Chevron's El Segundo Refinery In El Segundo, California, a city manager is fired after finding a secret, possibly illegal, backroom deal with Chevron to pay unusually low taxes in this company town.
One morning after a council meeting in December, Doug Willmore, El Segundo’s city manager, walked outside to his car and found a note. It was a warning for him and his family to get out of town.
“Who does something like that?” says Willmore, who had relocated from Salt Lake County, Utah, earlier that year. He says had he known the city had such close ties to Chevron Corporation, he probably would not have taken the job.
Tucked between a waste treatment plant and the largest oil refinery in California, the city of El Segundo just south of Los Angeles International Airport has earned a reputation over the years as a sort of “Mayberry by the Sea.” The town’s picturesque little league fields, antique streetlights and quaint holiday parades all help give it a hometown feel despite its beachfront industrial development. Continue reading Chevron’s Huge Tax Break Cost City Manager His Job
 Monju Nuclear Power Plant The United States deliberately allowed Japan access to the United States’ most secret nuclear weapons facilities while it transferred tens of billions of dollars worth of American tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium since the 1980s, a National Security News Service investigation reveals. These activities repeatedly violated U.S. laws regarding controls of sensitive nuclear materials that could be diverted to weapons programs in Japan. The NSNS investigation found that the United States has known about a secret nuclear weapons program in Japan since the 1960s, according to CIA reports. Continue reading United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium
 (Photo courtesy of the Pacific Legal Foundation) A unanimous Supreme Court ruling yesterday in favor of Mike and Chantell Sackett marks a significant victory for private property advocates. It also represents one of the biggest wins for the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) in its 30-year history as a nonprofit law firm working to rollback environmental laws and advance a broad conservative agenda.
For the PLF, the story of an Idaho couple getting strong-armed by the Environmental Protection Agency while trying to build their dream home represented far more than the interests of a single family and their dashed American dream. It was textbook PLF. Continue reading EPA Loses Major Supreme Court Decision on Wetland Enforcement
 © Copyright K A and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons License. After natural gas drilling began near their rural homes about 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, Carol Moten and her neighbors noticed that their well water began to smell. Then came the headaches, skin lesions, and diarrhea, in household after household. A two-year-old dog fell over dead.
“We’re talking about little children that have nosebleeds, cats that fall off windowsills,” she said.
Three years ago, Moten and her neighbor, Donald Allison, visited Dr. Amelia Pare in nearby McMurray for their skin infections. Allison’s health continued to deteriorate and earlier this month he died from what the neighborhood understood to be bone cancer. He was 46. Continue reading Cuomo and Corbett Ignore Health Concerns from Gas Fracking
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