Happy Valentine’s Day from ThinkProgress LGBT! (HT: Joe.My.God.)

The new eco-friendly buses have electric motors, and don’t use fuel of any kind, meaning they don’t produce emissions. Instead they are powered by a network of rechargeable batteries.

The buses cost $100,000, about the same as traditional buses, but they are quieter, cleaner, and cheaper to maintain.

“It doesn’t have a transmission. It has very few moving parts, and the vehicle is charged up overnight when the electric grid is being used the least so it’s off-peak,” said Bart Marksohn of WE Transport Inc.

The district is starting out with a one-bust test run over the next 60 days. If approved, the first electric buses will be on the roads in September 2012. The decision to go green was simple for district officials. As one put it, “In implementing this we’re only echoing what the students are learning — to care about their environment. So we’re just building upon what’s being taught in the classroom on a daily basis.”

Andrew Cuomo

The industry is pushing for the drilling process, also known as fracking, to take place not far from the Syracuse and New York City watersheds. This has caused some concern since fracking can harm the surrounding environment, poison nearby water sources, and even cause earthquakes. But the New York Daily News reports that drillers and utilities really want this to get started:

In pushing for state approval of hydrofracking, the natural gas industry has pumped $1.34 million into the coffers of New York politicians and their parties, a new study revealed. The donations were sprinkled around over the last four years as lawmakers and state officials debated whether to allow the controversial drilling process, formally known as hydraulic fracturing, in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation upstate, Common Cause New York said in its report.[...]

Common Cause’s study included not only gas drillers and producers, but some public utilities — including Con Edison and National Grid — that have stakes in gas distribution networks, Lerner said. The bulk of gas industry donations — some 75% — went to candidates for state legislature, including $448,359 given to Republican state Senate candidates and their campaign organizations. Another $217,901 was spent on Democratic candidates for state Senate and their campaign organizations. Gov. Cuomo’s campaign committee took in $153,816 from the gas industry, according to Common Cause.

The top ten recipients combined took in $231,557 in industry cash from January 2007 to October 2011, including $38,532 to the George Maziarz (R-Buffalo-Rochester), chair of the Senate’s Energy Committee, and $26,800 to Kevin Cahill (D-Ulster County), the chair of the Assembly’s Energy Committee.

The industry says it is only making these contributions to combat a well-funded effort on the other side. But as the donations show, they are also having to deal with a hesitant legislature which is discussing the extension of a fracking moratorium, not to mention some public pressure against the procedure.

The deadline for public comments on proposed fracking plans was Wednesday, January 11th. Environmental and pro-drilling groups submitted thousands of comments to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. A report is expected from the agency some time this year.

– Zachary Bernstein

Cuomo described his achievement on marriage as a “continuation of a legacy that I learned from Mario Cuomo as a progressive pioneer” and likened it to his father’s “fight on the death penalty, his fight on a woman’s right to choose”:

GQ: Let’s go back to marriage equality. So the timing was good. You had the momentum. You just said, “This has to be done”?

CUOMO: Look, there are issues that come across your desk…that you just say, “This is absurd.” Marriage equality changed life for people. When we did the gay-pride parade after the passage? I can’t tell you how many family members, friends, sisters, and brothers… It provided a level of acceptance for millions of people. And their families.

GQ: And you got the activists to work together—

CUOMO: Yeah. Because they were a fractured group. But I mean, you look at the injustice of the issue. [switches voices, mimicking the opposition] “You can’t get married if you’re gay.” Why? “Well, because you’re gay.” And? “And, well, you can’t make babies.” That’s the argument. Oh, really? So then we should change the law to say, “Only people who can and want to make babies can get married.” So an infertile man can’t. A woman who can’t, she can’t get married. People who don’t want to make a baby, they can’t get married. So let’s change the law so it says, “Only people who can and will make babies.” “Well, we don’t want to do that. You can get married if you don’t want to make a baby or if you can’t—except if you’re gay!” There’s no logic.

Once the state senate approved same-sex marriage on June 24, 2011, the number of Americans living in a state where gay and lesbian people can marry doubled.

The plan the legislature and Cuomo agreed on would have the rich paying less than they pay now.

It was widely celebrated earlier this week when New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) appeared to strike a deal “to raise taxes on the wealthy and slightly reduce them for the middle class.” “The deal reflects the first restructuring of the New York tax code in years and will net an additional $1.9 billion in revenues for the state in 2012,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

But ProPublica’s Marian Wang points out that Cuomo didn’t really agree to raise taxes on the rich. For the past few years, millionaires in New York have been paying a 6.85 percent state income tax rate rate plus a special surtax. The controversy over Cuomo resisting taxing the rich at a higher rate revolves around this special “millionaire’s tax” that had been put in place before he came into office.

Under the agreement between Cuomo and the legislature, high income New Yorkers will no longer be paying the surtax, though their rate will be higher than it would have been if the surtax had simply expired. But at the end of the day, they will be paying less than they were when the surtax was in place — meaning that they are actually getting a tax cut.

In fact, Wang noted that “individuals making between $500,000 and $2 million will pay 2.12 percent less in state income taxes for 2012.” She demonstrated this with the following chart:

So while it is true that the rich will be paying more than they would if the previous “millionaire’s tax” had simply expired, they will also be paying less than if that tax had been extended and less than they paid this year.

The survey found that more than eight in ten (84%) respondents describe health insurance exchanges as a “good idea” after reading a description of the proposed New York State SHOP (small business) Exchange. Additionally, more than three-fourths of respondents (76%) would consider using such a health insurance exchange when enrolling their employees in a health benefits program. Even more striking, among businesses that do not currently provide health insurance to their employees, 60% said they would be more likely to offer coverage if an exchange was available.

Look:

Interestingly, despite increasing health care costs, small businesses say they would consider providing health insurance in the future, with 75 percent of respondents agreeing “that offering health care benefits helps them attract and retain quality employees.”

The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 29 states “are making significant progress in creating Affordable Insurance Exchanges.”

Dimock residents’ water “started turning brown and making them sick, on woman’s water well spontaneously combusted, and horses and pets mysteriously began to lose their hair.” What’s more, the value of the land the residents lived on plummeted. The situation deteriorated so badly that by 2010, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) fined Cabot, shut down several of the wells, and required the company to permanently provide drinking water to 11 families in Dimock.

But this Wednesday, Cabot told Dimock residents that they’re officially on their own. Cabot ended daily deliveries of clean water this week, asserting that “Dimock’s water is safe to drink.” DEP gave Cabot permission last month to stop paying for the water, and a judge, who sits on the state’s Environmental Hearing Board, “declined to issue an emergency order compelling Cabot to continue the deliveries.” Now, Dimock families are left in a lurch, many unable to afford the provisions that run as high as $100 a day:

The decision left residents who don’t think their water is safe scrambling to find alternate sources.

“We are in desperate need here,” said Scott Ely, 42, who is married with three young children at home.

Ely, a former Cabot employee, said no option was appealing. A creek runs through his property, but the water hasn’t been tested and his wife doesn’t want it piped into their brand-new home. The Cabot contractor who had been supplying their water quoted him a price of $100 a day, he said.

“We’re sitting here with no answers, and I cannot believe Cabot got away with this,” he said.

Like those in Dimock, many Americans “signed millions of leases allowing companies allowing companies to drill for oil and natural gas on their land in recent years.” But as a New York Times review notes, “fewer than half the leases require companies to compensate landowners for water contamination after drilling begins;” “most leases grant gas companies broad rights to decide where they can cut down tress, store chemicals, build roads and drill;” the drilling companies “Rarely describe to landowners the potential environmental and other risks that federal laws require them to disclose” in leases; and the majority of leases “allow extensions without additional approval from landowners” so if landowners feel differently about the situation, “they may be out of luck.”

The Dimock situation should certainly serve as a warning to its neighboring states. In Ohio, GOP Gov. John Kasich is trying to open up Ohio’s state and federal parks to fracking. While it’s banned high-volume fracking, New York is currently considering some companies being fracking, a move that could potentially jeopardize the drinking-water supply for 9 million people in New York City and Syracuse. Hearings on the proposed regulations on the drilling drew 6,000 people to four public hearings and have spurred more than 10,600 public comments out of concern for the future of their water supply.

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Harold Steidel at a Rochester Wells Fargo Protest

One new initiative from the 99 Percent Movement is Occupy Our Homes, which aims to help victims of the foreclosure crisis. Although this effort has not been formerly named until now, communities have already seen remarkable success by planning to occupy homes threatened with foreclosure.

The Occupy protests got yet another victory last week in Rochester, New York. The Steidels contacted Take Back the Land and Occupy Rochester in September, and were soon joined by over 100 people who protested at Wells Fargo and foreclosure firm Steven J. Baum’s offices. If necessary, the groups threatened to encamp on the property; however, the mortgage giant Freddie Mac recently backed down, likely due to support from the public and Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY).

This focus on helping shielding families from foreclosures helps answer the question of how the demonstrators will regroup for the winter. From Salon:

“This is a shift from protesting Wall Street fraud to taking action on behalf of people who were harmed by it. It brings the movement into the neighborhoods and gives people a sense of what’s really at stake,” said Max Berger, one of the Occupy Our Homes organizers and a member of Occupy Wall Street’s movement-building working group. The backdrop for all this is a new study suggesting the foreclosure crisis is only half over, with 4 million homes in some stage of foreclosure.

In a city like Rochester, there is ample opportunity to take action on behalf of those in need. Rochester has one of the highest children’s poverty rates at 43 percent as well as a poor city school system where only 5 percent of high school graduates meet minimum standards for college, compared to 72 percent in wealthier districts.

Naked Capitalism called the New York Fed and confirmed that he is, in fact, an employee there. His LinkedIn profile identifies him as a Bank Examiner there. Naked Capitalism notes that his conduct appears to run afoul of the New York Fed’s Code of Conduct:

It is worrisome that a Fed employee would behave so unprofessionally, but it just as worrisome that the institution is hiring staffers who are unable to understand or empathize with people who are upset at the financial system. (HT: @JoshuaHol)

Photo credit: NYT

A daylong rally by City University of New York students against a planned tuition increase turned turbulent Monday evening when marchers ignored police requests to clear the lobby of a building at Baruch College where the university’s trustees were meeting and 15 people were arrested.[...]

Carlos Pazmino, 21, a City College student who helped organize the protest, said that after students began opening doors to the auditorium where the CUNY trustees were to hold a public hearing at 5 p.m., CUNY police officers surrounded the entrances and pushed back, using their batons, and that when students formed a line to push past, the officers began hitting the students with the batons.

“I saw two people knocked down by cops,” Mr. Pazmino said. “They were arrested and one guy’s head was bleeding.”

Watch a video of the confrontation:

During the fighting, a crowd of 200 to 300 protesters outside pounded on the lobby windows and shouted, “Shame!”

The group Students United For a Free CUNY, who began the protest, is demanding a repeal of a $300 tuition increase planned each year for the next five years. The protest began in the school cafeteria at lunchtime and moved to Madison Square Park later in the afternoon, where protesters chanted, “Banks got bailed out, students got sold out.”

Although organizers say the CUNY protest is independent of Occupy Wall Street, they support each other and share similar aims. A central tenet of the 99 Percent Movement has been that average Americans struggling to make mortgage and student loan payments deserve the same help from the government that big banks received. At the afternoon rally, a group of New York University and New School students joined CUNY students as part of the Occupy Student Debt campaign, which aims to get a million students to pledge that they will not pay back their loans.

And now they have one more thing in common: in the past few weeks students who have protested at their universities as part of the 99 Percent Movement have encountered brutal treatment from school authorities and the police. Now their counterparts working independently within their own universities to lobby leaders to hear their case are receiving the same violent response.