Thursday, May 16, 2013

Food Supply Under Assault By Climate Change

NBC News: Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor ~ The U.S. food supply is under unprecedented siege from a blitz of man-made hazards, meaning some of your favorite treats someday may vanish from your plate, experts say.

Warmer and moister air ringing much of the planet – punctuated by droughts in other locales – is threatening the prime ingredients in many daily meals, including the maple syrup on your morning pancakes and the salmon on your evening grill as well as the wine in your glass and the chocolate on your dessert tray, according to four recent studies.

[Corn from last year's harvest lies in a wet field on Iowa farms,while fields remain too wet to plant this year's crop]. The USDA's weekly crop progress report showed that just 12 percent of the nation's cornfields have been sown.  [Like your Cheetos and Doritos, while you got'em!]

At the same time, an unappetizing bacterial outbreak in Florida citrus droves, largely affecting orange trees, is causing fruit to turn bitter. Elsewhere, unappealing fungi strains are curtailing certain coffee yields and devastating some banana plantations, researchers report.

Now, mix in the atmospheric misfortunes sapping two mainstays of American farming — corn and cows. Heavier than normal spring rains have put the corn crop far behind schedule: Only 28 percent of corn fields have been planted this year compared with 85 percent at this time in 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, drought in the Southeastern plains and a poor hay yield have culled the U.S. cattle and calf herd [especially in Texas] to its lowest level since 1952, propelling the wholesale price of a USDA cut of choice beef to a new high on May 3 — $201.68 per 100 pounds, eclipsing the old mark of $201.18 from October 2003, the USDA reports.

“We are in the midst of dramatic assault on the security of the food supply,” said Dr. Robert S. Lawrence, director of the Center for a Livable Future, part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The group promotes ecological research into the nexus of diet, food production, environment and human health.

Read the full Bill Briggs article @ NBC News:

Climate Change Denial Conspiracy

Some downplay and deny that there is organized climate change denial in U.S. politics. But what the deniers have accomplished in this country is unique in the world, going far beyond the spread of disinformation. They have convinced more than half of America that there is no climate change and that there is no consensus among scientists that global warming is happening. They have also allowed fossil fuel interests to “capture” almost an entire political party.
National Journal: “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones.”

More than 97% of 4,000 international scientific papers analyzed in a peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, were found to acknowledge human-caused global warming.  [Full text PDF (501 KB) - Video]

A recent Yale study found that only 42 percent of Americans believe that most scientists think global warming is happening. A full 33 percent of respondents are convinced that there remains "widespread disagreement" among scientists on this question. Among the 10,000 individual climate scientists worldwide who have expressed a position on human caused global warming in peer-reviewed literature, 98.4 percent endorsed the consensus that humanity dumping CO2 into the atmosphere continue to accelerate global warming and climate change.
Riley E. Dunlap, a sociology professor at Oklahoma State, and Aaron M. McCright of Michigan State call it the “climate change denial machine” in their book chapter, “Organized Climate Change Denial,” for the Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society.

In a note, the authors explain: The actions of those who consistently seek to deny the seriousness of climate change make the terms “denial” and “denier” more accurate than “skepticism” and “skeptic,” particularly since all scientists tend to be skeptics.

On page 147 of their book the authors chart key components of the climate change denial machine that together work to feed the American public misinformation that climate science is “all one contrived phony mess," as Texas Gov. Perry puts it.

Here is the conclusion of Organized Climate Change Denial:”:

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Earth Under Water, Hell On Earth Or Both?

by Michael Handley

Human civilization has pushed atmospheric CO2 levels to near 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human existence. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revised its May 9, 2013 reading at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, saying it remained fractions of a point below the level of 400 ppm, at 399.89 ppm.

The last time concentrations of Earth's main greenhouse gas reached this mark, during the Pliocene era 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago, the planet was about 3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. The Arctic was 14°F warmer allowing horses and camels to graze in lush savannas that grew at those ancient high latitudes. The Arctic and West Antarctic ice sheets did not exist and sea levels during the mid-Pliocine were about 82 feet higher than today — levels that today would inundate major cities around the world!

The first decade of the 21st century contained nine of the 10 warmest years on record. A new report from the World Meteorological Organization compares the 2001-2010 decade with the 12 that came before it in a chart that makes it hard to argue that the planet isn’t warming.

Today, with the warming atmosphere, Arctic sea ice is melting much, much faster than even the best climate models had projected. The reason is most likely for faster loss of arctic ice is unmodeled amplifying feed backs in the CO2 cycles, plus recent Paleoclimate research suggests CO2 may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models. “Future warming likely to be on high side of climate projections,” according to a November paper in Science.  On our current emissions path, CO2 levels will continue to rise to as much as 650–970 ppm by the year 2100 -- levels last seen when the Earth was and average 29°F hotter and dinosaurs walked the earth. A 29°F rise in temperature would melt all the ice on earth, even in Antarctica, increasing sea levels by 250 feet over just decades.

More than 97% of 4,000 international scientific papers analyzed in peer-reviewed study, published  in the journal Environmental Research Letters, were found to acknowledge human-caused global warming.  [Full text PDF (501 KB) - Video]  President Obama even tweeted the study to his 31,000,000 followers.
97% global warming consensus meets resistance from scientific denialism - The robust climate change consensus faces resistance from conspiracy theories, cherry picking, and misrepresentations.

Media Still Overlooks 90% Of Global Warming, Washington Post Still Won’t Fact Check Columnists.
A new study led by Clark University and involving the University Colorado Boulder found that all glacial regions lost mass from 2003 to 2009, with the biggest ice losses occurring in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalayas. The glaciers outside of the Greenland and Antarctic sheets lost an average of roughly 260 billion metric tons of ice annually during the study period. "Because the global glacier ice mass is relatively small in comparison with the huge ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica, people tend to not worry about it," said CU-Boulder Professor Tad Pfeffer, a study co-author. But Greenland's inland ice sheet is now beginning to melt, too. Greenland's ice sheet saw melting across nearly all of its surface last summer due to higher than normal temperatures.

Most climate scientists don't think that the Antarctica and Greenland icecaps will thaw yet this century. Many studies since 2007, including by the World Bank, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a report for the Arctic Council, put the upper limit of sea surface rise at about six feet by the year 2100. However, when 97 percent of Greenland’s ice experienced at least some melting in July 2012, scientists began wondering if it was a one-time phenomenon. Now a new study in Geophysical Research Letters indicates it is a sign of things to come and by 2025, there is a 50-50 chance of it happening annually. Some climate scientists have started to wonder whether Widespread Greenland Melting Is To Become The Norm In Next Two Decades.   Miami, As We Know It Today, Is Doomed by Sea Rise; It’s Not A Question Of If. It’s A Question Of When.

Imagine sea levels rising 82 feet higher, and more, than today... Eminent climatologists think a "Great Flood" is inevitable if current CO2 emission rates continue.

Based on research by NASA astro-biologist and paleontologist Professor Peter Ward and a group of respected American climatologists, the Earth Under Water video is an eye-opening documentary.

This BBC documentary uses scientific evidence past and present, archive footage, location photography and CGI to explore the terrifying consequences should the atmosphere's CO2 levels treble over the next 100 to 300 years, as predicted.

Step by step, the BBC documentary paints a chilling picture of the world as the sea levels rise, unraveling the science behind this cataclysm, revealing when it could strike and what its impact would be on humanity. The film also questions experts and politicians about what measures can be taken now to stop the current rise of CO2 emissions, and explores how extreme engineering will buy us time. But the message of this film is stark, spelling out in graphic detail the Earth's apocalyptic future that we have been avoiding.

God Won't Save Us From Climate Catastrophe

A nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly -- that's not aligned with either history or the text of the Bible," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) declared in a Senate floor speech after an unnamed senator said God would protect the Earth from climate change. Listen to his full speech on the Senate floor.

“I was recently at a Senate hearing where I heard a member of our Senate community say, ‘God won’t allow us to ruin our planet,’” said Sen. Whitehouse  in a Senate floor speech on climate change Wednesday. “Maybe that is why we do nothing.” "If we believe in an all-powerful God, then we must then believe that God gave us this earth, and we must in turn believe that God gave us its laws of gravity, of chemistry, of physics." "We must also believe that God gave us our human powers of intellect and reason. He gives us these powers so that we his children can learn and understand earth's natural laws." "We learn these natural laws, and we apply them to build and create, and we prosper." “So why then, when we ignore his plain, natural laws, when we ignore the obvious conclusions to be drawn by our God-given intellect and reason, why then would God, the tidy-up God, drop in and spare us?” “Why would he allow an innocent child to burn its hand when it touches the hot stove but protect us from this lesson? Why would he allow a badly engineered bridge or building to fall, killing innocent people, but protect us from this mistake?” “We are warned in the Bible not to plow iniquity, not to eat the fruit of lies.” “Where in the Bible are we assured of safety if we do? I see no assurances of that.” ~ Whitehouse said.

Hell On Earth In Texas And The Great Plains

by Michael Handley

In the coming decades, climate change will lead to more frequent and more intense Midwest heat waves while degrading air and water quality and threatening public health. Intense rainstorms and floods will become more common, and existing risks to the Great Lakes will be exacerbated.

Those are some of the conclusions contained in the Midwest chapter of a draft report released early this year by the federal government that assesses the key impacts of climate change on every region in the country and analyzes its likely effects on human health, water, energy, transportation, agriculture, forests, ecosystems and biodiversity.

The weekly report of the U.S. Drought Monitor released for May 7, 2013 didn't  show much improvement for a profoundly parched Texas.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has watched first hand the ravages of a warming climate, first as Texas agriculture commissioner, then as governor.

However, Perry and Republicans in the state legislature argue that climate science is a made up liberal lie.  Perry said it's “all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight” in his book, Fed Up.

Republicans dismiss worsening killer droughts and record heat seen in 1996, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, with July 2011 Texas’ hottest in history, so far. Last year, Texas suffered through another historic dry spell . Large sections of the state continue to experience long-term exceptional or extreme drought. These prolonged, dry conditions put a strain on water supplies for all uses.

Texas has only received 68 percent of its normal rainfall, and reservoirs are at their lowest levels since 1990. The state temperature has increased on average by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1970s, and so that impacts drought through evaporation and loss of water from the ground and reservoirs.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Building A Democratic Base Audience With Podcasts

Citizen Journalism is when private individuals do essentially what professional journalists do - report and comment on the news. That news reporting and commentary can take many forms, including regular podcast programs to discuss issues of interest to a listening audience.   The emergence of social media based broadcast channels is what has made citizen journalism possible. The Internet and smart mobile devices, like iPhones and iPods, allows average people the ability to broadcast information globally. That was a power once reserved for only the very largest media corporations and news agencies.


Listen to the The Intellectual Saviors podcast "Tear Down This Myth." [01:33:50] The hosts discuss modern conservatism's legendary champion Ronald Reagan and his policies - starting at 30 min mark.
Intellectual Saviors podcasts consist of three Texas guys that consider themselves fearless truth-tellers.

The Intellectual Saviors are high-minded progressives who use their intellectual powers for good, even if they weren't asked. With logic and reason as their guide, they enlighten the masses with their blatantly honest progressive opinions, often using earthy and even vulgar language, to produce weekly podcast programs.

The Intellectual Saviors' next podcast will discuss the "media propaganda machine."

A few other podcast programs you might enjoy:

Friday, April 19, 2013

Obamacare Is Dead In Texas, Right? Think again.

Texas has the highest share of uninsured residents in the United States — about 29 percent of its adult population is uninsured — which costs Texans billions of dollars worth of uncompensated hospital care every year.  Texas Tribune: The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) will help 2.6 million Texans get health care insurance.
Nearly 2.6 million Texans could qualify for tax credits to purchase health insurance in 2014, according to a report released Thursday by Families USA, a nonprofit that advocates for health care consumers.

The tax credits will be offered through the health insurance exchange — an Orbitz-style online marketplace for health insurance — that the federal government plans to launch as part of the Affordable Care Act in October. Beginning in January, families with an income of up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line, between $47,100 and $94,200 for a family of four, will be eligible for a tax credit subsidy to purchase insurance through the exchange. The tax credits will be offered on a sliding scale, so that lower-income families will receive larger credits.

“These are typically the families where folks are working, sometimes more than one job,” U.S. Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, said of the report. “Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, I think that’s something we can all support.”

Nearly 5.8 million Texans — nearly a quarter of the state’s population — are uninsured. The Health and Human Services commission estimates the tax credits offered through the health insurance exchange and other provisions in the Affordable Care Act will lower that rate to 16 percent. If Texas also expanded Medicaid — an unlikely scenario given Gov. Rick Perry’s opposition — the uninsured rate could be lowered to 12 percent.  Perry says that Medicaid is a broken system and has called the Medicaid expansion of federal health reform “fiscal coercion.”

“Given the large number of people in Texas that are uninsured, many of whom are poor, this is an extraordinary opportunity,” said Ron Pollock, executive director of Families USA. He said it was “short-sighted” for the state’s leadership to oppose Medicaid expansion, as it would bring billions of federal dollars to the state, and increase job opportunities.
You can see the report for Texas here, and for other states here.

In Texas, Medicaid expansion would mean adding an estimated 2 million residents to Medicaid, for whom the federal government would cover 100% of that extra cost for the first three years, and then 90% after 2019. That would bring to the state an additional $13 billion a year, totaling roughly $100 billion before the end of the decade.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) doubled down earlier this month in his opposition to expanding Medicaid under Affordable Care Act, even though opposing it could cost Texas $90 billion. At a press conference Perry argued expanding the health insurance program for the poor would make Texas “hostage” to the federal government. “It would benefit no one in our state to see their taxes skyrocket and our economy crushed as our budget crumbled under the weight of oppressive Medicaid costs,” Perry said at the state capitol. Perry was flanked at  the press conference by top Texas Republicans, including rising conservative star Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. John Cornyn.

Republicans will, if they again gain full control of the federal government, repeal the Affordable Care Act, convert Medicare into a private insurance voucher program, and turn Medicaid into a severely underfunded state block grant program.  The Republican controlled U.S. House has voted 33 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act over the last three years and has passed multiple budget bills to convert Medicare into a private insurance voucher program.

Obamacare is dead in Texas, right? Think again.

Could Your Town Explode?

The fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, on Wednesday (April 17) is bringing increased attention to the thousands of facilities nationwide that store or manufacture fertilizer, especially ammonium nitrate, an explosive chemical often used in agricultural fertilizers. [LiveScience.comInfographic: Why Fertilizer Is Dangerous]

Ammonium nitrate is believed to be the cause of the fireball that was seen about two hours after the blaze started on Wednesday (April 17) evening. In February, Adair Grain (the owner of the West Fertilizer Co. fertilizer plant) informed the Texas Department of Health Services that it was storing up to 270 tons of ammonium nitrate at the facility.

The West, Texas, plant is just one of about 6,000 facilities scattered across the country — located in residential neighborhoods, small towns and urban areas — that manufacture, store or sell ammonium nitrate products, a spokeswoman for the Fertilizer Institute, an industry trade group, told NBC.

And most county and municipal zoning regulations don't prevent these facilities from being located near schools, hospitals, homes or other businesses. The nursing home and school damaged by the explosion in West were built several years after the fertilizer plant began operating about 50 years ago.

The explosion in West is not an isolated incident. In 2011, a chemical plant explosion in nearby Waxahachie forced the evacuation of about 1,000 residents, according to the Dallas Morning News, including people living in houses that were just 100 feet (30 meters) away.

Around the world, ammonium nitrate has been implicated in dozens of deadly explosions in recent years, including the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history when almost 600 people died in Texas City, Texas, after two ships carrying the chemical exploded in 1947.

The West, Texas, explosion points to the need for stricter regulation of plants that manufacture, store and use large quantities of hazardous chemicals.

Modern conservatives ignore the failures of their generally accepted conservative principles, like deregulation, as enacted over the last several decades. Republicans claim that eliminating government regulations will unleash business and create jobs. We did deregulate, but it didn’t create jobs. It did, however, create a worsening of our environment. Deregulation also created the worst financial disaster since the great depression. 

A View Of Government Deregulation

Tommy Muska, the mayor of West, Texas, said Thursday that 35 to 40 people are believed to be dead in a massive fertilizer plant explosion, “because they are unaccounted for and still missing.” Sen. John Cornyn, in statements on Friday, said 60 people remain unaccounted for in the small Central Texas town. Two hundred people were injured in the powerful blast.

Among those who are missing and believed dead include as many as six firefighters and four emergency medical technicians.

The explosion occurred Wednesday night, heavily damaging or destroying buildings within a half-mile radius and causing broken windows and other damage to structures up to double that distance. The factory exploded Wednesday with the force of a 2.1-magnitude earthquake.

Politic365 Reports:
The West Fertilizer Company has not been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985. “Texas relies on federal investigators, and has not made its own investment at the state level to inspect facilities, to make sure they are complying with federal safety standards,” said Alex Winslow, executive director of Texas Watch, a non-partisan group that is a corporate accountability group in the state. “We believe, and have supported in the past, efforts to beef up state inspections to compliment the federal inspections.”

Since 2006, only six fertilizer plants in Texas were inspected; West Fertilizer Company was not among them. The explosion is a spotlight to lax inspection standards in Texas. Under the leadership of Governor Rick Perry, who has been visiting states like Illinois and California to woo businesses to Texas, the state has advertised its low taxes and “predictable regulations” as part of its allure, begging the question whether the state’s “business friendly climate” has taken a step too far away from safety.

Loose regulations” in Texas may be a nice pitch for out-of-state business, however, in 2010 the state accounted for 10% of all workplace-related fatalities in the country. In 2011, Texas had the second-highest number of fatality investigations from OSHA (California was first), in 2010, Texas led the nation in Latino worker fatalities.

West Fertilizer Company in particular hadn’t been inspected by any government agency in five years.  In a report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency the West Fertilizer Company stated that the “the worst possible scenario” for a fire or explosion would be a “10-minute release of ammonia gas that would kill or injure no one.”  The second-worst scenario, according to the report, would be a leak from a broken hose that would cause no injuries. West Fertilizer Company's risk management plan, filed with the Environmental Protection Agency in 2011, made no mention of ammonium nitrate storage.

At times the plant had up to 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia available at the facility. This particular compound, according to the report, is at risk for explosion when it is inside a container.
The West Fertilizer Company had informed a state agency in February that it was storing up to 270 tons of ammonium nitrate – the highly explosive chemical compound used in the domestic terror attack on the Oklahoma City federal building. The Oklahoma truck bomb used just two tons of ammonium nitrate to destroy or damage 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, destroy or burn 86 cars, and shatter glass in 258 nearby downtown buildings.

It's not clear whether the ammonium nitrate, which was not initially reported as being present at the site in the wake of Wednesday's massive blast, was responsible for the explosion, or whether volunteer firefighters battling a fire at the facility knew of its presence. Under state law, hazardous chemicals must be disclosed to the community fire department and to the county emergency planning agency, in addition to the state. News reports on Thursday focused on tanks of anhydrous ammonia –a less volatile fertilizer.

Adair Grain, doing business as West Fertilizer Co., told the Texas Department of Health Services on Feb. 26 that it was storing up to 540,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, along with up to 110,000 pounds of the liquid ammonia, according to the disclosure report. (Read the document provided by the state.) The company's disclosure was first reported Thursday evening by The Los Angeles Times.

The West Fertilizer Co. stored 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Fertilizer plants and storage facilities must report to the DHS when they hold 400 lb or more of the explosive chemical. Filings to the Texas Department of State Health Services listing 270 tons of ammonium nitrate in storage were not shared with DHS by West Fertilizer Co. or any Texas state government agency.  Gov. Perry is on record promoting Texas' lack of business regulation statutes and enforcement as a selling point for businesses to relocate to Texas.

Ammonium Nitrate is an explosive that is also useful for fertilizer. It has not been used much as a military explosive in its simple form since WWII, but when mixed with other explosives it is encountered frequently in military explosives.  Ammonium Nitrate mixed with fuel oil is typically the explosive of choice in the mining industry.

In the video below, Rachel Maddow reviews the history of ammonium nitrate as an explosive and then as a fertilizer and reports the latest details of the fertilizer plant explosion that ripped through the town of West, Texas.


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday declared McLennan County, Texas - home to West, the small community devastated by the fertilizer plant explosion - a disaster area and announced that he asked President Barack Obama for a federal disaster declaration as well.

Federal disaster assistance available under a major disaster declaration falls into three general categories:
  1. Individual Assistance - aid to individuals, families and business owners;
  2. Public Assistance - aid to public (and certain private non-profit) entities for certain emergency services and the repair or replacement of disaster-damaged public facilities;
  3. Hazard Mitigation Assistance - funding for measures designed to reduce future losses to public and private property. In the event of a major disaster declaration, the county is eligible to apply for assistance under the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.
In related news, all three members of the Congressional delegation representing West, Texas (Republican Senators Cornyn and Cruz and Congressman Flores) joined in vowing to 'assist' the people of West. What they mean by 'assist' is that they're going to do all they can to steer federal disaster aid to the city of West, Texas.

All three of them -- Cornyn and Cruz and Flores -- voted against the bill that delivered federal disaster aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy call that aid “pork” and “wasteful spending.” ~ PoliticusUSA.com

More -> Texas Is Anti-EPA and Their Citizens Have Paid With Their Lives

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Women Organizing Women Democrats Kickoff

Plano, TX – Women Organizing Women Democrats (WOW Dems), a new North Texas-based organization, announces their kickoff meeting on Thursday, April 18th @ 6:45 p.m. The first official meeting of WOW Dems will be held at Harrington Library, 1501 18th St., Plano TX 75074. This event is not sponsored by the Plano Public Library System or the City of Plano.

Thursday April 18, 2013
April
18
The mission of WOW Dems is to expand the participation of women in politics: increasing their political engagement; raising awareness about women’s issues; and recruiting, supporting, and electing women Democrats for partisan and non-partisan offices.

After the business meeting, there will be a panel discussion on Legislative Advocacy. Panel members will include Denise Rodriguez of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas and Jeanne Rubin of Equality Texas. The panelists will discuss legislative issues that affect their individual organizations, their unique involvement in the legislative process, and the process in general followed by an audience Q&A.

After the program concludes, refreshments will be served and guests will have the opportunity to join WOW Dems.

To learn more about WOW Dems, contact Amy Lawrence, President at president@wowdems.org.
WOW Dems Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter

Monday, March 18, 2013

New Media For Old: The State Of American Journalism

Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism's newest annual report on health of American journalism shows a continued erosion of news gathering reporting resources in the traditional news media industry.

As the influence of traditional news media wains, Pew finds that those in politics, government, business and others are increasingly more adept at using digital media channels to directly broadcast information into the public arena and to inject their messaging into the traditional media's news narratives.

As traditional news outlets have continually cut news-gathering staff and cut budgets for reporters to find and investigate news leads, reports increasing follow and report on what news-makers themselves broadcast online.

The traditional news media industry is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands. Findings from Pew's public opinion survey finds that nearly one-third of the respondents (31%) have deserted a traditional news outlets because they no longer provide the news and information or the delivery format they want.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Texas Republicans Betray Texas' Committment To Veterans

Military veterans who put their lives on the line for our country are threatened by cuts to Texas' Hazlewood Act veterans education program.

Texas' institutions of higher education are now telling veterans that they and their children place an unbearable "burden" on the state's public universities and colleges by using their eduction benefit.

The Hazlewood Act is a Texas law providing veterans with tuition and fee exemptions to public universities and colleges of up to 150 hours.

The law was first enacted in the 1920s to assist soldiers who fought in World War I. It evolved and expanded in ensuing years, reflecting the state's tradition of strong commitment to its veterans. The law was eventually named after state Sen. Grady Hazlewood of Amarillo because he championed a major amendment to the law in 1943. Texas lawmakers passed the Hazlewood Legacy Act in 2009, allowing veterans to pass along any unused portion of the 150 hours of free tuition to their children.

Thousands of additional combat veterans returning from the wars in Iraq, and now Afghanistan, have substantially increased college and university enrollments of veterans, or their children under the Hazlewood program.

In the last three years, the number of students receiving some form of Hazlewood benefit has ballooned by 129 percent. Institutions had to forgo $24 million in tuition and fees in fiscal year 2009, but by fiscal year 2011, the total statewide had grown to $72 million. Enrollments under the program are likely to further increase as the U.S. brings troops home from Afghanistan.

The costs of providing free college tuition and fees for veterans and their children is emerging as a looming budget issue for the 2013 Legislative Session due to the more than $1 billion in higher education budget cuts made during the 2011 Legislative Session.

University and college officials are telling Texas lawmakers that the costs of providing the free tuition and fees to veterans has become an untenable unfunded mandate on their institutions due to funding cuts and increased Hazlewood program enrollments.

The budget-writing House Appropriations Committee is beginning to address the education portion of the Texas 2014-2015 biennium budget. But Republican Texas lawmakers are so far unwilling to reverse their 2011 budget cuts and adequately fund the educational needs of all Texans, including Texas' veterans.

University and college officials are telling the Legislature they must either increase higher education funding or make cuts to the Hazlewood Act veterans education program.

Hazlewood FAQ