of 25-year-olds had student loan debts in 2012. Debt now averages over $25,000 for graduates of four-year colleges.

Student loan debt now is about $1 trillion. The only kind of household debt that continued to rise through the recession, student loans now exceed credit card debt and rank second only to mortgages. The percentage of borrowers who are more than 90 days delinquent has risen to 17 percent, up from 10 percent in 2004.

These are the young people who’ve done everything we told them to do. They worked hard, stayed out of trouble, got admitted to college and sacrificed to succeed. Then they graduated, burdened with staggering debt, into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Many can’t find jobs; those who do often end up with low-wage and part-time work and debts they can’t repay.

Student debt is itself a huge obstacle to the recovery. Unless their parents have money, young Americans who achieve the most can’t begin to save for a down payment on a home, start a business or save for retirement.

This crisis stems from the successful conservative efforts to starve government. Cash-strapped state governments cut the contributions made to public colleges and universities. The cost of college was slowly privatized, with more and more left to the student. Those with affluent parents had no problem; those with working parents had to take on debt.

Now the crisis is coming to a head. The sequester and other budget cuts are forcing further cutbacks.

Continue reading Banksters Devouring Our Future: Student Loan Crisis is Coming to a Head →