Worries about food waste appear to vanish when diners know scraps go to compost

Efforts to educate diners, repurpose leftovers cancel each other out, study finds

Ohio State University

Composting is a good thing but it is NOT a substitute for waste reduction

Diners waste far less food when they're schooled on the harm their leftovers can inflict on the environment. But if they know the food is going to be composted instead of dumped in a landfill, the educational benefit disappears.

When composting enters the picture, educated diners waste just as much as those who haven't learned about shrinking landfill space, dangerous greenhouse gas emissions and water and soil pollution, a new study found.

This presents a tricky situation for policymakers figuring out how to manage food waste, because the top tactics are prevention (through education) and diversion (through composting), said lead researcher Danyi Qi, a graduate student in agricultural economics at The Ohio State University.

"When you do both, they cancel each other out -- they work at cross purposes," said Qi, who is presenting the findings this week at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations in Chicago.

Not welcome

Hopkinton May Not Be Best Place for Truckers, Motorists to Rest

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

Closed in 2011, this rest area on the northbound side of I-95 between exits 2 and 3 recently reopened. The state of Rhode Island had closed the facility because of ‘a lack of funds and changes in tourism trends nationwide.’ Two similar rest stops have been proposed near Exit 1. (Frank Carini/ecoRI News)

Public and private development projects associated with the transportation industry threaten the local drinking-water supply and some 50 acres of forestland, according to opponents of both ideas.

“The state wants to build a transit hub right square on an aquifer, and on one looks into it,” Mimi Karlsson, a Hopkinton resident and vocal opponent, told ecoRI News in late November. “We have aquifer protection overlays and comprehensive plans that need to be reviewed every five years on the books now for two and a half decades. Did DOT even look at these plans?”

In October 2015 Rhode Island was awarded a $9 million Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The money is earmarked for a travel plaza/welcome center, most likely at Exit 1 off Interstate 95. The grant would cover about 75 percent of the $12 million project, should state and local officials move forward on the proposal.

The Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) has proposed building the new facility on a 20-acre wooded site near the Connecticut border. Plans call for a 6,000-square-foot welcome center, fast-food chains, bicycling amenities, a park-and-ride facility for up to 200 vehicles that would serve the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority and intercity bus operators, and up to 10 fueling stations, including electric-vehicle charging.

There is no silver lining

Bad News for America’s Workers

By Joseph Stiglitz for the Project Syndicate

As US President-elect Donald Trump fills his cabinet, what have we learned about the likely direction and impact of his administration’s economic policy?

To be sure, enormous uncertainties remain. As in many other areas, Trump’s promises and statements on economic policy have been inconsistent. 

While he routinely accuses others of lying, many of his economic assertions and promises – indeed, his entire view of governance – seem worthy of Nazi Germany’s “big lie” propagandists.

Trump will take charge of an economy on a strongly upward trend, with third-quarter GDP growing at an impressive annual rate of 3.2% and unemployment at 4.6% in November. 

By contrast, when President Barack Obama took over in 2009, he inherited from George W. Bush an economy sinking into a deep recession. 

And, like Bush, Trump is yet another Republican president who will assume office despite losing the popular vote, only to pretend that he has a mandate to undertake extremist policies.

"There really is no silver lining to the cloud that now hangs over the US and the world."

You will be taken care of

Wingnuts of the week

Langevin condemns Russian election hack

Calls for immediate action to tighten cyber-security and for Trump to denounce the Russian actions

Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), co-founder and co-chair of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus and a senior member of the House Committees on Armed Services and Homeland Security, released the following statement in response to the Director of National Intelligence’s attribution report on Russian election interference and the decision by DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to designate election systems as critical infrastructure:

“Thanks to the dedicated men and women of our intelligence community, the involvement of the Russian government in interfering with our elections has been laid bare. The conclusion of the report is unequivocal: ‘We assess that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.’

"As I have stated before, such activity constitutes a blow to the very heart of our democracy, and it demands at least the level of response President Obama laid out last week. While the influence operation had multiple facets, at the heart was the hacking of emails from the Democratic National Committee and the staff of the Clinton campaign.

“It is essential that we take action immediately to improve our cybersecurity and reduce the risk of future such attacks, which is why I reiterate my call to Speaker Ryan to appoint a Select Committee on Cybersecurity to examine the attacks. The American people deserve a full accounting of the facts.

New logo captures the essence of a great program

Southern Rhode Island Volunteers has a new look!

By Deborah Tanner

Photo credit for all photos: SRIV

For 36 years, Southern Rhode Island Volunteers (SRIV) has helped hundreds of elderly citizens, adults with disabilities, children and the communities of Washington County and Jamestown, RI.  

SRIV’s volunteers are the heart of this organization. They share their time, talents, skills and more with neighbors in need.

Today, SRIV launches its new look that features just that - the heart of its volunteers. The launch of SRIV’s new look speaks to the heartfelt compassion that our service agency gives to the communities it serves.

SRIV is proud that this new look will illustrate how far we have come as an organization. SRIV has evolved from a program that focused solely on service and support from seniors to an organization that now engages volunteers 13-years-old and up. 

SRIV’s volunteers partner with multiple agencies to provide services across all generations residing in Southern Rhode Island.

SRIV’s mission includes continued growth of a county-wide group of dedicated volunteers who assist in making life a bit easier for those facing challenges.

SRIV has three core programs:

The Rotten State of Charter Schools

A For-Profit Bonanza, Sponsored by the DeVos Family

By Diane Ravitch

The confirmation hearings for Billionaire Betsy are scheduled to begin on January 11. It is assumed that she will breeze through because the DeVos family gives so much money to Republican politicians. 

That is usually enough to get a wealthy donor given an ambassadorship, but it is not typically the case for cabinet positions. 

Members of the president’s cabinet are expected to have some experience in the department and sector where they will take charge of federal policy. Billionaire Betsy has none. 

Her only involvement in education is as a lobbyist for private school choice. Since some 85% of children in the U.S. attend public schools, this means that she is totally out of touch with public education, for which she has repeatedly demonstrated hostility and contempt.

If she had her druthers, every child in America would attend a religious school, preferably evangelical Christian, to further her religious goals.

She and her husband tried and failed in 2000 to change the state constitution in Michigan, which forbids spending public money on religious schools. Voters turned down the revision overwhelmingly, by 69-31%.

So Billionaire Betsy and her husband went all in for charter schools, the next best route to privatization. 

They stood firmly against any regulation of charter schools, and the result–according to a year-long investigation by the Detroit Free Press in 2014–is a sector that is dominated by for-profit charters, that has low quality and poor performance, and that wastes $1 billion of taxpayers’ dollars every year. 

Here is one of dozens of stories of charter school corruption.

The Real Danger of Trump’s Alleged ‘Pee Party’

Maybe it's all a salacious lie, but imagine what Russia would do if it could blackmail a sitting president.

By Jill Richardson

The week leading up to the presidential inauguration brought streams, if not floods, of pee jokes. You might even say it was the number one opportunity for scatological humor since the poop cruise of 2013.

My heart goes out to parents who have to find an appropriate way to explain this to their children.

The occasion for the pee jokes was a leaked, unverified report on Russian anti-Trump intelligence. 

Someone described as a former British intelligence agent claims the Russians have been cultivating Trump for years, in part by gathering compromising information on him to hold over his head.

In one especially lurid example, the source claims, Trump allegedly paid sex workers to engage in lewd urination-related acts in a Moscow hotel known “to have microphones and cameras in all the main rooms.”

For those who support Trump, it’s a heinous and untrue case of scurrilous journalism. For those who oppose Trump, it’s an opportunity to laugh at him. And laugh and laugh and laugh.

If any of the allegations are true, though, it’s no laughing matter.

Suckers!

Trump now says US taxpayers will pay for Wall, will make Mexico pay us back. Right.

By Nika Knight, staff writer for Common Dreams

President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has signaled to Republicans in Congress that Trump would like to fund his infamous planned U.S.-Mexico border wall through the Congressional appropriations process in April, House Republican officials told CNN Thursday.

In doing so, the president-elect appears poised to break one of his core anti-immigrant campaign promises: that Trump would build a wall to "keep the Mexicans out," and that Mexico would pay for it. (Early in his presidential campaign, he even promised to force Mexico to build the wall.) 

Early Friday morning, Trump defended his move on Twitter by alleging that Mexico would pay the U.S. back for the cost of building the wall.

Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), congressional liaison for the Trump transition team, doubled down on Trump's position in comments to CNN: "When you understand that Mexico's economy is dependent upon U.S. consumers, Donald Trump has all the cards he needs to play," Collins said. "On the trade negotiation side, I don't think it's that difficult for Donald Trump to convince Mexico that it's in their best interest to reimburse us for building the wall."

However, Mexico's president has vociferously and repeatedly said that the country will not pay for Trump's promised wall. "We're not going to pay for that fucking wall," former president Vicente Fox added last March, as Common Dreams reported.

Time to start building fallout shelters again?

Donald Trump’s New Nuclear Instability

By Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan for Truthdig

For more cartoons by Ted Rall, CLICK HERE

President-elect Donald Trump exploded a half-century of U.S. nuclear-arms policy in a single tweet: 

“The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” 

With that one vague message, Donald Trump, who hasn’t even taken office yet, may have started a new arms race.

Trump’s statement set off alarms around the world, necessitating a cadre of his inner circle to flood the airwaves with now-routine attempts to explain what their boss “really meant.” On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow confronted former Trump campaign manager and newly appointed Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway about the shocking tweet:

Maddow: “He’s saying we’re going to expand our nuclear capability.”

Conway: “He’s not necessarily saying that—”

Maddow: “... He did literally say we need to expand our nuclear capability—”

Conway: “...What he’s saying is…we need to expand our nuclear capability, really our nuclear readiness, our capability to be ready for those who also have nuclear weapons.”

The next morning, during a commercial break on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe,” Trump spoke by phone with Mika Brzezinski, as she and her co-host Joe Scarborough sat in pajamas on the Christmas-themed TV set.

The call was not broadcast, but when the show came back from the break, Brzezinski quoted Trump as saying, “Let it be an arms race ... we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

Minutes after that aired, Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA, told us on the “Democracy Now!” news hour: “Every day, Trump says something that makes us worried, but this may be the most terrifying yet. A nuclear-arms race is the last thing that the world needs. I think about climate change. I think about economic inequality. I think about all of these major threats that we’re facing as a country and as a world. Why would we add on top of that a totally manufactured, unnecessary threat?”

He listens

For more cartoons by Mike Luckovich, CLICK HERE

Happy New Year! Bang!

January 10 town meeting on AMTRAK proposal

Charlestown Town Hall North East Corridor (NEC) Tier 1 Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) The Town Council has recently received notice from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) on their North East Corridor (NEC) Tier 1 Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The EIS proposes changes to the current rail route from Boston MA to Washington DC. A portion of that route affects property owners within the Town of Charlestown. The FRA will be accepting comments on the report until January 31, 2017. In anticipation of filing formal comments, the Town Council will be holding a public meeting: Tuesday, January 10, 2017 - 7:00 pm Charlestown Elementary School Cafeteria 363 Carolina Back Road At the meeting, the Town Council will take comments from the public as part of their formal response to the FRA. The Town has also alerted U.S. Senator Jack Reed, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Representative James Langevin, Governor Gina Raimondo, State Senator Dennis Algiere, State Senator Elaine Morgan and State Representative Blake Filippi of this report and requested their assistance with any concerns the Council and residents of Charlestown may have with this proposal. The NEC Tier 1 EIS is available for viewing at the Town's website  http://www.charlestownri.org/ Click here under Amtrak or directly at http://www.necfuture.com/tier1_eis/feis/ Click here. The Town Council would appreciate you taking the time to attend the meeting and expressing your concerns. Written copies of your comments would be very helpful and will be included in the record. If you are not available for the meeting, please consider sending your comments directly to U.S. DOT Federal Railroad Administration, One Bowling Green, Suite 429, New York, NY 10004 or by email at info@necfuture.com Click here. To submit comments to the Charlestown Town Council please email at  Amtrak-Comments@charlestownri.org or write care of the Administrator's Office, Town Hall, 4540 South County Trail.

Corporate Welfare King

Rick Perry's Texas Giveaways
by Alec MacGillis for ProPublica

Donald Trump's selection of Rick Perry to lead the Department of Energy has prompted many Democrats to question Perry's qualifications for the position. 

While he governed a state rich in fossil fuels and wind energy, Perry has far less experience than President Obama's two energy secretaries, both physicists, in the department's primary work, such as tending the nuclear-weapons stockpile, handling nuclear waste and carrying out advanced scientific research. 

That's not to mention, of course, that Perry four years ago called for doing away with the entire department.

However, there's one realm in which Perry will have plenty of preparation: doling out taxpayer money in the form of government grants to the energy industry.

What often gets lost in all the talk of the Texas job boom under Perry is how much economic development strategy was driven by direct subsidies to employers who promised to relocate to the state or create jobs there.