Sustainable practices are not merely temporary. These are permanent changes to protect our natural world.

Earth can be abundant and generous to all life, but, there are moral practices that have to be given their place in society for protections of the natural world.

Ruthlessness at any cost cannot be tolerated. Ruthless practices are immoral.

Sustainability is not a temporary measure. Don't fool yourself into believing if the global community cuts back greenhouse gas emissions for the next 10 years all will be okay and "the old ways" can return. The old ways will never return.

If tomorrow Earth had returned to pre-industrial revolution status, the world will still be growing in population. Looking toward tomorrow, with Earth in distress, the practices we institute today will be the ways of the future.

A couple of good examples. Scotland has recently become a country with 100 percent wind power. No carbon or methane emissions for energy from Scotland.

The Finnish government is now asking citizens to half their carbon footprint. 

15.9.2017

Finland's government (click here) agreed on a national plan on Thursday to drastically cut the country's emissions level by 2030. Ordinary consumers and citizens are also called upon to shrink their carbon footprints by changing how they commute and eat.

"This is about campaigning and encouraging people, not obligating anyone," Minister of Agriculture and the Environment Kimmo Tiilikainen said. "There's a big difference."

The Centre Party minister was asked why consumers are expected to halve their footprints by half, while the plan only calls for the government to bring greenhouse gas emissions down by 39 percent over the next 13 years.

"There are many ongoing challenges at the moment, and consumers or companies can make pledges to reduce the amount of emissions they are responsible for," Tiilikainen said. "I recall making such a pledge myself, to halve my consumption in a short time. This is one way of making these measures reality."

This is the first domestic climate policy of its breadth to be enacted in Finland. The measures are directed at sectors other than emissions trading, such as traffic, heating, waste disposal and agriculture....

These are new practices, but, they are not temporary or a fad. These are long term practices that insure protections for the natural world.

I covered government solid waste management and agricultural waste, but, the others will continue next week.

Harvard Business Review cites sustainability as a profit motive.

September 13, 2017

by 

Tensie Whelan, 

Bruno Zappa, 

Rodrigo Zeidan  and 

Greg Fishbein

...We chose Brazil’s beef industry (click here) as the location of our case study, both for the size and complexity of the industry and for its impact on the planet. We found that sustainable and deforestation-free practices created significant financial benefits for all players in the industry’s value chain.

Specifically, our analysis found that the net benefits to ranchers ranged from $18 million to $34 million (12% to 23% of revenues) in net present value projected over 10 years. For slaughterhouses and retailers (Brazilian operations), we also projected positive benefits: $20 million to $120 million (0.01% to 0.1% of revenues) and $13 million to $62 million (0.01% to 0.7% of revenues). These ranges were wide due to the relative size of the different players in the supply chain (for example, a company that has higher revenues will realize greater benefits than a smaller firm). Nonetheless, the case study demonstrates that measuring the value of sustainable business can be done, and that sustainable business itself can be cost-effective. We hope this will serve as a powerful motivator to improve leaders’ decision making and bring sustainable business practices further into the mainstream....

Sustainable agricultural practices can add cost, but, it is cost absorbed that results in an increase of profit.

...“McDonald’s standards in beef sourcing are among the highest in the world; even if our mass consumer is not willing to pay premiums for sustainability, we still have to maintain them,” says Daniel Boer, McDonald’s Director of Protein Supply for Latin America.

Retailers must be willing to pay for sustainability simply because the risk is too great not to — even if there’s a cost to their bottom line. “In 2009, after Greenpeace’s report on beef and Amazon deforestation, we had to reduce our supply base to as few as six different suppliers, which is not an ideal position to be in, in terms of price and volume negotiations,” Paulo Pianez, the Sustainability Director of Carrefour, told us.

Despite these strictures, the Brazilian operations of McDonald’s and Carrefour reaped similar types of benefits as the slaughterhouses — $12.5 to $62.1 million (0.01% to 0.6% of revenues) in expected net present value over 10 years, due to reduced risk and higher quality. According to our calculations, McDonald’s Brazil stands to gain between $5.7 million and $22.2 million net over 10 years — between 0.13% and 0.5% of its revenue. Carrefour Brazil stands to gain between $6.8 million and $39.9 million net over 10 years, between 0.01% and 0.05% of its revenue....

Why is that not good business? It is still a positive revenue stream while Earth receives its fair share of protection. That is morality. There is a reason why moral practices return profits. 

The climate dynamics impacting Africa are still ferocious.

October 20, 2009

...Africa’s heightened vulnerability to climate change7. (click here) Climate change is a key development issue in Sub-Saharan Africa because of the region’s special vulnerabilities. These include the continent’s natural fragility (twothirds of the surface area is desert or dryland), significant and fragile terrestrial and coastal ecosystems, and high exposure to natural disasters (especially droughts and floods), which are forecast to increase and intensify as climate change progresses. Moreover, the region’s livelihoods and economic activities are very much dependent on natural resources and rainfed agriculture, which are highly sensitive to climate variability. While biomass provides 80 percent of the primary domestic energy supply in Africa, rainfed agriculture contributes some 30 percent of GDP and employs about 70 percent of the population, and is the main safety net of the rural poor. Added to this is the spread of malaria — already the biggest killer in Africa — to higher elevations because of rising temperatures, compounding the effects of climate change with an increasing disease burden....

4 September 2017

By Baher Kamal

Members of the Kenyan Kadokoi community water project show how they use drip irrigation to grow vegetables with water from their borehole.

...In an interview with IPS, (click here) Elwyn Grainger-Jones, Executive Director of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) System Organization, analyses the impact of this staggering fact, which is based on the AAA Initiative report (Initiative for the Adaptation of Africa Agriculture to Climate Change), as well as the needed solutions.

The increasing occurrence and severity of weather events such as droughts and floods, high heat and cold stress, will impact agriculture in Africa, threatening regional food systems, explains Grainger-Jones.

Smallholder farmers and those who primarily draw their incomes from agriculture value chains will be affected, which will in turn threaten the region’s food security, adds the executive director of this partnership comprising 15 independent, non-profit research organisations, home to over 8,000 scientists, researchers and technicians.

“Agriculture and our global food systems, however, contribute up to 29 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions which needs to urgently be addressed,” Grainger-Jones underlines.

He further explains that CGIAR is helping the developing world to harness an environmental transformation, to drastically cut the environmental footprint of the food system, including climate emissions, land degradation, water, land pollution and food waste....                          

Best Practices for Agricultural Waste Disposal - Please don't burn agricultural waste, it is very organic and laden with carbon.

Water treatment for farm waste water.

September 12, 2017
By Alec Regimbal

Out on the Columbia Basin, (click here) a system of worm feces, wood chips and river rocks could spell a new solution to the vexing issue of nitrate pollution and greenhouse gases.

To deal with nitrate-laden wastewater generated by some 7,000 milk cows, the Royal Dairy in Royal City - about 25 miles northwest of Othello - commissioned a Chile-based company to build what is the largest treatment facility of its kind in the world.

Whether the system can be, or should be, widely adopted by dairies remains to be seen. But in Yakima County, where dairy cows outnumber people, and in other places with mega-size dairies, the technology is being watched carefully.

That’s because nitrates have become a big issue for many dairies. When manure is flushed from farms with water and reused for irrigation, nitrates from the manure can seep into the soil, potentially contaminating drinking wells. High levels of nitrates in the water can cause health problems, especially for pregnant women and young children.

Additionally, when farmers use lagoons to store their wastewater before reuse — a common practice — the large pool of untreated water can emit greenhouse gases. These problems have some state and regional water boards urging dairy farmers to switch to more environmentally friendly methods of disposal....

This is one aspect of agricultural waste.

Definition: (click here)

Agricultural waste is waste produced as a result of various agricultural operations. It includes manure and other wastes from farms, poultry houses and slaughterhouses; harvest waste; fertilizer run- off from fields; pesticides that enter into water, air or soils; and salt and silt drained from fields.

From the USDA:

...(a) Purpose and scope (click here) 

Wastes and residues described in this chapter are of an organic nature and agricultural origin. Other by-products of nonagricultural origin that may be managed within the agricultural sector are also included. This chapter provides information for estimating characteristics of livestock and poultry manure and other agricultural residuals. The information provided is useful for the planning and design of agricultural waste management system (AWMS) components including: 

- storage function components such as ponds and tanks

- treatment function components such as lagoons and composting 

- utilization function components such as land application.

The information may also be useful in formulating the environmental impact of manure and other agricultural wastes....

Municipal Solid Waste Generation from 1960-2013

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) (click here) — more commonly known as trash or garbage—consists of everyday items we use and then throw away, such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries. This comes from our homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses.

Each year EPA produces a report called Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures 2013, formerly called Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: Facts and Figures. It includes information on MSW generation, recycling, and disposal.

After 30 years of tracking MSW, the report has been expanded to include additional information on source reduction (waste prevention) of MSW, information on historical landfill tipping fees for MSW, and information on construction and demolition debris generation, which is outside of the scope of MSW.

The new name also emphasizes the importance of sustainable materials management (SMM). SMM refers to the use and reuse of materials in the most productive and sustainable ways across their entire life cycle. SMM practices conserve resources, reduce wastes, slow climate change and minimize the environmental impacts of the materials we use.

In 2013, Americans generated about 254 million tons of trash and recycled and composted about 87 million tons of this material, equivalent to a 34.3 percent recycling rate. On average, we recycled and composted 1.51 pounds of our individual waste generation of 4.40 pounds per person per day (Figure 1 and Figure 2).

September 15, 2017

According to the plan, the North, South and East Delhi Municipal Corporation would need to spend R 100 crore each on procuring a total of 549 units of modern equipment.

To improve solid waste management in Delhi, (click here) the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs announced a Rs 300-crore action plan on Friday.

Addressing the public affairs forum of India, union minister Hardeep Singh Puri said the initiative would be aided by the ministry through the ‘urban development fund’ operated by the Delhi Development Authority.

“Under the plan, automated machinery, equipment and other systems will be procured for better collection, transport, storage and decentralised treatment of garbage. Besides, steps would be taken for better maintenance of sewers and drains,” said Puri.

According to the plan, the North, South and East Delhi Municipal Corporation would need to spend R 100 crore each on procuring a total of 549 units of modern equipment. Of the total cost, an assistance of R 80 crore will be provided to each MCD from the Urban Development Fund.

“All equipment, including treatment plants, are to be procured and commissioned by the end of this year,” said Puri....

In Europe, landfill waste management has the largest volume of greenhouse gas emissions.

Data is from March 2014 (click here)

...For the EU-15, the total reduction achieved in 2011 amounted to 624 million tonnes CO2-eq/year, or 14.7 % since 1990 (when GHG emissions were 4 244.8 million tonnes CO2-eq/year). While some sources e.g. the road transport sector, still show an increase in GHG emissions, others, such as industrial processes, household & services, and waste disposal, show a decrease.

The EEA forecasts that emissions from waste disposal will decrease further in the future, despite a steady increase in the overall quantity of waste being generated. This shift stems from the decrease in waste being landfilled in the EU. The waste sector accounted for about 11 % of the cuts in GHG emissions in 2011, which amounts to 1.8 % of total emissions. The waste management sector therefore plays a key role due to the reduction in reliance on landfill for residual disposal - a change that has been significantly influenced by EU waste legislation (see Outlook below)....

There are currently five major storms in the northwest hemisphere of Earth.

September 17, 2017
2330.18z
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite of north and west hemisphere (click here)

There are two storms in the East Pacific, Hurricane Otis and Tropical Storm Norma.

Hurricane Otis is a Cat. 2 (click here for Weather Underground information).

Tropical Storm Norma (click here for Weather Underground information)

Three storms churn in the Atlantic

Solid waste degrades and releases methane. Any carbon in landfills are sequestered for as long as they remain in the landfill.

Landfilling (click here) is the most common waste management practice, and results in the release of methane from the anaerobic decomposition of organic materials. Methane is around 20 times more potent as a GHG than carbon dioxide. If the disposal of organic matter were decreased (for example by composting or combustion) it would be possible to reduce the amount of methane emissions. However, landfill methane is also a source of energy, and some landfi lls capture and use it for energy. In addition, many materials in landfi lls do not decompose fully, and the carbon that remains is sequestered in the landfi ll and not released into the atmosphere.

Environmental Protection Strategies for Sustainable Development 

pp 499-528

Part of the Strategies for Sustainability book series (STSU)

17 September 2011

By Muna Albanna

The recent changes in global climate (click here) are believed to be the result of growing anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; mainly carbon dioxide and methane, resulting from the increased industrial activities over the years. One of the main emission sources that add to the anthropogenic greenhouse gases concentrations in the atmosphere are derived from the processes of solid waste disposal. It can be shown that solid waste has adverse impacts on climate change and human health. The potential for deleterious public health and environmental effects is substantial where waste has been improperly disposed off.

Waste can be categorized predominantly into four sections as: municipal solid waste; agricultural waste; industrial waste; and hazardous waste. The economic growth and urbanization experienced over the past decades in many parts around the world have significantly escalated the quantities of the municipal solid waste. The improper disposal and the uncontrolled dumping of different types of waste have caused long term environmental and health problems, as well as degradation of land resources. Different solid waste management options have recently emerged inter alia including collection, processing, recycling, and disposal of the solid waste in ways that will reduce their harmful effects. This chapter will thoroughly assess the various robust and cost effective management alternatives, with the exception of hazardous waste, such as landfilling, composting, incineration, recycling, and the use of landfill gas (LFG) as a renewable source of energy. The chapter will also address the impacts of these management strategies that are reflected on the environment, the economy, and on human health.              

It's Sunday Night

A small Chinese girl (click here) doing her homework beside a pile of garbage bags in Guiyang. The year was 2011.

Pyrrhon - Trash Talk Landfill

From the band:

“Trash Talk Landfill”, Steve [Schwegler]’s first songwriting effort with the band, is an expression of the more playful side of Pyrrhon’s personality, both structurally and lyrically. Obviously, it’s still quite dark, so people might just scratch their heads when they hear that we were laughing constantly while putting it together. It’s also a pretty self-effacing song lyrically even though it’s an absurd and ambitious instrumental undertaking, which is an odd juxtaposition, I suppose.

"Trash Talk Landfill" by Pyrrhon (click here for website - thank you)

Talk comes real cheap
Expend and dispose, expend and dispose
These days, it’s what I live to do

Oh, I know this junk is tacky
But it’s what I’ve got to offer
I’ll just keep on spitting out more litter
It’ll heap up in disposable drifts
Some poor fucks will sort through it in shifts

Believe me, there’s more where that came from

Where can I buy budget words to describe
The awful hole that gapes inside
Me, and just keeps growing, growing, growing
As I pour in more and more plastic metaphors

You know you’re gonna keep on reading
This shit, lightweight and stripped of the meaning
It once wrapped up, ‘til I used it all up
Now it’s dross, compacted in metonym clumps

And all this waste comes straight from my waist
I’m shitting out tons and tons of this garbage every year
Dumped logotoxins leach into the groundwater
I’ll make every ear my sewer

It’s all trash talk, trash talk, trash talk
Throw me on the pile
No deposit for recycle
One use only

And all that offal is crawling
Back up through the plumbing
It’s clambering out
Of the landfills and rivers

My filth children will wander
While I spawn more, and wonder
Why these refuse similes
All sound so incomplete

21 years on the police force of being Undocumented and now he is a citizen.

September 17, 2017

By Madeline Buckley

Chicago police Officer Hector Alfaro, left, waves a U.S. flag toward his family Sept. 15, 2017, before being sworn in as a U.S. citizen during a ceremony that included several other public servants becoming citizens

Chicago Police Officer Hector Alfaro (click here) has lived in the United States since he was 3, when his parents moved from Mexico with three children in tow.

He joined the U.S. Marine Corps and then the Chicago Police Department. He had children, then grandchildren....


Children brought to the USA are important Americas. Hector Alfaro is an example of the outcome of years of service and pursuing the status of citizen. The country has benefitted by service of the Undocumented. Few talk about that. 

They might be deported, but, who is taking their place?

In my pursuit of finding the origins of hatred I ran across an old friend, the USA.

Kindly read this in entirety. I think it is important. US Senator Henry M. Jackson was a moral man in search of the best of the United States of America. He cared about people and his colleagues. He was a decent man with no sharp elbows, hubris or extremism.

September 3, 1983
By David Shribman

Washington, Sept. 2— Senator Henry M. Jackson, (click here) the Washington Democrat who served in Congress for more than half of this century, ran for President twice and was regarded as one of the nation's leading voices on military affairs, died Thursday night in Everett, Wash., after suffering a massive heart attack. He was 71 years old.

Mr. Jackson died hours after he called a news conference in Everett to deplore the downing of a South Korean airliner by a Soviet fighter plane.

Senator Jackson's death signaled the end of a political era in his home state of Washington and altered the political landscape of Capitol Hill. It gives Gov. John Spellman, a Republican, an opportunity to make a temporary appointment that will increase the Republicans' majority in the Senate.

The death also and removed a staunch advocate of military preparedness nine days after Senator John Tower, a Texas Republican who is another leading supporter of the military, announced that he would not seek re-election next year. Arms, McCarthy, Soviet Jews.

In nearly 43 years in Congress, Mr. Jackson was involved in the major themes of American political life, from the issues of the early years of the nuclear age to the arcane details of strategic arms treaties, and from the drama of the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954 to efforts in the 1970's to the freedom for Soviet Jews.

Senator Jackson died less than an hour after he was taken to Providence Hospital, only a dozen blocks from his home in Everett. The Senator, who had been considered in good health and was known as an energetic man, had just returned from a two-week trip to China and talks with Chinese leaders.

Shortly before President Reagan left California this morning to return to Washington, he said he and Mrs. Reagan were ''deeply saddened'' to hear of Senator Jackson's death. ''He was a friend, colleague, a true patriot, and a devoted servant of the people,'' Mr. Reagan said. Sought Out by Presidents

Mr. Jackson was John F. Kennedy's choice to head the Democratic National Committee in 1960. Presidents of both parties sought his counsel, particularly on military and diplomatic matters.

Over the years, he defended Adm. Hyman G. Rickover and the nuclear submarine; he spoke out for the survival of Israel; he strove to win military contracts for the Boeing Company, his state's largest employer.

He was a strenuous supporter of organized labor and civil rights. In the last decade he emerged as a leader of a strain of Democrats committed to a strong national defense and skeptical of their party's impulses in foreign affairs. These Democrats, some of whom called themselves neoconservatives, often regarded Mr. Jackson as the symbol of the party's traditional center. They supported him vigorously when he campaigned for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1972 and 1976. Remembrances by Colleagues

Mr. Jackson suffered a string of primary defeats in the 1972 race, but in 1976 he won important victories in the Massachusetts and New York primaries before his campaign languished.

In later years he confined his energies to the Senate, concentrating on his role in the Senate Armed Services Committee and urging colleagues to resist the entreaties of the political action committees that proliferated in the wake of the campaign financing laws prompted by the Watergate scandals.

His death brought expressions of sadness and tributes from Democratic and Republican colleagues. Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee, the Senate majority leader, termed Mr. Jackson ''a seasoned politician who understood the need for bipartisan cooperation on issues of vital national interest.''

Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina, characterized him as a ''great statesman'' and ''guiding force for democracy'' who ''never wavered in his dedication to the true principles of peace, liberty and freedom.''

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said that he felt a ''deep and personal loss'' and added, ''The Senate has lost one of its great leaders.'' 'Labor Had No Stauncher Friend'

Senator Jackson's death was also seen as a loss for the labor movement, which had given him considerable support in his Presidential campaigns. ''Labor had no stauncher friend,'' said Lane Kirkland, the president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. ''He shared our commitment to social and economic justice and to a strong national defense adequate to protect those values against totalitarians of the left or the right.''

Henry Martin Jackson was born in Everett May 31, 1912, the son of Norwegian immigrants. His father was a building contractor, his mother a devoutly religious woman, and on the wood-plank streets of his hometown the young Henry Jackson drew from their examples of hard work and demands for achievement. As a newspaper delivery boy he once set a record by delivering 74,880 copies of The Everett Herald without a single complaint. Sister Named Him 'Scoop'

His sister called him ''Scoop'' because she thought he resembled a character in a cartoon strip and the name remained with him, even on the floor of the Senate.

At Everett High School he managed the basketball team and was a member of the debating team. He earned his way through college, graduating from the University of Washington and taking a law degree there. As a young lawyer, he became a prosecutor in Snohomish County and won a reputation as a foe of prostitutes, slot machine operators and bootleggers.

Mr. Jackson was a vigorous supporter of President Roosevelt, catapulted into prominence by his success as a prosecutor, Mr. Jackson was to Congress in 1940.

He was 28 years old and one of the youngest members of the House. He became something of a specialist in nuclear energy and military affairs. He was re-elected five times before he challenged the Republican incumbent Harry P. Cain in 1952 for a Senate seat. He won a plurality of 135,000 votes. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Presidential candidate, took Washington State by more than 100,000 votes.

Thus began a tenure of three decades as his state's junior senator. Mr. Jackson and Warren G. Magnuson, who was elected to the Senate in 1944 and served until he was unseated in 1980 by Slade Gorton, a Republican, made up perhaps the most formidable team in the Senate.

Together, ''Maggie and Scoop,'' as they were called, accumulated 64 years of Senate seniority by 1980. They played decisive roles, Mr. Magnuson as chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, Mr. Jackson as an expert in armed services issues.

''We worked together so many years for the benefit of the state and nation,'' Mr. Magnuson, who is 78 years old, said today. ''We were in intimate contact. We were in so many contests together on the same side.'' The Jackson Personal Style.

In manner Mr. Jackson was quiet, contemplative, a bit 
ascetic, and just short of unfashionable in his demeanor. But in many ways he was a political figure from the old school. It was the new force in politics, television, that put him on the national stage.

In 1954, a year after he and two other Democrats, Senators Stuart Symington of Missouri and John L. McClellan of Arkansas, left the Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, Mr. Jackson charged that the committee was ''hunting headlines instead of hunting Communists,'' in part because of a dispute over committee staffing and in part as a protest against the techniques of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin.

But he and the others returned to the committee, and as television sent the Army-McCarthy hearings across the nation, Mr. Jackson came across as sober and fair-minded, by one account a ''clean-cut James Stewart type.'' The hearings were an outgrowth of Senator McCarthy's charges of Communist infiltration of the Army.

Mr. Jackson voted for the censure of Senator McCarthy in late 1954. He became a leading critic of the military policies of the Eisenhower Administration. He pointed out deficiencies in the nation's infant missile program and spoke out in favor of the nuclear submarine ideas advanced by Admiral Rickover. Key Party Role, Then Marriage

In 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy considered Mr. Jackson for the Vice Presidential nomination that eventually was given to Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. Shortly afterward Kennedy, who had pledged to select a Protestant to head the party, chose Senator Jackson to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

A year later, Mr. Jackson, a regular on Washington society writers' lists of bachelors, married Helen Eugenia Hardin of Albuquerque, who was working in the office of Senator Clinton P. Anderson of New Mexico.

Mr. Jackson was a longtime supporter of American involvement in Southeast Asia. In 1962 he urged that the United States ''draw the line'' in Laos. Later, though he muted his views on Vietnam as the nation grew weary of American involvement there, and even voted against President Ford's request in 1975 for emergency aid for the deteriorating Government of South Vietnam, Senator Jackson retained his belief that the United States had been correct in entering the Vietnam War.

''The basic decision to go into Vietnam was right,'' he said in April 1975, when such a position was unfashionable.

He also was a leading advocate of the antimissile missile, arguing that the Soviet Union was a ''dangerous, unpredictable opponent.'' He held up approval of the first treaty on limiting strategic arms, insisting that future treaties not limit the United States to missile levels inferior to those of the Soviet Union. He was perhaps the most vociferous Democratic opponent of the second strategic arms pact. Defense and Conservation.

Through his years in the capital, Mr. Jackson's commitment to the national defense has been coupled with his dedication to winning military contracts for Boeing. He was sometimes referred to in the capital as ''the Senator from Boeing,'' which he resented bitterly. He was, however, criticized for permitting a Boeing lobbyist to operate out of his Senate office in the unsuccessful battle for a Federal subsidy to build the supersonic transport plane.

The aircraft failed to win Congress's support. Senator Jackson's support of the measure angered some conservationists. But he regarded himself as a protector of the environment and was identified with Congressional battles over strip mining and land-use questions. He was a major architect of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the first modern statement of the nation's environmental goals. It created the Environmental Protection Agency.

Senator Jackson won perhaps his greatest attention for his efforts in behalf of Israel and Soviet Jews. He dated his repugnance to anti-Semitism to lectures from his mother. He solidified his support for the survival of Israel after a visit to a Nazi concentration camp. Easing Curbs to Free Jews.

In 1974 he prevailed in persuading Congress to tie an easing of trade barriers to provide freer passage of Jews out of the Soviet Union. The arrangement collapsed a year later, but it won Mr. Jackson the support of many influential American Jews.

Today, Howard I. Friedman, president of the American Jewish Committee, said Mr. Jackson was ''a man whose name will ever be associated with American legislation that already has helped more than a quarter of a million Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union to freedom.''

Although his two Presidential campaigns failed to win widespread support, Mr. Jackson, one of the last remaining New Dealers in Washington, remained an influential figure on Capitol Hill. Late this spring he was the leading voice in the successful effort to limit the amount of honorariums given Senators.

''There is growing and, I think, justifiable criticism that this has undermined the integrity of the Senate,'' said Mr. Jackson, who for years donated all his income from honorariums to charity. ''This is a scandal waiting to happen.'' Jackson Urged Latin Panel

Less than a week later, Mr. Jackson, along with Senator Charles McC. Mathias Jr., Republican of Maryland, urged President Reagan to appoint a commission on Central America, an idea that took form in Mr. Reagan's special commission on Central America.

Mr. Jackson was a member of the Board of Overseers of both Harvard University and Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., and a member of the Board of Advisers for the John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard. He was also a member of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Jackson is survived by a daughter, Anna Marie Jackson, a student at Stanford University, and a son, Peter Hardin Jackson, a student at the St. Alban's School in Washington.

Memorial services are to be held Tuesday evening in Washington's National Cathedral and in the Everett Civic Auditorium, Everett, Wash. A private service for the family and for a Congressional delegation is scheduled for noon Wednesday in the First Presbyterian Church in Everett.

photos of Henry M. Jackson

I am trying to find the link to where the USA turned from a country where honesty and integrity mattered in political standing and elections. There is a profound place where 'tone' changed in the USA. It was the 1960s. The civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the greenhouse effect and the deadly nature of chemicals in our environment. There is no one who would debate the 1960s were some of the most turbulent years in the country.

Previous to the 1960s the country was a majority in it's moral content and decency. It was more politically homogenous in social settings. There were campaign slogans such as "I like Ike." Interesting isn't it. The people of the USA liked friendly slogans and valued a man for president that could be their neighbor and a war hero.

I sincerely believe before the 1960s it was about the quality of life. "Two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot." Coming out of the agrarian era of the USA, having won two World Wars, the country was one. The politics friendly and the outcomes of elections stabilizing and not destabilizing.

Then came the 1960s, turbulence, and deaths of great leaders. The face of politics would change forever because of the loss of some of the most promising members of our brain trust being murdered. Senseless murders. 

The USA set it's foot on the moon in 1969. We were in awe of the greatness of the USA. The world stopped and realized the people of the USA were incredible achievers with visions of the future only others could never imagine. Some of that imagination played out in Hollywood movies.

In 1969, Richard Nixon was elected to the Presidency. He had originally run against John Fitzgerald Kennedy and lost. Lyndon Johnson would become the anchor for the next eight years to a country traumatized.

By the time Richard Nixon took office the country was engaged in Vietnam for nearly 11 years, if my memory serves me. The Vietnam War was started under President Eisenhower, but, it wasn't a war then, it was assisting an ally, France, a member of SEATO. President Kennedy would send military advisors and humanitarian supplies to Vietnam, but, he was known to desire an end to USA involvement, much the way France did. President Kennedy was assassinated before he could bring all USA personnel home. President Lyndon Johnson expanded the war. 

When Richard Nixon took office the country was demonstrating and demanding a return home of troops. He cried the war was to prevent the Domino Effect and was backed by the Moral Majority. His campaign for re-election was difficult. In 1972, a campaign chairman, by the name of Donald Segretti would find defaming and lies a suitable method to increase concerns by the electorate and Nixon won a second term. We all know the history after that. But, Segretti would prove to be a divider, not a uniter and the man capable of vicious politics.

A former military prosecutor and civil lawyer, (click here) Segretti ran a campaign of political sabotage against the Democrats for Nixon's reelection effort. In 1974, he served 4 1/2 months in prison after pleading guilty to three misdemeanor counts of distributing illegal campaign literature, including a letter falsely claiming that former senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson had fathered an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old girl.

Segretti briefly threw his hat into the ring as a candidate for Superior Court judge in Orange County, Calif., in 1995 but withdrew after a week, saying the shadow of Watergate hung over the campaign. "It was supposed to be a low-key campaign and a non-partisan office," Segretti said. "But it wasn't treated that way."

If an election strategy worked it was repeated. I believe Mr. Segretti was the first brick in the Republican wall that changed it's direction and tone. I also believe he mentored a man who has proven to be a powerful assassin of character. Even a CIA agent by the name of Valerie Plame could not escape his maniacal methods.

Karl Rove took Segretti's methods and magnified them. Fear became a driving factor along with privilege. As the years went by and Segretti's GOP became more and more extreme, the social and economic justice of Senator Henry M. Jackson was abandoned. What took over was the ideology of wealth and privilege accompanied by methods of pushing the envelope to greater and greater Wall Street wealth. (Please know there are decent companies on the stock exchanges run by decent people, but, I also believe they are the companies that still value "the worker.") The "trickle-down economics" destroyed the Middle Class and the "Contract with America" created the working poor. Wall Street welfare became an everyday concept and Walmart set up an office to help employees apply for Food Stamps and Medicaid.

The country of the USA has been lost. The name is the same, but, the face of the country is drastically different and I am not referencing race or skin color. I am referencing the moral content of the country.

Kindly read this New York Times obituary to completion of one hasn't already. Reflect on the country we were, even with the flaws. We were a moral country. We achieved greatness and it wasn't through war. I think when reading about Senator Jackson versys the stark difference of today, our deranged evolution will be obvious. Senator Jackson wasn't interested in changing the USA into an efficient business. He knew government served the people and people are not perfect or efficient.

I worry about a shifting baseline with changing regimes in Washington, DC.

World Health Organization "Lead in Drinking Water" (click here)

ug/L is shorthand for micrograms per liter.

1 ug/L = 1 ppb (parts per billion)

I think Flint residents are no different than most Americans in that they don't want lead at all in the water. There is mistrust in government and it is not unique to Flint, Michigan.

Flint's pipes have yet to be completely replaced so the city remains compromised. They are not compromised because of old pipes, they are compromised because Governor Rick Snyder allowed the Flint River to flow through the old pipes without any corrosion control. NEGLIGENCE. Rick Snyder and his administration received letters from the US EPA and completely ignored it. Governor Rick Snyder decided to ignore the letters and decided to never spend a thin dime on safe water for Flint.

Most Americans are drinking processed water. At least Flint is joining the rest of the country with help in obtaining safe water. There are new jobs coming to Flint. Those jobs will help the people of Flint continue to afford safe water.

The pipes have to be replaced because they were made unsafe by a Governor who is far less interested in African Americans than others in communities nearby.

September 15, 2017
By Joe Guillen

New test results (click here) show Flint's water meets federal regulations for lead, but residents still are cautioned to use filters and bottled water to curtail lead exposure, according to a leading researcher who is credited with helping to expose the Flint water crisis two years ago.

Virginia Tech College of Engineering professor Marc Edwards lead a team that found in 138 Flint homes a 90th percentile lead level of 9.8 parts per billion -- below the federal Lead and Copper Rule's action level of 15 parts per billion.

Flint water samples taken in August 2015 were at 31 parts per billion....

Sad news today. Basi, the well cared for Panda, has died at the age of 37.

September 14, 2017

By Kelly McCarthy

The world's oldest captive giant panda Basi (click here) has died, her keepers in Fuzhou, southeast China announced Thursday.

"With a heavy heart, we solemnly announce today that giant panda star Basi died at 8:50am at the age of 37," an official from the Straits Giant Panda

Research and Exchange Centre in Fuzhou said.

Basi first became sick in July and developed irreversible liver damage, according to the research center.

She lived to the equivalent of more than 100 years old in human years, surpassing all other pandas she lived with in captivity.