It’s About Saving American Lives, Not Profit

Nuff said yet? Nah, probably not…

Drive-By Truckers Help Get the Group Started

A new citizen-based organization, Tennessee Riverkeeper, has been created to protect the Tennessee River and its tributaries by enforcing environmental laws and educating the public, according a press release.

The organization was approved by non-profit Waterkeeper Alliance which licenses the Riverkeeper trademark, according to David Whiteside, one of the founders. The group has set up an office in Decatur near the geographic center of the main stretch of the Tennessee River and plans to open a second office upstream in the state of Tennessee.

The organization has submitted an application to the IRS for a 501(c)(3) non-profit status, Whiteside said, and the group plans to address sewage from failing waste water treatment plants and “point source” industrial pollution as top priority pollution threats. The organization will monitor polluters and their pollution permits, respond to citizen complaints, and utilize other methods to further protect the Tennessee River and its tributaries. When the organization discovers illegal pollution, Tennessee Riverkeeper will enforce environmental laws, he said.

Tennessee Riverkeeper is against the proposed TEPPCO fuel depot a half-mile upstream from Decatur, Alabama’s only drinking water intake.

“The Tennessee River basin is one of the most biologically diverse watersheds in the world,” Whiteside said.

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Thousands of classroom teachers and school support workers were publicly humiliated and insulted by the remarks made this week by former two-year college chancellor Bradley Byrne, according to Ron Sparks’ campaign for governor.

The Fort Payne Democrat, who faces Birmingham Congressman Artur Davis in the Democratic Party primary next June, said Byrne made no attempt to cloak his “contempt” for rank and file public education employees.

“Chancellor Byrne must feel a need to pick a fight with AEA to motivate the extreme right wing of his party who feels humdrum about his candidacy for governor,” Sparks says.

Byrne launched an unwarranted and unfounded attack on the Alabama Education Association, Sparks says in the release, saying advocates for public education, the most effective being AEA, have been “the single greatest impediment to quality education in this state” and that somehow standing up for school teachers “short changes” some of the hardest working folks among us.

“Perhaps Chancellor Byrne needs to reevaluate his definition of ‘short changed’ and ‘impediment,’” Sparks says.

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Can we just go ahead and say it?

Fuck the private, for profit insurance companies. We want a government health care plan like every modern democracy on the planet! So what if the mega rich insurance company executives are forced into the unemployment lines. They can retire and cruise the world in their million dollar yachts. If the Democrats don’t get this, they can be replaced!