Items filtered by date: March 2017

The Imperial River Chapter of the American Business Women's Association invites you to

Mimosa Madness: A special brunch with a Florida twist, Saturday April 29th at Artichoke & Company in Bonita Springs. The event time is 10:00 AM to 1:30 PM. Tickets are $40 per person at ABWAImperialRiver.Eventbrite.com . The chapter is raising funds to support the professional development of business women in Southwest Florida.

Enjoy a brunch with specialty mimosas, garnished with Florida fruits. Bid on an assortment of silent auction themed baskets - all with a special "5th line surprise". Bid live auction items that include trips, bakery, art and a special Mother’s Day package. We'll also have a Little Red Liquor Wagon for Raffle, as well as a "Cruise or Booze" raffle, and a 50/50 raffle. Tickets are $40 per person on Eventbrite.

The newly-established Imperial River Chapter of ABWA was created to serve the growing population of South Lee County, Florida. Recruiting focuses on Estero and Bonita Springs. We support ABWA's mission of "changing lives, one woman at a time" by offering opportunities for networking and professional development, as well as recognition for personal and professional growth. For more information, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Erin White

All week, we will hear about President Donald Trump's first 100 days, which culminates Saturday.

Media have developed a pack narrative that says the first 100 days have been a display of dysfunction in which President Trump has barely achieved anything worthwhile.

Intelligent minds can agree to disagree about Trump's performance, but one accomplishment will defy dispute.

Trump finally put the White House correspondents' dinner in its rightful place. He will not attend and instead will hold a rally in Pennsylvania.

The dinners began in 1921, and 15 presidents have attended at least one since Calvin Coolidge showed up in 1924. No president has skipped a dinner since President Ronald Reagan, who could not attend while recovering from a gunshot wound in 1981.

The dinner has long been an embarrassment to much of the journalism profession. White House reporters show up in black tie to schmooze with a president they are supposed to cover with adversarial skepticism. They are to keep presidents in check, which becomes difficult after an evening of whooping it up.

Sprinkled among journalists are Hollywood celebrities. During the Obama years, the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian competed with starstruck reporters to get their pictures taken with the president.

Correspondents' dinners with Obama were love fests. It was so out of control in 2016 that CNN radio's Bob Garfield called it "repulsive."

"These are supposed to be the watchdogs, watchdogging those in power," Garfield said. "And they're sitting there passing one another dinner rolls with zero possibility of any journalism breaking out. It's a sham. If I'm gonna dine with a high official, my tape recorder is going to be switched on and my notebook is gonna be open."

The New York Post quoted a late-night TV news veteran saying: "It's too chummy there. The press and the people it covers shouldn't be hanging out after hours and rubbing shoulders."

Imagine the awkward nature of a dinner in which celebrities and reporters tried chumming it up with Trump. Hollywood and the majority of White House reporters despise Trump and have made this no secret. The Media Research Center, which surveys and tallies news coverage, found TV networks produced mostly positive coverage of Obama during his first 80 days.

Trump received coverage deemed a whopping 89 percent "negative."

"As President Trump approaches the end of his first 100 days in office, he has received by far the most hostile press treatment of any incoming American president," wrote the survey's analysts, Rich Noyes and Mike Ciandella. Let's hope Trump's decision starts a new tradition in which presidents don't party with reporters. Presidents and reporters should respect one another and not take to the public stage to act like friends.

Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers' Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don't realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as "American" as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.

In the late nineteenth century, the working class was in constant struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. Working conditions were severe and it was quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were commonplace at many work places and inspired such books as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Jack London's The Iron Heel. As early as the 1860's, working people agitated to shorten the workday without a cut in pay, but it wasn't until the late 1880's that organized labor was able to garner enough strength to declare the 8-hour workday. This proclamation was without consent of employers, yet demanded by many of the working class.

At this time, socialism was a new and attractive idea to working people, many of whom were drawn to its ideology of working class control over the production and distribution of all goods and services. Workers had seen first-hand that Capitalism benefited only their bosses, trading workers' lives for profit. Thousands of men, women and children were dying needlessly every year in the workplace, with life expectancy as low as their early twenties in some industries, and little hope but death of rising out of their destitution. Socialism offered another option.

A variety of socialist organizations sprung up throughout the later half of the 19th century, ranging from political parties to choir groups. In fact, many socialists were elected into governmental office by their constituency. But again, many of these socialists were ham-strung by the political process which was so evidently controlled by big business and the bi-partisan political machine. Tens of thousands of socialists broke ranks from their parties, rebuffed the entire political process, which was seen as nothing more than protection for the wealthy, and created anarchist groups throughout the country. Literally thousands of working people embraced the ideals of anarchism, which sought to put an end to all hierarchical structures (including government), emphasized worker controlled industry, and valued direct action over the bureaucratic political process. It is inaccurate to say that labor unions were "taken over" by anarchists and socialists, but rather anarchists and socialist made up the labor unions.

At its national convention in Chicago, held in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which later became the American Federation of Labor), proclaimed that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886." The following year, the FOTLU, backed by many Knights of Labor locals, reiterated their proclamation stating that it would be supported by strikes and demonstrations. At first, most radicals and anarchists regarded this demand as too reformist, failing to strike "at the root of the evil." A year before the Haymarket Massacre, Samuel Fielden pointed out in the anarchist newspaper, The Alarm, that "whether a man works eight hours a day or ten hours a day, he is still a slave."

Despite the misgivings of many of the anarchists, an estimated quarter million workers in the Chicago area became directly involved in the crusade to implement the eight hour work day, including the Trades and Labor Assembly, the Socialistic Labor Party and local Knights of Labor. As more and more of the workforce mobilized against the employers, these radicals conceded to fight for the 8-hour day, realizing that "the tide of opinion and determination of most wage-workers was set in this direction." With the involvement of the anarchists, there seemed to be an infusion of greater issues than the 8-hour day. There grew a sense of a greater social revolution beyond the more immediate gains of shortened hours, but a drastic change in the economic structure of capitalism.

In a proclamation printed just before May 1, 1886, one publisher appealed to working people with this plea:
•Workingmen to Arms!
•War to the Palace, Peace to the Cottage, and Death to LUXURIOUS IDLENESS.
•The wage system is the only cause of the World's misery. It is supported by the rich classes, and to destroy it, they must be either made to work or DIE.
•One pound of DYNAMITE is better than a bushel of BALLOTS!
•MAKE YOUR DEMAND FOR EIGHT HOURS with weapons in your hands to meet the capitalistic bloodhounds, police, and militia in proper manner.

Not surprisingly the entire city was prepared for mass bloodshed, reminiscent of the railroad strike a decade earlier when police and soldiers gunned down hundreds of striking workers. On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the United States walked off their jobs in the first May Day celebration in history. In Chicago, the epicenter for the 8-hour day agitators, 40,000 went out on strike with the anarchists in the forefront of the public's eye. With their fiery speeches and revolutionary ideology of direct action, anarchists and anarchism became respected and embraced by the working people and despised by the capitalists.

The names of many - Albert Parsons, Johann Most, August Spies and Louis Lingg - became household words in Chicago and throughout the country. Parades, bands and tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets exemplified the workers' strength and unity, yet didn't become violent as the newspapers and authorities predicted.

More and more workers continued to walk off their jobs until the numbers swelled to nearly 100,000, yet peace prevailed. It was not until two days later, May 3, 1886, that violence broke out at the McCormick Reaper Works between police and strikers.

For six months, armed Pinkerton agents and the police harassed and beat locked-out steelworkers as they picketed. Most of these workers belonged to the "anarchist-dominated" Metal Workers' Union. During a speech near the McCormick plant, some two hundred demonstrators joined the steelworkers on the picket line. Beatings with police clubs escalated into rock throwing by the strikers which the police responded to with gunfire. At least two strikers were killed and an unknown number were wounded.

Full of rage, a public meeting was called by some of the anarchists for the following day in Haymarket Square to discuss the police brutality. Due to bad weather and short notice, only about 3000 of the tens of thousands of people showed up from the day before. This affair included families with children and the mayor of Chicago himself. Later, the mayor would testify that the crowd remained calm and orderly and that speaker August Spies made "no suggestion... for immediate use of force or violence toward any person..."

As the speech wound down, two detectives rushed to the main body of police, reporting that a speaker was using inflammatory language, inciting the police to march on the speakers' wagon. As the police began to disperse the already thinning crowd, a bomb was thrown into the police ranks. No one knows who threw the bomb, but speculations varied from blaming any one of the anarchists, to an agent provocateur working for the police.

Enraged, the police fired into the crowd. The exact number of civilians killed or wounded was never determined, but an estimated seven or eight civilians died, and up to forty were wounded. One officer died immediately and another seven died in the following weeks. Later evidence indicated that only one of the police deaths could be attributed to the bomb and that all the other police fatalities had or could have had been due to their own indiscriminate gun fire. Aside from the bomb thrower, who was never identified, it was the police, not the anarchists, who perpetrated the violence.

Eight anarchists - Albert Parsons, August Spies, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab, George Engel, Adolph Fischer and Louis Lingg - were arrested and convicted of murder, though only three were even present at Haymarket and those three were in full view of all when the bombing occurred. The jury in their trial was comprised of business leaders in a gross mockery of justice similar to the Sacco-Vanzetti case thirty years later, or the trials of AIM and Black Panther members in the seventies. The entire world watched as these eight organizers were convicted, not for their actions, of which all of were innocent, but for their political and social beliefs. On November 11, 1887, after many failed appeals, Parsons, Spies, Engel and Fisher were hung to death. Louis Lingg, in his final protest of the state's claim of authority and punishment, took his own life the night before with an explosive device in his mouth.

The remaining organizers, Fielden, Neebe and Schwab, were pardoned six years later by Governor Altgeld, who publicly lambasted the judge on a travesty of justice. Immediately after the Haymarket Massacre, big business and government conducted what some say was the very first "Red Scare" in this country. Spun by mainstream media, anarchism became synonymous with bomb throwing and socialism became un-American. The common image of an anarchist became a bearded, eastern European immigrant with a bomb in one hand and a dagger in the other.

Today we see tens of thousands of activists embracing the ideals of the Haymarket Martyrs and those who established May Day as an International Workers' Day. Ironically, May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and unofficially celebrated in many more, but rarely is it recognized in this country where it began.

Over one hundred years have passed since that first May Day. In the earlier part of the 20th century, the US government tried to curb the celebration and further wipe it from the public's memory by establishing "Law and Order Day" on May 1. We can draw many parallels between the events of 1886 and today. We still have locked out steelworkers struggling for justice.

We still have voices of freedom behind bars as in the cases of Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier. We still had the ability to mobilize tens of thousands of people in the streets of a major city to proclaim "THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!" at the WTO and FTAA demonstrations.

Words stronger than any I could write are engraved on the Haymarket Monument:
THE DAY WILL COME WHEN OUR SILENCE WILL BE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE VOICES YOU ARE THROTTLING TODAY.

Truly, history has a lot to teach us about the roots of our radicalism. When we remember that people were shot so we could have the 8-hour day; if we acknowledge that homes with families in them were burned to the ground so we could have Saturday as part of the weekend; when we recall 8-year old victims of industrial accidents who marched in the streets protesting working conditions and child labor only to be beat down by the police and company thugs, we understand that our current condition cannot be taken for granted - people fought for the rights and dignities we enjoy today, and there is still a lot more to fight for. The sacrifices of so many people can not be forgotten or we'll end up fighting for those same gains all over again. This is why we celebrate May Day.

Eric Chase
Industrial Workers of the World
www.iww.org

Get ready Florida! The World’s Loudest Month is bringing the Fort Rock Festivals back for 2017 and the lineups for the festival are great!

The Fort Rock Festival will take place the weekend of April 29 and 30 at Jet Blue Park, Fort Myers Florida.

The Saturday bill is headlined by Def Leppard, Chevelle and Papa Roach, with support from Alter Bridge, Seether, Three Days Grace, In This Moment, Nothing More, Of Mice and Men, Motionless In White, Beartooth, Cover Your Tracks and Felicity

The Sunday bill at Welcome featured artists Soundgarden, A Perfect Circle and The Offspring. Other acts performing on Sunday include Mastodon, Highly Suspect, The Pretty Reckless, In Flames, Eagles of Death Metal, All that Remains, Starset, Dinosaur Pile-Up, I Prevail and Goodbye June.

“We can’t wait to hit the stage and kick off the World’s Loudest Month in Florida! See you all at the show,” adds Pierce the Veil’s Vic Fuentes, while Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy concludes, “We’re stoked to be kicking off the World’s Loudest Month with Alter Bridge. It’s gonna be epic so don’t miss it!”

“We are thrilled to return to Fort Rock — Florida crowds are some of the best in the world,” says The Offspring’s Dexter Holland.

“Fort Rockfest is coming again guys! Hailing from Chicago, IL, we always look forward to heading down south to Florida to warm up, stretch our legs and hopefully still head bang our way right into, or right through your hearts! Yes indeed, we will see you soon,” adds Chevelle’s Pete Loeffler, while Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy concludes, “We’re stoked to be kicking off the

World’s Loudest Month at Fort Rock with Alter Bridge. It’s gonna be epic so don’t miss it!”

Tickets are still available and can be found on craiglist.com or purchased at www.fortrockfestival.com

Florida residents pay 6th lowest state taxes; some say burden can be still be lowered

Florida residents have the sixth lowest state tax burden in the U.S., according to a recent WalletHub report.

“Florida has the sixth lowest total tax burden at 6.79 percent mostly because the state has no income tax,” WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez said. “One of the advantages is that residents here pay the third lowest total taxes at $2.385 per capita, but there’s also a notion of ‘you get what you pay for’ in terms of government services, according to our taxpayer Return On Investment report.”

Florida TaxWatch president and chief executive officer Dominic M. Calabro said the low tax burden is a plus for Florida families and businesses.

“Florida’s tax climate makes it an attractive option for families and businesses alike to move to and flourish,” Calabro said. “A lower tax burden allows businesses to create more jobs and expand, while allowing taxpayers to have more money in their pockets that can then be spent and funneled back into the economy.”

Calabro said Florida still could do more to reduce the tax burden. His organization “also called for burdensome taxes to be cut to improve our tax climate further.”

The proposed changes include reducing or eliminating the state’s business rent tax and communication services tax.

According to a briefing published by Florida TaxWatch, “Florida subjects commercial lease and license payments to the state and local sales tax and it is the only state in the nation that does so.”

As a result, Florida TaxWatch said the state government mandated an increase of up to 8 percent in occupancy costs for all business that rent property, “a cost they would not incur in any other state.”

“Florida businesses pay more than $1.7 billion a year as a result of this tax,” the briefing said.

In addition, Florida TaxWatch said renters must pay local option sales taxes, increasing the tax burden for these businesses by an estimated $230 million.

In a separate briefing, Florida TaxWatch said, although the combined state and local tax rate in the state tops out at 7.5 percent, the purchase of cell phone and other taxable communications services drives the tax rate to more than 14 percent and even in excess of 16 percent.

“Florida has one of the highest tax rates on communications services in the nation,” the briefing said.

Richard C. Auxier of the Urban Institute/Tax Policy Center, said it’s important to understand what rankings like the ones reported by WalletHub “say and what they don’t say.”

According to Auxier, Urban Institute has found that “state tax cuts do not automatically lead to economic growth.”

Auxier said “politicians certainly care about rankings like WalletHub’s, but the study only analyzed property tax, individual income tax, sales tax and excise tax.

A business considering moving its operations to Florida would want to know about other taxes such as corporate income taxes, gross receipts taxes, fees and all the taxes levied at the city or county level, he said.

In addition, he said state residents are also affected by different taxes.

“For example, Florida does not tax income,” Auxier said. “That’s great if you’re earning a lot of money. But if you’re not earning much, Florida’s no income tax is not helpful and its high sales tax is harmful, and there are states with far better tax systems for you.”

Auxier said “businesses think about a lot of things other than taxes.” He said a 2016 study ranked highway access, availability of skilled labor and cost of labor as the most important business location factors, “with tax incentives and rates ranking fifth or lower.”

Meanwhile, Auxier said individuals consider schools, commute times and other issues when deciding whether to move to a specific state or area.

“All those things – roads, workforce, schools, parks, etc. – are affected by a lot of things governments do and spend on,” Auxier said.

Auxier said some independent state tax commissions use rankings like the ones reported by WalletHub to boost their argument for cutting income taxes or corporate taxes.

Enterprise Florida communications director Nathan Edwards feels that Florida’s low state tax burden and lack of government interference in spending decisions have benefits for the state’s residents and businesses.

“Business dollars go a lot farther in Florida given the state’s tax advantages, tax exemptions and no state personal income tax,” Edwards said. “Businesses and citizens know how to spend their money better than government. Florida’s leaders recognize this and keep government out of the way.”

Carrie Salls
Watchdog.org

Air pollution in California cities is the worst in the United States, both for short-term and year-round pollution, finds new research published by the American Lung Association in its 2017 “State of the Air” report. Los Angeles, Bakersfield and Visalia topped all most-polluted lists in the report.

Each year the “State of the Air” reports on the two most widespread outdoor air pollutants, ozone pollution and particle pollution.

This 18th annual national air quality report card found that 125 million Americans, 38.9 percent, lived in counties with unhealthful levels of either ozone or particle pollution in 2013-2015. This exposure places them at risk for premature death and other serious health problems such as lung cancer, asthma attacks, cardio- vascular damage, and developmental and reproductive harm.

“This year’s ‘State of the Air’ report is a testament to the success of the Clean Air Act, which has reduced air pollution in much of the nation,” said Harold Wimmer, national president and chief executive of the American Lung Association. “As a result, Americans’ lung health is far better protected today than it was before the Clean Air Act health protections began nearly five decades ago.”

“However,” Wimmer said, “this report adds to the evidence that the ongoing changes in our climate make it harder to protect human health. As we move into an ever warmer climate, cleaning up these pollutants will become ever more challenging, highlighting the critical importance of protecting the Clean Air Act.”

Wimmer is feeling defensive about the Clean Air Act because President Donald Trump has issued a budget slashing by 31 percent funding for the agency responsible for administering the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Trump’s first budget has yet to be approved by the U.S. Congress, but already the EPA has rescinded what EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt called “an unjustified, premature evaluation of greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards for model year 2022-2025 vehicles.”

The Trump administration is reviewing the entire Clean Air Act, and that could have a big effect on air quality in California.

California has a unique power under the Clean Air Act. At any time, the state can ask the EPA administrator for a waiver to restrict tailpipe emissions more strictly than the federal government. If its proposed rules are “at least as protective of public health and welfare” as the EPA’s, then the agency must grant the waiver.

No other state can ask for a waiver, but under the same section of the Clean Air Act, any other state can choose to adopt California’s stricter standards, and 15 state currently do so.

Not all the news in the American Lung Association’s report is bad. The analysis finds continued improvement in air quality over the 2013-2015 time period, but also finds that “a continued increase in dangerous spikes in particle pollution is putting Americans’ health at risk.”

Unhealthy particles in the air are emitted from diesel engines, wildfires, wood-burning devices and coal-fired power plants.

Known as PM2.5, these microscopic particles lodge deep in the lungs and trigger asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes, cause lung cancer and shorten life.

The report grades both daily spikes, called short-term particle pollution, and annual average or year-round level that represents the concentration of particles day-in and day-out by location.

The report analyzes particle pollution in two ways: through average annual particle pollution levels and short-term spikes in particle pollution. Both ozone and particle pollution are dangerous to public health and can be lethal.

But the trends reported in this year’s report, which covers data collected by states, cities, counties, tribes and federal agencies in 2013-2015, are different for these pollutants.

The largest improvements in air quality tracked in this report result from the ongoing reduction in high ozone days and in levels of year-round particle pollution.

Steps to clean up emissions that produce these widespread pollutants have allowed many cities to reach the lowest concentrations of these pollutants since the “State of the Air” report first reported them.

By contrast, and despite these improvements, many cities hit their highest average number of days when particle levels spiked.

Many cities experienced their highest number of spikes since the monitoring for particle pollution began in 2000-2002, with 43 million people living in counties that experienced too many days when particle pollution peaked at unhealthy levels.

Increased heat, changes in climate patterns, drought and wildfires – all related to climate change – contributed to the extraordinarily high number of days with unhealthy particulate matter, the report shows.

“Even with the ongoing improvements, too many people in the United States live where the air is unhealthy for them to breathe. This is simply unacceptable,” Wimmer said. “Everyone has a fundamental right to breathe healthy air. Our nation’s leaders must do more to protect the health of all Americans.”

Short-term spikes in particle pollution increased in eight of the 10 most polluted cities in 2013-2015, including in the city ranked once again as having the worst short-term particle pollution problem, Bakersfield, California.

Situated at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, Bakersfield is the capital of Kern County, the most productive oil producing county, and the fourth most productive agricultural county, by value, in the United States.

Industries include natural gas and other energy extraction, aerospace, mining, petroleum refining, manufacturing, distribution and food processing.

Top 10 U.S. Cities Most Polluted by Short-Term Particle Pollution
Bakersfield, California
Visalia-Porterville-Hanford, Ca.
Fresno-Madera, California
Modesto-Merced, California
Fairbanks, Alaska
San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, Ca. Salt Lake City-Provo-Orem, Utah
Logan, Utah-Idaho
Los Angeles-Long Beach, California
Reno-Carson City-Fernley, Nv.

By contrast, year-round particle pollution levels have dropped across much of the nation, including in half of the 10 cities most polluted by year-round particle pollution.

While fewer people suffered from unhealthy year-round levels of particle pollution, 19.9 million people were still living with unhealthy levels in 2013-2015.

Several cities, including four among the 10 most polluted, reached their lowest levels ever.

This continued progress is due to the cleanup of coal-fired power plants and the retirement of old, dirty diesel engines, steps taken because of the Clean Air Act.

Visalia-Porterville-Hanford, California was an area where levels worsened, and it ranked as the city with the worst year-round level in 2013-2015.

Top 10 U.S. Cities Most Polluted by Year-Round Particle Pollution

Visalia-Porterville-Hanford, California

Bakersfield, California

Fresno-Madera, California

San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, Ca. Los Angeles-Long Beach, California

Modesto-Merced, California

El Centro, California

Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton, Pennsylvania-Ohio-West Virginia

Cleveland-Akron-Canton, Ohio

San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles-Arroyo Grande, California

The 2017 report found that far fewer people suffered from unhealthy ozone pollution than in the 2016 report, although 116.5 million people lived in counties that earned an F for too much pollution.

Los Angeles remains the most polluted city for ozone, yet it’s one of the six of the 10 most ozone-polluted cities list that have reached their best levels yet.

This progress is due to steps taken under the Clean Air Act to clean up the emissions nationwide that create ozone, including emissions from cars and trucks as well as power plants.

Inhaling ozone pollution acts like a sunburn of the lung, and can trigger coughing and asthma attacks, and may even shorten life.

Top 10 Most Ozone-Polluted Cities:

Los Angeles-Long Beach, California
Bakersfield, California
Fresno-Madera, California
Visalia-Porterville-Hanford, California
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Arizona
Modesto-Merced, California
San Diego-Carlsbad, California
Sacramento-Roseville, California
New York-Newark, New York–New Jersey-Connecticut-Pennsylvania
Las Vegas-Henderson, Nevada-Arizona

The report also identified the cities with the least air pollution in 2013-2015, and found that only six cities had no days when ozone or particle pollution reached unhealthy levels and also had the lowest year-round levels of particle pollution.

Top Cleanest U.S. Cities,

Burlington-South Burlington, Vermont

Cape Coral-Fort Myers-Naples, Fl

Elmira-Corning, New York

Honolulu, Hawaii

Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Fl.

Wilmington, North Carolina

“The Clean Air Act is the most important tool in the fight for healthy air; it has successfully saved lives and improved health by driving emission reductions for more than 47 years, as ‘State of the Air’ continues to document,” Wimmer said.

“We urge President Trump, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and members of Congress to fully fund, implement and enforce the Clean Air Act for all pollutants,” he said, “including those that drive climate change and make it harder to achieve healthy air for all.”

© Environment News Service (ENS) 2017. All rights reserved.
www.ens-newswire.com

Even though Heavy downpours early Sunday morning have finally brought some relief to Firefighters battling wild fires across the southern half of Florida, Fires continue to bun in the Gateway area.....Golden Gate Estates Brush Fire covered over 7,000 acres and is now only 65% contained

The sound of early morning raindrops was music to the ears of firefighters and forest officials in the area, but firefighters are asking the public to help in getting the rest of the fires out. If you see a log burning in the middle of a black burned out area, chances are that that is not a problem, but if you see fire running accross green or dried out fields, that needs to be reported.

The rain that did fall allowed the firefighters to go on the offensive and start to push back flames.

Even though Heavy downpours early Sunday morning have finally brought some relief to Firefighters battling wild fires across the southern half of Florida, Fires continue to bun in the Gateway area.....Golden Gate Estates Brush Fire covered over 7,000 acres and is now only 65% contained

The sound of early morning raindrops was music to the ears of firefighters and forest officials in the area, but firefighters are asking the public to help in getting the rest of the fires out. If you see a log burning in the middle of a black burned out area, chances are that that is not a problem, but if you see fire running accross green or dried out fields, that needs to be reported.

The rain that did fall allowed the firefighters to go on the offensive and start to push back flames.

Keanu Reeves writes..

"My friend's mom has eaten healthy all her life. Never ever consumed alcohol or any "bad" food, exercised every day, very limber, very active, took all supplements suggested by her doctor, never went in the sun without sunscreen and when she did it was for as short a period as possible- so pretty much she protected her health with the utmost that anyone could. She is now 76 and has skin cancer, bone marrow cancer and extreme osteoporosis.

My friend's father eats bacon on top of bacon, butter on top of butter, fat on top of fat, never and I mean never exercised, was out in the sun burnt to a crisp every summer, he basically took the approach to live life to his fullest and not as others suggest. He is 81 and the doctors says his health is that of a young person.

People you cannot hide from your poison. It's out there and it will find you

so in the words of my friend's still living mother: " if I would have known my life would end this way I would have lived it more to the fullest enjoying everything I was told not to!"

None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an after thought.

Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine.

Jump in the ocean.

Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like hidden treasure.

Be silly. Be kind. Be weird.

There’s no time for anything else."

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.

When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I wrote down ‘happy’.

They told me I didn’t understand the assignment,

and I told them they didn’t understand life.”