Articles by Corey McKrill

Being exploited? Exploit them back.

Tomorrow, Alaska's primary election will include an important ballot measure that imposes new regulations and taxes on the cruise ship industry. For environmental protection, it includes beefed-up regulations that will hold cruise corporations more accountable to Alaska's strict pollution controls, as well as allowing civil action suits against violators.

For economic growth, it proposes a head tax on all cruise passengers coming into the state, the revenue of which will be used for services and infrastructure related to the cruise industry. Further, it will tax income from onboard gambling and force companies to pay corporate income tax. And it will require onboard tour sellers to disclose how much they mark up tours from the price offered directly from the tour operators on shore.

The Anchorage Daily News has a good piece about it here. Full text of the measure here (it's not that long). More below the fold.

Going to jail for the environment

Today I received an email from my friend Kate, with whom I studied environmental politics and geology in college, and who now works for the Cascadia Wildlands Project in Eugene, Oregon. On Monday, she was arrested in Medford, Oregon, during a protest against the roadless-area logging recently approved by the Bush Administration. Below the fold is her letter describing her experience and explaining why she chose to participate in an act of civil disobedience. I've added links to relevant bits of background.

Our ongoing environmental and economic setbacks are the successes of the current administration’s co

Anyone who's been following the systematic dismantling of environmental protection occurring in this country knows that the Bush administration is anything but incompetent. The people in power have very specific goals, and a lack of competence wouldn't have gotten them as far as they are today. Over on AlterNet, George Lakoff explains the philosophy that has brought about our recent failures and setbacks:

The conservative vision for government is to shrink it - to "starve the beast" in Conservative Grover Norquist's words. The conservative tagline for this rationale is that "you can spend your money better than the government can." Social programs are considered unnecessary or "discretionary" since the primary role of government is to defend the country's border and police its interior. Stewardship of the commons, such as allocation of healthcare or energy policy, is left to people's own initiative within the free market. Where profits cannot be made -- conservation, healthcare for the poor -- charity is meant to replace justice and the government should not be involved.

So the federal response to Katrina was actually a success:

Net Neutrality: Why you should care

Congress is expected to vote this week on the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006," which, in all its Orwellian glory, is written to allow internet companies to compartmentalize the web, restricting access to domains that can't or won't pay a fee to be able to load at full speed. It undermines the concept of net neutrality, whereby internet users have equal access to any and every website, be it a corporate media node or a personal blog.

According to Vint Cerf, one of the "founding fathers" of the internet, this is bad: