7 Facts about Building 7
1) If fire caused Building 7 to collapse, it would be the first ever fire-induced collapse of a steel-frame high-rise.
2) Building 7’s collapse was not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.
3) According to a Zogby poll in 2006, 43% of Americans did not know about Building 7.
4) It took the federal government seven years to conduct an investigation and issue a report for Building 7.
5) 1,500+ architects and engineers have signed a petition calling for a new investigation into the destruction of Building 7, specifying that it should include a full inquiry into the possible use of explosives.
After all, as of last week, as per the website Zero Hedge and data analysts Capital IQ, 29 public companies -- including Bank of America, JP Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, GE and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway -- each have more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury. And as Citigroup's Peter Orszag, former director of Obama's Office of Management and Budget, wrote on July 13, we need to be "as bold as we can." Says he, "The right policy response is a combination of more aggressive attention to bolster the job market now and much more deficit reduction enacted now to take effect in a few years."
So why not make a sacrifice bigger than a nice hefty grant to Mount Vernon or the historic location of your choice and commit instead to finding employment for at least some of the 14.1 million out of work? After all, the Republicans keep telling us these corporations and their rich executives and stockholders need every last one of their outlandish tax breaks -- because they're job creators!
In this chapter of that larger tragicomedy, lawmakers whose campaigns are underwritten by agribusinesses have used billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize those agribusinesses' specific commodities (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc.) that are the key ingredients of unhealthy food. Not surprisingly, the subsidies have manufactured a price inequality that helps junk food undersell nutritious-but-unsubsidized foodstuffs like fruits and vegetables. The end result is that recession-battered consumers are increasingly forced by economic circumstance to "choose" the lower-priced junk food that their taxes support.
Corn -- which is processed into the junk-food staple corn syrup and which feeds the livestock that produce meat -- exemplifies the scheme.
While getting blotto at some Bayview, Idaho bar the other day, 28-year-old white supremacist Daren C. Abbey allegedly threatened and tried to fight Marlon L. Baker, an African-American and rumored "champion" of the Spokane Boxing Club. Bet he regrets that now.
In 2007, little seemed problematic about the energy-efficient light bulb or the law signed by President George W. Bush, which called for the incandescent bulb to be phased out in favor its energy-saving counterpart. But that was before the rise of the Tea Party.
Suddenly, saving the old-fashioned 100-watt bulb -- which wastes most of the energy it consumes and costs households more in energy bills than the new model -- has become a matter of personal liberty. And so, House Republicans on Monday will seek to repeal the 2007 law, which calls for the phaseout to begin in January 2012.
The law has been dubbed "the light bulb ban" by activists on the right and has struck a Tea Party nerve. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann have all called it government intrusion par excellence. It essentially mandates that no new bulbs can go on the market after January '12 without meeting a new, higher standard of energy efficiency. Bulbs that don't meet the standard but that are already in stores won't be taken off shelves.
"It is one of those issues out there that just inflames people," Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, co-sponsor of the bill that would reverse the phaseout, told Politico. "What in the world were you doing restricting the kinds of light bulbs in my home?"
