God Love The Onion

Ah Yes, I See It Now

Wes Clark's a pretty smart guy.  I haven't checked on any of this, but I'll bet it's at least as close to The Truth as anything you're gonna get talking to anybody else.

We spend about 1/2 a TRILLION dollars every year trying to secure the flow of oil into the US.

You're a pretty smart cookie too, so I'm sure you're wondering, why is it OK for us to spend all that money every year?  Two basic reasons:
1) The US economy is designed, engineered and marketed as Petroleum-Based.
$15 Trillion dollars per year in GDP, and prob'ly 80-90% of it depends on relatively inexpensive oil products in one way or another.  $500 Billion (aka 1/30th of your "gross revenue") sounds like cheap insurance to some of these pricks.

2) Clark says there's something like $170 Trillion worth of oil still in the ground.



And, oh yeah - 3) Most of the various layers of Government in the US reflect the "realities" of our Petro-Based economy, and the political community has again been corporatized to the point where it's not much more than just another Business Unit.

Knowledge is Power?  Not here.  Not anymore.

from WhoWhatWhy ( a new one for me) with a hat tip to Democratic Underground

Above The Law

Elizabeth Warren is on 'em like the sun covers Dixie - and my mad crush on that woman continues unabated.

“Beginning in 2008, the federal government poured billions of dollars into AIG to save it from bankruptcy. AIG’s reckless bets nearly crashed our entire economy. Taxpayers across this country saved AIG from ruin, and it would be outrageous for this company to turn around and sue the federal government because they think the deal wasn’t generous enough. Even today, the government provides an ongoing, stealth bailout, propping up AIG with special tax breaks — tax breaks that Congress should stop. AIG should thank American taxpayers for their help, not bite the hand that fed them for helping them out in a crisis.“

The violence that some of these fuckwads did to our economy is criminal.  And while I'm trying to reform my hard-ass Ayn Rand reactionary self, I have to wonder: when do we get to hang a few of these jag-offs?

We Just Don't Know

Except we kinda do know - or at least we're getting to where we have to be starting to think there has to be something to it. There's always whatever small probability that it could be a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc, but c'mon - at what point do we just have to say those damned hippies were right all along?
From The Rocky Mountain Arsenal:

Deep well injection for liquid waste has been safely used for many years at sites throughout the United States without documented damage to human health or the environment. After an extensive study of deep injection wells across the country by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it was concluded that this procedure is effective and protective of the environment.
The Rocky Mountain Arsenal deep injection well was constructed in 1961, and was drilled to a depth of 12,045 feet. The well was cased and sealed to a depth of 11,975 feet, with the remaining 70 feet left as an open hole for the injection of Basin F liquids. For testing purposes, the well was injected with approximately 568,000 gallons of city water prior to injecting any waste. However, when the Basin F liquids were actually introduced, the process required more time than anticipated to complete because of the impermeability of the rock. The end result was approximately 165 million gallons of Basin F liquid waste being injected into the well during the period from 1962 through 1966.
The waste fluid chemistry is not known precisely. However, the Army estimates that the waste was a more dilute version of the Basin F liquid which is now being incinerated. Current Basin F liquid consists of very salty water that includes some metals, chlorides, wastewater and toxic organics. From 1962 -- 1963, the fluids were pumped from Basin F into the well. From 1964 -- 1966, waste was removed from an isolated section of Basin F and was combined with waste from a pre-treatment plant, located near Basin F, and then pumped into the well. The waste from the pre-treatment plant was generally a solution containing 13,000 parts per million sodium chloride (salt), with a pH ranging from 3.5 to 11.5. The organic content of the solution was high but is largely unknown.
The injected fluids had very little potential for reaching the surface or useable groundwater supply since the injection point had 11,900 feet of rock above it and was sealed at the opening. The Army discontinued use of the well in Feb. 1966 because of the possibility that the fluid injection was triggering earthquakes in the area. The well remained unused for nearly 20 years.
In 1985 the Army permanently sealed the disposal well in stages. First, the well casing was tested to evaluate its integrity. Any detected voids behind the casing were cemented to prevent possible contamination of other formations. Next, the injection zone at the bottom 70 feet of the well was closed by plugging with cement. Additional cement barriers were placed inside the casing across zones that could access water-bearing formations (aquifers). The final step was adding Bentonite, a heavy clay mud that later solidified, to close the rest of the hole up to the ground surface.

I was 14, living in Arvada Colorado in August 1967, and I remember very clearly at the time that nobody wasn't convinced the earthquakes were being caused by the US Army pumping tons of toxic waste into those wells.  The Army didn't deny it although they were pretty cagey about what they were willing to say about it in public.

Historic Earthquakes

Denver, Colorado
1967 08 09 13:25
Magnitude 5.3

The main damage occurred in Northglenn, a northern suburb of Denver, but minor damage occurred in many area towns. At Northglenn, concrete pillars were damaged at a church; foundations, concrete floors, and walls cracked; windows broke; and tile fell at a school. At one residence, a piano shifted about 15 cm and a television set overturned. Some bricks fell from a chimney in downtown Denver, damaging a car. This was the largest of a series of earthquakes in the northeast Denver area that were believed to be induced by pumping of waste fluids into a deep disposal well at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The Colorado School of Mines recorded more than 300 earthquakes from this zone during 1967. Felt north to Laramie, Wyoming, south to Pueblo, west to Vail, and east to Sterling.

Cracks in highway overpass pillar in the Denver, Colorado, area caused by the August 9, 1967, earthquake. (Photograph by the Denver Post.)

And then this, from Up With Chris Hayes:

Indeed, energy independence–and the economic opportunities that come with it–may be an admirable goal. But then there’s this: fracking is causing earthquakes. Federal scientists presented a new study this week to the American Geophysical Union that suggests natural gas drilling is the likely culprit behind a skyrocketing number of earthquakes in the Raton Basin in Colorado and New Mexico. From 1970 to 2001, there were just five earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater in that region. Then, companies began injecting what’s called “wastewater fluid” from natural gas drilling into the Earth. After that, from 2001 to 2011, there were a total of 95 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater–an increase of 1,900%. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey concluded in their report that “the majority, if not all of the earthquakes since August 2001 have been triggered by the deep injection of wastewater related to the production of natural gas from the coal-bed methane field.”

This has to stop.

Gettin' It Done - 26

26. Improved Food Safety System: In 2011, signed FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which boosts the Food and Drug Administration’s budget by $1.4 billion and expands its regulatory responsibilities to include increasing number of food inspections, issuing direct food recalls, and reviewing the current food safety practices of countries importing products into America.

Seems like your basic no-brainer, don't it?  Here's the problem with letting a free market take care of these things:  dead people.  

It makes perfect sense that any company is going to do whatever it can do to protect its reputation.  There's a solid incentive to do things right and to try to ensure the safety of your customers - the thinking is that if your product causes harm to your customers, you won't have customers for very long, and so the problem fixes itself.  But every time we've decided it's not necessary to be proactive about these things, we end up with the same result - dead people.

All these smart business guys keep reminding us how smart they are, but they seem totally unaware of one of the absolute rock-hard fundamentals of the production process - no matter what it costs or how long it takes, doing it right the first time is always quicker and cheaper than having to go back and do it again.  And it's no different when you apply it to product safety.  Prevention is far more cost-effective than remedy.

But here's the kicker:  BizGuy knows his math, and he actually is fully aware of the Prevention-vs-Remedy Formula.  He's walked himself thru the exercise and he's decided to attack the problem of Remedial Cost by purchasing a few Coin-Operated Politicians, who'll simply block the consumer's path to the remedy.  PR, De-Regulation and Tort Reform make for a winning combination.

Throw in some Union Busting and we're right back where we started 240 years ago.

A Quickie

Something's been buggin' me about the whole 47% thing - I mean something other than the douchebaggery of WIllard saying it, and the oral flatulence of Limbaugh and Noonan and Bobo as they try to pretend it was all about clumsy wording or inept campaigning or conniving libruls who like to play "gotcha games".  There was something else. Something very much in keeping with how Repubs do things, and it took me a while to figure it out, but here it is:

For a lot of people, Willard's attempts to dodge US taxes make him a bit of a hero.  Government is evil and all taxation is theft, so anything you do to screw the IRS is a noble gesture.  For these folks, Willard is the Self-Service version of Robin Hood.

So how come they don't see "the 47% who don't pay taxes" in the same light?

There's a guy flippin' burgers who used to work for the county as a civil engineer to keep the paving contractors honest, but he got laid off when they had to cut the budget to make up for tax cuts.  He doesn't pay Federal Income Tax because he doesn't make enough.  He'd love to get back to where he pays taxes again.  And there it is.  He wants to pay his taxes; he wants to pay the bloodsuckers their tribute; he's brainwashed; he's corrupt; he's not one of us.  And before you know it: "he must be eliminated"

So in GOP Oppositeland, you can't be virtuous if you're not out to fuck somebody over, and even tho' they actually believe the 47% are trying to do exactly that, the GOP must have an enemy, so the enemy is us.

It Starts To Make Sense

When lots of people said, "We invaded Iraq because of the oil", I was willing to consider it as one possible reason, but it also had the hollow ring of empty rhetoric for me, especially as we failed to produce a decent flow of crude.
(3.5M bbl/day pre-war, 1.5M bbl/day now)

It seems I was pretty wrong on that one.  Almost crazy stupid wrong.  For one thing, while invading Iraq was indeed about securing the supply, more importantly it was about controlling the flow (but that's just a little bonus info - read on).

A book review by Matt Stoller via Naked Capitalism:

The use of coal and oil in the context of industrialization has always been about who has the power to profit from the surplus these energy forms produce, but until now, no one has pulled the various historical details together into a historical narrative laying bare the fascinating power dynamics behind the rise of Western political systems and their relationship with energy. Carbon Democracy is an examination of our civilization’s 400 hundred year use of carbon-based energy fueling sources, and the political systems that grew up intertwined with them. Rather than presenting energy and democracy as separate things, like a battery and a device, Mitchell discusses the political architecture of the Western world and the developing world as inherently tied to fueling sources. The thesis is that elites have always sought to maximize not the amount of energy they could extract and use, but the profit stream from those energy sources. They struggled to ensure they would be able to burn carbon and profit, without having to rely on the people who extract and burned it for them. Carbon-based fuels thus cannot be understood except in the context of labor, imperialism and democracy.

--and--

And oil companies operated not to maximize production, but to sabotage it. Mitchell wrote, “The companies had learned from Standard Oil that it was easier to control the means of transportation. Building railways and pipelines required negotiating rights from the government, which typically granted the further right to prevent the establishing of competing lines. After obtaining the rights, the aim was usually to delay construction, but without losing the right. Iraq became the key place to sabotage the production of oil. It would retain that role through much of the twentieth century, and reacquire it in a different way in the twenty-first century.”

So it turns out that all the Geopolitics and whatever nuevo-jargon maneuverings you care to mention over the last 50 years or so is just the same old imperial game of grab the cash and make a stash?

Same shit, new day.  And Jesus wept.

Banks vs The World

Minor throw-back tho'ts of "fuck the French" and "those pesky Germans are at it again".  But really, it's all about who owns the decisions when it comes to the money.