BAYTOWN, Texas - Union workers say they are prepared to strike at Baytown's ExxonMobil refinery due to unresolved safety issues.

The local chapter of the United Steelworkers Union notified the company of its plans to strike in less than 60 days.

A union spokesman said workers are asking for an update on safety measures and an improvement in education efforts. They claim the same measures were implemented at the company's refineries in Beaumont and Louisiana.

The company has about 56 days to respond to union demands, but a worker said the union has already brought in trailers and other equipment in preparation for a strike.
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Last November, the Houston Chronicle completed a database analysis of the changing population patterns of the state and the changing voting proclivities of key demographic blocs. Our conclusion: Texas would become competitive by 2020 and a true toss-up state by 2024 if current turnout and partisan voting patterns continued.

But what if Latinos — historically a group that votes with far less frequency than the rest of the population — started voting at the same rate as everyone else, as Battleground Texas is seeking to accomplish? How much would that narrow the Republicans’ advantage in Texas?

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Now we realize that’s easier said than done, but here are the cold, clear numbers of what might have been …

Mitt Romney carried Texas by a margin of 15.8 percent over President Obama in 2012. If Latino citizens had voted at the same rate as non-Hispanic whites, Romney’s victory margin would shrink to 5.4 points. This shift would have made Texas the state with the second smallest margin of victory of any state Mitt Romney won, behind battleground North Carolina and just ahead of Georgia.

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In the past year, Texas women watched as lawmakers slashed funding for family planning and passed the "Sonogram Law" which, you may recall, forces women seeking abortions to undergo a sonogram a full 24 hours before the procedure. In retrospect, the 2011 legislative session basically operated as a reminder to Texas women that while we can have babies, we can't have a voice.

Now, in reaction to the lack of available family planning resources, New American Media is reporting on women in Texas border towns who travel to Mexico to obtain Misoprostol (also known as Cytotec), an ulcer medication that, when taken in high doses, can terminate unwanted pregnancies in the first nine weeks. The drug works quickly, is (relatively) cheap and available without a prescription.

But despite Misoprostol's effectiveness, healthcare providers worry about the lack of medical supervision for women taking the drug. Pharmacists in Mexico are not required to be trained or licensed and women often fail to visit the doctor for follow-up exams.

As the radical measures taken against family planning continue to be implemented, there is no doubt that women will continue to find radical ways to get around them.

Tuesday February 26, 2013
Battleground Texas - Jeremy Bird
Jeremy Bird describes his Texas initiative to get African Americans, Hispanics, women and young people out to the polls.

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"We're still escorting them, they're about two hundred miles (321 kilometres) north of 60 and the Sun Laurel, their tanker, is another two hundred miles north of the Nisshin Maru," he said.

"So, they're on a course direct for Indonesia.

"So hopefully that means they're going home. We don't know for sure but they're definitely leaving the whaling ground".

Sea Shepherd claims the fleet killed no more than 75 whales, the smallest haul in the history of its Antarctic hunt.

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A bill recently introduced in the Texas state house aims to reward employers who violate Obamacare, offering subsidies to any company that uses religious objection as an excuse for denying its employees copay-free contraception.

House Bill 649, introduced by state Rep. Jonathan Stickland (R), was apparently inspired by the controversy over craft chain store Hobby Lobby. That store sued to deny its employees contraception coverage, citing its male president’s religious objections. But since Hobby Lobby, and companies like it, will be forced to pay a fine for violating the law, Strickland wants to compensate them with tax breaks.

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By offering to help compensate these companies, Strickland is accepting a drastic cut in funding to the Texas government. His plan proposes letting organizations like Hobby Lobby off the hook for state taxes up to the amount they owe in federal penalties. Since Hobby Lobby is estimated to owe a fine of $1.3 million a day (more, in a year, than it would be paying in state taxes), Hobby Lobby would get a pass on giving a single cent to the state of Texas.

But more importantly, it’s unlikely that this bill would survive if it went to the courts. Federal law does not simply supersede conflicting state law, it also invalidates state laws that “stand… as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress” — a doctrine known as “obstacle preemption.” Since the entire point of this Texas bill is to thwart a federal law, it would likely run afoul of this obstacle preemption.

Some pet-owning web users reacted with shock this week to a Swedish insurance company’s new advertisement featuring cats skydiving, set to the soothing sounds of artist R. Kelly. The uproar was actually enough to get CNN’s attention.

Reached by reporters, the insurance company Folksam assured the network that the cats didn’t really go skydiving.

The company claimed ad was created for a customer named Eve, who insures her cat through Folksam, using green screen technology to digitally place the cats into a video of people doing the real skydiving.

Still, it is pretty cute.