News Headlines for Monday with Richard Tewes

News headlines from around the world, nation, region and state.

Will a California Electric Auto Maker
Get a Federal Bailout?

Today in Washington DC congress grilled top executives from the nation’s big 3 auto makers about the 25 billion dollar bailout they’ve requested. In a minute Paul Emery talks with a California electric car manufacturer about the bailout, but first here’s congressman Gary Ackerman, Democrat from New York chiding the heads of GM, Ford and Chrysler for their transportation choices.

The Details of Cuts in
Nevada County Library Services

Yesterday the Nevada County Board of Supervisors voted to cut funding to county libraries. Paul Emery talked to county librarian Mary Ann Trygg about how these cuts will affect library services.

The Latest Information on
the Proposed Idaho-Maryland Mine

Alan Stahler attended the latest meeting on the proposed Idaho-Maryland mine and shares his observations.

A Conversation with Fryer Fat
as Auto Fuel Entrepreneurs

The first known use of vegetable oil as fuel in a diesel engine was for a demonstration at the 1900 World’s Fair. Since then use of vegetable oil as vehicle fuel has been episodic and correlates with fuel shortages or periods of high gas and diesel prices. In recent years as energy independence and concern over Green House gas emissions have become more pressing, oil from deep fat fryers in restaurants and potato chip factories has been finding its way into automobile tanks, and in Sacramento over the past three years demand for filtered vegetable oil has tripled. Brian Bahouth moderated a live call-in discussion with Rich Porras co-owner of the company Grease Kings and Steven Bash who is a longtime biodiesel organizer and is working to create a vegetable oil coop in Sacramento.

Gay Civil Rights

This past weekend, tens if not hundreds of thousands of protestors nationwide took to the streets to protest California's passing of Proposition 8. Many said that Prop 8 passed because of the religious beliefs of those who supported it. But if religion was in the background, the public arguments used in favor of Prop 8 were all utilitarian. So those who are battling against support of Prop 8 have three fronts on which to attack bigotry against homosexuals: first, there is the religious bigotry which thinks that God has condemned homosexuality; second there is the intellectual failure to distinguish between uncomfortable consequences that might result from an action, and what justice requires; third, there is the moral failure that comes from not seeing that justice requires inclusion, not exclusion; in other words, that justice requires equality.