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Author: Leslie Eastman

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Leslie Eastman

I am an Environmental Health and Safety Professional, as well as a science/technical writer for a variety of news and professional publications. I have been a citizen activist since 2009, and am one of the co-founders of the San Diego-based group, Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 13, 2016 1 Comment
The Obama Administration's foreign policies have lit fires all over the world. Mid-2015, we covered the civil war in Yemen. As a reminder:
The fighting in Yemen pits the Houthis and allied troops loyal to Saleh against southern separatists, local and tribal militias, Sunni Islamic militants and loyalists of exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, in September.
Now, one U.S. Navy ship has become the target of a missile attack for the second time in four days.
...The attack was again aimed at the USS Mason, a guided-missile destroyer that also came under fire Sunday night, said Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. The coastal defense cruise missile was launched at about 6 p.m. from south of the coastal city Al Hudaydah, in an area of western Yemen held by the Houthis. The rebel group pushed the central government out of power in the capital city of Sanaa in 2014, and has resisted U.S.-backed efforts by Saudi Arabia to restore President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 12, 2016 1 Comment
Reports have surfaced that a new pathogen has made the hop from South America to the Caribbean, and may soon head to our shores. Researchers at the University of Florida have identified the Mayaro virus in an 8-year-old Haitian, the first reported case in that region.
"The virus we detected is genetically different from the ones that have been described recently in Brazil, and we don't know yet if it is unique to Haiti or if it is a recombinant strain from different types of Mayaro viruses," Dr. John Lednicky, an associate professor in the environmental and global health department at the University of Florida, said in a press release.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 11, 2016 20 Comments
President Obama recently touted the “Paris Agreement” as a “turning point” in his misguided attempt to save the planet from climate change. However, the rules, regulations, and fiscal schemes associated with the implementation mean that airlines are being hijacked into making the "first international aviation climate deal." In a nutshell, airlines will pay a tax to fund projects that cut carbon pollution, such as wind farms or solar-power plants. Ultimately, this means the UN will redistribute as much as $24 billion by 2035 from air travelers to the politically-connected environmental activists.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 11, 2016 24 Comments
One of the biggest surprises of the Sunday debate was the moment that Obamacare came up as an audience-member question. Hillary Clinton basically said she'll mend it, and Donald Trump vowed to end it. Gone are the days of, "if like your plan, you'll keep your plan."

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 08, 2016 8 Comments
Is there anything that won't cause climate change? A new report indicates that a boom in legalized marijuana farming could come with a high carbon cost.
It turns out that every little joint and edible adds up. A new report finds that marijuana cultivation accounts for as much as 1 percent of energy use in states such as Colorado and Washington. The electricity needed to illuminate, dehumidify, and air-condition large growing operations may soon rival the expenditures from big data centers, which themselves emit an estimated 100 million metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. The marijuana industry’s energy use “is immense,” said the report’s author, Kelly Crandall, an analyst for EQ Research, a clean energy policy research institute. Her report found that a large grow operation can have energy expenditures of 2,000 watts per square meter because of its constant need for lighting and ventilation.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 07, 2016 19 Comments
Nothing is safe from race-based drama! This week started with Aleister reporting on Penn State's costume-shaming campaign targeting Halloween garb. However, despite the fact that a Muslim leader originally commissioned the work and the opera has been performed over 1,000 times since its debut in 1886, a British university is shutting down a musical based on Giuseppi Verdi's Aida due amid charges of...cultural appropriation.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 06, 2016 1 Comment
While tensions related to the fatal shooting of a a black man by El Cajon police have subsided, it appears the Los Angeles Police Department has also became a center of #BlackLivesMatters demonstrations. The triggering incidents seem similar to the one in the San Diego, in which Alfred Olango took a shooting stance with an e-cigarette. However, both of these situations involved either a gun or an object that more closely resembled an actual weapons.
The Los Angeles police chief on Monday defended the use of deadly force against two men in separate fatal shootings over the weekend, saying one turned toward officers with a gun and the other pointed what looked like a real gun at police.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 04, 2016 5 Comments
In September, we noted that Avengers writer Joss Whedon gathered a few of his celebrity friends and produced "Save the Day” as a way to encourage people to show up at the polls come Election Day. While it was not hard to see the production as pro-Clinton, a group of talented deplorable citizens gathered together to make the best political ad to date in response the glitterati's pleas.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 03, 2016 8 Comments
State approaches to disenfranchising felons vary widely. For example, in Maine and Vermont, felons never lose their right to vote, even while they are incarcerated. California automatically restores voting rights once the sentence has been completed. However, Governor Jerry Brown has taken felon voting rights for some inmates to a whole, new level.
Gov. Jerry Brown has agreed to restore the voting rights of convicted felons serving time in county jails. The bill that Brown announced signing Wednesday also reinstates the voting eligibility of felons on probation or under community supervision beginning next year. It does not affect those in state or federal prisons. AB2466 stems from California’s criminal justice realignment, which led to some people convicted of low-level felonies serving time in county jails.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 03, 2016 4 Comments
Twisting Title IX, by Robert L. Shibley, describes how Title IX, a 1972 law intended to ban sex discrimination in education, morphed into a monster-storm of regulations and guidelines that have chilled free speech on campuses across the nation. The importance of the information that this book coveys cannot be over-stated, because if conditions are left unchecked,a blizzard of special snowflakes will inundate our schools. Shibley, the executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), has over 13 years of experience aiding students and faculty members at hundreds of institutions contend with slew of unintended Title IX consequences. His book begins with a brief history of how Title IX originated, why the focus changed from sports teams to sexual behavior, and describes the disturbing consequences of the implementation of vague and politically correct guidelines.
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