May all beings be filled with joy and peace.
May all beings everywhere,
the strong and the weak,
the great and the small,
the mean and the powerful,
the short and the long,
the subtle and the gross:
May all beings everywhere,
seen and unseen,
dwelling far off or nearby,
being or waiting to become:
May all be filled with lasting joy.Your life will bring heaven to earth.
Let no one deceive another.
Let no one anywhere despise another.
Let no one out of anger or resentment
wish suffering on anyone at all.
Just as a mother with her own life
protects her child, her only child, from harm,
so within yourself let grow
a boundless love for all creatures.
Let your love flow outward through the universe,
to its height, its depth, its broad extent,
a limitless love, without hatred or enmity.
Then as you stand or walk,
sit or lie down,
as long as you are awake,
strive for this with a one-pointed mind:
The main oil lobby group, the American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement: "There is no compelling scientific evidence for the policy decision to develop more stringent standards. The existing standards are working and will continue improving air quality."
James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is the Senate's biggest doubter of climate change, said the new rules were the first wave of "an onslaught of post-election rulemakings that will place considerable burdens on our struggling economy and eventually push us over the 'regulatory cliff'".The lethal impacts of air pollution can be seen worldwide, as John Vidal writes in the Guardian:
In 2010, more than 2.1m people in Asia died prematurely from air pollution, mostly from the minute particles of diesel soot and gasses emitted from cars and lorries. Other causes of air pollution include construction and industry. Of these deaths, says the study published in The Lancet, 1.2 million were in east Asia and China, and 712,000 in south Asia, including India.
Worldwide, a record 3.2m people a year died from air pollution in 2010, compared with 800,000 in 2000. It now ranks for the first time in the world's top 10 list of killer diseases, says the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study.Link to complete article:
Senate Republicans announced today they have formally reached a deal with Rodney Tom and Tim Sheldon (of the 48th and 35th Districts, respectively) to run Washington’s Senate for the next two years, which means that Democrats will be in the minority for the first time since the 2006 session.
At a press conference in Olympia, Tom and Sheldon confirmed that they have signed an agreement to form a “Senate Majority Coalition Caucus” which will consist of the two of them plus the twenty-three Republican senators. The Republicans have all agreed to allow Tom to serve as their majority leader and Sheldon to serve as the Senate’s president pro tempore. (The president pro tempore presides when the Lieutenant Governor is not available to run the Senate.)In return for getting these plum assignments as Majority Leader and president pro tem, Sens.Tom and Sheldon allowed Republicans to set up committee assignments for the state Senate. And not surprisingly, Republicans took committees like Ways and Means (essentially the main budget and tax-writing committee), Commerce and Labor, Education, Government Operations and Health Care for themselves. In other words, all of the main budgetary committees for states. Incoming Democratic Governor Jay Inslee will now have to contend with Republicans to get his budget passed, despite the election results.
