Energy Companies Pay Prisons to Cut Power During Heat Waves

Amanda Warren

Another dumpy thing about Ohio, besides their increasing sinkhole problem, is the way they treat their prisoners. There are witness accounts of how privatization has dramatically changed typical jail time. Any major discomfort is acceptable as long as it turns a profit.

This recent absurdity may or may not have to do with privatization, but some signs say yes. As if the prison industry isn't bloated enough, ushering in recruits all the time with new laws waiting to be broken and using prisoners for slave labor (another form of outsourcing) -- Ohio's prisons are now accepting gobs of money to cut power at peak hours.

US House votes to boost oil, gas drilling

Sun sets behind two under construction
offshore oil platform rigs in Port Fourchon
© AFP/File Saul Loeb

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Amid a political war over painfully high gasoline prices, US President Barack Obama's Republican foes on Thursday pushed a bill to boost offshore oil drilling through the House of Representatives.

One year after a massive oil spill caused by an explosion on an offshore drilling rig devastated the Gulf of Mexico, more than 30 Democrats joined Republicans to approve the legislation by a 266-149 margin.

Obama's foes charged his energy policies doomed US voters to high gas prices that threaten the fragile US recovery, while Democrats accused Republicans of favoring profits for Big Oil over environmental concerns.

Nuclear Power Exposed as a Product of the State (Video)

Freedomain Radio

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Doomsday Machine: Why Nuclear Will Never Be the Answer

Hope Creek Nuclear Plant/AFP image

Andrew McKillop
21st Century Wire

What the atomic energy lobby calls The Nuclear Renaissance is advance warning of uncontrolled and runaway financial and economic disaster.

This adds on to vastly growing risks of industrial disaster like we have witnessed this month in Japan, nuclear weapons proliferation, and reactors turned into and used as massive Dirty Bombs while their wastes are recycled as Depleted Uranium ordnance.

The so-called ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ could or might see as many as 225 new large-size reactors built in as many as 45 countries, through 2010-2020. World uranium demand – already at least 20 percent more than uranium mine supply – could almost double in the same period.