Oops

Abraham Lustgarten, ProPublica:

Over the past several decades, U.S. industries have injected more than 30 trillion gallons of toxic liquid deep into the earth, using broad expanses of the nation’s geology as an invisible dumping ground.

No company would be allowed to pour such dangerous chemicals into the rivers or onto the soil. But until recently, scientists and environmental officials have assumed that deep layers of rock beneath the earth would safely entomb the waste for millennia.

There are growing signs they were mistaken.

algore Requests Your Attendance at an Event Supporting Democracy/Corrected

Don Siegelman’s appeal to the Supreme Court needs your assistance. Our last legally-elected president, algore, requests your doing your duty to challenge this miscarriage of justice.

Oh, and just adding my own commentary here– F.U., Eric Holder.
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Added, 6/23. The Supreme Court has declined to hear Siegelman’s appeal. Apparently the Gore mail went out at about the time the USSC was deciding to be a bunch of jerks for maybe the millionth time. Doesn’t mean that the Legal Defense Fund doesn’t need money, but it does mean that there’s now no hope that Siegelman will get justice in this lifetime.

And please accept my apologies for not checking on the status of the case before posting.

CTJ digest

States are underinvesting:

A new report from the National Governors Association (NGA) and National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) explains that an uptick in revenues from modest economic growth is not enough to undo the damage from years of cuts to state governments during the recent economic downturn when revenues were underperforming. According to NASBO, while state revenues are returning to pre-recession levels, spending is not, largely because lawmakers are being conservative – replenishing rainy day funds, for example – rather than restoring revenues to agencies that have been under-serving citizens for years.
…
with the cost of education and health care (the two biggest chunks of total state spending) growing faster than the economy and taking an ever growing bite out of budgets, states are facing a genuine crisis.
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state governments can and should make systemic changes such as expanding the state sales tax base to include services, eliminating tax loopholes (like those for capital gains) and ending corporate tax breaks that allow corporations to dodge taxes with accounting tricks.

Republican governors actually demonstrate leadership:

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad recently joined with a dozen other Republican governors in calling for Congress to pass a measure that would allow states to require the largest online retailers to collect sales taxes. In pushing for the measure, however, Republican governors are finding that their biggest roadblock is opposition from their own party in Congress, who perceive the measure as being a “tax increase.”
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The growth in online shopping is staggering and it is costing states tens of millions a year in lost sales tax revenues.

Give ’em credit. Sales taxes may be regressive, but the only people benefiting from the sales tax exemption for online sales are either shareholders of online retailers or high end customers who do a lot of their shopping online.

Comparison of Obama vs. GOP on tax policy.

Friday Cat Blogging

US Media Character Assassination: This Time It’s Against Ecuador

Want to be tarred as History’s Greatest Monster by the US Establishment Press? Defend Julian Assange from extradition to the US.

Kevin Gosztola has the details:

The coverage from media in the US, UK and Australia has been nothing but dismissive or outright sneering. Rather than admitting Assange is within his legal right to seek and apply for asylum from any country like Ecuador, media have focused on tangential issues. They’ve reported supporters that donated money to Assange’s bail fund could lose the money—£240,000 ($370,000)—because he violated his terms of bail when he failed to report to his “registered bail address near Tunbridge Wells, Kent, after 10pm on Monday.” They’ve suggested Ecuador is “anti-press” and so it is quite ironic that Assange would want asylum from the country’s government. They’ve said Ecuador President Rafael Correa and Julian Assange to deserve each other because they are “anti-American.” And they’ve rehashed a smear that he is doing this for attention and to create drama, which the public has heard in some variation since WikiLeaks began to publish the major caches of documents like the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs and the US State Embassy cables in 2010.

And yes, Fred Hiatt’s Washington Post leads the pack.

Why the US is determined to torch relations with the last non-right-wing non-dictatorship/narcostate in Latin America that will even speak to it — especially as the US is already in trouble with the Ecuadorians for being suspected of trying to do to them what was done to Honduras — is beyond my comprehension. Unless having its crimes revealed for all to see is apparently worth alienating yet another of America’s rapidly-shrinking circle of friends.