Growing concern over the threat of coal ash to public health and the environment is making it’s way into the board rooms of some of the nation’s biggest power companies. Shareholders for some power companies are pushing for resolutions on coal ash that would require more transparency about the size, scope and threat of coal ash dumps and waste ponds located near power plants, according to Earth Justice.

Southern Company shareholders will vote on a resolution Wednesday that seeks more accountability from the power provider on coal ash waste ponds and landfills. The vote comes on the heels of similar votes at CMS Energy and Montana-Dakotas Utilities, where a resolution received 25.6 percent support, a huge step on an environmental resolution, which commonly only receive between 5-6 percent support.

“There is growing momentum to push power companies to deal with these coal ash problems,” Lisa Evans, Senior Administrative Counsel at Earthjustice, said in a statement issued today. “Communities are concerned about the exposure they face. Scientists have noted that more needs to be done.”

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A Review of Michael Moore’s ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’

Michael Moore trying to gain entry at GM headquarters in the film Capitalism.

The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

If Michael Moore had arrived on the film scene as a conservative Republican activist in 1989, he might be heralded by Fox News today as a major American hero, and he might even be able to get a fair review in the so-called “liberal” New York Times.

Unfortunately for him and his message, he started making movies during the late 1980s, when the presidencies of Republicans Ronald Reagan and then George Herbert Walker Bush made them the target of his outsourcing ire. Moore first became famous for his 1989 film “Roger and Me,” a documentary about what happened to his home town of Flint, Michigan, after General Motors closed its automobile factories and moved to Mexico, where workers made much less.

Since then Moore has been known as a critic of the “neoliberal” view of globalization, according to Wikipedia, although that term goes right over the heads of most of the working people in the U.S. who should be watching his movies and learning something from them. That is the sad state of political dialogue in the good old US of A.

I mean here’s a regular Joe who could be comfortable drinking a beer with George W. Bush, who should be fighting side-by-side with the conservatives who oppose the big government bailout of Wall Street banks.

But because 20 percent of the country still believes somehow that Bush was an OK president, the audience that needs to see this movie the most, average working people struggling to make a living, especially in the South, will not see it because they already dismiss Moore as a “liberal” Democrat “propagandist.”

Although I did find some hope after screening “Capitalism: A Love Story” Friday night in a theater located in a Wal-mart parking lot. That’s an irony considering how Moore takes on the retail giant in his film. (See the After Matter in the end for the hope).

In the film, Moore is his usual bumbling self, just an average “everyman” trying one more time to get into the General Motors headquarters in Michigan, where he is predictably turned away yet again. His now familiar shtick also inspires him to lease an armored truck and make a futile attempt to get the $700 billion in Bush bailout money back from Citibank, AIG and other recipients to transfer it back into the U.S. Treasury.

The best gag for me came near the end, when he stretches yellow crime scene tape around Goldman Sachs on Wall Street, tying it off on the Wall Street Bull (see the photo below).

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Long-Time President of Non-Profitable Fest Might Go?

by Glynn Wilson
Editor & Publisher

George McMillan, the Mountain Brook lawyer and former Lt. Governor of Alabama, tells the Birmingham News he would be “happy” to turn over the leadership of the floundering summer music festival to someone else.

Maybe it’s time. I’ve always liked McMillan. He is a Democrat and should have been governor of Alabama in 1982. Instead, he was beaten by George C. Wallace by one vote per precinct in Alabama’s 67 counties.

Glynn Wilson

Derek Trucks at City Stages 2006

But as the losses mount over the years, it is clear that City Stages is a festival past its prime and maybe it’s time for someone in Birmingham to come up with a better idea.

For the past few years, it has been obvious that as a regional event, City Stages cannot compete with the real Woodstock style hippie music festival in Tennessee, Bonnaroo. Last year the events were scheduled on the same weekend. This year Bonnaroo was one week ahead, but still, and especially in the midst of a recession, how many music lovers can be expected to turn out and shell out the bucks two weeks in a row?

Plus, it is too hot and the air is too bad in downtown Birmingham for people to be expected to show up. If an event were held in the spring or fall, it would most likely work out better.

My question is — which the local press has not bothered to ask about or report on — what corporate sponsors withdrew their support by not buying blocks of tickets this year? Was it Alabama Power? The Birmingham News?

We don’t know, because not one news organization has bothered to ask.

Plus, I don’t go to City Stages anymore anyway for a couple of good reasons. The promoters of the event stopped giving out press credentials several years back for alternative publications, and would not provide press passes for us.

Second, and even more important, the last time I went, three years ago, I came away with asthma two days in a row from the ozone hanging in the city due to the pollution from Alabama Power’s coal-fired power plants. And I have never officially been diagnosed with asthma. I’ve had maybe four or five attacks in my life.

Then, it is particularly annoying to see those Alabama Power banners everywhere you look at City Stages, yet there’s not one single environmental program associated with the event. Would it not be a good idea to use the festival to promote clean air, rather than ignoring that there is an air pollution problem with the main corporate culprit using the festival to promote it’s image through “Green Washing”?

Sometimes the people of my home town just don’t seem to get it. Which brings up a last point. Some people think City Stages is not only a financial failure, but a cultural one as well. Where is the cultural tie-ins at this event? Where is the local cuisine and other heritage?

Every one of these music events are copies of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. But it is still the best, because not only is it a big concert, New Orleans actually has original ideas in music, food and culture to highlight.

Surely Birmingham has something to offer on this front too, but for the life of me, I can’t think of what it is — maybe because the so-called leadership of the Birmingham area doesn’t know either. That’s sad, but pathetically true…