Good morning, everyone, and Happy St. Patrick's Day. We are supposed to hit between 65 and 70 degrees today with at least the early part sunny. Time to get the little greenhouse put together and the plastic tents over the containers.

I also hope that that nuclear plant that is planned for your part of Colorado isn't built, Lois. This story, like the ones I linked to yesterday, illustrates the major problem. Companies have a built in economic incentive to minimize the risks to the public and the environment. And we all know that government agencies are not as effective as they should be at regulating any large industry in this country. Consider how the Repthuglicans in congress are trying to water down or cancel the regulatory legislation designed to prevent another financial meltdown. For profit companies would rather spend money lobbying for loose (or no) regulation than spend that money on safety.

Will wonders never cease? Finally someone has confirmed my deeply held suspicion that the 'any job is better than none' mantra is total crap. One of the news shows had a garbled throwaway line on this last night.

According to Keith Olberman's blog (by way of nakedcapitalist), Wikileaks strikes again--this time with information (never mentioned in the mainstream media) that there have been repeated problems with the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant itself and Japanese regulators failed to deal with the problems as they were revealed. I wish it didn't sound so much like our very dysfunctional system of (non-) regulation.