May, 24 2016, 11:15am EDT

Legal Action to Shut Down Indian Point
Emergency legal filing to the NRC demands reactor 2 not restart, immediate shut down of reactor 3
WASHINGTON
The disappearance and disintegration of more than 1 in 4 critical bolts holding the Indian Point nuclear reactor cooling system together is far more serious than owner Entergy admits. On Tuesday, May 24th Friends of the Earth filed an emergency petition with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission calling for immediate action by the agency. The filing demands keeping reactor 2 offline until the NRC certifies that the problem is fully diagnosed and fixed, and that the reactor is safe to operate. It also calls for an immediate shutdown to inspect reactor 3 to ensure that the reactor's bolts have not also disintegrated. Reactor 3 is the twin of reactor 2 but Entergy has rejected inspecting it until 2017 despite it being the same design and almost as old. Friends of the Earth also released an expert report detailing the breadth and depth of the bolt problem.
Although critical to the core cooling system (essential to preventing a nuclear meltdown), bolts securing the plates that channel cooling water through the reactor core are broken, degraded or missing in reactor 2. Entergy is pushing to simply replace the bolts and restart the reactor in June--in time for the profitable peak summer energy season. The company has said that it will conduct a root cause analysis of why the bolts broke or disappeared but are conducting the repairs without completing such a comprehensive review.
"This is a matter of common sense denied: if a machine breaks, you have to figure out what is wrong and then fix it," said Damon Moglen of Friends of the Earth. "Instead, at Indian Point, Entergy has decided that the priority is to get the damaged reactor up and running by summer to protect their profits. They are making a theoretical fix to a serious but undiagnosed problem. This is a recipe for disaster."
The technical report also released by Friends of the Earth concludes that the more than 25% failure rate of the bolts is extraordinarily high and appears to be unprecedented in the history of the global nuclear power industry. Without a full root cause analysis approved by the NRC, the report warns that there can be no assurance that the remaining old bolts will not fail or that simply replacing bolts will fix the problem.
"Only a utility that puts profits ahead of public safety would resume running this nuclear reactor without an "all clear" from the federal regulator," said Dave Freeman, who was the head of NYPA in the mid-1990s, and operated the nuclear reactors at that time.
Just as the Space Shuttle Challenger was brought down by a seemingly minor faulty O-ring, Indian Point is in danger from the damaged and missing bolts. Located a mere 26 miles from New York City,in the right weather conditions a radiation release at Indian Point could reach Times Square in as little as 90 minutes, making evacuation of New York City impossible and rendering the area uninhabitable indefinitely. The Indian Point reactors' licenses expired in 2013 and 2015, respectively, and the plant is operating beyond its 40-year life span. The NRC must intervene and take immediate steps to protect the public.
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
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Norfolk Southern CEO Refuses to Commit to Giving Workers 7 Paid Sick Days, Halting Stock Buybacks
Questioned at a Senate hearing on the East Palestine disaster, Alan Shaw also wouldn't agree to end "precision-scheduled railroading," a Wall Street-led profit-maximizing approach that critics say endangers communities nationwide.
Mar 09, 2023
Thursday's U.S. Senate hearing about the ongoing environmental and public health disaster in East Palestine, Ohio "did not go well" for Norfolk Southern president and CEO Alan Shaw, the progressive media outlet More Perfect Union declared.
Shaw refused to commit to providing workers with seven days of paid sick leave, ceasing stock buybacks, and abandoning Wall Street-endorsed policies that critics say contribute to the 1,500-plus derailments seen each year in the U.S., including Norfolk Southern's toxic crash near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border last month as well as a derailment that happened in Alabama just before the multimillionaire executive testified.
In remarks prepared for the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Shaw wrote, "I am deeply sorry for the impact this derailment has had on the people of East Palestine and surrounding communities, and I am determined to make it right."
But during the committee's hearing, Shaw refused to use the multiple opportunities he was given to publicly commit to enacting meaningful changes.
Noting that Norfolk Southern has recently rewarded wealthy investors with $10 billion in stock buybacks, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont asked Shaw if he could "tell the American people and your employees right now that... you will guarantee at least seven paid sick days to the 15,000 workers you employ."
Sanders acknowledged that Norfolk Southern recently agreed to provide up to a week of paid sick leave per year to roughly 3,000 track maintenance workers. However, he asked Shaw, "Will you make that commitment right now to your entire workforce?"
"I will commit to continuing to discuss with them important quality-of-life issues," Shaw responded.
Sanders told Shaw he sounds "like a politician" and reiterated his question, but the executive repeated his dodge.
Sanders, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, then told Shaw that he looks forward to discussing the matter further, hinting at a potential request to testify before the panel he leads.
Later during the hearing, Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon asked Shaw, "Will you pledge today that you will do no more stock buybacks until a raft of safety measures have been completed to reduce the risk of derailments and crashes in the future?"
Once again, Shaw refused to give a straight answer, saying that he will commit to "continuing to invest in safety." Merkley repeated his question, to no avail.
More Perfect Union has calculated that payouts to Norfolk Southern's shareholders surged by more than 4,500% over the past 20 years, from $101 million in stock repurchases and dividend bumps in 2002 to $4.7 billion in 2022.
In response to Merkely's inquiry, Shaw claimed that thanks to his company's safety investments, "the number of derailments, hazardous material releases, and personal injuries has declined" over time.
Not helping Shaw's case, a Norfolk Southern train careened off the tracks in Calhoun County, Alabama around 6:45 am ET on Thursday, about three hours before the hearing began. The rail giant was also responsible for other derailments last month in addition to the highly visible one in East Palestine. Moreover, a Norfolk Southern conductor was killed in a collision in Ohio early Tuesday.
More Perfect Union shared data showing that Norfolk Southern's accident rate grew faster than the industry average over the past decade and accused the CEO of lying about his company's safety record.
According to Railroad Workers United and others, industry-led deregulation and Wall Street-backed policies such as "precision-scheduled railroading" (PSR) have made the U.S. rail system more dangerous.
During Thursday's hearing, Sanders brought up PSR, which forces fewer workers to manage longer trains in less time.
The profit-maximizing practice championed by Wall Street has enabled Norfolk Southern to rake in billions of dollars while reducing the size of its workforce by nearly 40% over a recent six-year period, said Sanders, but that has come at the expense of safety.
"Will you make a commitment right now to the American people that you will lead the industry in ending this disastrous precision-scheduled railroading?"
Despite Sanders' request for a "yes or no" answer, Shaw danced around the question, saying that he has increased hiring since becoming CEO last May.
Sanders characterized the recent uptick in hiring as an attempt to recover from a preceding round of mass layoffs and asked once again if Shaw "will lead the industry in doing away with" the PSR model that was "imposed" by profit-hungry Wall Street actors.
Shaw, however, refused to commit to such a change.
Thursday's hearing comes two days after the National Transportation Safety Board—which is already probing the causes of the East Palestine disaster—announced a "special investigation" into Norfolk Southern's "organization and safety culture."
It also comes less than a month after Shaw angered East Palestine residents by skipping a town hall where people expressed their concerns over the long-term consequences of air pollution and groundwater contamination stemming from the release and burnoff of carcinogenic chemicals, a move that was made to avoid a catastrophic explosion.
Following the hearing on Capitol Hill, Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter said in a statement that "Shaw's apology today rings hollow," coming as it did "after years spent pushing to roll back the very sorts of safety regulations that would have prevented an accident like this."
"If Norfolk Southern had real concern for the safety of the countless communities like East Palestine through which their trains run, they would be calling for more safety measures for the industry," said Hauter. "Instead they offer voluntary steps that can easily be undone, prioritizing profit margins over people."
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'Educators Are Nation Builders': Sanders Bill Would Ensure Minimum $60K Salary for Public School Teachers
"The situation has become so absurd that the top 15 hedge fund managers on Wall Street make more money in a single year than every kindergarten teacher in America combined."
Mar 09, 2023
Demanding an end to "the international embarrassment" of low teacher pay in the United States, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday introduced legislation to guarantee a minimum salary for public school educators of $60,000 per year, moving to fulfill a pledge he made during his 2020 presidential campaign.
The Vermont Independent senator called on the federal government to take accountability for chronic staffing shortages in school districts across the country, which he said is linked to the fact that "the starting pay for teachers in almost 40% of our nation's school districts is less than $40,000 a year" and that the average weekly wage of a public school teacher has gone up by just $29 in the past 30 years, adjusting for inflation.
More than half of the nation's schools are understaffed, according to the National Center on Education Statistics, and Sanders noted in a fact sheet about his proposal that "hundreds of thousands of public school teachers have to work two or three jobs during the school year to make ends meet." A recent report by the Teacher Salary Project found that 17% of educators work part-time in retail, restaurants, or in the gig economy to supplement their meager incomes.
Sanders, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, called the statistic "simply unacceptable."
"The situation has become so absurd that the top 15 hedge fund managers on Wall Street make more money in a single year than every kindergarten teacher in America combined—over 120,000 teachers," said the senator. "Wages for public school teachers are so low that in 36 states, the average public school teacher with a family of four qualifies for food stamps, public housing, and other government assistance programs. We have got to do better than that."
The Pay Teachers Act of 2023 would significantly increase investments in public education, beyond teacher salaries—tripling Title I-A funding for schools with high percentages of low-income students and funding for rural education programs; providing an additional $1 billion for the Bureau of Indian Education; and investing in grant programs to improve teacher preparation and development, among other investments.
States would be required to establish a "minimum salary for teachers" of at least $60,000 per year, with increases throughout their career, and to ensure teachers are paid "a livable and competitive annual salary" that's comparable to professionals with similar education requirements.
"Educators are nation builders," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.7 educators. "They have a vital role in educating and caring for our next generation. But they are neither treated nor paid commensurate with that role. Teachers earn nearly 24% less than similarly educated professionals, and when adjusted for inflation, many [earn] less than they were making a decade ago."
"Even with their need to take second jobs, educators spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on supplies, snacks, books, and other items for students," she added. "Chairman Bernie Sanders's bill, the Pay Teachers Act, will help close the pay gap by significantly increasing federal investments in public schools and raising annual teacher salaries."
Co-sponsors of the Pay Teachers Act include Democratic Sens. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Alex Padilla of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Peter Welch of Vermont.
Ellen Sherratt, board president of the Teacher Salary Project, applauded the legislation and lawmakers who are"fighting for teacher salary levels that are professional."
Sanders introduced the legislation a month after holding a town hall with labor leaders and teachers from across the country regarding chronic low pay in the field, where educators talked about completing hours of work per week outside of the school day for no extra pay, purchasing snacks for low-income students, and facing barriers to working in schools that have many open teaching positions and have resorted to hiring people without teaching qualifications.
"Students of every color, background, and ZIP code deserve qualified and caring educators who are dedicated and have the resources to uncover the passions and potential of every child," said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association (NEA), as Sanders introduced the bill Thursday. "America's schools are facing a five-alarm crisis because of the educator shortages that have been decades in the making and exacerbated by the pandemic. Together, we must recruit large numbers of diverse educators into the profession and retain qualified and experienced educators in our schools to support our students in learning recovery and thriving in today's world. To do that, we must have competitive career-based pay to recruit and retain educators."
"On behalf of the three million members of the National Education Association, I thank Chairman Sanders for introducing the Teacher Pay Act," she added. "We urge senators to support educators and cosponsor this commonsense legislation that invests in our students, educators, and public schools."
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'Madness': Biden Requests Record $886 Billion Military Budget
"Continuing to throw this much money at weapons, war, and defense contractor profits is unacceptable," said one critic.
Mar 09, 2023
President Joe Biden unveiled a budget blueprint Thursday that requests $886.4 billion in military spending for fiscal year 2024, pushing for a nearly $30 billion increase over current outlays as progressives demand cuts to the bloated and notoriously fraud-ridden Pentagon.
The president's budget proposes $842 billion for the Pentagon alone, including nearly $38 billion for widely criticized efforts to "modernize" the United States' massive nuclear arsenal.
Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen and a vocal critic of excessive military spending, said Thursday that Biden's request for an $886 billion budget is "madness."
"That's a jump of $28 billion from the current year," Weissman noted. "The increase of $28 billion is more than twice the entire EPA budget."
Weissman argued that funneling more money into the Pentagon's coffers "makes the U.S. weaker, not stronger."
"It means we are weaker on healthcare, weaker on poverty, weaker on fairness and equity, weaker on climate, weaker on pandemics, weaker on diplomacy," he added.
The president's military budget request is part of a sprawling $6.8 trillion framework that was largely praised by progressives for its proposed tax hikes on the rich and large corporations—revenue from which would be used to fund Biden's plan to bolster Medicare and increase spending on Medicaid, public housing, and childcare.
But with austerity-obsessed Republicans in control of the House, much of the president's budget is dead on arrival.
However, recent history shows Congress is almost certain to build on Biden's military spending request.
Last year, lawmakers agreed on a bipartisan basis to add $45 billion to the president's topline proposal, bringing total military spending to $858 billion for fiscal year 2023.
"The proposed Pentagon topline level makes no sense," Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen's executive vice president, said of Biden's new budget request. "There is no excuse for our country's reckless overspending on the Pentagon, and the FY24 proposal continues this dangerous trajectory."
"The Defense Department has never once passed an audit and is infamous for wasting funds with impunity," Gilbert continued. "The president's proposal would bring U.S. military spending to its highest level in history at an astronomical $886 billion. Continuing to throw this much money at weapons, war, and defense contractor profits is unacceptable."
"It's telling that as families struggle and see support they had during the pandemic evaporate, the Pentagon, which has never passed an audit, continues to get a budget windfall."
A fact sheet put out by the White House on Thursday states that the president's budget "prioritizes China as America's pacing challenge" and "supports investments to accelerate critical weapons and munitions production lines; develop capabilities like long-range strike, undersea, hypersonic, and autonomous systems; and increase resiliency of our space architectures."
While the White House claimed Biden's military budget would help the world confront "pressing global challenges," Sara Haghdoosti of Win Without War countered that "more F-35s aren't going to solve climate change or make sure families can afford basic supplies like eggs."
"It's telling that as families struggle and see support they had during the pandemic evaporate, the Pentagon, which has never passed an audit, continues to get a budget windfall," said Haghdoosti.
In an analysis of the president's request, William Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft noted that when accounting for "likely emergency military aid packages for Ukraine later this year plus the potential tens of billions of dollars in congressional add-ons," total U.S. military spending could balloon to around $950 billion for the fiscal year that begins on October 1.
"The Pentagon doesn't need more spending. It needs more spending discipline, tied to a realistic strategy that sets clear priorities and acknowledges that some of the greatest risks we face are not military in nature," Hartung wrote. "Today's announcement is just the opening gambit in this year's debate over the Pentagon budget. Hopefully critics of runaway spending will have more traction this year than has been the case for the past several years."
"If not," he added, "$1 trillion in annual military spending may be just around the corner, at great cost to taxpayers and to the safety and security of the country as a whole."
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