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I submitted testimony to the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Public Health today as part of the process being undertaken for the Commonwealth to set appropriate siting standards for wind turbines.  The public comment period closes on March 19, 2012.

Please join me in calling for reparations if health impacts are confirmed.  It is clear that some wind turbines have been sited too close to peoples’ homes.

The work that an independent panel conducted for DEP/DPH is incomplete.

Continue reading Reparations are Due

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Now available !… the stenograph record of the last public meeting of Boston City Council, email city.council at cityofboston.gov

If you’re deaf, have hearing loss or have some cognitive difficulties the stenographic record of the public meeting of Boston City Council is a great resource.

Continue reading Now available !… the stenograph record of the last public meeting of Boston City Council…
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The Urban Ring is a planned public transport service to encircle central Boston, connecting the existing subway line ‘grid’ so as to allow quicker routes around Boston’s center. It is expected to move 40,000 passengers each day in phase I, to about 275,000 per day in phase III in 2025, speeding commutes and relieving central Boston’s transit system congestion.

Because most business doesn’t know now what to do with capital, interest rates are near historic lows, so it’s a great time to raise building capital via municipal bond sales.

And it is a great time to hire transit system builders, amidst this seemingly endless recession, and to thus stimulate the greater Boston economy.

The land-owners of the to-be-connected new stops on the Urban Ring stand to gain tremendously in financial terms from the Ring’s connecting these sites right to the existing subway and busway system, and it would thus be fair to partly fund Urban Ring construction by taxing the increase in land value created at and near these new stops with special taxation zones. This funding method is addressed at: http://www.vtpi.org/smith.pdf

Continue reading Now is the Time to Start Building the Boston Urban Ring Transit Line.
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I just stumbled over this group, just after stumbling over Blue Mass Group, where I recently posted on how Mass might raise revenues now.

I was surprised to discover little support among BMG respondents for raising Mass revenues now.

While I see Mass education, police and fire as in desperate straits, others at BMG saw a Mass state revenue returning to the historical 15% of state GDP

as healthy.

I’m curious – Here at Green Mass Group, what do we think about the existing level of taxation?

Continue reading Mass State Revenues: too much, enough, or too little?
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Ten years ago, this blogger had the honor of spending several weeks among the Oglala Lakota at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. At the time, the Tokala Oyate (or “Kit Fox Society,” which serve as contemporary tribal warriors) had physically occupied a section of Badlands National Park that ‘overlaps’ the Pine Ridge Reservation. The occupation occurred after the National Park Service proved unable to prevent the looting of bones from Lakota graves on a landform called the Stronghold Table. Through much of modern history, the Lakota people have displayed a willingness to put themselves at risk and physically intervene in instances of social injustice.

This week was no exception.

On Monday, residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation learned through social media contacts that enormous trucks loaded with oil pipeline components related the Keystone Pipeline/Canadian Tar Sands Project were headed towards the reservation and set to pass through the Oglala Tribal lands. “We did not know where the equipment was going, but we knew that these trucks were too huge, too heavy, and too dangerous to pass our roads. We thought the equipment may be going to the Tarsands oil mine, or other oil mines in Canada,” Lakota matriarch Debra White Plume said.

Continue reading Lakota Grandmothers Stop Keystone Trucks
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Vote for UMass Permaculture as College Campus Champion of Change!

You have to sign in and thus provide your email address, and you may use all 3 votes to support the UMass project.

From John Gerber, Professor of Sustainable Food and Farming at UMass Amherst:


The UMass Permaculture Project was selected from among 1400 nominations as one of 15 finalists in the White House Campus Change Challenge.  After a week of online voting we were leading the nation (until yesterday), when the University of Arkansas got a story in USA Today and picked up thousands of votes.  We believe that with a last minute “push” we can retake the lead in the balloting.

If you are willing please vote for us here and ask a few friends to help us out.

Our students have done a terrific job trying to change the culture on campus to be more supportive of local food and farming.  This would be quite a tribute to their hard work.

VOTE UMASS Permaculture!

Continue reading Help send UMass to the White House – vote by midnight Saturday (3/3)!
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