Todd Hymas Samkara’s Posts

• Barack's economic policy speech in Wisconsin

  Obama lauds green jobs and clean tech in economy speech 4

  Posted 1 year, 8 months ago

  

  Photo: Sam Graham-Felsen

  In a speech on Wednesday at a GM auto plant in Wisconsin, Barack Obama outlined his economic agenda for the country. He described his stimulus plan, promising to boost green jobs, help the middle class, dole out tax cuts, negotiate worker and environmental protections in upcoming free-trade agreements -- and, to help pay for much of it, end the costly war in Iraq.

  The environmental highlights of the speech are below (audio available Read More

• Answering the college

  Focus the Nation events to heat up campuses across the U.S. 5

  Posted 1 year, 9 months ago

  

  Focus the Nation, a series of climate-change-focused educational events on over 1,000 campuses across the United States, is basically the student-centered cousin of Step It Up. And if you were one of the thousands who attended SIU (or SIU 2), you know that raising climate consciousness doesn't have to be a drab affair. It can be a colorful, creative, youth-infused party of a time. Enter Focus the Nation.

  Hoping to pick up where SIU left off, Focus the… Read More

• Move Thyself: Flying objects edition

  Watch out for that flaming bag of McNuggets 6

  Posted 2 years, 2 months ago

  I'm so spoiled now that I live in bike-path-licious Boulder, Colorado. I hardly have to interact with cars anymore when cycling to most points in the city. But just a few weeks ago, before I moved here, I was out there with all the other Colorado cyclists in traffic getting assaulted.

  Sure, most assaults are verbal and harmless-ish, but then there are the ones that aren't. This article from today's Los Angeles Times leads with a list of one guy's experience in L.A.:

  Scott Sing has had a tire iron hurled at him, a water bottle thrown at his… Read More

• Like a spam filter for your mailbox

  Knock that junk off 11

  Posted 2 years, 8 months ago

  Washington state is one of a half dozen states considering legislation this year to create a "do not mail" list for residents, similar to the feds' popular "do not call" registry.

  And like the telemarketing industry's cries that it would be utterly destroyed and millions of contented telemarketers would be out of a job, similar forces are mobilizing against the "do not mail" bills, including the Direct Marketing Association, the mail carriers' union, and others who argue that junk mail is simultaneously essential, irreplaceable, and innocuous.

  Bollocks.

• Move Thyself: A roundup of pedal-powered news in the new year

  A pedal-tastic roundup 8

  Posted 2 years, 10 months ago

  On a personal new year's note, I can't help but mention the only-months-old but hopelessly addictive new habit I know I'll be nursing throughout the year: mountain biking at night.

  

  No idea why I only started doing this recently, and in the winter no less, but there you go. And since I splurged on a set of burly studded mountain-bike tires that should be arriving any day now, snow and ice riding on both trail and street at all hours are up next. That, and on snowmobile trails.

  Any others out there who… Read More

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Todd Hymas Samkara’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Voucher, schmoucher

  Dan Akst contends that a program of school vouchers is what's needed to solve this country's sprawl problem by encouraging otherwise flight-prone would-be suburbanites to stay in the city, thereby easing the push to city outskirts. Well shucks. It's an interesting argument, for a minute at least. OK, less than a minute. After that, the argument can be seen for what it is: a vaguely environmental rationale to justify defunding public education, while perpetrating the rich-poor, class, and race divides in our society.

  School vouchers would neither improve schools, decrease pollution, nor curb sprawl -- the essay's central contentions. Not in the world of "Hobsonia" and its supermarkets, and not in real-life America. What vouchers would do is defund the public schools that need the most help, keep the vast array of suburbanites right where they are, and leave pollution completely untouched.

  The rest of this rebuttal can be seen here. On School choice could be an answer to sprawl posted 4 years, 1 month ago 24 Responses