Who said anything about salinity change as the only thing doing the damage? The whole process ignores microscopic organisms from the intake to the filters to the osmosis process.

You might be able to push it up a little locally if you dump the salt in a harbor or something... soooo... don't do that. duh.

And that is exactly what they will do because it is the cheapest option that the lowest bid waste contractor has. It wouldn't be the first time humans created a toxic waste dump...

I can see another aspect besides the waste in electricity... The microscopic life in the ocean that is the foundation of the food chain that will eventually lead to us is not considered in the environmental assessments. They are only worried about the higher multi-cellular life. The ocean is one of the most diverse places on Earth. I can see us fucking up that diversity much like we fucked up everything else we touched in nature.

Five hundred IT workers at SCE were cut, and many had to train their replacements.

It is at this point that I would tell them to piss up a rope and suck on the dry end until it was wet...

It just adds insult to injury to expect a person you tell you are firing that they have to train their replacement. If forced by contract I would do the bare minimum required by the contract. Nothing compels me to divulge everything. They are, after all, supposed to be qualified for the job right?

Fines don't work at all. It is built into the price as a "cost of doing business".

Hit the corporation where it really does hurt. Suspend their corporate charter. That removes the legal protections the corporation has allowing the shareholders as well as the executives to be held liable for illegal misdoings. You will quickly see a change in their behavior once the shareholders can be sued for enabling the bad conduct...

Cheating on tests is not criminal.

It is when money is tied to it like it was in this case. You are acting as if it was the students that were cheating. It was the teachers changing wrong answers on the tests after the students were done. They did it for the money plain and simple since they got bonuses based on those test results.

There was a joke on NPR the other day it went like this:

3 economics statisticians went deer hunting. The first just missed the back end of the deer while the second just missed the front. The third yelled, "We got him!"

What this shows is there is always a margin of error and as long as the numbers are within that range they got it.

How on earth does cheating on some tests in any way compare to racketeering?

Because their salaries, bonuses and the school's reputation (hence more funding for being a "good school") were based on the test results and they all colluded to change the scores to achieve the higher salaries and bonuses. In short, they colluded to illegally enriched themselves.

We've been obsessing over test scores for a while now and it doesn't seem to improve the quality of education.

That is the fault of the No Child Left Behind Act. The act that tied teacher / administrator salaries to the test results. Public schools across the nation stopped worrying about a kids learning and worried about their bottom line. That leads to doing whatever it takes to make sure the test results are positive.

Only by people like me who are constituents....

Earl Ray IMO is a "company man" from Logan County (the county where the most mountain top removal is happening). He was the president of the Senate here for ages before taking over for Manchin. It needs to be stated that this year was the first in over 3 decades that both houses went Republican in WV and they have done nothing but passing idiotic laws to include getting rid of the conceal-carry laws and gutting the above ground storage tank law that was passed after the Freedom spill that affected 300,000 residents and businesses for weeks.

The problem is that even though the governor has line item veto all it takes is a simple majority to override that veto.

I too started on a Coco 3. And worse, I recently found this:

http://www.coco4.com/vcc/

High pressure commission sales staff

It is great fun when they mob yo at the door with, "Can I help you?" to answer, "No thanks. Just shoplifting." They then follow you real close after that...

Many states, including my home state of WV, have "stand your ground" laws where the bar to use deadly force is very low. In WV all that is required is a notice posted "Private property. No trespassing. Violators will be shot" notice. It is quite silly really. Our stand your ground law puts Florida's to shame!

Oh it gets worse...

In order to download this you are required to sign up for their spam newsletter AND their forum as well as register it. So in exchange for your personal email and other personal info they are giving you this "free" tool...

Protected ones are race, religion, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation.

Sexual orientation isn't one of the "protected species". Sex (meaning mostly female) is though. Disability also isn't enumerated in the Constitution however there is the Americans with Disability Act that covers them. So to restate it they are race, religion, age, national origin and sex.

Geolocated of course...