Now, in their “cost cutting” zeal, Congressional Republicans want to deep-six this “between the census” program, which has been around in varying forms since the 1850s. The survey helps define the best ways for the government to spend over $400 billion in funds for so-called “social programs” from heating assistance to job training.

Last week, the Republicans in the House voted to eliminate the survey. Daniel Webster, a first-term Republican from Florida, said “This is a program that intrudes on people’s lives, just like the Environmental Protection Agency or the bank regulators. We’re spending $70 per person to fill this out. That’s just not cost effective, especially since in the end, this is not a scientific survey. It’s a random survey.” Let’s just ignore the fact that statisticians say random surveys are the most scientific of all.

Every year, about three million households participate. The survey gathers information about demographics, habits, languages spoken, occupation, health care and insurance, housing situation, ages, disabilities, education levels, income, a whole range of factors that impact and shape our lives. The survey does not ask about political affiliation or opinions on political subjects. It is just the nuts-and-bolts of living and surviving, thriving or barely getting by. And, I’m sorry to disagree with Mr. Webster, but the woman who was taking the survey sure wasn’t being paid $420 an hour for her time with my family. So, who wrote to their Congresspersons and objected to the survey? Technically, participation is mandatory. But it was not presented to us that way. The woman who took the survey did not mention penalties or fines for not participating, she just explained what the survey was for and how it helped the community.

The Repubs like to cite the question about flush toilets as offensively intrusive. It is used to assess groundwater contamination in areas where there are no sewer systems (and no laws like Vermont’s that specify where septic systems can be placed.) It helps assess the possible need for a sewer system to be extended beyond its present limits to include newer development.

And in the most egregious aspect of the stupidity of the Repubs, most of the questions on the survey were generated because of laws passed by Congress, including the newest ones about computers and internet access, which was specifically requested by Congress in 2008. Mr. Webster himself cites the survey in posting to his constituents on his Congressional webpage.

It seems that Speaker Boehner, who used to hand out lobbyist checks on the floor of the House in his early days, forgot to instruct his caucus as to who they actually represent.

McDonalds does not count steeples to determine where they will site a new store. They use the American Community Survey. Retail chains use it. The United States Chamber of Commerce uses it. In fact, anyone with half a brain, in both business and government, uses it. You can probably cite instances in your own community where someone did something totally stupid…like my city deciding it wanted to put a methadone clinic up at the hospital, when most of the need is on the other side of the city. Those are the people who didn’t use the survey, the ones with less than half a brain.

In addition to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Retail Federation and the National Association of Home Builders are screaming over this ridiculous idea to end a survey that so many of their members depend upon. So are economic development organizations, state education departments that determine where to site community colleges and what programs to offer, factory owners who want to locate where there are available employees with the needed educations and skills.

But, in typical Tea Party blindness, Rep. Webster insists that “What really promotes business in this country is liberty, not demand for information.”

Really?

Businesses need information. Without knowing where the customers are, they don’t know where to locate their businesses. Without knowing where the customers are, they don’t know how to target their advertising. Without knowing where the workers are, they don’t know where to locate their factories.

Governments and community assistance groups need information. Without knowing where the people with no health insurance are concentrated, they don’t know where to locate free or assisted clinics. Without knowing where the uninsulated houses are, they don’t know where to target their information about weatherization projects and loans. Without knowing where the children are, they don’t know where to locate a day care facility. Everything from bus routes to zoning to border crossings to the development of broadband capability and placement of cell phone towers depends on information generated by the American Community Survey.

Webster and his anti-government allies are even claiming that the survey is unconstitutional. The actual census is called for in the Constitution, and the courts have ruled that the ACS is also constitutional. It might be nice if some of these tea party folks learned to read and how to research the law and court rulings.

The fact is, Webster is part of the right wing anti-government faction that joined government to dismantle it, and the people who oppose this survey are the same kind that killed a census taker in 2010 – people who believe the whole extreme end of the right wing that preaches how the government under any Democrat is going to take away your guns and your rights, even though it was a Republican administration that crafted and forced the Patriot Act which really did take away our rights, and it has been every Republican president since Nixon who has authorized the domestic spying capabilities of intelligence agencies, after the Democratic presidents voided them. The problem isn’t the intrusiveness of the survey, it’s the culture of fear of the government that the right wing nurtures and Republicans take advantage of to get votes.

Some people are suggesting that the survey be made purely voluntary, but a voluntary survey would generate bad data and probably result in whole swaths of the country never being surveyed. Whether or not there is a compromise on the House bill is entirely up to the Senate and Majority Leader Harry Reid. There would be worse things in the world than Reid deciding to shelve this bill. Just think about it….with most of the business community supporting the survey, it certainly wouldn’t hurt the Democratic Party to show who really supports business in this country.

Related articles

• Congressional Threat to Every Investor, Business Owner and Citizen(ritholtz.com)

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• Republicans Declare War On Accurate Economic Data from Calculated Risk(jhaines6.wordpress.com)

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• The GOP’s anti-research agenda (maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com)
• News Analysis: The Debate Over the American Community Survey (nytimes.com)
• Republicans Declare War On Accurate Economic Data (businessinsider.com)
• Operating in the Dark (nytimes.com)
• Government by Paranoiacs: The U.S. Census Edition (mikethemadbiologist.com)
• House attack on survey is nonsensical (mysanantonio.com)
• Census savings would put us on track for big waste (kansascity.com)

Adult Humboldt Penguin

You may remember that back in March, a one-year-old Humboldt penguin staged its own version of “The Great Escape” in Tokyo, climbing a 13’ rock wall and shimmying through a barbed wire fence to reach the relative freedom of Tokyo Bay. Handlers from the Tokyo Sea Life Park fanned out around the bay for the next couple of weeks, chasing down sightings and attempting to capture the adventurous little guy.

They failed.

Rainbow Bridge, Tokyo Bay

Many people around the world have feared for its safety and health – after all, Tokyo Bay is a major seaport, surrounded right down to the water’s edge by one of the largest cities in the world. Not to mention that the Humboldt penguin, which when grown measures between 22–28” long and a weighs between 8-13 pounds, is native to the coasts of Peru and Chile, nowhere near Japan.

#337, however, has beaten all the odds up to now. He turned up again on May 7^th, swimming peacefully as he was monitored by a Tokyo Coast Guard patrol boat and a rescue craft for about an hour. When they moved in for the capture, it promptly proceeded to evade them and all they got was this picture.

Penguin #337 taken May 7, 2012

 REUTERS/Tokyo Coast Guard Office/Handout

“You can see it’s got the same ring around its flipper and identical facial patterns,” said Kazuhiro Sakamoto, deputy director of the Tokyo Sea Life Park, when shown the video of the happy escapee taken by the Coast Guard.

“It didn’t look like it has gotten thinner over the past two months, or been without food. It doesn’t seem to be any weaker. So it looks as if it’s been living quite happily in the middle of Tokyo Bay.” The bird is probably feeding on small fish in the bay during daylight hours and returning to the shore at night to rest somewhere along the bay, keepers said.

The penguin, which as a juvenile doesn’t yet show the characteristics that would enable its gender to be determined, was hatched in 2011. It had shared life in a rocky outdoor enclosure at the aquarium with 135 other Humboldts and a number of other penguins prior to its escape. Sakamoto attributed its flight to a sense of adventure.

FURTHER INFORMATION FOR THE CURIOUS

Humboldt Penguins from Wikipedia

Tokyo Bay Ecosystem

Related articles

• Escapee penguin sought in Tokyo (bbc.co.uk)
• Penguin goes walk-about in Tokyo (nzherald.co.nz)
• Japanese keepers discontinue hunt for missing penguin (rawstory.com)

Map showing Bolsa Chica wetlands

Friday (4/27/12) a 6-foot, black-and-white common dolphin was spotted in a channel of the Bolsa Chica wetlands Ecological Reserve. Peter Wallerstein of Marine Animal Rescue said Sunday that the dolphin looks healthy, but a bit disoriented. Observers have noted that it’s reactions are fast, it’s showing no signs of distress, and that it won’t let any humans near it.

The Bolsa Chica dolphin

Wildlife experts on paddleboards managed to coax the dolphin toward the open sea Saturday, but it got spooked by another pair of dolphins at the entrance and fled back into the wetlands. Wallerstein said rescuers might try again today (4/30/12), but they’re hoping it will leave on its own, now that it’s been shown the way.

I think it’s trying to get to Disneyland… it’s only 11 miles inland as the crow flies!

Insulamon Palawanense

Four new species of brilliantly hued freshwater river crabs have been identified by Hendrik Freitag of the Senckenberg Museum of Zoology in Dresden, Germany. In a recently published study Freitag described the small crabs, which live in the freshwater creeks of the Philippine island of Palawan.

The four species are in the genus Insulamon, including Insulamon palawanense (pictured). The crabs are between one to two inches wide. Only one other species, I. unicorn, was known in the genus, having been found in 1992.

I. palawanense seems to be widespread on the island, although the other three new species are restricted to specific creeks. All of the crabs can only live in freshwater, though they can spend a good amount of time on land, thanks to their large gill pockets.

Dominant Male

Scientists aren’t sure why the animals are so brightly colored. Interestingly, dominant males of the I. palawanense species take on a red color, in contrast to the purple of females and less dominant males.

Because their habitats are so small and individual, the crabs are especially vulnerable to the intrusions of man. Degradation of the water quality of the streams, through farm runoff pollution and forestry, will destroy the crabs.

Hopefully the publicity generated from getting these photographs out on the Internet will help drive the necessary protections for these tiny, living gems.

Related articles

• Pictures: New Purple Crab Species Found (news.nationalgeographic.com)
• Purple Crab (weeklyworldnews.com)
• Insulamon Palawanense: Purple Crab Species Discovered In Philippines (inquisitr.com)

Topographical map of the Arctic region. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, not only the United States Navy, but the world’s military leaders believe climate change is real, particularly with regard to the Arctic. In fact, the military chiefs of the eight main Arctic powers — Canada, the U.S., Russia, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland — gathered at a Canadian military base last week to specifically discuss regional security issues.

The concern is not so much territorial disputes (we carved up the Arctic a long time ago), but border enforcement and disaster preparedness. Mankind has a deplorable record of creating disasters before the mechanisms are in place to deal with them, just as it has a deplorable record of trying to make an illegal buck by trespassing on other countries’ borders (look at a map and see if you can guess where, along the Canadian coastline, a small smuggler’s vessel could come ashore… now figure out how to stop it).

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its untapped natural gas is in the Arctic. Shipping lanes could be regularly open across the Arctic by 2030 as rising temperatures continue to melt the sea ice, according to a National Research Council analysis commissioned by the U.S. Navy last year.

Conning tower of a U.S. nuclear sub surfacing in the Arctic

The United States is actually the least able of the Arctic powers to respond to anything on the surface. We may have the best Arctic submarine fleet, bar none, but we have no Navy icebreakers or any of the land-based support facilities to patrol our part of the ocean. Actually, we do have one icebreaker – it belongs to the Coast Guard.

Noting that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe, in 2009 the U.S. Navy announced a beefed-up Arctic Roadmap by its own task force on climate change that called for a three-stage strategy to increase readiness, build cooperative relations with Arctic nations and identify areas of potential conflict.

A summary of a simulation conducted by the Naval War College released last month found the Navy is “inadequately prepared to conduct sustained maritime operations in the Arctic” because it lacks ships able to operate in or near Arctic ice, support facilities and adequate communications.

The U.S. Coast Guard's Polar Star icebreaker

“The findings indicate the Navy is entering a new realm in the Arctic,” said Walter Berbrick, a War College professor who participated in the simulation. “Instead of other nations relying on the U.S. Navy for capabilities and resources, sustained operations in the Arctic region will require the Navy to rely on other nations for capabilities and resources.”

“The Navy seems to be very on board regarding the reality of climate change and the especially large changes we are seeing in the Arctic,” said Mark C. Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences University of Colorado. “There is already considerable collaboration between the Navy and civilian scientists and I see this collaboration growing in the future.”

Great. Fantastic. Congress will jump on increasing oil and gas exploration. BUT, will they fund what our military needs to be in place for the first oil spill or drilling platform explosion?

Probably not. That would require them to accept climate change and accept responsibility for the activities of their donors in that fragile, changing environment.

One of the Arctic's most endangered species

PepsiCo dropped out in January, when their membership came up for renewal. Now, not to be out-done by their closest competitor, Coca-Cola has pulled out its support. It appears that the message is getting through to at least some corporations. It was articulated by Rashad Robinson, director of Color Of Change, “The clear and simple message was that you can’t come for black folks’ money by day and try to take away our vote by night.”

Nothing talks louder than money for any corporation. It may not be possible to hurt an oil company, but a good boycott can hurt any company that sells its products directly to Americans. Pepsi’s and Coke’s decisions to pull out are two small victories for our liberties and hard-won rights.

Related articles

• Coca-Cola cuts ties to conservative group (cbsnews.com)
• Coca-Cola cuts ties with ALEC, the group behind ‘Stand Your Ground’ (thegrio.com)
• PepsiCo Ends Partnership With Right-Wing Front Group ALEC (thinkprogress.org)
• Pepsi and Coca Cola End Relationship With the One Percent’s Misinformation Front Group (johnhively.wordpress.com)
• Coke drops conservative group ALEC (politico.com)
• Coca-Cola Quits American Legislative Exchange Council (treehugger.com)
• Coca-Cola Pulls Support From ALEC (theroot.com)
• BREAKING: Progressive Movement Compels Coca-Cola To Pull Support From ALEC Over Voter Suppression Efforts (thinkprogress.org)

Tapping maples for sap

If you live in New England, or watch the Weather Channel for fun, you know that last week we had an early taste of summer: temps in the 70’s and 80’s. What you might not know, is that weather like that, this early in the year, means the maple syrup harvest is screwed.

Vermont maple syrup

According to the maple specialist for the University of Vermont Extension Service (the folks who work with all aspects of agriculture in the state), Tim Wilmot, the high temps ended the sap runs and forced the trees into early bud. Normally, mud season into spring means temps below freezing at night and well above freezing during the day, which causes the trees’ sap to run, preparing the tree for summer.

With that season being cut short by such high temps, Wilmot said that reports he’s getting are that most sugarmakers harvested only a half to two-thirds what they usually do. That will translate into a scarcity of Vermont maple syrup and maple syrup products this year.

Even with the temps dropping as they have over the past few days, any sap that starts to run again will likely be of poor quality and flavor.

If you’ve never had real Vermont maple syrup, you have no idea what you are missing. With the way prices are likely to spike this year, you may not have a chance to rectify that until next year… we hope.

(photo credit for maple tree in summer is kindra clineff)

Related articles

• Climate Change: Could We Run Out of Maple Syrup by 2100? (eatdrinkbetter.com)
• Syrup Shortfall Jeopardizes Our Nation’s Brunches [Science] (gizmodo.com)
• Canadian Chef Heads For The Sugarbush (lezgetreal.com)

The Enbridge "Tank Farm" in Cushing, Oklahoma

President Obama never said he wouldn’t approve the Keystone XL pipeline. He just refused to be pushed into doing it on the Republican’s timeline and based on grossly exaggerated job projections. Tomorrow, in Cushing, Oklahoma, he will announce the approval and his personal support for the southern leg of the pipeline, from Cushing to the refineries in Texas.

Cushing is a critical point in our oil supply and processing. It is at Cushing that oil is backing up because the existing pipelines from Cushing to Texas are inadequate for the amount of oil being sent to the refineries. The additional pipeline will unplug the flow the of oil and increase American refinery results. That none of that oil belongs to “America” and is not really “American oil” is an argument lost of the right wing. They don’t understand that all the oil belongs to private companies. All we as a nation get out of it is the leases for drilling on public land and the royalties for what is extracted, and the clean up when they screw up. This isn’t Saudi Arabia. “Our” oil does not end up in our gas tanks or impact the cost of petroleum products in America. But, I digress.

The Keystone XL pipeline was proposed for the purpose of transporting oil from the oil sands development in northern Canada to the refineries in Texas to be made into saleable products to be sold overseas, and possibly to us on the open global oil market. It is not intended to increase oil supplies in America. It is even less “our oil” that what comes out of American land and sea drilling operations. It belongs to Canada, and specifically to a company called TransCanada. The long-distance pipeline would not only cross some very environmentally significant land, the massive watershed that supplies drinking water to the center of the nation, but an international border. That put the pipeline under the jurisdiction of the Federal government. The part of the pipeline between Oklahoma and Texas is not actually under Federal control, but can be approved just by the states. And we all know how Oklahoma and Texas feel about oil.

The pipeline will not create tens of thousands of jobs, not even for its construction. TransCanada runs thousands of miles of pipelines across Canada and the United States with a payroll of less than 4,500 people. They actually have a series of pipelines, carrying natural gas, that transverse much of the needed route for the oil sands, just further east of the originally proposed route.

The Republicans made an issue of the pipeline from Alberta, inflated the jobs projections by tens of thousands, insisted that the pipeline would lower gasoline prices at the pump. None of what they have said was true. Fast-tracking the construction between Cushing and Texas is a good political strategy. It will defuse the accusation that President Obama hates oil and show a very real number of jobs to argue about, not an inflated guesstimate. It will, hopefully, carry more weight than all the statistics that show how this administration has increased our oil production, increased our oil exports and generally supported the oil industry.

Cushing is the third stop of the President’s two-day energy tour, where he will try to make the case that the country is doing very well, thank you, in oil production. You can expect to see live coverage of his speeches on MSNBC and CNN, but very little coverage on Fox. And so it goes.

Related articles

• President Obama & TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline (lezgetreal.com)
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• Obama to fast track southern portion of Keystone XL Pipeline (whitehouse.blogs.cnn.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Rick Santorum told attendees at the Gulf Coast Energy Summit in Biloxi, Mississippi, on Monday March 14^th to trust his judgment on the environment. This followed on the heels of an op-ed penned by Santorum published on RedState.com on Saturday, explaining his position in more detail.

“The Washington Establishment would rather fight global warming than fight for American jobs,” Santorum wrote. “President Obama and his administration have decided to wage war against global warming and thus against the American worker. … Those living on or near the Gulf Coast in particular know the impact these extreme environmental positions can have on the region’s economy.”

He went on to say that his GOP opponents, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, have flip-flopped and “supported the radical environmentalists’ measures to combat global warming at the expense of American jobs.”

“Romney and Gingrich have changed their views for one simple reason: to pander to Republican voters when the political heat is rising. They sought to ingratiate themselves with trendy liberal elites—despite lack of conclusive, verifiable scientific evidence … Of all the GOP candidates, I am the only one who has not bowed, and will never bow, to this liberal orthodoxy. I did not pander when global warming seemed cool to the press and to Hollywood. We know that climate changes over time, that the earth warms and cools over time. This debate is about whether human activity plays a role, and whether U.S. emissions cuts can have any effect when China and India refuse to go along. The apostles of this pseudo-religion believe that America and its people are the source of the earth’s temperature. I do not.”

Excuse me while I go wash my eyes after reading that drek.

Why is everything an “orthodoxy” or a “pseudo-religion” or a “theology” with this man? He missed the Renaissance, I think. He obviously doesn’t know words like “theory” or “philosophy” or “ethics”… and he really doesn’t comprehend the word “fact”.

It is a fact that the earth’s climate is changing. Ask any farmer anywhere. It has been proven that man-made greenhouse gases are accelerating what is, yes, a natural cycle. It is postulated that these man-made contributions to the event will not only accelerate it, but will make it more extreme than a natural climate shift. That extremity may be beyond the earth’s ability to cope, and that is the real fear.

We’re not afraid of being able to grow oranges in Nova Scotia. We’re afraid of a climate change that will drown island nations, permanently inundate coastal regions that hold a vast majority of the earth’s major cities, turn breadbaskets into dust bowls, and destroy the natural resources of nations. We are afraid of the wars that will break out because of resource shifts (if you don’t believe those wars could happen, look at sub-Saharan Africa).

If the change happens at the earth’s pace, we can cope. Humans can move, but only if given enough time. We are afraid that if our waste gases accelerate climate change beyond a certain point, we will not have enough time, and we won’t cope. Neither will all the other creatures we share this little blue marble with. Those are rational fears, Mr. Santorum.

As for the U.S. trying to do the right thing and reduce our impact on the situation before others are on board, well, Sir Richard Santorum of the Knights of Malta, have you ever heard the phrase “leading from the front”? That’s what a true knight, a good general and a brave nation do.

Related articles

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All images via Suncommon.com

A new company in Vermont is offering homeowners a stable and reliable way to power their homes and get out from under rising electric bills with no upfront costs. Suncommon, while they do offer a single payment lease and an outright purchase option, is really touting their 20 year lease program. Under this program there is no upfront cost for installation, and the monthly payments for leasing the equipment will be equal to or less than the homeowner’s current electric bill… and will not go up over the 20 years of the lease. While in the short term there won’t be an appreciable savings, over time, as electric rates get hiked, the savings will mount up. Plus, as a lease, if there is a problem with the installation, it gets fixed for free.

Photovoltaic Solar Panels

The system itself is really amazing. Just a couple of years ago, if you wanted to go solar with your home, you needed to have space for a bank of storage batteries, and the initial outlay for purchase and installation was astronomical. This system actually taps into your local power grid. There is a law in Vermont that requires electric utilities to accept into the grid any excess power you create and issue your account with a credit for those watts of power. It’s called Net Metering, and the ideal is that you’ll produce enough excess energy with your solar installation to offset the electricity you draw from the grid when the panels aren’t working, like at night. Unlike systems that require those big batteries in your basement, this system sends the power directly to the grid, which acts as your battery.

Co-Founder Duane Peterson

Suncommon grew out of a pilot program funded by the non-profit Vermont Public Interest Group. During the pilot project, 300 homes got the installations and the process, partnerships and so forth was developed into a successful working model. Co-Founders Duane Peterson and James Moore, who worked on the pilot for VPIRG, decided to take it to the next step and created Suncommon.

Co-Founder James Moore

While solar installations are only available in Chittenden and Washington counties and Stowe, the company is actively working to expand into the rest of the state. They prefer to wait to go into a community until there are a number of people interested in the program, although a homeowner can get at least a first estimate of whether or not solar is possible for their house by filling out a simple form online and requesting an estimate. The company’s solar designers will look at an aerial photograph of the property and make their first estimate based on that… and it’s free.

They explain on their website that if a homeowner really wants to get them into their community, they should network with neighbors and help generate that interest.

They certainly have some impressive partners and their advisory board is packed with people famous in the world of green energy, sustainable everything and value-based businesses: Ben Cohen, Beth Sachs, Cairn Cross, Matt Ewing and Mathew Rubin. To folks on the outside of those worlds, the most recognizable name is that of Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. Since selling the ice cream company, Ben has devoted himself to supporting value-based businesses and sustainable economies.

The Energy Mill and Suncommon's Volt

Even their offices “walk the walk”; they are housed in the largest Net Zero building in the state, The Energy Mill. The building has no furnace and burns no fossil fuels. Heating and cooling is all geothermal, hot water is solar thermal, electricity sufficient to run the building and charge their Chevy Volt is all solar photovoltaic, superior insulation is provided by a grass roof – yes, “grass” not “glass”. The building designer used lumber milled locally and rescued a lot of the remaining building materials from sites being demolished. The office’s desks used to be high school bleacher seats.

After reading about this and visiting their website, I really want to tell President Obama to look over here and see a state that is not only talking the talk about sustainable, renewable energy but is most certainly walking the walk. And speaking of, it was really cool reading the bio of one of the women in the company and read about her wife. Yes, we do walk the walk here.

Related articles

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Wagga Wagga Wolf Spider (Wikipedia)

Normally, Australian wolf spiders are solitary creatures that live in dens underground, where humans rarely see them. Not so when their homes get inundated by floodwaters, as has happened in the past week. In the city of Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, the 8,000+ human residents have been evacuated due to the flooding, and thousands of spiders have moved in.

The spiders have been doing something called “ballooning” to escape the waters. This basically means they throw up a strand of silk and ride the wind until they land on something above the waters. Because the wind only blows in one direction, the spiders tend to land in the same places and blanket their sanctuary in webs. Researchers have taken to the air themselves in a hot air balloon to hunt for them and document the behavior.

Farm outside Wagga Wagga blanketed in webs (Daniel Munoz/Reuters)

While local residents are taking the invasion in stride (the picture of a dog walking across a field covered in webs is downright creepy), they’ve been assured by spider experts around the country that when the flood waters recede, the spiders will return to their normal underground habitats.

In the meantime, they are actually helping out. All those webs they’re spinning are for catching the overabundance of mosquitoes and other winged insects that have hatched out due to the floodwaters. How cool is that? Mother Earth does not let things get out of balance if you leave her alone.

But I think I’ll hold off on visiting Wagga Wagga. I’ve been known to run screaming out of a room because I turned around and there was a spider hanging from the ceiling in front of my nose… the really embarrassing part was I was half naked at the time!

Related articles

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• Spider Web Forest Is Beautiful And Terrifying(buzzfeed.com)

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The Macondo Deepwater Horizon platform burning

The first trial over the 2010 oil spill was set to convene this week in New Orleans, but has been postponed as negotiations continue for an out-of-court settlement. The companies involved, British Petroleum, Transocean Ltd., Anadarko Petroleum and Halliburton are seeking to sort out who is responsible for how much of the damage and the monetary value of the damages.

The size and scope of the damage is so far beyond anything ever encountered before that trying to work out a price tag is almost impossible, and the three companies would each love to have more liability assessed against the other two.

When the Macondo Deepwater Horizon well blew up, 11 workers were killed and 17 injured. It took 85 days to cap the well and more than 200 million gallons of crude gushed into the Gulf in that time. About 900 miles of shoreline were fouled, beaches were closed, fishing zones were shut. Most countries that allow offshore drilling have a requirement that a parallel relief well be drilled with the exploratory. The relief well is slightly less deep as the two are drilled. That way, if there is a failure in the exploratory well, it can take only a few days to angle the relief shaft and tap into the exploratory’s shaft and seal it. The United States has never required a relief well because we have very powerful lobbyists with very deep pockets who have made sure we don’t add this expense to the cost of drilling in our waters.

The Clean Water Act assesses a fine of a minimum of $1,100 per barrel of spilled oil with those fines quadrupled in cases of gross negligence. The four companies involved could face $5 billion to $20 billion depending on the outcome of the trial to prove gross negligence. And that is on top of any assessment of damages.

Related articles

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• ‘How Culpable Was BP?’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• BP ready to fight negligence claims over Gulf oil spill (smh.com.au)

Alaska's topography (shale field is above northernmost mountains on left)

The debate has raged for years about drilling oil from the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWAR). There is some oil under it, but any drilling would destroy the reserve. Now, it appears there may be an alternative, a vast shale oil and gas reserve that lies to the west of the ANWAR.

There are obvious environmental problems withe the North Slope shale field. The only way to extract oil and natural gas from shale rock is by using “fracking,” the insertion of pressurized water between the levels of the shale to force the oil or gas towards the wells. Fracking has been related to contaminated water (as in being able to light flowing water with a match) and earthquakes in the lower 48. Though we equate Alaska with earthquakes, the fault lines are along the Pacific coast, and there are none known in the North Slope region which faces the Arctic Ocean.

If developed, the Alaska shale field would be the second largest in America, after the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Montana. The formations feed into the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk oil fields, which are already being drilled. The U. S. Geological Survey estimates the North Slope holds up to 2 billion barrels of oil and 80 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. There are already a half-million acres under lease by the Great Bear Petroleum LLC, and they are planning to start the shale development there. The land straddles the Alaska pipeline corridor.

Assessing the potential for the oil and gas are just the first step to being able to extract it. USGS Director Marcia McNutt made it clear that “There is a long lag between doing this resource assessment and understanding what it might take to develop them, but we hope that the information from this study being put in the public domain will help everyone make wise decisions in the future as to whether these resources are going to be economically worth developing and what sorts of environmental protections would be needed to be put into place if they were developed.” The interest in the North Slope had lain dormant for a half-century because they could not be drilled in a conventional manner. The new technologies have made the North Slope more attainable.

The history of fracking, in particular the incidents of water pollution, will be studied thoroughly. The region is still home to Native American tribes and herds of wild animals, even though it looks undeveloped.

The Gulf of Mexico

Natural resources have a aggravating habit of not paying any attention to the borders than men create. Water flows across international frontiers, air moves around the planet, even soil moves. Occasionally, that movement creates problems, as when one nation or state blocks the passage of water or air that is polluted by one entity damages the flora in another and impacts the economy. The United States and Mexico have recognized that sometimes that cross-border problem isn’t even visible.

Both nations drill for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico, but there is no way to control the extraction of oil that is pooled below one country’s territory by a well that is drilled in the other’s territory. On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mexican Secretary (Chancellor) of Foreign Affairs Patricia Espinosa signed an agreement of co-operation between the two nations for extraction of oil from cross-border reservoirs. Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar were present for the signing in Los Cabos, Mexico.

Secretary Clinton said the agreement would “ensure safe, efficient, responsible exploration of the oil and gas reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico. These reservoirs could hold considerable reserves that would benefit the United States and Mexico alike, but they don’t necessarily stop neatly at our maritime borders. This could lead to disputes if a company discovers a reservoir that straddles the boundary – disputes, for example, over who should do the extraction and who much they should extract.” The deal sets rules for extraction of oil or gas from shared reservoirs and eases the fears of many Mexicans that American-backed international companies would drill in our waters to extract oil from theirs. Under the agreement, companies that work in America would partner with the Mexican nationalized oil industry for these extractions, but no restraints would be imposed where the reservoir does not cross borders. If a fair agreement cannot be reached over the ratio of extraction from a particular reservoir, neither country can extract the oil.

There are 1.5 million acres of borderland that will become more accessible because of this agreement. That’s an area larger than the state of Delaware. It could contain as much as 172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

The agreement also addresses concerns about safety issues in the aftermath of major oil rig failures in both countries, the Mexican 1979 Ixtoc spill and our 2010 BP spill. It was not mentioned in the press releases if there were any provisions concerning the way oil and gas extraction is turning the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico into a fractured sponge, with billions of gallons of oil and natural gas being extracted making the seabed very unstable.

Now, what are we planning on doing about a similar agreement with Cuba, which is exploring their share of that seabed?

Related articles

• US, Mexico agree on joint oil projects (alternet.org)
• Hillary Clinton Signs New Energy Deal (huffingtonpost.com)
• U.S., Mexico Sign Accord for Joint Oil Exploration in Gulf (businessweek.com)
• U.S., Mexico Agree To Cooperate On Energy (cosmicconnection.wordpress.com)
• U.S. and Mexico Agree to Cooperate on Energy (nytimes.com)

The Vogtle nuclear power plant, Waynesboro, Georgia

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 4 to 1 for the building of two new reactors at the Vogtle nuclear power plant near Waynesboro, Georgia. It is near the South Carolina border, about 65 mile northwestly up the Savannah River from the Atlantic Ocean.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko cast the dissenting vote, citing last year’s disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan. He wants better reviews of how nuclear plants in America could withstand natural disasters. At 65 miles from the ocean, the threat to Vogtle from a tsunami or even a hurricane storm surge is very, very slight. Waynesboro is, however, on the edge of the middle zone for earthquake hazard, which is centered on the South Carolina coast. This is the first permit granted for construction of a nuclear plant in over 30 years.

For a time, interest in nuclear plant construction was high because of our dependency on foreign oil, but the drop in natural gas prices has greatly reduced interest in nuclear power. A 1,000 megawatt power plant using natural gas generation, with the newest technological advances, takes less than five years to permit and build and costs up to $1 billion. A similar nuclear power plant takes 5 to 10 years to build and costs more than $5 billion. It just doesn’t make sense economically to go with nuclear right now.

Between 2007 and 2009, applications were made by 13 companies to build 25 new reactors. This is the first such permit to be approved.

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Albino squirrel, from the BBC

Sorry to be so late with this. I’m fighting a rather vicious intestinal virus.

Today is Squirrel Day at the Washington Post. Upload your favorite squirrel photos to userpics@washpost.com. 

 Show your love for the Sciuridae! Or your fear of them. After his first confrontation with a squirrel, my 315-pound father was convinced that if he wasn’t nice to them, they would get him. That’s what happens when three pounds of enraged fur reads you the squirrel riot act in the middle of an off-ramp from the New Jersey Turnpike. Puts the fear of the squirrel gods in you.

Of all the photos available of squirrels, I chose this one from the BBC for two reasons. Vermont has a rather famous albino squirrel that was discovered a couple of years ago and featured on the front page of all our newspapers. They are true albinos and very rare. But it was the bird feeder that caught my attention.

 Our attached garage is at basement level and juts out behind our house. We can see the roof and front of it from my kitchen. My husband, not believing in the curse of the squirrels, used a four-foot long 1″x1″ pole to hang a birdfeeder from the roof of the garage. One morning, I watched a squirrel hang from his toenails from the 1″x1″ to eat from the birdfeeder. He then twisted himself back up, climbed on to the roof of the garage, stood surveying the large back yards between blocks, raised his forearms and proclaimed himself King of World. We call him Leonardo.

 And for all those fools who think they can feed the birds and not feed the squirrels – a research team once set up an obstacle course to reach a bird feeder. There were eight separate obstacles to overcome. It took the subject squirrel a day to conquer the first one. Second day, he whipped right past the first obstacle and spent a day figuring out the second one. When the squirrel reached the bird feeder, the researchers had proven that not only can squirrels solve problems, but they have long-term memory capacity. Give it up and just feed the squirrels. The only thing you accomplish in trying to thwart the squirrels is enriching those companies that promise you a squirrel-proof feeder.

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TransCanada Tower, Alberta, Canada

TransCanada’s threat to take its oil sands muck to British Columbia to ship to China was a hollow one. Chief Executive Russ Girling told an investment conference on Thursday that he expects the pipeline to Texas will be built and the reformulated proposal will be expedited in time to put the pipeline in service by the end of 2014.

There are major objections to a pipeline from the Alberta oil sands field to British Columbian ports being raised by the First Nations’ whose land the pipeline would cross, and in Canada, the First Nations are more likely to prevail than the oil companies.

Girling says the timeline is dependent upon the project being approved a year from now. So much for how urgent this is. Congressional Republicans only agreed to continue the payroll tax holiday if President Obama made his decision on the pipeline within 60 days, expecting him to accept the pipeline if they pushed enough people into believing it would create 20,000 jobs. They put the pipeline deadline into the payroll tax bill. They really thought they had the President over a barrel and he would agree to something that, by best estimates, might create up to 6,000 temporary construction jobs and only 500 permanent jobs. Girling’s statement proves that the President was right all along and there was no rush to approve this.

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President Barack Obama

The Obama administration, with the recommendation of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, has rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline, an allegedly $7 billion project to link the tar sands mining project in Alberta to the Texas refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

Canada says that it will take the oil to British Columbia and ship it to China.

Let’s back this up a couple of steps. The whole thing might be a moot issue. There are major environmental challenges being raised in Canada for both routes by the First Nations through whose land these pipelines are proposed and on whose land the tar sands are leaking toxic waste into the ground water.

Next step backwards, this pipeline will not create any 20,000 jobs, not by a bloody longshot. The whole TransCanada energy company has functioned for years with less than 5,000 employees for a network of pipelines that spreads across all of Canada. The most accurate estimate is that building the pipeline will create around 4,000 TEMPORARY construction jobs, and less than a thousand jobs across eight states to maintain it. Now, you can make an argument that any job is better than no job, even if it is temporary, but it is necessary to weigh the benefits of those temp jobs against the environmental sensitivity of the area through North Dakota that the pipeline would go through.

The administration has offered to let Keystone reapply after they come up with a less dangerous route. They decided to get nasty and say – we’ll go to China instead.

So, that brings us to the most important thing about this pipeline…it is not American oil There is no such thing as American oil, and this is even less American than what is pulled out of the Gulf of Mexico or out of the ground in one of our states. This oil would go to the international oil market, as all the oil extracted north of the Rio Grande is.

We lease land, or sea bottom, to oil companies, almost all of which are international. They do or do not drill for oil on that land. Many hundreds of thousands of acres of leased land are not drilled but used as tax deductions. The government gets the lease payment and a royalty on the oil which is extracted. That’s it. Billions of dollars of oil are extracted from American soil and we don’t get a dime out of the oil itself, beyond very minor royalty fees which are wiped out by the tax deductions and subsidies that we give to these oil companies. And, we don’t get to keep the oil. It goes into the international market. It is sold wherever Exxon or BP feels like selling it.

Shareholder John Boehner, by Donkey Hotey, Creative Commons

Then, there’s John Boehner. He owns stock in a total of seven companies that would benefit directly from the pipeline deal. That’s called insider trading. Boehner’s “defense” is that he personally doesn’t pick what companies he is invested in, an investment firm does it for him. Yup, and he never, ever in his entire adult life has reviewed his portfolio and made recommendations to his stockbroker.

Killing the Keystone XL pipeline is neither a job killer nor a giving away of American oil. It’s not our oil and the Republicans have greatly inflated the job creation potential for this project. The entire concept of oil sands is extremely controversial within Canada. It is as desperate a move as fracking to keep us dependent on fossil fuels, and is proof that oil is a finite resource.

Have you ever seen the oil drilling map of the Gulf of Mexico? There are over 30,000 holes in Gulf for extracting oil. One of the things we should have considered during the BP crisis was what it means when so much oil is taken from the sea bed. Have we ever seen an expert’s opinion about what could happen if these Swiss cheese holes should collapse?

Once upon a time, the world wore beaver hats, until we have harvested beavers to the brink of extinction. Once upon a time, the world ran on whale oil, until we had hunted whales to the brink. Now, we are pushing fossil fuels to the brink, mining coal and extracting oil and gas from more and more dangerous sources. It was President Carter who first suggested that we needed to start replacing oil as our primary source of energy. He was elected in 1976. That was 35 years ago. Instead of making solid progress at replacing fossil fuels, we have decided to squeeze the very last micron of coal or drop of oil from the earth in the most environmentally unsafe ways possible. If saying no to the Keystone XL project helps us focus on the entirety of this debate, this decision is godsend.

In the meantime, watch the Republican PAC machine turn this decision into an indictment of the President’s job record.

In support of SOPA and PIPA protests, we are providing no links to this story.   Original story material gathered from MSNBC, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, multiple newspapers and websites.

Compared to the state of Vermont, the EPA are slackers. Our Act 250 makes businesses quake and our citizens shake their heads in disbelief. But, as one Act 250 inspector put it, “If they bothered to read the regulations before they built, they wouldn’t have to do it over.” We kind of like the regulations when they prevent some home builder putting in a septic leech field uphill from our water wells.

The Republicans have two goals in their attacks on the EPA. First is making it possible for business to destroy our living space and the second is to destroy the independence of executive branch agencies. For people who are always talking about the Constitution, they really hate the part about it creating three branches of government. They want single-party rule, like China or Syria or Egypt before the revolution.

The EPA regulations do sometimes get in the way of business, mostly to everyone’s benefit, but occasionally with something dumb. In the Republican view of America, states should decide if they want to be socialist muckpiles or free enterprise paradises. So why should be defend a national EPA? I’ll share a few EPA stories with you to illustrate why the EPA is needed.

Way back before the EPA had much clout, the state of Vermont suddenly had an air quality problem. Whole hillsides of trees were being killed by acid rain. Thing is, Vermont doesn’t have any industries that create acid rain. We don’t burn fossil fuels for electricity and we’re not exactly a manufacturing powerhouse. The acid rain was coming in from the West – from a paper mill in New York state and auto plants in Michigan and coal-burning electricity-generating plants in Pennsylvania. Canada was having the same problem with acid rain. Both Vermont and Québec have forest-based industries – timber, maple products and tourism. Acid rain is also not a great thing to have falling on farm fields producing human food and the crops used to feed milk cows. So, Vermont and Canada sued in Federal court to protect our air. We won, and air quality regulations were enforced on everyone upwind of us. Only a national agency can act when one state’s pollution damages another state’s industries.

When my husband took a job in a Federal Court in coastal Georgia, we went up to get him settled in an apartment. The children and I would join him when school ended. We asked one of his new co-workers “What’s that smell?” and she replied “Our bread and butter.” It was a turpentine plant just beyond downtown. During our tour of the court, we had seen an 8-foot long window sill shelf filled with court filings. We later found out, those were the filings from the EPA and Georgia EPA battle with that one turpentine plant.

The town has three SuperFund sites – places so polluted that the only thing that can be done with the land is scrape it off and remove it. People decide where to go fishing based on what the air smells like. It if’s papermill air, fish in one place. If it’s turpentine air, fish in another spot. Within 18 months, the windshield of our car was etched in a pattern identical to the wipers. Among the EPA’s finding was the fact that 20-year-guaranteed house roofs downwind of the plant (and everywhere was really downwind) had to be replaced in less than 10 years. The asthma and lung cancer rates are off the graph. I once went rushing up to the high school with a can of Pepsi, and met the principal outside the building. He took one look at the Pepsi can and directed me to the nurse’s office. Pepsi is a poor man’s emergency inhaler for asthmatics. All four of us left that town with asthma, something there is no medical history for in our families.

When Ben Affleck was engaged to the first Jennifer — Lopez – he bought an island off the state of Georgia, just a dozen miles up the road from the town we lived in. The running gag down there is that JLo visited the island, loved the plantation-style house and the isolation. Then, the wind shifted and she caught a snootful of the mainland where there is a chemical plant. Somewhere between gagging and wiping the tears from her eyes, she ran like hell. I have never read a story about Affleck and Jennifer Garner taking their beautiful little girls to his island. I don’t even know if he still owns it. For anyone who wants to breathe, it is uninhabitable. You drive past that town on I-95 and you want a barf bag, quick. The stench is horrific, a combination of swamp gas and chemicals.

The attitude towards pollution in the South is exemplified by that remark about “bread and butter.” A gentleman I met through the Kerry campaign, sixth generation Georgian, explained how the public schools were controlled for decades by a consortium of business, political and church leaders. Between those forces the people of the South were trained to believe that whatever business wanted was the best thing for everyone and if there were bad consequences, it was God’s will and His way of testing his servants.

The religious aspect of the hatred of the EPA first surfaced during the Reagan administration. Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior, James G. Watt, was an evangelical Christian who believed the Biblical statement that man should have dominion over the earth. Besides, as he explained, the Rapture was on its way and the world was going to end within the next twenty years, so why should we do anything to protect it.

It was about this time that environmentalists were hit with the ancient line from a letter by Julius Caesar about the Celts “They worship trees and sacrifice humans to them.” Nice quote, but Caesar was trying to scare the bejeezus out of his Senate to get them to fund his campaign, not really reporting on Celtic religious practices. A better explanation of the ancient pagan attitude is this – only the English name a Prince of Wales. To the Celtic Welsh, one is not prince or king of a land, just the leader of a people. The land is not owed or ruled, just stewarded. Hence, in ancient traditional fashion, we have Albert II, King of the Belgians.

The EPA is not a battleground of pagan sensibilities against end-time Christian beliefs. It is a battleground for the air we breathe, the water we drink and the land we live upon and farm. Land should not melt the soles of shoes, as it does in that Georgia town near the paper mill. Air should not make people sick and cripple them for life. Water should be clear and drinkable, not catch fire. One can make the argument that land is within the jurisdiction of a state, except that land and what is placed upon it washes away with rain and travels or what is placed upon it leeches down into the water table. Air and water do not stay within state boundaries. They travel from state to state, impacting the lives of those who are downstream and downwind.

That is why we need the EPA – to protect those of us who care what we breathe and drink and eat from those in other states who don’t. The basic principle of our founding was that the majority could rule only so long as they did not deny rights to or harm the minority.

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This week has been a double-whammy for the EPA. The Republicans hyped up a threat that didn’t exist that the EPA was going to impose a regulation about “farm dust.” A statement by Administrator Lisa Jackson that such a regulation wasn’t even being considered did nothing to stop the propaganda. It couldn’t. Such a statement would never get equal time on right wing media.

Since Hurricane Irene, Vermont has had to deal with a dust problem that carries significant health problems. The floods laid down a layer of silt in farm fields and home yards. This silt carried with it farm fertilizer and livestock fecal matter, overflow from septic systems and sewer systems, detritus from the ground-up bodies of animals who were swept away by the floods – you name it, it’s in the silt. For all intents and purposes every inch of the valleys in Vermont is covered with this, as well as the bottoms of our lakes and ponds. We have to deal with this dust carefully because breathing it is hazardous, but there was no need for any new regulations to do so. Most of it was just common sense.

This week, the Republican House passed a bill to block the creation of a farm dust rule that no one is even contemplating. H.R. 1633, The Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act, is unneeded, unnecessary and one more case of the House doing anything but what they are supposed to do. If one points out to House Republicans that this bill was unnecessary, they just say it was needed to “create certainty that no rule would come out.” It’s not enough for Republicans to try to cut EPA funding, for them to threaten to shut the agency down, now they are resorting to childish harassment of the agency.

Then, there’s the fracking report. Fracking is the new drilling. It is used to extract oil and gas where conventional methods cannot. It is intended to extend our dependence on fossil fuels instead of building alternatives. One report has already shown a statistical correlation between increased seismic activity in places where fracking is taking place. The new report concerns water contamination.

We have seen the videos of people igniting the water coming out of their faucets. The industry says they are faked. On Thursday, the preliminary EPA report was released. The EPA monitored water quality, specifically on drinking water wells in Wyoming. It proves that the water table has been contaminated with oil and natural gas.

Environmentalists have long claimed that fracking, the process of forcing high-pressure water into marginal oil and gas fields to make the fuels flow, was being done at the cost of drinking water. The industry, and the Republican Party have denied this. They claim fracking is safe. They call the environmentalists crazy, but the right has been doing that pretty much since Bambi was released. Now, the science proves it. It still won’t impact Republican views or give momentum to any laws or regulations for dealing with it.

The right-wing likes to quote a letter that Julius Caesar wrote to the Roman Senate about the Celts of France, “They worship trees and sacrifice humans to them.” Caesar was lying. The Celts did practice human sacrifice, in very specific situations, but they didn’t sacrifice humans to the trees. The trees weren’t their gods. Caesar wanted more funds for his war, so he wrote something that would offend the Romans, enrage them and get them to fork over more money. It was self-serving propaganda. It still is. It equates environmentalists with pagans to a voting base that is heavily Christian, but actually serves the industries that want an end to EPA regulations that exist to give us clean air, clean water and clean land.

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• The E.P.A. Says Fracking Contaminates the Water (blueingreene.org)
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• Fracking may be causing groundwater pollution, says EPA report (guardian.co.uk)
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Cottonmouth's mouth, photo by Terry McCormack

About 12 years ago, my son-in-law, an amateur herpetologist, acquired a cottonmouth, a very venomous snake. This female was estimated to be between six and eight years old at the time and was called P. K., short for Preacher Killer, because she did.

You’ve heard of those snake-handling churches? Well, one of them lost their preacher to P. K. That made her famous in the herper world. After a while I lost track of how many thousands of dollars Brian was offered for her. The first time I saw her, she was in her plastic winter-hibernation storage case and she lunged at the cover. Scared the hell out of me. Sixteen foot red tails crawling around the floor I could handle, but there was something about P. K….no one could ever think of her as adorable or loveable or even beautiful as some of Brian’s snakes were. P. K. was just plain mean.

Brian was a serious herper, participating in rattlesnake rescues the days before the infamous Georgia “rattlesnake round-ups” which are killing hunts. He took a seminar at Loma Linda hospital in California with venom expert Dr. Sean Bush. He worked with an Atlanta vet on research in boa diseases. P. K. was his pride and joy, his living proof that people need to respect the snake – respect its nature, respect its power, respect its space.

After Brian was bitten by a venomous snake that he had rescued, and almost lost his arm because the dipsticks in the hospital didn’t believe him when he told them to call Miami-Dade’s snake center to get the proper dosage and duration for the anti-venom, Brian agreed to get rid of his collection of venomous snakes. He refused all offers for P. K. and donated her to the Atlanta Zoo.

She also became famous for her virgin births. The last time P. K. was anywhere near a male cottonmouth was before Brian acquired her, yet she delivered almost 20 babies. The last one, Special K, was born just two months ago. The zoo’s vet believes that this last birth was too much for a nearly twenty-year old cottonmouth who was already eight years beyond the normal lifespan of her species. She passed peacefully today in her private habitat at the zoo.

I have this vision of her arriving on the other side and searching out the preacher she killed, just to thank him for dying. If he hadn’t, she would never have been able to live for twelve years in snakey luxury or become one of the most famous cottonmouths in the South.

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Rep. Ron Paul by Donkey Hotey, Creative Commons, Flickr (original photo by Gage Skidmore)

The United States government holds in trust for the American people a total of 193 million acres of land and properties, 8% of the total land area of the nation. These lands include both national parks and national monuments. There are also “trust lands” of about 1,280 acres per township in the western states (straight line from eastern border of Montana to eastern border of Arizona and westward) that are managed for grazing or mining with the proceeds going to the towns to support schools. Wilderness public lands must be preserved in their natural state, but other public lands are leased for mining, oil exploration and timber. Additionally, the military holds around 24 million acres of public land.

In Nevada, the government manages a total of 48 million acres, 67% of the land in Nevada. Please bear in mind that Nevada is a desert. It’s something one really appreciates after a few seasons of CSI.

Rep. Ron Paul, candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination, would like to see the government sell off its public lands.

Addressing the Western Republican Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, Rep. Paul said that Nevada should become more like Texas where “private owners” have “developed all the natural resources.”

Warming up to the idea, Paul went on to say, “Take a look at the state of Nevada. Do the people own the property in Nevada? No. Who’s the biggest landowner? It’s the federal government. I would like to see the development of this state the way that Texas had the privilege of devloping. Before we went in the Union, it was owned entirely by private owners and it has developed all the natural resources, a very big state. So you can imagine how wonderful it would be if land will be or should be returned to the states and then for the best parts sold off to private owners.”

Yup, I can imagine it. The government would lose all the revenue it receives from leasing land for mining and oil and gas development. In fact, the Koch brothers have been funding events all over the west to convince people that public lands should be sold off – so they can buy them and stop paying leasing fees on their oil wells. The Congressmen who have been pushing the idea of selling off public lands are heavily supported by corporate interests.

Then there’s that little part of Western history that Paul seems as unaware of as his son was of the history of mining in Kentucky. Private ownership of grazing land was the cause of our range wars. Remember Billy the Kid? He became famous because of a thing called the Lincoln County War in New Mexico. Texas is kind of famous for the huge – really, really huge – ranches that were there, like the 1.2 million acre King Ranch. That’s Paul’s idea of private ownership – where on family owned whole counties, towns and cities.

The last damned thing in the world Ron Paul’s supporters would ever believe him capable of is taking his libertarian principles to the point of selling off our country to mega-billionaires and corporations. That’s not what libertarianism is supposed to be about. But that is what would happen if our public lands were sold off to the highest bidder. No more wilderness areas for camping, no more public lands for cattle grazing, no more revenue from mining and oil exploration.

Imagine the rim of the Grand Canyon with oil rigs. Imagine the Grand Tetons strip mined. Imagine where $4 million in Ron Paul’s third quarter contributions came from. They didn’t come from his famous “small donors” who donated $3.8 million or his congressional campaign chest, which transferred a half million.

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From The Tar Sands Action website

On Sunday November 6 the Tar Sands Action will return to Washington DC to send an unmistakable message to the President.

Image via Wikipedia

Exactly one year before the election, we want to encircle the whole White House to ask President Obama to reject Keystone XL and live up to his promise to free us from the tyranny of oil. In doing so, we want to remind him of the power of the movement that he rode to the White House in 2008. This is bigger than any one person – President or no – and we will carry on, with or without him.

We’ve never tried something this ambitious before, and we don’t know if there are the thousands of people that it will take to encircle the White House. But if we can pull it off, it will be an unmistakable message. Also, we’re not expecting any arrests at this action, which means that anyone and everyone is able to participate.

To join them November 6th, sign up here: http://www.tarsandsaction.org/sign-up

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• It Begins. Dozens Arrested at White House on Day 1 of Tar Sands Action (treehugger.com)
• Gasland’s Josh Fox on Tar Sands & Keystone XL Pipeline (VIDEO) (treehugger.com)
• The controversial Keystone XL pipeline – will it pass? (environmentalgreen.wordpress.com)

Tar Sands/Bitumen Sands courtesy of jonathanasmis.com

Okay, so here we are again with that proposed oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas. The first item to learn about is bitumen, which is what gets extracted from oil sands, and what they want to pump across the central United States. Bear with me, this is somewhat boring, but I firmly believe that an informed and educated public is an effective electorate.

Strip Mining Process courtesy of albertasoapbox

Bitumen, also called tar or heavy oil, is a solid or semi-liquid form of oil that is extracted from oil sands. The further north the deposits, the more solid the bitumen. In fact, oil sands are strip mined where the deposits are close enough to the surface. After being mined, the sands are mixed with hot water and caustic soda to create slurry before going to the extraction plant. There, the slurry is agitated to add air bubbles and create a bitumen froth that is skimmed off.  The froth is then treated to remove water and fine particles, finally yielding “pure” bitumen. Because it is semi-solid, it then has to be mixed with thinner oils or chemically cracked to make it liquid enough to be piped to refineries.

Where the oil sands aren’t close enough to the surface for pit mining (90% of the Canadian deposits), the production companies use a couple of different techniques to squeeze the oil out.

CSS Process courtesy china-alberta.com

The first, Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS) puts the well through cycles of steam injection, soak, and oil production. First, steam is injected into a well for a period of weeks or months; then, the well is allowed to sit for days or weeks to allow heat to soak into the formation; and finally, the hot oil is pumped out of the well for a period of weeks or months. Once production falls off, they do it again and keep repeating the cycle until the well is no longer profitable. This technique recovers 20-25% of the oil in place.

SAGD Process courtesy of cbc.ca

The second, Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD), uses two horizontal wells drilled in the oil sands, one at the bottom of the formation and another about 5 meters above it. Steam is injected into the upper well, the heat melts the bitumen, which allows it to flow into the lower well, where it is pumped to the surface.^[47] SAGD recovers up to 60% of the oil in place.

A third method, Vapor Extraction Process (VAPEX) is similar to SAGD but instead of steam, hydrocarbon solvents are injected into the upper well to dilute the bitumen.  This method is still in the experimental stage, but is getting a lot of attention because it is more energy efficient, and the solvents actually start the process of upgrading the bitumen to synthetic oil.

Okay, got all that? Bitumen is gooey oil. It’s recovered from oil sands in a number of ways, pre-refined into a liquid form and then piped to refineries for processing into synthetic crude oil. That synthetic crude is then refined into various petroleum products.

Next topic: environmental impacts.

Related articles

• Anti-Oil Sands Protesters Target Ottawa September 26 (indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com)
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• Canadian Oil Sands and America: Part 2 (hotair.com)

The Great Lakes from space

Illinois has two problems. There is a foreign fish poised to invade the Great Lakes. The Asian carp is a plankton eater that seriously disrupts the eco-system of any lake it doesn’t belong in – that pretty much means any lake outside of Asia. There are also in Illinois rising numbers of people depending on soup kitchens and food banks for their daily meals. So, how can these two problems be solved in a positive way? Feed the carp to the poor, that’s how!

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources spokesman, Chris McCloud, admits that “We are in unchartered water here” – no pun intended, I’m sure – “Why remove them [the carp] and put them into a landfill when you can take them and use them for good? If we can get past the name ‘carp’ and the perception, we can prove this is going to be a highly nutritious, cheap meal.” Well, the AP reporter who wrote this story suggested “minced Asian carp tacos” and “spaghetti with carp sauce.” Sorry, but I can’t recall any recipe that ever identified the type of fish in a taco. They’re just called “fish tacos.” And when you use fish, usually oil-packed tuna, in spaghetti sauce, it’s called “pasta puttanesca.” Maybe the name of the fish isn’t as big a problem as getting people to eat fish to begin with. Renaming the fish would not be as unusual as one might imagine. What we grandly call Chilean sea bass is more properly called Patagonian toothfish.

The Silver Carp

The Asian carp allegedly tastes like mahi mahi or tilapia and is very bony. As part of the public relations for this idea, the state has recruited Louisiana chef Philippe Parola to get on television and fry up the fish and serve it to the audience. He calls the Asian carp “silverfin.”

Illinois already has a program which allows hunters to donate their deer meat to be ground up and distributed to food pantries. At this time, there is no program in place to catch, clean and distribute large numbers of the pest fish and the state officials aren’t even sure what the best way to distribute it will be. Asian carp is served in high-end restaurants and across China.

The Bighead Carp

Two forms of Asian carp are a major problem in America, with other types slightly less of a problem. They were imported from China and escaped into the Mississippi River in the 1970′s. The bighead carp reaches up to 4 feet in length and 100 pounds, while the silver carp famously leap out of the water and slam into boaters with enough force to break bones. There are electric barriers set up near Chicago to keep them out of Lake Michigan. Were they to enter the Great Lakes system, they would destroy the native fish population by eating all the food and would ruin a $7 billion fishing industry. The carp that are currently being caught are being trapped near the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which connects the Mississippi and Lake Michigan.

If the state of Illinois can work the kinks and aversions out of the idea, using invasive species for something positive is preferable to just throwing them away. And if they can manage to create a strong market for them while doing their public relations for this program, perhaps we can overfish them and really solve the problem.

Related articles

• Illinois’ Solution To Hunger? Asian Carp (npr.org)
• Asian Carp tacos? Ill. launches anti-hunger program (msnbc.msn.com)
• Illinois’ Solution To Hunger? Asian Carp (npr.org)
• Report: DNA method helpful in seeking Asian carp (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Feds to step up hunt for Asian carp near Chicago (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

At a rare joint session of Congress, with several significant Republicans boycotting the speech, the President delivered his jobs plan – the one the Republicans like to say he doesn’t have.

Senator David Vitter is home in Louisiana hosting a football party. Sen. Paul Broun of Georgia is in his office watching the speech on television and tweating his anti-Obama views just as he did during the State of the Union address. Rep. Joe Walsh, the deadbeat dad of Congress, didn’t want to be a “prop” for the President. And Sen. Jim DeMint told ABC News, “If he sent a written proposal over first, I would go hear him explain it, but frankly right now I’m so frustrated I don’t think I’m going to go. I can’t imagine too many Americans wanting to hear another speech with no real plan attached.” They only no-show with a reason is Florida Senator Marco Rubio, whose mother is seriously ill. Rep. Michele Bachmann is planning a post-speech press conference at 8:30 when the Packers-Saints game starts. A couple of last night’s debaters took shots at the president for speechifying too much.

President Obama was five minutes late, a common event for him. He must drive Michelle crazy when they’re trying to go somewhere. He was followed into the room by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Eric Cantor. John Boehner was in his seat behind the podium. Mitch McConnell did not join the parade into the chamber.

Whoa, nellie – this was President Obama’s gauntlet throw-down. He dared the Republicans not to support this, right from the first paragraph – “millions of Americans watching right now don’t care about politics….” They care about how they are going to survive.

Several times the President pointed out that this is a jobs bill – and it is a bill that he is sending to Congress, something he has not done before – has had support from both Republicans and Democrats, though not necessarily for the same things. And it will be paid for.

The full text of the speech follows this analysis. Here are a few of the highlights and the Congressional reactions, other than the standing applause from Democrats every time the President took a long breath.

Cut payroll taxes in half for working Americans and small businesses. Give tax breaks for companies that hire the long term unemployed, raise wages or hire veterans (that one got a smile from John McCain).

Start rebuilding our infrastructure. “It’s an outrage…” that our country is allowing our infrastructure to crumble while China is building new roads, new airports and whole cities. We need to repair 35,000 schools and rehabilitate those areas that have deteriorated in part because of high foreclosure rates (this hits mostly the South and California, definitely the red states except Texas). To accomplish this, the government needs to cut red tape and cut the process for getting loans for these projects.

We need to be rehiring teachers, not letting them off. We need to help create opportunities for disadvantaged youths and their parents.

He proposed a $4,000 tax credit for hiring anyone who has been unemployed for more than 6 months and a program to put the unemployed into temporary jobs that will help refresh and sharpen their job skills. The administration is working with private industry to find ways to help the economy and his committee has come up with ideas to get companies to train engineers and pay tuition to improve employee skills.

Now, pay for it. He is proposing an even bigger deficit package than the one agreed to, sort of. Most of the deficit reduction would be in the future. It will include reforming Medicare because that is necessary to save it. (That got Lindsay Graham to his feet.) More importantly, we need a tax code where “everyone gets a fair shake and everyone pays their fair share.”

For corporate taxes, eliminate all the special interest tax breaks and lower the corporate rate. Go fight that one, Republicans! Your own Tea Party has advocated this.

He asked that we pass the trade agreements he negotiated on those “vacations” he was criticized for. They weren’t vacations – they were trade trips that almost every President has taken. We are driving Kias and he wants to see Koreans driving Fords.

The President made several historical references – Lincoln building the transcontinental railroad while fighting the Civil War, our infrastructure building, our history of shared great projects. He also said “I reject the idea that we have to give away collective bargaining to compete.” He had a list of things he rejects, like deregulating ourselves into having to choose between a job and safety.

The full text of the speech follows. Sixteen times the President said “Pass this bill…” He threw down the gauntlet, pass this bill and do right by the country. He scored points with the unions and used a lot of the code words and phrases that are part of the conservative mindset and media mantras. Where he might have decided to educate the American public about economics, he chose instead to cut the platform out from under the Republicans using their own phraseology.

How well this will jump start the economy is debatable. How well it hit the Republicans below their political belt isn’t. Even Fox News carried the speech live, so there is no way they could filter his words. They can twist the hell out of them afterwards, but the words are out there. How bad Fox’s ratings were during it will tell us how well they did in preventing their audience from hearing him directly. Watching the after-speech on Keith Olbermann and MSNBC would be even better for the Republican base. It would disprove what they are told by the right wing that the mainstream media bends down and kisses the President’s feet.

By the way, John Boehner was in camera range during most of the speech. Interestingly, he is actually darker than our “First Black President.” He also looked dyspeptic throughout the speech. There probably isn’t enough Pepto in Washington for the Republicans tonight. They just got challenged to do the right thing when their approval rating is under 15%.

Now, Barack Obama will get out there and sell this plan to the public.

Here is the text of his speech in full:

Mr Speaker, Mr Vice President, members of Congress, and fellow Americans:

Tonight we meet at an urgent time for our country. We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless, and a political crisis that has made things worse.

This past week, reporters have been asking “What will this speech mean for the President? What will it mean for Congress? How will it affect their polls, and the next election?”

But the millions of Americans who are watching right now: they don’t care about politics. They have real life concerns. Many have spent months looking for work. Others are doing their best just to scrape by – giving up nights out with the family to save on gas or make the mortgage; postponing retirement to send a kid to college.

These men and women grew up with faith in an America where hard work and responsibility paid off. They believed in a country where everyone gets a fair shake and does their fair share – where if you stepped up, did your job, and were loyal to your company, that loyalty would be rewarded with a decent salary and good benefits; maybe a raise once in awhile. If you did the right thing, you could make it in America.

But for decades now, Americans have watched that compact erode. They have seen the deck too often stacked against them. And they know that Washington hasn’t always put their interests first.

The people of this country work hard to meet their responsibilities. The question tonight is whether we’ll meet ours. The question is whether, in the face of an ongoing national crisis, we can stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy; whether we can restore some of the fairness and security that has defined this nation since our beginning.

Those of us here tonight can’t solve all of our nation’s woes. Ultimately, our recovery will be driven not by Washington, but by our businesses and our workers. But we can help. We can make a difference. There are steps we can take right now to improve people’s lives.

I am sending this Congress a plan that you should pass right away. It’s called the American Jobs Act. There should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation. Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans – including many who sit here tonight. And everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything.

The purpose of the American Jobs Act is simple: to put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of those who are working. It will create more jobs for construction workers, more jobs for teachers, more jobs for veterans, and more jobs for the long-term unemployed. It will provide a tax break for companies who hire new workers, and it will cut payroll taxes in half for every working American and every small business. It will provide a jolt to an economy that has stalled, and give companies confidence that if they invest and hire, there will be customers for their products and services. You should pass this jobs plan right away.

Everyone here knows that small businesses are where most new jobs begin. And you know that while corporate profits have come roaring back, smaller companies haven’t. So for everyone who speaks so passionately about making life easier for “job creators,” this plan is for you.

Pass this jobs bill, and starting tomorrow, small businesses will get a tax cut if they hire new workers or raise workers’ wages. Pass this jobs bill, and all small business owners will also see their payroll taxes cut in half next year. If you have 50 employees making an average salary, that’s an $80,000 tax cut. And all businesses will be able to continue writing off the investments they make in 2012.

It’s not just Democrats who have supported this kind of proposal. Fifty House Republicans have proposed the same payroll tax cut that’s in this plan. You should pass it right away.

Pass this jobs bill, and we can put people to work rebuilding America. Everyone here knows that we have badly decaying roads and bridges all over this country. Our highways are clogged with traffic. Our skies are the most congested in the world.

This is inexcusable. Building a world-class transportation system is part of what made us an economic superpower. And now we’re going to sit back and watch China build newer airports and faster railroads? At a time when millions of unemployed construction workers could build them right here in America?

There are private construction companies all across America just waiting to get to work. There’s a bridge that needs repair between Ohio and Kentucky that’s on one of the busiest trucking routes in North America. A public transit project in Houston that will help clear up one of the worst areas of traffic in the country. And there are schools throughout this country that desperately need renovating. How can we expect our kids to do their best in places that are literally falling apart? This is America. Every child deserves a great school – and we can give it to them, if we act now.

The American Jobs Act will repair and modernize at least 35,000 schools. It will put people to work right now fixing roofs and windows; installing science labs and high-speed internet in classrooms all across this country. It will rehabilitate homes and businesses in communities hit hardest by foreclosures. It will jumpstart thousands of transportation projects across the country. And to make sure the money is properly spent and for good purposes, we’re building on reforms we’ve already put in place. No more earmarks. No more boondoggles. No more bridges to nowhere. We’re cutting the red tape that prevents some of these projects from getting started as quickly as possible. And we’ll set up an independent fund to attract private dollars and issue loans based on two criteria: how badly a construction project is needed and how much good it would do for the economy.

This idea came from a bill written by a Texas Republican and a Massachusetts Democrat. The idea for a big boost in construction is supported by America’s largest business organization and America’s largest labor organization. It’s the kind of proposal that’s been supported in the past by Democrats and Republicans alike. You should pass it right away.

Pass this jobs bill, and thousands of teachers in every state will go back to work. These are the men and women charged with preparing our children for a world where the competition has never been tougher. But while they’re adding teachers in places like South Korea, we’re laying them off in droves. It’s unfair to our kids. It undermines their future and ours. And it has to stop. Pass this jobs bill, and put our teachers back in the classroom where they belong.

Pass this jobs bill, and companies will get extra tax credits if they hire America’s veterans. We ask these men and women to leave their careers, leave their families, and risk their lives to fight for our country. The last thing they should have to do is fight for a job when they come home.

Pass this bill, and hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged young people will have the hope and dignity of a summer job next year. And their parents, low-income Americans who desperately want to work, will have more ladders out of poverty.

Pass this jobs bill, and companies will get a $4,000 tax credit if they hire anyone who has spent more than six months looking for a job. We have to do more to help the long-term unemployed in their search for work. This jobs plan builds on a program in Georgia that several Republican leaders have highlighted, where people who collect unemployment insurance participate in temporary work as a way to build their skills while they look for a permanent job. The plan also extends unemployment insurance for another year. If the millions of unemployed Americans stopped getting this insurance, and stopped using that money for basic necessities, it would be a devastating blow to this economy. Democrats and Republicans in this Chamber have supported unemployment insurance plenty of times in the past. At this time of prolonged hardship, you should pass it again – right away.

Pass this jobs bill, and the typical working family will get a fifteen hundred dollar tax cut next year. Fifteen hundred dollars that would have been taken out of your paycheck will go right into your pocket. This expands on the tax cut that Democrats and Republicans already passed for this year. If we allow that tax cut to expire – if we refuse to act – middle-class families will get hit with a tax increase at the worst possible time. We cannot let that happen. I know some of you have sworn oaths to never raise any taxes on anyone for as long as you live. Now is not the time to carve out an exception and raise middle-class taxes, which is why you should pass this bill right away.

This is the American Jobs Act. It will lead to new jobs for construction workers, teachers, veterans, first responders, young people and the long-term unemployed. It will provide tax credits to companies that hire new workers, tax relief for small business owners, and tax cuts for the middle-class. And here’s the other thing I want the American people to know: the American Jobs Act will not add to the deficit. It will be paid for. And here’s how:

The agreement we passed in July will cut government spending by about $1 trillion over the next ten years. It also charges this Congress to come up with an additional $1.5 trillion in savings by Christmas. Tonight, I’m asking you to increase that amount so that it covers the full cost of the American Jobs Act. And a week from Monday, I’ll be releasing a more ambitious deficit plan – a plan that will not only cover the cost of this jobs bill, but stabilize our debt in the long run.

This approach is basically the one I’ve been advocating for months. In addition to the trillion dollars of spending cuts I’ve already signed into law, it’s a balanced plan that would reduce the deficit by making additional spending cuts; by making modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid; and by reforming our tax code in a way that asks the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share. What’s more, the spending cuts wouldn’t happen so abruptly that they’d be a drag on our economy, or prevent us from helping small business and middle-class families get back on their feet right away.

Now, I realize there are some in my party who don’t think we should make any changes at all to Medicare and Medicaid, and I understand their concerns. But here’s the truth. Millions of Americans rely on Medicare in their retirement. And millions more will do so in the future. They pay for this benefit during their working years. They earn it. But with an aging population and rising health care costs, we are spending too fast to sustain the program. And if we don’t gradually reform the system while protecting current beneficiaries, it won’t be there when future retirees need it. We have to reform Medicare to strengthen it.

I’m also well aware that there are many Republicans who don’t believe we should raise taxes on those who are most fortunate and can best afford it. But here is what every American knows. While most people in this country struggle to make ends meet, a few of the most affluent citizens and corporations enjoy tax breaks and loopholes that nobody else gets. Right now, Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary – an outrage he has asked us to fix. We need a tax code where everyone gets a fair shake, and everybody pays their fair share. And I believe the vast majority of wealthy Americans and CEOs are willing to do just that, if it helps the economy grow and gets our fiscal house in order.

I’ll also offer ideas to reform a corporate tax code that stands as a monument to special interest influence in Washington. By eliminating pages of loopholes and deductions, we can lower one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. Our tax code shouldn’t give an advantage to companies that can afford the best-connected lobbyists. It should give an advantage to companies that invest and create jobs here in America.

So we can reduce this deficit, pay down our debt, and pay for this jobs plan in the process. But in order to do this, we have to decide what our priorities are. We have to ask ourselves, “What’s the best way to grow the economy and create jobs?”

Should we keep tax loopholes for oil companies? Or should we use that money to give small business owners a tax credit when they hire new workers? Because we can’t afford to do both. Should we keep tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires? Or should we put teachers back to work so our kids can graduate ready for college and good jobs? Right now, we can’t afford to do both.

This isn’t political grandstanding. This isn’t class warfare. This is simple math. These are real choices that we have to make. And I’m pretty sure I know what most Americans would choose. It’s not even close. And it’s time for us to do what’s right for our future.

The American Jobs Act answers the urgent need to create jobs right away. But we can’t stop there. As I’ve argued since I ran for this office, we have to look beyond the immediate crisis and start building an economy that lasts into the future – an economy that creates good, middle-class jobs that pay well and offer security. We now live in a world where technology has made it possible for companies to take their business anywhere. If we want them to start here and stay here and hire here, we have to be able to out-build, out-educate, and out-innovate every other country on Earth.

This task, of making America more competitive for the long haul, is a job for all of us. For government and for private companies. For states and for local communities – and for every American citizen. All of us will have to up our game. All of us will have to change the way we do business.

My administration can and will take some steps to improve our competitiveness on our own. For example, if you’re a small business owner who has a contract with the federal government, we’re going to make sure you get paid a lot faster than you do now. We’re also planning to cut away the red tape that prevents too many rapidly-growing start-up companies from raising capital and going public. And to help responsible homeowners, we’re going to work with Federal housing agencies to help more people refinance their mortgages at interest rates that are now near 4% — a step that can put more than $2,000 a year in a family’s pocket, and give a lift to an economy still burdened by the drop in housing prices.

Other steps will require Congressional action. Today you passed reform that will speed up the outdated patent process, so that entrepreneurs can turn a new idea into a new business as quickly as possible. That’s the kind of action we need. Now it’s time to clear the way for a series of trade agreements that would make it easier for American companies to sell their products in Panama, Colombia, and South Korea – while also helping the workers whose jobs have been affected by global competition. If Americans can buy Kias and Hyundais, I want to see folks in South Korea driving Fords and Chevys and Chryslers. I want to see more products sold around the world stamped with three proud words: “Made in America.”

And on all of our efforts to strengthen competitiveness, we need to look for ways to work side-by-side with America’s businesses. That’s why I’ve brought together a Jobs Council of leaders from different industries who are developing a wide range of new ideas to help companies grow and create jobs.

Already, we’ve mobilized business leaders to train 10,000 American engineers a year, by providing company internships and training. Other businesses are covering tuition for workers who learn new skills at community colleges. And we’re going to make sure the next generation of manufacturing takes root not in China or Europe, but right here, in the United States of America. If we provide the right incentives and support – and if we make sure our trading partners play by the rules – we can be the ones to build everything from fuel-efficient cars to advanced biofuels to semiconductors that are sold all over the world. That’s how America can be number one again. That’s how America will be number one again.

Now, I realize that some of you have a different theory on how to grow the economy. Some of you sincerely believe that the only solution to our economic challenges is to simply cut most government spending and eliminate most government regulations.

Well, I agree that we can’t afford wasteful spending, and I will continue to work with Congress to get rid of it. And I agree that there are some rules and regulations that put an unnecessary burden on businesses at a time when they can least afford it. That’s why I ordered a review of all government regulations. So far, we’ve identified over 500 reforms, which will save billions of dollars over the next few years. We should have no more regulation than the health, safety, and security of the American people require. Every rule should meet that common sense test.

But what we can’t do – what I won’t do – is let this economic crisis be used as an excuse to wipe out the basic protections that Americans have counted on for decades. I reject the idea that we need to ask people to choose between their jobs and their safety. I reject the argument that says for the economy to grow, we have to roll back protections that ban hidden fees by credit card companies, or rules that keep our kids from being exposed to mercury, or laws that prevent the health insurance industry from shortchanging patients. I reject the idea that we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to compete in a global economy. We shouldn’t be in a race to the bottom, where we try to offer the cheapest labor and the worst pollution standards. America should be in a race to the top. And I believe that’s a race we can win.

In fact, this larger notion that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everyone’s money, let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own – that’s not who we are. That’s not the story of America.

Yes, we are rugged individualists. Yes, we are strong and self-reliant. And it has been the drive and initiative of our workers and entrepreneurs that has made this economy the engine and envy of the world.

But there has always been another thread running throughout our history – a belief that we are all connected; and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.

We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. But in the middle of a Civil War, he was also a leader who looked to the future – a Republican president who mobilized government to build the transcontinental railroad; launch the National Academy of Sciences; and set up the first land grant colleges. And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.

Ask yourselves – where would we be right now if the people who sat here before us decided not to build our highways and our bridges; our dams and our airports? What would this country be like if we had chosen not to spend money on public high schools, or research universities, or community colleges? Millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, had the opportunity to go to school because of the GI Bill. Where would we be if they hadn’t had that chance?

How many jobs would it have cost us if past Congresses decided not to support the basic research that led to the Internet and the computer chip? What kind of country would this be if this Chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do? How many Americans would have suffered as a result?

No single individual built America on their own. We built it together. We have been, and always will be, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all; a nation with responsibilities to ourselves and with responsibilities to one another. Members of Congress, it is time for us to meet our responsibilities.

Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight is the kind that’s been supported by Democrats and Republicans in the past. Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight will be paid for. And every proposal is designed to meet the urgent needs of our people and our communities.

I know there’s been a lot of skepticism about whether the politics of the moment will allow us to pass this jobs plan – or any jobs plan. Already, we’re seeing the same old press releases and tweets flying back and forth. Already, the media has proclaimed that it’s impossible to bridge our differences. And maybe some of you have decided that those differences are so great that we can only resolve them at the ballot box.

But know this: the next election is fourteen months away. And the people who sent us here – the people who hired us to work for them – they don’t have the luxury of waiting fourteen months. Some of them are living week to week; paycheck to paycheck; even day to day. They need help, and they need it now.

I don’t pretend that this plan will solve all our problems. It shouldn’t be, nor will it be, the last plan of action we propose. What’s guided us from the start of this crisis hasn’t been the search for a silver bullet. It’s been a commitment to stay at it – to be persistent – to keep trying every new idea that works, and listen to every good proposal, no matter which party comes up with it.

Regardless of the arguments we’ve had in the past, regardless of the arguments we’ll have in the future, this plan is the right thing to do right now. You should pass it. And I intend to take that message to every corner of this country. I also ask every American who agrees to lift your voice and tell the people who are gathered here tonight that you want action now. Tell Washington that doing nothing is not an option. Remind us that if we act as one nation, and one people, we have it within our power to meet this challenge.

President Kennedy once said, “Our problems are man-made – therefore they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants.”

These are difficult years for our country. But we are Americans. We are tougher than the times that we live in, and we are bigger than our politics have been. So let’s meet the moment. Let’s get to work, and show the world once again why the United States of America remains the greatest nation on Earth. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

What do David Daniel of East Texas, Daryl Hannah of Hollywood and three of the First Nations of Canada have in common? They are trying to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline that will run from within the Alberta province of Canada to initially the Houston area of Texas and ultimately the Gulf Coast.

Who benefits from this pipeline? TransCanada and the Koch Brothers (funny how they keep cropping up on this site, ain’t it?).

Who has to approve it? Hilary Clinton and the State Department, because it crosses an international border.

Who can stop it? Lisa Jackson and the EPA. They have already classified the State Department’s analysis of the project as “inadequate” (the worst rating they can give), which has kicked it back to the State Department. If they cannot satisfy the EPA, then the football gets kicked to…

The White House Council on Environmental Quality. From there, it could very possibly wind up on President Obama’s desk for him to decide.

Oil Sands and Pipelines

This is big and complicated. Understanding it means learning about oil sands, bitumen, the Ogallala Aquifer, oil pipelines, heavy oil, pre-refining, eminent domain, easements, subsurface mineral rights and so much more. My research document for this is already 35 pages long, and I haven’t even started pulling up the definitions on the technical terms.

We’re going to take it a little bit at a time. Consider this the teaser.

Because of the large amount of real estate involved, the map is kind of fuzzy, but here are the important bits: the orange blobs are the oil sands deposits in Canada; the black line is the existing Keystone pipeline which begins in Hardisty, Alberta and ends in Patoka, Illinois; the red line is the proposed expansion, the Keystone XL pipeline, also starting in Hardisty, Alberta and ending first in Houston, Texas and then branching off to Port Arthur, Texas.

Rick Perry by Donkey Hotey, Creative Commons, Flickr

Rick Perry will probably not be attending the first non-Fox Republican debate this week. He has canceled his planned appearances to fly home to Texas and fight the wildfires. He’s proving his Presidential credentials by standing by his state during a natural disaster.

It’s the Republican thing to do……

There has not been a disaster in this country since January, 2009, that Republicans haven’t used to criticize President Obama for not getting in there from day one. He was apparently supposed to swim down to the Deepwater Horizon wellhead and personally seal it. He was supposed to parachute into New Jersey during Hurricane Irene and personally divert the Passaic River. He was supposed to go to Arizona and blow out the wildfires. In the world of right wing critics, Presidents are supposed to be Superman. The tights and cape are frowned upon, however. Presidents are always supposed to look properly presidential – suits and ties in public at all times.

Forget the fact that the presence of a President requires a whole hell of a lot of security. Forget the fact that the only thing a civilian can do is get in the way of the professionals who are dealing with the disaster. Forget the fact that all the presence of a President in a natural disaster is, quite frankly, is a photo op. No, in the minds of right wing critics, the President isn’t being properly presidential if he isn’t getting underfoot and isn’t making inane statements like “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” because he has no idea what is really going on.

So Rick Perry will do the Presidential thing. He will sit around in Austin getting updates on the work of the real firefighters, something he could have done from anywhere in the world. He will show up on the fireline to take up the too scarce rest time of the firefighters to pat them on the back and tell them what a heck of a job they are doing. He will lead the state in prayer, since he has no faith in the ability of humans to do anything without divine intervention. He might even lead a new prayer rally for rain, even though the last one accomplished buttkiss. He will promise the people who are losing homes and businesses that he will personally make sure they get help – by signing the request for designation of a disaster for Federal assistance, also something he could have done from anywhere.

It doesn’t necessarily look very presidential for Perry to say, as he did in his press conference today, that it is the local authorities who determine evacuation, but he adds his voice to the call for evacuation. Molly Ivins used to say that the governor of Texas was only the fourth most powerful man in the state. Presenting himself as little more than a cheerleader certainly adds weight to Ivins’ assessment.

Related articles

• Texas Fires Pull Rick Perry From Presidential Forum (inquisitr.com)
• Rick Perry Skipping Palmetto Freedom Forum, Heading Back To Texas To Address Wildfires (huffingtonpost.com)
• Perry Cancels S.C. Event to Deal With Texas Wildfires (blogs.wsj.com)
• Perry to skip DeMint’s presidential forum, will return to Texas to deal with wildfires (thehill.com)
• Why Rick Perry Must Never, Ever Be President | The Philly Post (gloucestercitynews.net)
• Perry to skip DeMint forum (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)

Speaker of the House John Boehner

Never let it be said that the Republicans will graciously accept what they ask for when given it. President Obama directed the Cabinet departments to identify any regulations that were out-dated, redundant or unnecessary, and most importantly, regulations that the Executive Branch could eliminate without Congressional action.. They came up with 500 of them. Rather than saying, “Thank you very much, Mr. President, for making life easier for business,” John Boehner is now demanding a list of any regulations that have a projected economic impact of at least $1 billion.

Define that, please. What is “economic impact?” Knowing the Republicans he means anything that requires businesses to use lead-free paint on children’s toys instead of cheap lead-based paint or requires them to clean up their toxic waste dumps.

In a perfect Republican world, there would be no regulations, especially environmental ones, and the Cincinnati River would catch fire again, mines would routinely collapse and we would be watching our trees die in New England from acid rain produced in Michigan. In a perfect Republican world, we would not be able to see the Hollywood sign for the smog and our children would be losing brain cells to lead paint. In a perfect Republican world, we would have Bophal in Ohio and horrific ship dismantling industry that has buried parts of the African coast in toxic used oil sludge in Santa Barbara harbor.

Besides, Boehner’s asking the wrong people. The executive branch enforces regulations, but they only write the ones dictated by laws passed by Congress. If, as Boehner insists, new regulations that will carry an annual cost of $100 million or more jumped from 191 to 219 last year, he needs to look to Congress for the source of these regulations, not the White House.

Boehner says that he wants this information before Congress returns in about two weeks, and he will call for a law requiring Congressional review and approval of all new regulations. Back to that same square one – they wrote the laws that necessitated the regulations.

Somewhere behind all the nonsense about “job killing regulations” is the reality that this is a backdoor attempt to kill the affordable health care and financial services laws. Businesses hate the health care law because it will require them to provide access to group health insurance to their employees, and they would much rather push their employees into federal programs like Medicaid for their children and state programs where available for themselves. Then, the Republicans can cut those programs so people just die and do a Scrooge, “reduce the excess population.”

Regulations aren’t created out of thin air. They are created because laws were passed that set standards for something – air quality, emissions levels, safety in a particular work environment. The relevant law may be nothing more than the authorization for an agency to make a workplace safe, but there is a law behind every regulation. What is more distressing than this latest publicity stunt is the fact that so many Americans don’t understand where regulations come from and won’t learn that because they watch Fox News and never get essential information to help them separate the nonsense from the governance.

Related articles

• First Regulatory Streamlining Announced (lezgetreal.com)
• Boehner blasts Obama over increase in regulations (hotair.com)
• Boehner Presses Obama on Regulations (news.firedoglake.com)
• Boehner demands list of regulations from White House (dailykos.com)
• Boehner to Obama: Disclose costly regs (politico.com)
• Republican “Proof” of Obama’s Spending Full Of Nonsense (lezgetreal.com)
• What can Congress do to create jobs? Five Republican proposals. (csmonitor.com)
• Boehner Says Obama Being Disingenuous on Regulatory Burdens (blogs.abcnews.com)

Okay, so the National Cathedral was bouncing – it wasn’t just the camera making it look like the bouncing Limbaugh. 

Three of the small pointy “pentagles” on the top of the tallest tower on the Cathedral were damaged.  One broke off and landed on the ground, but no one was in the area so there were no injuries.  There is also some damage inside. 

There are reports of extensive damage near the epicenter, but the area is lightly inhabited and there have been no reports of life-threatening injuries.  In New York City, a few chimneys fell, also with no injuries.  Windows were cracked at the University of Virginia.  Most of the damage is small and reparable.  The damage to the Cathedral may be expensive primarily because the stonework that was damaged was hand-carved by artisans who are not easily found today.

There have been interruptions in both air and train schedules.

Geologists have explained why this quake was felt from Atlanta to Canada – the age of our mountains compared to California’s.  The Appilachians are very, very old, the oldest mountains in the world.  They are more solid than the Rockies, with less in the way of “loose” layers.  California earthquakes are localized, not shaking the entire coast.  It is also so rare for the Appiliachians to have a major quake.  Small ones are not unknown, but one this size is rare and people really didn’t know what was happening. 

It is not expected that there will be aftershocks as there are in earthquakes in younger mountains.  This is expected to be a singular event.

Related articles

• Earth Quakes In Washington (lezgetreal.com)
• 5.9 magnitude earthquake hits Mineral, Va. (hotair.com)
• Stones fall off Washington National Cathedral (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Why are East Coast earthquakes so widely felt? (cbsnews.com)
• East Coast Quake Closes Down Airports, National Parks & Causes Water Damage To The Pentagon (lukewilliamss.wordpress.com)
• 5.9-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes East Coast (nytimes.com)
• How the earthquake impacted landmarks (cnn.com)
• Earthquake Hits the East Coast! (thedailybeast.com)
• Yes, That Was an Earthquake (fort-greene.thelocal.nytimes.com)

Aerial view of the White House

Last fall, President Obama asked the Executive Branch departments to review regulations and suggest those that could be removed, streamlined, combined, or rewritten. Today, the administration unveiled a plan to cut back almost 500 regulations, which they say will save businesses up to $10 billion over the next ten years.

Naturally, the Chamber of Commerce and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said the cuts weren’t enough. Cantor called them “underwhelming,” while Bill Kovacs, senior vice president of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce said “The Administration’s findings and determinations, on their own, are a worthy effort at making technical changes to the regulatory process, but the results of this look-back will not have a material impact on the real regulatory burdens facing businesses today.”

Kovacs and business leaders are looking in the wrong direction, and Cantor doesn’t own a mirror. The vast majority of our regulations are a consequence of laws passed by Congress and can only by changed by Congress. The Executive branch is charged with creating means to enforce the laws that Congress passes, but has little power to remove most regulatory patterns. They can tweak the enforcement, but not void the laws.

The Republicans like to blame the President and act as though he and he alone has the power to regulate, but that’s disingenuous. It was Congress that passed laws for the inspection and regulation of food products, not the White House. It was Congress that passed environmental laws, not the White House. It was Congress that created OSHA and gave it mandates concerning specific areas where there was a need for safety protections for workers.

And that doesn’t even acknowledge the regulatory powers of the states. The Federal government does not regulate gambling, so the regulations that billionaire resort and casino owner Steve Wynn hates are actually Nevada’s regulations, not Federal ones. Except as pollution can cross state lines, it is the states that regulate the environment. It was necessary for New England states to sue Mid-Western states in Federal court to get any regulatory control of acid-rain producing air pollution coming eastward from the industries around the Great Lakes.

So, when Cantor and the Chamber of Commerce complain that the Fed should streamline permit processes and roll back environmental regulation, they are blowing smoke towards the faithful right wing who can’t be bothered to learn a few facts. The regulations they’re criticizing are primarily state regulations, not Federal.

Related articles

• Administration moves plan to ax hundreds of regs (knoxnews.com)
• Obama to Save $10 Billion with Regulatory Overhaul (businessweek.com)
• White House: Regulatory reform could save billions (marketwatch.com)
• What can Congress do to create jobs? Five Republican proposals. (csmonitor.com)
• Eric Cantor does not like the EPA (dailykos.com)
• Cantor: Obama administration’s actions say, “We want to make it harder to create jobs” (hotair.com)

The National Cathedral at twilight

Well, one more unique event in a year of unique natural events. Washington, D. C., has experienced a 5.9 earthquake. The funniest thing about it was the fact that MSNBC was broadcasting live from their Washington bureau when it hit, on a commercial break and suddenly Andrea Mitchell was replaced by Tamron Hall. Mitchell was being evacuated in the middle of interviewing Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware.

The epicenter was 4 miles from Mineral, and 4 miles from Louisa, Virginia, about 41 miles northwest of Richmond, 85 miles southwest of Washington. The quake was felt in New York City and as far away as Detroit and Windsor, Canada. There are no reports of injuries or damage from the major cities, but reports still have to be received from the town immediately around the epicenter. It set off alarms at nuclear plants in Virginia, and one plant automatically shut down, but there were no disruptions of electrical service or damage to the plants.

Amtrak is inspecting tracks and trains and shut down service while they make sure the tracks were not disturbed, and inspecting tunnels and bridges. The Washington-New York corridor is one of Amtrak’s most heavily used.

MSNBC is showing a video, one of those local television site-cams that overlook a city, that shows the National Cathedral bouncing up and down like Rush Limbaugh at a Republican event. It was the camera that was bouncing, not the Cathedral, but it gives one a good idea of what they felt in Washington. All the federal buildings were evacuated, as was NBC’s Washington office building.

In the meantime, state emergency services along the southern East Coast are broadcasting website addresses for hurricane evacuations as Hurricane Irene screams towards the Carolinas. It is currently projected to skirt the Florida and Georgia coastlines and make landfall in the Carolinas. Should it swing slightly east, it will rage just off-shore along the entire east coast and might make landfall at any point from Virginia to the Canadian Maritimes.

Those who believe in the Mayan 2012 prediction would say that the male Earth is having a rolling temper tantrum about being usurped by the female Earth next year and we can expect another four months of extraordinary weather and natural disasters.

Related articles

• USGS: Colorado experiences largest quake in almost 40 years (cnn.com)
• 6.5 quake hits northeastern Japan – Washington Post (news.google.com)
• Magnitude 7.5 quake hits Vanuatu in Pacific: USGS – Reuters (news.google.com)

Athabasca oilsands deposits

Anyone who watches television has seen the ad touting the safety of new oil and gas extraction techniques. They are designed to allay fears concerning fracking – the process of pumping water into oil-bearing rock to release the oil – and oilsand extractions. Bituminous sands, aka oilsands or tar sands, are areas where sand, clay, water and a very dense oil are mixed together. Extracting the oil requires steam injection and refining techniques that generate two to four times the amount of greenhouse gases that conventional oil production produces. Including the use of the oil itself, oilsands generate 10% to 45% more greenhouse gases.

There are large reserves of oilsand in Venezuela and Canada. The oilsands in Venezuela are in a warmer climate and slightly easier to extract. In Canada, they are in the northern areas of Alberta Province, parallel to Anchorage, Alaska.

Dr. John O’Connor, a family practioner, first raised concerns about oilsands in 2006 when he noticed an increase in a rare form of bile-duct cancer in the Fort Chipewyan and Fort McMurray communities. A provincial study in 2009 confirmed his analysis and recommended further study to determine causes. Dr. O’Connor said this week, “For various reasons, and none of them really sort of satisfactory, nothing has happened – this is over two and a half years later. But in the interim, we’ve had a lot of scientific studies that have revealed the lack of monitoring and the lack of due diligence on the part of the government.”

Finally, the Alberta Health and Wellness agency will begin a comprehensive study of cancer rates in areas downstream of the oilsands. Fort McMurray is 110 miles south of Fort Chipewyan, but upstream along the Athabasca River. The study will focus on the river and those living near it. A report from an expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada last December said that “there is currently no credible evidence of environmental contaminant exposures from oilsands reaching Fort Chipewyan at levels expected to cause elevated human cancer rates.” That’s nice, but do we really know what those levels are? The 2009 Alberta Cancer Board study showed cancer rates were 30% higher than expected, while environmental studies have shown high levels of toxic pollutants in the Athabasca River.

The oilsands area overlaps the Athabasca River watershed, which begins in Jasper National Park in Rockie Mountain glaciers and flows north to eventually empty into the Arctic Ocean. The area has been a scenic wilderness as well as home to several native American tribes. Steve Courtoreille, chief of the Fort Chipewyan Mikisew Cree said, “I want to see some results, but at the same time, I don’t want my community to be getting our hopes up and at the end of the day finding out that we’re not any closer to what’s causing these various cancers.”

For decades, we have been aware that fossil fuels are a finite resource and we should start transitioning away from them, but special interests are still blocking our ability to start the transition to wind, solar and hydroelectric power. We could be gathering wind in the Great Plains without disrupting agriculture and farming sunlight in our deserts, instead, we are fracking for natural gas, extracting oilsands and shearing the tops off mountains to get at coal in seams too small for traditional mining. We could be creating hundreds of thousands of jobs as we phase out our dependence on oil and gas. But as long as the existing energy companies exert power, money and influence on our politicians, we will continue to follow this path to destruction of our natural environment, cancers and other health issues in our population and eventual loss of enough energy to power our nation.

Just curious…..at what point does the right-wing conspiracy of billionaires and media propagandists and politicians blocking our nation’s future to protect their current wealth qualify as full-out treason?

Related articles

• Cancer rates downstream from oilsands to be probed (cbc.ca)
• Find lots of bison, but few tourists, in Canada’s largest national park (theglobeandmail.com)
• Alberta oilsands draw protesters to Washington (ctv.ca)
• Environmental groups want Alberta to form independent oilsands panel (canada.com)
• Foreign environmentalists want review of Alberta oilsands plan (calgaryherald.com)
• Oilsands pipeline focus of White House sit-in (cbc.ca)
• First Nations pan Athabasca land-use plan (cbc.ca)

The Real Tea Party, Boston Harbor

A New York Times op-ed is getting a lot of replay in the media today. It was written by David E. Campbell, Associate Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame, and Robert D. Putnam, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, the co-authors of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. As Ezra Klein, Washington Post editor and MSNBC contributor, noted, the op-ed exposes the lie of the origins of the Tea Party movement.

The “official” story of the Tea Party is a completely grass roots movement, inspired and named after the Boston Tea Party of Revolutionary War fame, which blossomed unbidden out of the frustrations and fears over the recession. Campbell and Putnam say, that version is bunk. They know how the Tea Party got started because they have the survey results that predicted Tea Party involvement before there was a Tea Party.

The first study was conducted in 2006 as part of the research for their book on religion in America and the impact of religion on politics. They talked to 3,000 people on a variety of specific issues that all relate in major or minor ways to the relationship between religion and politics. This year, following the explosion of the Tea Party movement, they re-interviewed many of the same people.

The first Tea Party myth they expose is the idea that the driving forces behind the Tea Party are economic and outside the mainstream parties. The “origin myth” says that Tea Partiers were political babes-in-the-woods who were never involved in the scuzzy world of politics before. What they found was that the people in their original study who were hardcore conservative Republicans are the hardcore of the Tea Party, who were more likely to have engaged personally with some government official at some point. That ties remarkably with Ohio Governor John Kasich’s admission that he went after the public sector unions because of a bad encounter with a police officer.

The second unifying attribute was a desire to see more God in our government. This goes beyond the anti-abortion, anti-gay rights crowd. These are people who will insist that our nation was founded as a Christian state, no matter what Jefferson, Adams, Washington or any other founding father may have said on the subject. And that ties in to another definer of Tea Partiers. They really are bigots. They have a much higher rate of being anti-immigrant and anti-minority than even mainstream Republicans. (For those not old enough, the “Moral Majority” and the “Religious Right” were 1970′s and 1980/90′s movements for the creation of a theocracy in America.)

In a backhanded way, this goes back at least to 9-11 and its aftermath, and possibly to the millennium hysteria. No matter how hard the Bush administration tried, and they did try, to distance the war on terror from ordinary Muslims, there were plenty of voices out there insisting that Islam is a violent religion with a Qur’anic edict to eradicate Christians and Jews. There were plenty of preachers and speakers in churches calling the Prophet Mohammed a child molester and calling Allah a “monkey God.” (Wrong religion, the Monkey God is Chinese and he was only a demigod.) 9-11 gave these people a legitimate reason to scream for ending immigration and shutting the borders, reinforcing their anti-minority views. And, though I hate to sound like a regionalist, the Tea Party gained its greatest following in the areas of the country with the least diversified history of immigration – the South which was almost exclusively settled by people from the British Isles and the importation of slaves, and the Midwest with an overwhelming preponderance of Northern Europeans. Without a history of diversified immigration and a history of the cycle of anti-immigrant violence and laws, these people did not understand the true immigrant experience or the reality of bigotry in America.

So, what did Campbell and Putnam find were the characteristics of the people who evolved into Tea Partiers over the past five years? Highly partisan Republican, social conservative, deeply religious, white, solidly upper middle class, anti-immigrant, and anti-minority (pretty much anti-anyone-not-us).

It has been easy for the people who tapped this group to direct their anger. Being anti-Muslim is patriotic because of 9-11. If one tries to defend the rights of Muslims, one hears the “how can you forget 9-11?” accusation. Being anti-minority morphs into being opposed to those people most likely to be receiving some form of social safety net in their view. Though there are far more whites than any other group receiving welfare, they will tell you that whites are not on welfare. The portrayal of recipients of welfare and unemployment and Social Security disability as “lazy” actually weaves well with the belief that minorities are more prone to use those programs and the stereotype of the lazy black and lazy Mexican.

They also, being hardcore partisan Republicans, tend toward the whole imperial vision of America, the vision that took us into Iraq and Afghanistan, the vision that says it is not enough to be “first among equals” as President Clinton, but America must be first, period. So, it becomes very easy to twist that imperial view into a pretzel with lingering anti-communism. The way the Tea Partiers talk, one would think Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush had not overseen the death of global communism. In the right hands, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, the lines between “socialist,” “communist,” and “fascist” were blurred. The Tea Party is a natural evolution out of the Bush era – the hyper patriotism, the “God and Country” mentality – that typifies fascism. Just don’t call the Bush government fascist or point out the parallels to Peron and Franco, or even insist on a correct definition of fascism.

What Campbell and Putnam do not explore is the way the Tea Party types were infiltrated and taken over by the money people who wanted to increase mainstream Republican power and increase the support of deregulation of business and elimination of taxes on the rich. The Koch brothers funded the Tea Party Express. That’s a proven fact. Old-time Republican operatives were recruited by Dick Armey to direct the Tea Party. When the money was brought into play, the public face of the Tea Party as a small government, anti-deficit, anti-regulation movement began.

Where did it all coalesce? In the person of Barack Obama. One could almost believe that Barack Obama was chosen by the Tea Party types to become president so as to energize the Tea Party types and grow the power of the Republican Party. Not only is our President half-African American, he chose an unacceptable number of Jews and minorities for his administration. His personal history, a Muslim African father, a childhood in a country most people can’t find on a map, these were gifts to the Tea Party, they made it easy to create the whole birther-secret Muslim nonsense.

But the more power the Tea Party has asserted, in states like Florida and Wisconsin and in Congress, the fewer people approve of their ideology. This is turning into a case of winning for losing – they gained national prominence, gained blackmail power in Congress, gained control of several states and so over-reached themselves that they exposed the worst of what they are to the majority of Americans who don’t believe in their far right ideology.

Campbell’s and Putnam’s conclusion is simple….the Tea Party has been so extreme that they have destroyed themselves, just as the extremists of the anti-Vietnam War era created the presidency of Ronald Reagan. A very basic, deeply ingrained belief in the true values of America and the moderate path is being brought out in the majority of Americans. And, as Martha Stewart would say, that’s a good thing.

Related articles

• The Tea Party Is a Religious Movement (usnews.com)
• Who Is Really Behind The Tea Party Movement? (businessinsider.com)
• Tea Party people less popular than many other hated minority groups (salon.com)
• Op-Ed Contributors: Crashing the Tea Party (nytimes.com)
• The Tea Party As A Christianist Force (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• Tea Party has become less popular than “atheists” and “Muslims” (politics.ie)

Via Twitter, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced the final three members of the “super committee” charged with coming up with an additional $1.2 trillion in budget cuts by Thanksgiving. The committee consists of three each from the two parties and the two chambers of Congress.

Rep. James E. Clyburn

Pelosi has chosen South Carolina Representative James E. Clyburn, whose district includes the cities of Florence and Sumter and portions of Columbia and Charleston. Clyburn has served in the House since 1993 and was House Majority Whip under Pelosi when she was Speaker. He is currently the third-ranking Democrat in the House, and one of the top ranking African Americans in Congress. He is considered a liberal, and ranks 77^th most liberal member with a National Journal score of 81, based on his votes. That means his voting record shows that 81% of the Congress is to is right. He has strong positions on health care, education, organized labor and environmental issues. Clyburn, like the other two men named by Pelosi, is a frequent guest on television programs discussing Congressional activities.

Rep. Chris VanHollen

Chris VanHollen has been representing Maryland’s 8^th district since 2003. His district borders the District of Columbia on it north and is one of the most educated and affluent districts in America. The primary employers of his constituents are the government and government contractors. He is the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee and is also involved in environmental issues.

Rep. Xavier Becerra

Xavier Becerra has also been serving since 2003, representing California’s 31^st district, which anchors in Los Angeles, then spreads west to Hollywood and south to Alameda. If you have ever seen the movie Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones, well Becerra’s district wraps around the primary location of the eruption. It is a socio-economically and racially diverse district. Becerra’s appearances on television have shown a man a bit more to the progressive end of the spectrum, but not ravingly ideological. Becerra’s parents were working-class immigrants.

The inclusion of Clyburn and Becerra help the committee avoid the appearance of being a ‘white man’s club” with a token woman. Now, of the twelve, we have one woman, one African-American and one Hispanic to go along with those 9 white guys. To be representative of our nation, the committee would have to have been 6 women and 6 men, with two African-Americans, two Hispanics and one Asian among them.

All the nominees are veteran lawmakers, and though Pat Toomey had Tea Party support, none are known as ideological hardliners. The hard line is between the two parties. The Republicans insist that all budget negotiations can only include cuts, while the Democrats insist that we need tax reform and an increase in revenues. The Tea Partiers who have made the media rounds have said that they favor elimination of tax breaks with a lower of rates, which happens to be President Obama’s position.

Senator Dick Durbin, who was a member of the Gang of Six, said the if the super committee would begin with what his group negotiated, then all they would need to do is tweak. If they try to start from scratch, they will never make the deadline.

What do most Americans want? The polls that have been conducted over the course of the seven months since the Republicans took control of the House have all pretty much said the same thing….we want jobs, not spending cuts. We want a fair tax system. We understand that some reform is needed in the entitlement programs, but we don’t want privatization. With a committee made up of so many moderate and veteran lawmakers, maybe we have a chance at a rational resolution to this nonsense.

Related articles

• Here Are Nancy Pelosi’s Picks For The “Super-Committee” (businessinsider.com)
• Pelosi Chooses Clyburn, Van Hollen, Becerra For Deficits Super Panel (npr.org)

Speaker John Boehner

Nine down, three to go for the “super committee” to create a budget policy for the next ten year and whose constitutionality is being challenged. Let’s see, the House and Senate are supposed to reconcile bills after they are written and passed, and anything that they pass is only valid for the two years this particular Congress is in session and can be repealed, overturned, or has no force of law after the next biennial election. I think that covers the constitutional issues.

So, ignoring the constitutionality of this “super committee,” Speaker John Boehner has named Representatives Jeb

Hensarling of Texas, Dave Camp and Fred Upton both of Michigan to represent the Republican majority in the House. House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has named Senators John Kyl of Arizona, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Robert Portman of Ohio to represent the Republican minority in the Senate. They are joining Senators Patty Murray of Washington, Max Baucus of Montana and John Kerry of Massachusetts who were named by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Still to go are House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s three picks, the House’s Democratic minority members.

What? No Paul Ryan? No Eric Cantor? No Jason Chaffetz? I’m positively gobsmacked.

Sen. Pat Toomey

Okay, Toomey won his seat with Tea Party support, but he’s the only person named so far who voted against the recent debt ceiling bill, and for the damnedest reason – he was “concerned that the long-term cuts over the next decade will not materialize. All Congress has to do to override this bill’s spending restraints in the future is pass another law that overrides them. If Congress is truly serious about cutting spending, it would mandate serious spending cuts in next year’s budget — the only year in which cuts are actually guaranteed.” OMG! A Congressman who understands the law. What a concept! Or, a Congressman who understands that the whole shebang was just political theater to damage President Obama and the Democrats and wasn’t worth buttkiss, except that it caused our credit rating to be downgraded. Toomey, by the way, was a three-term congressman who lost his first Senate bid against Arlen Specter in 2004 and then beat Joe Sestak in 2010 by a mere 2.02%.

Sen. Jon Kyl

Jon Kyl, Senate Minority Whip, has already announced that he is retiring next year, so he really can’t be bullied into any ideological position other than his own. It’s pointless to threaten him with a Tea Party primary, but he’s a staunch conservative, most recently noticed for his “mis-statement” that 90% of Planned Parenthood’s business was abortions. Kyl tends to shoot his mouth first and then find out the facts.

Sen. Robert Portman

Robert Portman is a strange choice. He held two cabinet positions under George W. Bush, U. S. Trade Representative and Director of the Office of Management and Budget, but as a Congressman, his record was almost Democratic – he authored or co-authored bills to trade Costa Rica’s debt for preservation of the rain forests, reform the Internal Revenue Service, curb unfunded mandates (like Bush’s Medicare drug program), expand pensions and IRAs for small businesses and create Cincinnati’s National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, eliminate capital gains taxes on most homes, promoted drug prevention and education programs and a bill to help prisoners reenter society.

The House appointments are just as far off the Tea Party.

Rep. Dave Camp

Dave Camp represents Michigan’s 4^th district, which is a sprawling piece of northern Michigan with only four cities of any appreciable size. Michigan right now is one of those states in the claws of a Republican majority in both houses and the governorship where holy hell is breaking loose over the Republican agenda, particularly the governor’s power to dissolve local governments and appoint emergency managers. Camp is Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee – the guys who decide where the money goes.

Rep. Fred Upton

Fred Upton has been representing the Michigan 6^th district since 1987, and his district includes Kalamazoo, Portage and the town of Benton Harbor, the one that made history with the appointment of a financial manager who was in cahoots with the people who want to take over their public beach for an exclusive, expensive development. He is Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling

Jeb Hensarling is a five-termer from Texas and the chairman of the House Republican Conference. He is expected to counter-weight the Democratic co-chair, Senator Patty Murray, who is the chairman of the Senate Democratic Campaign committee. They are the two expected to protect the political positions of their parties.  Hensarling and Murray will be co-chairing the committee.

Former Senator Alan Simpson had only one thing to say about the people appointed to this “super committee” – where are the Gang of Six? As he pointed out, they have been working on this for the past six months and know what is needed and possible. Leaving them out is ridiculous in his view because the members of this super-committee will have to be educated before they can do anything intelligent (he also had nothing complimentary to say about Max Baucus who was a member of the Simpson-Bowles commission.)

The super committee has until Thanksgiving weekend to come up with $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next ten years, none of which will really have any impact because they can be undone in 2013 when the new Congress is sworn in. If they don’t come up with a plan, the back-up kicks in and automatic cuts will be imposed.

The chances that the “Super Committee” will come up with something viable, intelligent, effective, job creating, fair, balanced, and lacking in ideology? Nil, none, nada, never happen, at least that’s the assessment of all the pundits and most Americans. The Republicans have done too good a job convincing people that government in any form is bad for them to be able to participate in the fine art of governance. Their goal, first, last and every since 2000 has been the creation of a single-party state, the “permanent majority,” you know, like Syria.

　          

 

Related articles

• Six Republicans named to ‘super committee’ (marketwatch.com)
• Murray: All is on table in debt “super committee” (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• McConnell, Boehner Make ‘Super Congress’ Appointments (huffingtonpost.com)
• Debt ‘super-committee’ takes form (bbc.co.uk)
• Baucus added to debt super committee – msnbc.com (news.google.com)

A Frisian Holstein, a.k.a. "Cow"

There was a placard held up behind Ed Shultz and his panel last night that drove us nuts – what the hell did “stoptherichfieldcafo” stand for?

Richfield is the name of a site chosen by MilkSource, Inc., a company that specializes in “concentrated animal feeding operation” factories. The one they are proposing in Wisconsin is a 115 acre site (that’s a square measuring 7.5 football fields on a side) on which they would house 5,000 dairy cows and steers in a “free stall barn.” There would be no pastures. Around 58 acres would be for treatment and storage of manure, “managing” the over 55 million gallons of urine and 8,500 tons of shit. The remaining 57 or so acres would be divided into one-third housing for the 5,000 cows and two-thirds for feed storage. Approximately an area the size of three football fields would house 5,000 cows. Each cow would get an area approximately 4×4 feet. The recommended size of a stall for a dairy cow is 9 feet by 4+ feet.

Aside from the impact on the cows from being packed in like the proverbial sardines, and the impact of all that pee and shit on the environment, we have already seen the potential hazards of this kind of farm factory in this spring’s egg crisis. A pair of chicken factory farms were responsible for contaminated eggs in dozens of states. And let’s not forget that these factory farms tend to hire illegal immigrants, just one of the violations of various laws that the farm factories get away with routinely.

Take a look at the middle of this country – all that space. Take a look at the states like Vermont where family dairy farms are failing for want of decent milk pricing. And then look at how this idea of CAFO keeps milk processes deflated and helps force the end of family farms where cows are treated humanely. Are the pennies a gallon really worth the cost in environmental damage, chances of infection and illness in overcrowded cattle, the destruction of independent agriculture?

If you would like to know more about the fight against the Richfield CAFO, go to www.stoptherichfieldcafo.org.

Related articles

• Lawsuit Concerning Richfield Dairy Could Threaten Economic Developement In Coloma Area (dekerivers.wordpress.com)
• Factory Farms Produce 100 Times More Waste Than All People In the US Combined and It’s Killing Our Drinking Water (alternet.org)
• Manure Concerns Of Richfield Dairy Near Coloma Have Well-Owners Concerned (dekerivers.wordpress.com)
• USDA Hides Damning Report Of Antibiotic Abuse on Factory Farms (treehugger.com)

This election will not be over for some time, because of Waukasha County’s portion of Senate District 8. At 11:30 p.m. Central Time, the one remaining of the six recall elections was not going to be decided until Wednesday. An investigation into Waukasha County has already been called for.

The Republicans have held three of the recalled seats and the Democrats have gained two.

To recap….the Wisconsin state senate consists of 33 districts. Nineteen were held by Republicans and 14 by Democrats. After the Walker anti-collective bargaining law was shoved through the Senate in violation of the state’s open meeting law, recall petitions were circulated. Recalls in Wisconsin can only be called on legislators who have been in office more than one year, and the state elects only half the Senate every other year. Six Republicans and 3 Democrats were recalled. August 9, was D-Day for the recall elections for the Republicans. Democrats needed to take three senate seats to gain control of the Wisconsin Senate and break the one-party rule of Governor Scott Walker, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (Scott’s baby brother).

Polls in the larger communities didn’t close until 9 p.m. Central time because Wisconsin polls don’t close until everyone who was in line at 8 p.m. has had an opportunity to vote. Turnout in the recall elections was very heavy, matching if not exceeding the turnouts for presidential races. The Senate districts in Wisconsin were established by a Republican state Senate ten years ago to be Republican districts. They have been solidly Republican districts ever since.

The decided races and the results follow, incumbent Republicans are listed first:

2^nd district, Robert Cowles v. Nancy Nusbaum, was called for Republican Cowles at 9:18 p.m. Central (10:18 Eastern). This was not a surprise, the 2^nd is a very rural district.

10^th district, Sheila Harsdorf v. Shelly Moore, called for Republican Harsdorf at 9:23 p.m. Central (10:23 Eastern), also not a surprise, also a rural district.

 14^th district, Luther Olsen v. Fred Clark, called for Republican Olson at 10:00 p.m. Central (11 Eastern), again, a very rural district, but Olson won by only 4%.

Senator-elect Jessica King

18^th district, Randy Hopper v. Jessica King. Hopper led in this race for most of the evening, but never by more than 500 votes, and without the results from the city of Oshkosh which was King’s strongest base. At 97% of the results in, King’s lead broke to 1,200 votes. Called for Democrat King at 10:39 p.m. Central (11:39 Eastern) to roaring cheers from the crowd in Madison who were at MSNBC’s broadcast site.

Senator-elect Jennifer Shilling

32^nd district Dan Kapanke v. Jennifer Shilling. Shilling led right out of the post in this one. Democrat Shilling was declared the winner at 10:08 p.m. Central (11:08 Eastern). The votes in the city of LaCrosse tipped the balance in this one.

This election has probably set records for money. Alberta Darling raised $1.5 million, but received $6.5 million from Super PACs, and the majority of that money came from the Koch brothers’ groups. It is estimated that over $30 million was spent on this election.

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz reported live from Madison in a crowd of Democrats, union members, farmers, teachers, firefighters, police officers. The Wisconsinites Ed talked with spoke of cuts to schools amounting to one-third of the staff in small towns. They told of policies that favor agribusiness over small family farms. They also talked about the next 15 months, and the overriding strategy of the Democrats in Wisconsin, how they will stay on the ground and engaging voters on a personal level because they know the money will be behind the Republicans.

The big problem is the 8^th district, Alberta Darling v. Sandy Pasch. Darling led substantially in the early returns, but after an hour, Pasch overtook Darling. This was considered the bellweather district on Walker’s policies. Darling has been a rubber stamp for Walker. She has also been referred to as the “Sharron Angle of Wisconsin,” because every time she speaks, factcheck.org goes into overdrive.

Then, Waukasha County threw a monkey wrench into the works This is where County Clerk Kathy Nicholas misplaced 14,000 votes in the Supreme Court election in April for two days, stripping Democrat Joanne Kloppenberg of her win with the only district to go 3 to 1 for Prosser. There were accusations out of Waukasha County that bags of paper ballots were opened, something that should not have happened unless and until those paper ballots were needed for a verified recount.

Initially, the clerk’s office told Think Progress that their results couldn’t possibly be ready before midnight local time. By 12:30, they were saying the results wouldn’t be ready until Wednesday. Waukasha uses the same election machines as the rest of the state and is a suburban district, not a city like Oshkosh which got its votes in in just two hours and forty minutes. Wisconsin State Senator Lena Taylor did tell Ed Schultz that there were a lot of absentee ballots involved in the Darling-Pasch race, so there is a possibility that Waukasha has one person with an abacus counting the absentee ballots.

Democratic Representative Tammy Baldwin asked in April for a Federal Justice Department investigation into Waukasha County and Kathy Nicholas. We are still waiting. The investigation should have started long before this critical election in Wisconsin. Nicholas should never have been placed in the position of determining any election ever again, no less one that will determine the majority in the State Senate.

The Tottenham Riot

Over the spring, protests, strikes and riots broke out in Europe because of austerity budgets, deficit reductions plans and debt crises. The unrest culminated this weekend in the worst rioting seen in England in decades. Over two dozen police officers were hospitalized and over 160 rioters were arrested.

The riot began in the Tottenham and Wood Green area with protests over the shooting death of a 29-year-old by police and descended into arson, looting, destroyed patrol cars, a torched double-decker bus and a rampage through a shopping mall. Former Metropolitan Police Commander John O’Connor told Sky News on Sunday, “This is just a glimpse into the abyss. Someone’s pulled the clock back and you can look and see what’s beneath the surface. And what with the Olympic Games coming up [next summer], this doesn’t bode very well for London.”

As residents picked through the damaged, two spoke with the press. Nadine Knight, who works for a planning and architecture firm, said “I’m completely and utterly disgusted by what the community has managed to do here.” Christian Macani, who works in environmental sciences asked, “What does this achieve?”

The riot was reminiscent of the 1985 riots in the same neighborhood, when one police officer died and 60 were injured. Then, as in this case, the flash point was the police response in the neighborhood. Journalist Rizwana Hamid, who covered the first riot, told the BBC, “The climate has changed, but very little of the issues have gone away,” issues like poverty, desperation, and a lack of communication between the police and the residents. No satisfactory explanation has been given for the shooting death of Mark Duggan, who was killed Thursday. The police have claimed that Duggan was armed and fired on an officer. His family denies it.

Though this riot was seemingly caused by a single incident, it is part of a broader pattern across Europe. It has been easy for Americans to shrug their shoulders and treat this as a European problem. After all, the French go on strike and French students take to the streets if the sun doesn’t shine the required number of hours in a day. It is not something we should be blase about.

Watts, Los Angeles, Aug. 12, 1965

How quickly we’ve forgotten Watts, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict, Kent State. As long as Washington keeps being vague about the spending cuts – our austerity budget – we’re safe from the possibility of street protests over program cuts. The Senate killed the Ryan Budget, so they de-fanged opposition to it’s move to privatize the social safety net. We’ve forgotten the cause and effect relationship between the Watts riots and Johnson’s Great Society, which was supposed to end the deeply ingrained culture of poverty, lack of education and desperation that existed in our inner cities.

The Great Society was a glorious failure – too much funding was put into the support of people and not enough into the ways to change the culture. Then, it started getting eaten away at, first by the Reagan administration’s block granting which cut funding subtly so it wasn’t immediately apparent. Then, Clinton instituted reforms to the system that were making real progress. All the measures of the sickness of a society – unwed teenage mothers, poverty, drop out rates, were reduced though the efforts of Bill Clinton and effective governors who reworked the system to match the needs and capabilities of their states. All of that went away in the Bush/Cheney era.

We are in worse shape than we were in 1965 when the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles burned for six days. Gangs are more prevalent, drugs more invasive in all levels of society, poverty is deeper because we have lost the manufacturing jobs that employed so many Americans who did not attend college and offered them middle class incomes, we have the largest prison population in the world – per capita, not just raw numbers – and our high school drop-out rate is back to the levels of 1965. The gap between the highest and lowest earners is the widest it has been in almost a hundred years.

And the social safety net is under assault in ways President Reagan never dreamed of. Though there has always been a resentment of welfare recipients, this is the first time in my life that there is even a suggestion that anyone who has lost his/her job would rather collect $103 a week in unemployment and live in a flophouse than get a job. This is the first time in my lifetime that the propaganda has overwhelmed reason. A large part of our population believes that all food stamp recipients are welfare queens, even though food stamp recipients have always outnumbered welfare recipients two to one and now, because 20 million adult Americans are either un-employed or under-employed that ratio has jumped to between three and four times as many. They don’t know about workfare. They don’t know one needs proof of citizenship to collect any Federal program. They confuse the truly disabled with the lazy and condemn them all as leeches living off the sweat of hard-working, conservative Americans. Only conservatives. If you are a liberal or progressive, you must, according to the propaganda, sit around your living room all day watching your huge flat-screen TV waiting for your personal check from the socialist President.

Republican state legislatures like Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida have cut billions out of schools and police departments to give billions in tax cuts to the rich and called it “balancing the budget.” The Republicans in Washington want to do the same – cut, cut and cut some more, but not get so much as a dime from the “job creators” who used ten years of tax cuts to create jobs in the third world, India and China.

We need to be paying attention to the riots and demonstrations and protests. This weekend, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu learned the hard way that telling the Israelis that he was going to open negotiations with the Palestinians using the 1967 borders was not enough to make them stop protesting high prices and stagnant wages. That’s the equivalent of an American President using elevated terror alerts to try to divert attention from inflation in food prices. It didn’t work in Israel, why should scare tactics work here anymore? Both countries have had too many cries of wolf and not enough wolves to make us accept what is going on in our economies. Europeans aren’t so much afraid of the increase in immigration of Middle Eastern Muslims from a social and cultural perspective any more as they are protesting the influx of people in depressed job markets.

My generation was backed off protesting by the tragedy at Kent State, by the photos of students lying dead in the street, killed by our own National Guard. It was the day the protests against the Vietnam War and social problems ended. But that was a long time ago, and the generation that is being destroyed by our economic malaise and the lack of real change doesn’t remember that. There is a new generation out there, one more desperate and more poverty-stricken than in 1965. They are watching the rise of a political power in this country that wants to force them into workhouses and prisons, force them further and further from the American dream, a political power that is demonizing immigrants and minorities, and is doing nothing about the rhetoric of the fanatics calling for genocide of immigrants and minorities and the poor as a way to “take back America.”

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, 1905. Unfortunately, those of us who do remember, those who understand the volatility of the situation are not the ones who are controlling the message right now. How sad that we are the ones who care enough about this country to be afraid for its future.

Related articles

• Tottenham riots: the history lesson from Los Angeles is that the modern middle class won’t tolerate mob rule (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
• Police apologise to Mark Duggan’s family for failing to keep them informed (guardian.co.uk)
• WATCH: As Riots Spread Outside London, New Details Emerge In Police Shooting (businessinsider.com)
• These riots were about race. Why ignore the fact? (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
• London riots: results of our crowdsourcing experiment (guardian.co.uk)
• 26 cops hurt, dozens held after London riot (msnbc.msn.com)
• Behind the London Riots: Twitter, Instant Messaging (techland.time.com)

We had a spring filled with floods and killer tornados. We are still having floods. Heat records by the hundreds are being set this summer. The hurricane season is already active and it’s just barely August. And now, the weather on the sun is about to create more problems for us.

Can’t we just leave it with earthly weather problems for a while?

The Space Weather Prediction Center, a division of the U. S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a report that solar storms are about to cause havoc with earth’s electrical grids and telecommunications systems. It may also give the northern latitudes some spectacular auroras.

In 1989, a solar storm took down the power grid in Quebec for several hours. The worst one on record was in 1859, when all that we had to disrupt was telegraph systems. They kept transmitting even after operators removed the batteries and cause several operators electrical shocks. A really bad disruption could cost trillions of dollars in damage.

NOAA measures solar storms on a one-to-five scale. These three storms have been rated as twos and threes. The first one’s effects have already passed Earth without any problems, but the last one isn’t expected to pass for a few days. The three storms have the potential to build on each other’s impact, making the last one the most dangerous.

Solar storms peak about every 12 years, and the next peak is expected in 2013. National and international power grids have been warned of the potential problems and the media is being relied on to spread the warnings to customers. Satellite users are the most vulnerable, though most cable systems also rely on satellite dishes to receive the signals they then transmit over physical cables. Cell phone towers, obviously, are also vulnerable. If its up in the air or pointed towards the stratosphere, you can assume there’s a probability of trouble.

The Mayan calendar says that next year the earth will change gender, and it’s something of a running gag right now in pagan circles that the male earth is throwing a temper tantrum over being usurped by the female earth. The Mayan calendar, however, says nothing about extraterrestrial weather problems, so we’re on our own with this one.

Related articles

• Power companies prepare as solar storms set to hit Earth (scientificamerican.com)
• Solar Flares May Impact GPS and Communications This Weekend (benzinga.com)
• Subsiding solar storm and new sun spot- 1267 (theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com)
• Effects of solar flares arriving on Earth (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Solar storm heading our way (physorg.com)

8-2-11

by LGR Science and Tech News Staff

Mount Etna , one of the most active volcanoes in the world, erupted in a spectacular display this weekend spewing ash and volcanic debris nearly 1500 feet into the air and sending lava down its slopes.

Mount Etna, located on the southern Italian island of Sicily, started erupting on Saturday morning and continued through Saturday and Sunday.

With the latest activity, the grand total of Etna eruptions for this year stands at eight, which makes  2011 one of the most active on record for the Sicilian volcano.

In January lava fountaining occurred from the vent on the east flank of Etna’s Southeast Crater cone, lasting more than 1.5 hours. During that eruption, Italian Authorities were forced to temporarily close airports for a couple of hours while the ash cloud cleared but  no flights were delayed during this latest eruption.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

At 7:04 p.m. Eastern Time, the House of Representatives passed the debt ceiling bill. The final vote two minutes later was 269 in favor, 161 opposed and 3 not voting. The ayes were 174 Republicans and 95 Democrats.  When the vote passed the 216 mark, applause broke out.  Speaker Boehner was wielding the gavel himself for this vote.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords flew in from Houston, where she is still receiving treatment for the bullet that passed through her head last January, to cast her vote.  Rep. Giffords’ presence was the primary reason for all the applause.

The bill will now go to the Senate for a vote tomorrow.

It turns out that last night we only had half the information on the debt ceiling/deficit deal. Here is the full picture…..

Immediately, we have a $900 billion increase in the debt ceiling and an equal amount in cuts. The $900 billion increase in the debt ceiling will actually come in two stages, $400 billion today and $500 billion after a vote of “no opposition.” There will be a bi-partisan, bi-cameral 12-member committee established to determine where more cuts will be made, but there is no restriction on revenues or where the cuts would be made. The committee will consist of three member-groups nominated by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. By November, that committiee must present a comprehensive plan with either an additional $1.5 trillion in cuts or a balanced budget amendment. The debt ceiling will be raise $1.2 trillion in November, no matter what happens with the commission, but failure to agree to cuts will result in an automatic $1.2 trillion across the board cut in Federal Executive Branch spending. The bi-partisan, bi-cameral “super committee” will be the third or fourth such committee to try to find the best ways to bring our government spending under control.

There is a possibility, if John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have enough balls, that the committee will not include the most extreme members of their caucuses. Reid will definitely choose moderates from the Senate and Pelosi might throw in one Progressive, but she is also more likely to go for the middle of her caucus rather than the extremists. Both parties have learned, we hope, in the past few weeks that the majority of Americans are not members of either extreme and we want balanced, fair, moderate governance instead of extreme ideology.

The first $900 billion in cuts will come from “security” funds – defense, Homeland Security, veterans’ benefits, the State Department. Before anyone goes ballistic about reducing Homeland Security spending, far too much of it has been a huge waste. For the first eight years, there was a major flaw in Homeland Security plans. Dick Cheney, in an excess of paranoia, refused to allow inter-connectedness between jurisdictions. Homeland Security was just behind the two wars and the unfunded Medicare drug program as a giant sucking sound at the Treasury.

Of the $900 billion in immediate cuts, $350 billion will come directly from the Defense Department. If the “trigger” that cuts $1.2 trillion ends up happening in November, most of those cuts will come from the Defense Department. Defense is 20% of our budget, equal to Social Security and Medicare and as much money as is spent by the rest of the world combined. We could lose 87% of the Defense budget and still spend more than China.

It’s a lot of “what ifs” and speculation and targets. Now comes the hard part. Working out the “balanced approach” to bringing our government’s spending under control.

The key part of this deal is the fact that nothing is off the table in the committee, and that includes making changes to our revenue process. Now, we get to drag out all those video clips of all those Tea Partiers saying that they support gutting the special interest tax breaks, loopholes and credits in exchange for a lower set of tax rates. Now, we get to force them to put our money where their mouths were. The Bush tax cuts are due to expire in January, and if there is as much disarray over those as there was over this deal, we could see them automatically end with an increase in $3.9 trillion in revenue as a consequence. At the very least, the companies that are showing record profits have until December to start producing jobs or their sob-story excuse of “don’t tax job creators” goes right out the window, along with their tax cuts.

This may still not be enough to keep us from being downgraded. Standards and Poors was demanding a $4 trillion spending cut in 10 years. That was actually what the President offered in the negotiations – the “plan” he allegedly never offered according to the Republican talking points.

On the positive side, the cuts do not impact the things we most desperately need to restore the economy, the funds for investment and education.

The first vote on the plan is tentatively set for this afternoon in the Senate.

This deal still does not represent anything that remotely resembles rational governance. Everyone agrees on the end point – lower government spending, stimulus to create jobs. What is not agreed upon is the how. History says that not taxing the rich does not create jobs. History says the government must spend money to build our way out of a recession or depression. But as long as a small part of the Republican Party has as its goal the dismantling of the Federal government, this deadlock will continue. The Tea Party goal is not to solve the problems, but to return us to the failed Articles of Confederation and 50 independent governments with only joint defense as glue. We rejected that idea in Iraq when all they wanted were three independent states. Why should be accept the idea of 17 times as much division?

Related articles

• Debt deal: Obama, Hill leaders break through (politico.com)
• Congress Must Trim Deficit to Avoid Broader Cuts (nytimes.com)
• Debt ceiling: What they’ll be voting on (money.cnn.com)
• Sen. Lee inclined not to support debt-limit deal (thehill.com)
• A Few Thoughts on the Debt Limit Deal (news.firedoglake.com)
• A Tea Party Triumph (online.wsj.com)

There are very few reasons for a people to revolt against their government. Many times, the causes overlap, but there are some identifiable categories.

The most obvious one is a people revolting against a foreign occupier. As long as there have been men with imperial ambitions, there have been local populations willing to fight and die to evict the foreigners. In modern times, this includes Vietnam, Algeria, Zimbabwe, India, and because of our stupidity, Iraq and Afghanistan. Reality is, the so-called “insurgents” are fighting a foreign occupying army.

Majority populations revolt against minority rulers. These usually overlap into other causes. The majority/minority line can be drawn by race, ethnicity or religion.

The rarest of all revolutions is political. The American colonies didn’t revolt because they were occupied. We were the occupiers. We revolted because we were denied representation in our own republic. The one most important thing we are not taught about Great Britain before 1776 is that there had been two political revolutions there before ours and they had established, for all time, that the rights of a free people are greater than the divine rights of kings. Our battle cry was not “dump the king!” It was “no taxation without representation!”

But the greatest underlying reason for revolution is and always has been economics. The French kept returning to monarchies after their revolutions because they were never about monarchy but about the intolerable income gap between the aristocracy and the poor. The Arab Spring is about economics, with the occasional majority/minority overlap like Syrian and Bahrain. The electoral revolution that put Juan Peron in power was economic, as was the one that removed him. The revolutions that ended communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were partly political, partly foreign-occupation but mostly economic. It wasn’t the calls to freedom of Radio Free Europe that inspired them. It was, according to friends we had in Russia, the unstoppable influence of West German television and its images of consumerism and wealth that took down the communist governments.

What does this have to do with us, here, now and in the future? Real unemployment and underemployment are sitting at over 20% of working age, able-bodied Americans. The income loss in minorities has topped 50%, while for whites it’s a 16% loss of real income. Millions of us have lost our homes while the people who bought our packaged mortgages made billions. Millions more are on track to be foreclosed. Seventy-three percent of us say that the economy is getting worse. That’s up 11% in the Gallup Daily tracking poll just since July 6. At the same time, the Economic Confidence Index fell to minus 46, down 16 points. Americans are learning a new word “oligarch” – and it is gaining in the rankings of bad things, alongside fascist, communist and socialist. The right wing did such a great job of blurring what “fascist” means, that the left had to find a new way to explain what this economic situation is all about. An oligarchy is government of, by and for the rich without the hereditary element of aristocracy.

Even if we don’t know who contributes to 501(c) accounts to create attacks ads, we do know who contributes directly to sitting Congressmen. In an oligarchy, the contributors are the very rich, and that is who is contributing to John Boehner’s campaign chest. It’s stupid to claim you are fighting for working class Americans when you are accepting campaign contributions from hedge fund manager John Paulson, #20 on the Forbes 400 list, a man worth over $136 billion, a man who pays only 15% capital gains rate on his commissions instead of the 36% top income tax rate.

We are not stupid out here. We have seen the direct line between the oligarchs and the governors who are cutting our services to give tax breaks to the rich. We were just informed by one of those oligarchs, Steve Wynn, that he prefers making his billions in communist countries. We have finally had something happen, England’s phone hacking scandal, that has made us question the principle source of right wing propaganda. We can see the real history of taxation, job creation and the triple failure of trickle-down economics. The battle cry of the left is not “kill the oligarchs!” it’s “look it up.” That’s what we tell those who try to repeat to us the talking points of Fox News and the Republican Party. Look it up…learn the truth. For the truth shall set you free.

John Boehner likes to say that “The American People Have Spoken,” referring to the 25% of eligible voters who handed him the Speaker’s gavel. No, Mr. Boehner, we really haven’t, and you don’t want us to. The hacking attacks of Anonymous against massive corporations are only the smallest part of what can and will happen if you and your party continue to lie to yourselves and not hear what we are still trying to say peacefully.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt looked at the rise of the Communist Party in the early days of the Great Depression and realized that the only way to save this nation was to save our economy before the message of “kill the oligarchs” took hold. He understood that a limited amount of socialism not only did not limit the possibilities of capitalism, but saved a whole lot of capitalist ass. That is what the Republican Party does not comprehend today. This is class warfare, and they are on the wrong side of it.

Right now, we want fairness and balance. We want the thousands of special tax breaks for the wealthiest eliminated and the tax rates lowered. We want real small businesses to get the breaks, not “tax code small businesses” like Cargill and Koch Industries. We want jobs, not sweatshops and part-time work that leaves us begging for food stamps and Medicaid for our children. We want our houses back – the ones that were taken from us because greedy mortgage holders used the adjustable rates to drive us out of them. We could afford our homes at the rates we originally had. We could not afford them when those rates were jacked up month after month for no reason but greed. We don’t want handouts – we want a chance to share in the wealth of this nation, to restore the wealth of this nation, to stop shipping the wealth of this nation overseas.

Most of all, we want the Republican Party to stop lying to itself and to us. And if they had their heads out of their donors’ butts, they would understand the dangers.

Revolutions are usually about economics.

Related articles

• Why Oligarchs Don’t Want A Deal (crooksandliars.com)
• Oligarchy and the Debt Ceiling (drumsnwhistles.com)
• How Washington’s favorite pundits explain why we’re doomed (salon.com)

This morning, a few more Republican lawmakers got in front the of the cameras and whined that they support eliminating tax loopholes as long as there is a lowering of tax rates. It’s the latest grand Republican spin.

This is what most Americans want to see. And it is what President Obama asked for in January in his State of the Union Speech. It is the best way to raise revenues, share the sacrifice and make us more competitive in the global marketplace. It is the best way to lower our deficits, avoid more debt and put people to work. But what the Republicans are doing is beyond disingenuous. It is lying.

They have had six months to bring this idea to fruition. They have had six months to correct the nightmare of our burdensome tax code. They have refused to even mention the idea until it became the one Americans want and they need to cover their asses. They could not under any circumstances agree to anything that President Obama suggested, no matter how good it was for the country. They relied on their propaganda machine to make sure that almost half the people in this country didn’t remember any part of the State of the Union and are now being convinced that it the Republicans who brought forth this wonderful idea.

THEY ARE LYING. Tell them so. Tell them loudly and often. Tell them they can get their rich donors to pay their salaries because we don’t have the money to. Tell them they can get their freeloading butts out of our office buildings. Tell them we want PRESIDENT OBAMA’s plan for fair taxes and they should stop taking credit for something they did not propose.  Tell them to grow up and admit they are trying to steal the credit like some school bully taking credit for a good homework paper they stole.

Find your voice. Please.

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President Obama went on national television tonight to repeat the terms of a proposal that would meet all the requirements of keeping our national credit rating, both by avoiding default and by demonstrating a serious approach to curtailing our nation’s financial problems. He put forth the two plans currently at loggerheads – a balanced approach of cutting expenses and raising revenues versus a plan just to cut expenses, and none of them from the Pentagon.

He ended the address with a simple request – contact your representatives, particularly if you have a Republican Congressman and/or Senator. Just don’t try to e-mail Speaker Boehner’s office. His server is “too busy.” Again.

It all comes down to the question the President asked – do you want to preserve the system that lets hedge fund managers pay lower taxes than their secretaries or do you believe that the only people who are benefitting from the current economic crisis should share the sacrifices?

If you don’t know how to e-mail your representative, simply google him or her. Once on the home page, click on “contact” It only takes a few minutes. And, don’t try to e-mail anyone else’s except the Speaker. Their systems favor communication from their own state.

Make your voices heard. After all, Speaker Boehner keeps insisting the you have spoken because his party was elected to the majority in the House, therefore, he doesn’t have to actually listen to what any of you have to say. Twenty-five percent of the eligible voters in this country gave him a mandate to do whatever he wants. It’s time for the other 75% of us to be heard.

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Speaker John Boehner has given his response to the President’s press conference. He says that the talks broke down on two points.

First, there was an agreement to lower and flatten the tax rates, remove some of the special interest tax breaks and increase revenues in that manner. Boehner said that the President then suddenly asked for an additional $400 billion in revenues. In other words, it was the number, not the method that was at issue.

Second, the President’s plan did not cut enough from entitlements. The Republicans want the bulk of the cuts to come from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The President wants them to come from discretionary spending and the military first and entitlements second.

Speaker Boehner says he does trust the President as a negotiator.

Boehner was disingenuous on one critical point. He claims that the President wants to raise taxes on “the American people.” That’s not accurate. When Boehner talks about “the American people” he’s talking about the rich and corporations that aren’t paying taxes right now. He keeps calling them “job creators” when they haven’t created jobs no matter how low their taxes have been dropped. It was the President’s demand that the Bush tax cuts on the highest earners be allowed to expire. That’s where the $400 billion was. Those highest earners have gotten a $40 billion a year break because of the Bush tax cuts just with a 4% increase in their tax rate.

Boehner says it’s the president who killed the deal because of that $400 billion over 10 years. Take your pick – both General Electric and Bank of America paid no taxes last year. The hedge fund manager tax dodge means that the 103 hedge fund and money managers on the Forbes 400 pay only 15% on their incomes, instead of the 32% that ordinary millionaires pay. They can make an argument that they need to protect small businessmen, but only if there is a redefinition of small business. A small business in the tax code should not be Cargill, with over 100,000 employees. It should not be Koch Industries or Walmarts. It should not be how a company is owned that qualifies it as a small business, but how big the business is. Boehner saying that he’s trying to protect “small businesses” is just more Republican nonsense. The guy who owns Clem’s Restaurant in my downtown is a small businessman, not David Koch.

Boehner said that he will be meeting with Congressional colleagues tonight to work out a deal, which they will then present to the President tomorrow. We will then find out who is willing to protect the middle class and the most vulnerable of us and who is trying to protect the super-rich and small businesses that aren’t small by any rational definition.

Republicans wanted to push the changes to the tax code to 2013 (in other words, don’t raise any revenues until after the election, but cut spending now) and be tied to killing the individual mandate in the health care law. That’s another case of the Republicans doing a kitchen-sink plan that mixes issues to blackmail the Democrats into whatever the Republicans want.

The bottom line is without a rational, logical, balanced deal, Moodys and Standards and Poors will cut our credit rating. That’s what they have told us, flat out. And they have made it very clear that any deal that does not include rational increases in revenue just won’t fly with the people we really have to get approval from. They will not accept a short term deal.

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President Obama took to the airwaves at 6 p.m. Eastern time to tell the American public that Speaker Boehner walked out of the debt ceiling negotiations and refused to take the President’s phone calls. The negotiations ground to a halt with Boehner saying once again that the President didn’t have a plan. Well, the President told us all what the plan was, what the offer was, and how the Republicans are willing to destroy the country’s economy and possibly the world’s rather than raise revenues in any way.

Fox News actually carried the whole press conference live, a move that comes as a shock to those who have watched them consistently deny their viewers the President’s words. Attempts to access the Speaker’s website, speaker.gov met with the message “server is too busy.”

The President made it clear that we cannot simply raise the debt ceiling. Our national credit rating is also dependent, to those who determine our credit rating, that we have a plan to reduce our debt and deficits.

“That’s all the American people want – fairness.” The President has responded to that with his offer. It’s a broad plan that both cuts spending and raises revenues without raising any tax rates. He admits that this plan could cost Democrats support, and that Democrats are willing to do that for the good of the nation.

Watching Fox News after the press conference was interesting. No matter what Chris Wallace tried to do, there was no way to spin this other than to say that the President took a shot at Republicans and laid the blame for the collapse of the negotiations on them. Wallace said that the Republicans have alleged that the President moved the goalposts on revenues, which the President denied in the press conference. Repubs say he demanded more revenues than the Gang of Six, but the President said the revenues requested were less than that. The Fox analysts are still saying the President hasn’t put forth any particulars of a plan, but neither have the Republicans in terms of these negotiations. Their idea of a detailed plan is the Ryan budget plan that is shorter than some papers I wrote in college, and the “cut, cap and balance” bill that didn’t lay out any details either, just a demand to slash spending, cap all government spending at 18% of GDP and pass a balanced budget amendment. Where are the details of spending cuts in that?

The President offered $1.65 trillion in cuts and asked for $1.3 trillion in new revenues. He refuses to put all these cuts on the backs of those who are most vulnerable. The right wing wants details? The Federal budget every year runs to hundreds of pages. Those are details. Agree to a target for cuts and then let the budget writers determine where. That is how this could have been handled if the budget had been debated in the same manner it has been for generations, instead of with this scorched earth attitude among House Republicans.

The President has “summoned” (Charles Krauthammer said that was “disgraceful”) to the White House at 11 a.m. Eastern on Saturday.

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Lucky me. I live in a state where the Weather Channel’s air pollution index routine says our pollution is at the lowest level and our primary pollutant is ozone. Vermont, Oregon, Washington, New York and California have the lowest toxic pollutant levels in their air. Yup, New York and California.

It’s the coal-fired power plants that do it. So, if your state has or is surrounded by coal-fired power plants, you are probably on this list. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) used Environmental Protection Agency data to determine the worst states for air pollution from power plants, more toxic than any other source of air pollution.

The worst air in America? Ohio. I know, no one thinks of Ohio when thinking of air pollution.

The rest, in order from worst to bad….Pennsylvania, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Indiana, Michigan, West Virginia, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Iowa.

The list was generated to disprove the industry “facts” being set out to fight the EPA’s proposed new regulations for public health protections. The regulations specifically look at mercury and toxic emissions from so-called “clean coal” – an oxymoron if ever there was one.

Dan Lashof, NRDC’s Climate Center Director said “Power plants are the biggest industrial toxic air polluters in our country, putting children and families at risk by dumping deadly and dangerous poisons into the air we breathe. Tougher standards are long overdue. Members of Congress who consider blocking toxic pollution safeguards should understand that this literally will cost American children and families their health and lives.” Yeah, but it would also cost them donations from the Koch brothers if they passed the new regulations. This is what the Kochs do – they are an energy company and are presently poised to purchase some of those old coal-fired power plants in Wisconsin that Gov. Scott Walker decided to put on the market to save Wisconsin some money in his infamous budget.

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Wisconsin Senate Districts

Tomorrow is the first of Wisconsin’s recall elections, Democratic primaries in six districts. The primaries are a set-up, with Republicans openly filing on the Democratic ticket just to set up the primaries, and delay the recall election itself.

The danger is the system in Wisconsin. They have open primaries. One does not need to be a registered Democrat to vote in a Democratic primary. It is going to take a massive get-out-the-vote effort on the part of Democrats in Wisconsin to assure that they have an honest election, a Democrat against the recalled incumbent, on August 9.

Remember this the next time some Republican starts in about how much voter fraud is perpetrated by Democrats. There has not been one verified case since 1968, but they are busy passing laws to limit access to the polls for traditional Democratic voters to fight “voter fraud” while getting away with garbage like this.

To recap: in the 2^nd district, Democrat Nancy Nusbaum is facing fake-Democrat Otto Junkerman.

In the 8^th district, Dem. Sandy Pasch vs. fake-Dem. Gladys Huber.

In the 10^th district, Dem. Shelly Moore vs. fake-Dem. Isaac Weix.

In the 14^th district, Dem. Fred Clark vs. fake-Dem. Rol Church.

In the 18^th district, Dem. Jessica King vs. fake-Dem. John Buckstaff.

In the 32^nd district, Dem. Jennifer Shilling vs. fake-Dem. James Smith.

This primary is a mockery of the electoral system. It is an insult to the people of Wisconsin. It shows the depths of deception, depravity and manipulation the Republicans will sink to in order to retain their complete power, just as the vote to end public sector collective bargaining rights was deceitful, depraved and manipulative. Walker and the Fitzgeralds have proven they do not deserve to govern Wisconsin because this is what they think of the people of their state.

The Wisconsin election is important to all of us, everywhere in this country. It involves more than just stopping three power-mad politicians in one state. During the Madison protests, there was a sign held up in Tahrir Square in Cairo – “Egypt supports Wisconsin workers.” Wisconsin is our Tahrir Square. It is where the ordinary American can prove that we will not be fooled into supporting a political party that talks jobs and recovery and only wants to further enrich the rich. It is where ordinary Americans can prove the power of our numbers over the power of their money.

Our hopes and our aspirations for the future of this nation are with the Democrats of Wisconsin tomorrow and on August 9. During the last elections, during this build-up to 2012, the Tea Party and the Republicans have said they want to “take back our country.” Well, it is our country, too, and while they have the right to share it with us, they do not have the right to take it from us.

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