Severe tornadoes, severe snowfall, severe flooding, severe economic destruction by Republicans, severe lengths of U.S. wars, severe tuition prices, and now severe drought. Armageddon?

The Real Traitors to America

Goons in Gucci's So where does this sudden, multi-state offensive against the hard-won rights, protections, and democratic power of America's wage earners come from? From the top--from a relative handful of arrogantly rich, right-wing families and corporate chieftains who have long been dedicated to disarming labor, repealing the New Deal, and returning America to the glory days when robber barons ruled. These particular moneyed elites have not idly dreamed of going back to the future, they've been investing hundreds of millions of dollars during the past four decades to assemble a shadowy network of hired political thugs to get them there. [HISTORICAL FLASHBACK: In the fierce labor wars of the last century, industrial barons employed Pinkertons and other goons to bloody the heads of laborers or simply gun down those struggling for a share of economic and political power. It was brutal, but organized workers persevered and eventually gained a share of economic and political power. From their sweat and blood, America's middle class flowered.] Today, the bands of nouveau corporate royalists (with coats of arms bearing such names as Coors, DeVos, Koch, Scaife, and Walton) are determined to take back those middle-class gains of yesteryear. They are working to achieve this through a coordinated, long-term campaign to (1) crush the ability of working people to unionize, (2) bust America's middle-class wage structure, (3) eliminate job security, and (4) emasculate government as a force capable of controlling corporate avarice and arrogance. These latter-day royalists are employing a more sophisticated thuggery than brute force (though don't think they wouldn't resort to it). Instead, their goons are more likely to be in Gucci's than brogans, using dollars and computers rather than clubs and guns. They have been recruiting, financing, training, deploying, and coordinating thousands of political operatives to work through hundreds of front groups, law firms, think tanks, PACs, lobbying offices, media and PR consortiums, faux academic centers, astroturf campaigns, and--of course--compliant politicians. Among the compliant is our covey of hyperactive governors, all carrying basically the same anti-worker, anti-democratic policy ideas. Their unified agenda wasn't produced by telepathy or freakish happenstance, but by AFC, ALEC, IFL, SPN,* and other obscure organizational acronyms unknown to 99 percent of Americans. But Daniels of Indiana, Walker of Wisconsin, Kasich of Ohio, Scott of Florida, and the rest of the covey have these organizations on speed dial. Behind the non-descript acronyms are aggressive and insidious right-wing wonk shops that have been set up and richly financed by the corporatists to prepare and hand-deliver pro-corporate programs to compliant governors and key legislators. Once delivered, the organizations work (usually clandestinely) to get the programs enacted. Let's peek inside a couple of these acronyms. 2. AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL. "With nearly 2,000 members" explains a brochure of this secretive organization, "ALEC is the nation's largest nonpartisan, individual membership association of state legislators." Maybe your very own local lawmaker is one of them--but you won't get that information from ALEC, which hides its list of legislators from public view. Nonpartisan? Its website lists 22 legislators from around the country who serve as board members and officers of this tax-exempt legislative service organization. All are Republican. In fact, only token numbers of Democrats are allowed in the club, and all inductees are individually vetted to make sure they will adhere to ALEC's corporate dogma. Which brings us to the organization's pose as an association of legislators. The "exchange" in ALEC's name is not between lawmakers, but between lawmakers and such behind-the-scenes powers as Altria, AT&T, Bayer, Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, GlaxoSmithKline, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Koch Industries, Kraft Foods, Peabody Energy, Pfizer, Reynolds American, State Farm Insurance, UPS, and Walmart. These giants form ALEC's "private enterprise board," and they are among the self-interested corporations that put up its money and shape its agenda. State reps pay only a token $50 a year to be members of ALEC, while at least 82 percent of the $6 million yearly budget comes from corporations (ALEC demurely refuses to name its donors, much less report how much each gives, nor will it disclose how it spends the money). What do corporations get for their tax-deductible donations? A greased skid for sliding their wish list into the laws of multiple states. ALEC is something of a speed dating service. It holds three national conferences a year, plus convening issue-specific policy sessions in 20 to 30 state capitols annually. These are cozy sessions that conveniently gather groups of legislators to meet in private with corporate executives. The two groups schmooze together and develop bills to help extend corporate power over workers, consumers, environmentalists, and others--then the lawmakers go back home to pass the corporations' bills. ALEC is the ultimate back room for corporate-legislative collusion. Its promotional brochure describes it as a dynamic partnership "that will define the American political landscape of the 21st century." That's no empty threat. ALEC's tête-à-têtes result in about 1,000 bills being introduced across America every legislative session, and an ALEC official proudly adds, "We usually pass about 200 bills a year." And what pieces of work they are! For example: Even before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took office this January, ALEC agents were handing him model bills for clubbing teachers and other public employees. Pushing ALEC's attack from inside the legislature were Wisconsin state Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, the rancorous, union-busting majority leader who was ALEC's state chairman last year, and state Rep. Robin Vos, the house budget slasher who heads ALEC's state organization this year. Likewise, governors in Indiana, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio have backed anti-union legislation this year that closely resembles ALEC's 'model' bills. In 2009, ALEC drew up the Voter ID Act to ban university students from using their college-issued ID's as proof of residency for voting. Seven states have adopted this model law, which is intended to bar eligible students from the voting booth. These kids must be disenfranchised, New Hampshire's house speaker bluntly said in February, because they're "voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience." This model bill has been introduced in 18 other states this year in a rather obvious ploy to hold down the student vote in the 2012 presidential election. Arizona's infamous anti-Latino immigration law was crafted at an ALEC conference. The state senate leader who sponsored the bill was in the meeting, as was an eager executive from Corrections Corporation of America, the private prison operation that stands to get a nice business boost from Arizona's law. Numerous state bills have been filed to kill, dilute, or withdraw from Obama's universal healthcare reform. Many bear remarkably similar wording, perhaps because they were drawn from a special report churned out by the 'nonpartisan' ALEC, entitled "The State Legislators Guide to Repealing ObamaCare." One of ALEC's specialties is developing state laws to stop citizens from interfering with corporate whim. For example, when various communities began outlawing the use of genetically altered seeds in their area, ALEC rushed out a model bill to remove local control of seeds--11 states have passed it. Also with such climate-change deniers as Koch and Exxon funding ALEC and sitting on its board, you can guess why this corporate policy front has produced more than 800 draft measures against regulating global warming emissions--and, at least six states are considering bills nearly identical to ALEC's draft resolution for "state withdrawal from regional climate initiatives." The big lie Something unconscionable is at work here, something that is shameful, unworthy of our people, and directly contradictory to our country's founding ideals. The richest, most powerful, most privileged people in our land--in cahoots with a horde of the least principled, most venal political opportunists in civic life-- are intentionally savaging the well-being of America's majority and aggressively suppressing the democratic rights that make America America. And for what? Solely for themselves, for the aggrandizement of their own wealth and power. To pull off this grand political larceny, the narcissistic right has manufactured a huge lie that has largely been accepted as truth not only by the GOP and tea partiers, but also by the mass media, nearly all of the mainline pundit class, and too many fraidy-cat Democratic leaders, including the one in the oval office. The lie is that extreme budgetary measures (they call them "coura- geous") simply must be imposed now, this instant, in order to slay the looming deficit monster that is gorging itself on government spending at all levels. "In the name of your grandbabies," they cry, "teachers must be fired, rights smothered, pensions abrogated, Medicare tossed aside, little kids cut off from Head Start, and the bright promise of America's shared prosperity dimmed. We have no choice but to slash and burn." No choice? One hedge fund hustler pocketed $2.4 million last year. Not for the year--$2.4 million AN HOUR. Yet he and his ilk pay a much lower tax rate than you and I do. In recent years, huge corporations like GE, ExxonMobil, and Bank of America have pocketed billions of dollars in profit, yet paid not a dime in federal income taxes. Indeed, far from paying taxes, these three have even been handed millions of dollars in "refunds" from our public treasury in some of their profitable years. Sliding through loopholes created by their lobbyists, two-thirds of corporations in the US pay no income taxes to help cover the priceless benefits they get from our national government. America does not face a deficit crisis--we face a multi-billion dollar annual tax dodge by the most elite of moneyed elites. The money our society needs is right there--in the coffers of flagrantly rich Fortune 500 corporations and Wall Street banks, in the personal accounts of absurdly wealthy CEOs and fast-buck speculators. America is hardly a poor country. It's the richest in the history of the world, and it ought to have the very best public education program in the world, the most advanced infrastructure network, and the finest system of health care for all. Yet our 'leaders' only talk of what they can't do, of what must be cut, of how the middle class and the poor must sacrifice, of how Americans must adapt to the new normal of diminished expectations and shriveled democratic power. The ugly truth is that these despicable governors and lawmakers are willingly trashing teachers and butchering our public budgets simply to spare the privileged and plutocratic few from paying what they owe to sustain a just, democratic, and truly prosperous society. This is ridiculous. Let's tax the super-rich! We the People must join together, stand up, push back, and shift the focus in this fight from hardworking teachers to these disgusting deadbeats and their political puppets. - Jim Hightower

Bad News from Juan Cole:

"It is hard to decide which is the worst news in the International Energy Agency’s new study.

"The central piece of bad news is that as the world recovers from the 2008-2009 crash, it is spewing record amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In 2010 human beings sent 30.6 gigatons of carbon into the air, 5% more than in 2008, beating that previous record.

"A lot of the sources of emission are fixed coal and other hydrocarbon plants that will likely go on operating through 2020, suggesting that there will be annual increases in emissions into the next decade.

"In turn, this steady production of atmospheric poison, which causes the atmosphere to retain the heat of sunlight and interferes with it being radiated back out into outer space, is likely to increase the average global surface temperature by more than 2 degrees. Climate scientists had hoped that international protocols and government efforts would hold the increase to that amount. An average increase of 3 degrees would suggest that in some times and places it would be hellish, with a deleterious impact on crops and human health.

"Oxfam has just issued a warning that food staples will likely double in price by 2030, in part because of climate change. A billion people in the world go hungry already, and spend 80% of their income on food. If the world envisaged by Oxfam materializes, obviously there is the potential of widespread starvation.

"The Big Oil and Big Coal executives attempting to stop efforts to reduce emissions are thus in effect mass murderers of a future generation.

"America’s corporate police state has decided that ecological activism is a danger that it needs to spend millions combating. (In fact, genuine ‘eco-terrorism,’ as opposed to FBI entrapment of aging hippies, is rare.)

"Given what is being done to the planet, the FBI should instead be having agents sit outside Big Oil and Big Coal corporate offices tracing how the money goes out from them to buy our political representatives (that is illegal, guys) and have them work against green energy and engage in climate change denial."

Your Conservatives/Republicans hard at work, creating today's problems:

FreedomWorks Nov 03, 2006 OFFSHORE DRILLING IN THE GULF OF MEXICO Good for the economy and good for the environment Most Americans understand the need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and provide the extra supply of oil and natural gas to lower our energy costs. The Mineral Management Services (MMS), an agency of the Department of Interior, estimates that the OCS (Outer Continental Shelf) contains enough natural gas to heat 100 million homes for 60 years or enough oil to replace current Persian Gulf imports for 59 years. Unfortunately the federal government has held back 80% of the country's OCS from oil and gas exploration and production. But despite these findings, there are those from radical environmental groups that oppose critical access to domestic oil and natural gas, claiming they are protecting the environment. Actually the facts tell us that offshore rigs and platforms can be beneficial to marine wildlife. Once in place, the platform's substructure acts as an "artificial reef," providing hard surfaces for encrusting organisms such as spiny oysters, barnacles, sponges, and corals. These creatures are the basis of the food chain in what becomes a new marine ecosystem for numerous types of fish, sharks, sea turtles, spiny lobsters, and sea urchins, so basically speaking,the rigs create critical two factors for marine life: Shelter and food. The food chain begins with the formation of barnacles on these structures below the waterline. This sets the stage for small fish seeking shelter and food that the steel legs provide. Many local Gulf coast scuba divers enjoy underwater visits to Gulf platforms to sight-see tropical fish and organisms normally associated with natural reef systems located in the Caribbean and far away places. Local divers call these trips "Rig Diving" because the word rig is commonly used in place of platform. The areas of the Gulf Coast that have access to the platforms have seen increased business due to the popularity of “rig” diving, that means the platforms are not only beneficial to the environment but also good for local economies, attracting new tourist to Gulf Coast towns. Also new technologies make platforms safer from oil leaks, automatic well-head cut-off valves keep oil under the seabed if the rig or platform breaks away. Investigations showed that there was no significant environmental damage from the offshore platforms despite two Category 5 hurricanes last year in the Gulf. Actually, the only oil spills after the hurricanes came from beached oil tankers damaged from the storms and not from the platform pipes themselves. Also, all proposed drilling areas would have platforms very far from the field of vision from coastal beaches as not to have any impact people enjoying their “day at the beach.” Allowing greater access to the outer continental shelf for new oil and natural gas exploration is a win-win for Americans; less dependence on dangerous foreign dictators holding us hostage with oil prices, and creating beneficial artificial reefs for marine wildlife.

And two years later George Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling instituted 20 years earlier by.... his father!

C'mon, how big is the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, really? By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer posted May 1, 2010 at 11:49 am EDT Atlanta — Calculating the exact flow of crude out of the bent Deepwater Horizon oil rig "riser" pipe on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is difficult. But it's now likely that the actual amount of the oil spill dwarfs the Coast Guard's figure of 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day. Independent scientists estimate that the renegade wellhead at the bottom of the Gulf could be spewing up to 25,000 barrels a day. If chokeholds on the riser pipe break down further, up to 50,000 barrels a day could be released, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration memo obtained by the Mobile, Ala., Press-Register. As estimates of the spill increase, questions about the government's honesty in assessing the spill are emerging. At the same time, pressure is building for the US to release worst-case scenario estimates so residents of the Gulf Coast can adequately prepare. Meanwhile, BP is working furiously to do the unprecedented: Activate a faulty blowout preventer a mile under the Gulf to stop the leak at its source. If that fails, it could take three months, or more, to drill a relief well in order to plug the renegade well. “In the environmental arena, risk modeling is done day-in and day-out for every type of pollutant, whether going in the water, earth or air," says Stuart Smith, an environmentl attorney in New Orleans, in a statement. "Why are BP and the Environmental Protection Agency not releasing such information to the public? After originally saying the rig wasn't leaking at all, the Coast Guard originally used estimates in part provided by BP to describe the size of the spill as 1,000 barrels a day. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on March 20, killing 11 and injuring 17 of a 126-member crew. It exploded again and sank 36 hours later. The resulting leak has created a Jamaica-sized oil slick that is now whirling in a hurricane shape into sensitive marshes of the Louisiana coastline, endangering birds, fish, oysters, and many peoples’ livelihoods. President Obama prepared to visit the affected area this weekend as the government began wresting control of the relief operation from BP, which leased the Deepwater Horizon rig, and which has so far provided leak estimates based on reconnaisance of the crumpled pipe done by remote-controlled mini-subs on the murky bottom. Officials say measuring the outflow is extremely difficult – like trying to gauge by eye the amount of water spurting from a leaky garden hose. The Obama administration, which only a month ago proposed opening up new coastal areas for oil exploration, has put on hold all new exploratory drilling along the US continental shelf and is now fighting to stay ahead of what sociologist Steven Picou at the University of South Alabama calls a "monster catastrophe that boggles the mind." A government report obtained by the Mobile, Ala., Press-Register explains that "choke points" in the crumpled riser are controlling the flow from the so-called Macondo well at Lease Block 252 in the Mississippi Canyon. But scrubbing action from sand in the oil is further eroding the pipe. There are likely tens of millions of gallons in the deposit that BP tapped with the Deepwater Horizon. "The following is not public," reads National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response document dated April 28, according to the Press-Register. "Two additional release points were found today. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought." An order of magnitude is a factor of 10. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that John Amos, an oil industry consultant, said that NOAA revised its original estimate of 1,000 barrels after he published calculations based on satellite data that showed a larger flow. The 5,000 barrels a day is the "extremely low end" of estimates, Mr. Amos told the Journal. "There's a range of uncertainty, and it's very difficult to accurately gauge how much there is," BP spokesman John Curry told the Journal.

Here's a very nice summary of what's going on and the possible consequences to our environment. It's all very disturbing, to say the least.

On the other hand....

Greed, negligence behind BP oil spill By Donna Brazile, CNN Contributor May 3, 2010 5:19 p.m. EDT (CNN) -- I spent a restless night, worrying that another man-made disaster might devastate my beloved hometown, New Orleans, just as its post-Katrina motto "Recover, Rebuild, Rebirth" was becoming real. The oil spill couldn't come at a worse time. Everybody was so up, waiting for the inauguration of our newly elected Mayor Mitch Landrieu. The BP oil spill threatens New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast in a way that's more insidious than Hurricane Katrina. After all, the failure of the levees and the response from the previous administration, widely criticized for incompetence and indifference, followed an act of nature: the destruction, immediate; the impact, obvious; and the pain and suffering, visible to all. The BP disaster has only one cause: human greed, and the almost inevitable result, negligence. The immediate tragedy was that 11 people died. But the destruction that will result from BP's "crude river" will be long-term and the impact far from obvious. The "crude river" will spawn streams of suffering: economic, environmental and emotional. So as the "Big Muddy" fights the "Big Cruddy," how do we assess the players? And what actions should be taken against rigged disasters, both once and future? First, we must hold BP accountable and responsible. Was it an accident? Only if we define "accident" as negligence. The failure of the "shear ram," the set of steel blades intended to slash through a pipe at the top of a well and close off the flow of crude, should not have surprised BP or the corporations that work for it. Eight years ago, the Minerals Management Service found that 50 percent of the shear rams tested failed. So calling the failure of the "last resort device" an accident is like calling the damage caused by a drunken driver an accident. Failure to take the proper precautions is not an accident; it's negligence. BP has rightly accepted responsibility. We may grant the company a skeptical benefit of the doubt regarding its willingness to pay for the cleanup and the damages. We should, however, monitor its PR-to-payout ratio. But we should not lose sight of the role of companies like Halliburton, under investigation because it was responsible for the cement seal that apparently leaked; Cameron International, which supplied the rig's blowout prevention system; or Transocean, which manufactured the rig. As the federal government begins its investigation, it should ask not only who was negligent, but why. To what extent did profit preclude prudence? Since BP can't contain the spill -- rather, the river, which is what it really is -- government at all levels must do what it's supposed to do, and do it right. For example, officials should carry out Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser's plan to deploy local fishermen with booms on movable platforms in the Gulf, ready to "draw a line in the sand," depending on how the oil moves. Gov. Bobby Jindal has approved. Already the response from the Obama administration exceeds that of the federal response to Katrina, and the oil hasn't yet begun to cause the catastrophic damage we all fear. The morning after the explosion, Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes was sent to the Gulf. The morning after the explosion, Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes was sent to the Gulf. President Obama began monitoring the situation, staying in contact with the governors of the five Gulf states, making sure every available resource be at their disposal and ordering a coordinated Cabinet-level response. Here are a few authorizations the president has made, before his personal visit. • The U.S. Coast Guard; the Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce and Interior; and the Environmental Protection Agency immediately began directing and overseeing BP's response. • The Navy is using advanced technology and working with the Coast Guard to contain and disperse the oil. • The Departments of Homeland Security and Interior will be investigating the cause and inspecting all platforms and rigs in the Gulf. • The secretary of defense is authorizing the Louisiana National Guard to help communities in the cleanup and to protect critical habitats from contamination. But Obama has to let people know what's being done, what will be done, and that he takes this personally. He needs to express, perhaps as only he can, that the federal government gets it. He gets the plight of the fishermen, the restaurants, the waiters, the taxi drivers -- the economic ripple effect and the environmental tide of disaster. This is a visual and visceral crisis. If he handles it right, it will be known as a sign of Obama's competence. Obama can't split the sea, but he must help to plug the Gulf. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Donna Brazile.

Hey, welcome to my city!


I live a couple of miles from the neighborhood highlighted in the report. Ironically, Cerritos was named an "All American City" just a few months ago. Ahh ha ha ha....

"Yes, He Can"

Elections have consequences. President Obama’s new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years. If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course. The budget will, among other things, come as a huge relief to Democrats who were starting to feel a bit of postpartisan depression. The stimulus bill that Congress passed may have been too weak and too focused on tax cuts. The administration’s refusal to get tough on the banks may be deeply disappointing. But fears that Mr. Obama would sacrifice progressive priorities in his budget plans, and satisfy himself with fiddling around the edges of the tax system, have now been banished. For this budget allocates $634 billion over the next decade for health reform. That’s not enough to pay for universal coverage, but it’s an impressive start. And Mr. Obama plans to pay for health reform, not just with higher taxes on the affluent, but by putting a halt to the creeping privatization of Medicare, eliminating overpayments to insurance companies. On another front, it’s also heartening to see that the budget projects $645 billion in revenues from the sale of emission allowances. After years of denial and delay by its predecessor, the Obama administration is signaling that it’s ready to take on climate change. And these new priorities are laid out in a document whose clarity and plausibility seem almost incredible to those of us who grew accustomed to reading Bush-era budgets, which insulted our intelligence on every page. This is budgeting we can believe in. Many will ask whether Mr. Obama can actually pull off the deficit reduction he promises. Can he actually reduce the red ink from $1.75 trillion this year to less than a third as much in 2013? Yes, he can. Right now the deficit is huge thanks to temporary factors (at least we hope they’re temporary): a severe economic slump is depressing revenues and large sums have to be allocated both to fiscal stimulus and to financial rescues. But if and when the crisis passes, the budget picture should improve dramatically. Bear in mind that from 2005 to 2007, that is, in the three years before the crisis, the federal deficit averaged only $243 billion a year. Now, during those years, revenues were inflated, to some degree, by the housing bubble. But it’s also true that we were spending more than $100 billion a year in Iraq. So if Mr. Obama gets us out of Iraq (without bogging us down in an equally expensive Afghan quagmire) and manages to engineer a solid economic recovery — two big ifs, to be sure — getting the deficit down to around $500 billion by 2013 shouldn’t be at all difficult. But won’t the deficit be swollen by interest on the debt run-up over the next few years? Not as much as you might think. Interest rates on long-term government debt are less than 4 percent, so even a trillion dollars of additional debt adds less than $40 billion a year to future deficits. And those interest costs are fully reflected in the budget documents. So we have good priorities and plausible projections. What’s not to like about this budget? Basically, the long run outlook remains worrying. According to the Obama administration’s budget projections, the ratio of federal debt to G.D.P., a widely used measure of the government’s financial position, will soar over the next few years, then more or less stabilize. But this stability will be achieved at a debt-to-G.D.P. ratio of around 60 percent. That wouldn’t be an extremely high debt level by international standards, but it would be the deepest in debt America has been since the years immediately following World War II. And it would leave us with considerably reduced room for maneuver if another crisis comes along. Furthermore, the Obama budget only tells us about the next 10 years. That’s an improvement on Bush-era budgets, which looked only 5 years ahead. But America’s really big fiscal problems lurk over that budget horizon: sooner or later we’re going to have to come to grips with the forces driving up long-run spending — above all, the ever-rising cost of health care. And even if fundamental health care reform brings costs under control, I at least find it hard to see how the federal government can meet its long-term obligations without some tax increases on the middle class. Whatever politicians may say now, there’s probably a value-added tax in our future. But I don’t blame Mr. Obama for leaving some big questions unanswered in this budget. There’s only so much long-run thinking the political system can handle in the midst of a severe crisis; he has probably taken on all he can, for now. And this budget looks very, very good. - Paul Krugman, 2008 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics

The Feel Good Story of the Holiday Season

Tim DeChristopher Throws Utah Oil And Gas Drilling Leases Auction Into Chaos An environmental activist tainted an auction of oil and gas drilling leases Friday by bidding up parcels of land by hundreds of thousands of dollars without any intention of paying for them, a federal official said. The process was thrown into chaos and the bidding halted for a time before the auction was closed, with 116 parcels totaling 148,598 acres having sold for $7.2 million plus fees. "He's tainted the entire auction," said Kent Hoffman, deputy state director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Utah. Hoffman said buyers will have 10 days to reconsider and withdraw their bids if they think they paid too much. Tim DeChristopher, a 27-year-old University of Utah economics student, said his plan was to disrupt the auction and he feels he accomplished his goal. DeChristopher won the bidding on 13 parcels, auction records show, and drove up the price of several other pieces of land. "I thought I could be effective by making bids, driving up prices for others and winning some bids myself," the Salt Lake City man said. Some bidders said they were forced to bid thousands of dollars more for their parcels, while others fumed that they lost their bids...

My wish for the Holiday Season is that Tim DeChristopher has a lot of donations to help his legal fund and the federal court drags this into the Obama Administration.

We will know right away if Obama will fight for what is environmentally right! And when Ken Salazar gets confirmed if he will fight big corporations and not let them exploit the U.S. Bureau of Land Management!

In an effort to wring every last cent from anxious investors who've already lost a significant chunk of their retirement portfolios' worth, financial advisers are now saying that the impending $700B bailout is going to stabilize the housing and stock markets, and that investors should buy, buy, buy! Gee, where have we heard that before? How about after each government intervention during the past year? Lowered prime interest rates. Rescue Bear-Stearns, rescue Fannie/Freddie, rescue AIG, and now $700B of free money for losers. And don't forget, immediately after each rescue all the experts said that, if it wasn't for the government rescue of Company XYZ, the global markets would have crashed and the planet would have dived into a financial meltdown.

Yeah, right.

Not only is the latest bailout proposal the largest in history, it's also the worst financial decision in history. We are going to give money away to companies that are in dire financial straits. It's that simple. We're "investing" our tax dollars in the very companies that were the most mismanaged and thus suffered the worst losses. Is that the way you would invest your personal savings?

And to add insult to injury, reasonably smart taxpayers like myself who stayed out of the housing market the past six years are going to suffer because the idiots in Washington feel it's necessary to give my (and my children's) money to companies and individuals who made bad financial decisions. I mean, WTF?! Be smart, get punished. Be a greedy asswipe and get rewarded. Apparently that's the new American Way.

There's probably nothing any of us can do to stop the Bush Administration and, by The Order of the Subservient Sheep, the Democratic Congress from giving away our money and, in the process, spitting in the face of our youngest and soon-to-be taxpayers who will have to carry the burden of this financial ruin for the next several decades.

Right now the Congressional Democrats are pretending to stand up to Bush by insisting on a better method of giving away that $700B, but in the end it's all the same old same old. Bush will in essence get his way as the Dems roll over and lay back down in their still-warm spots, waiting to receive and follow Bush's next demand.

Only in the U.S. government will you find success in enacting the worst possible laws while its taxpayers, after 7+ years of being ramrodded over a wrong war, worstening healthcare, increasing unemployment, a national infrastructure as tenuous as a stack of Legos, decreasing real wages, worsening climate and loss of constitutionally-backed personal rights, still take it all and go back to watching American Idol.

We are SO deserving of what we get.

{cross-posted at Daily Kos]

From The Independent:

Scientists identify 'tipping points' of climate change

Arctic sea ice: some scientists believe that the tipping point for the total loss of summer sea ice is imminent. Greenland ice sheet: total melting could take 300 years or more but the tipping point that could see irreversible change might occur within 50 years. West Antarctic ice sheet: scientists believe it could unexpectedly collapse if it slips into the sea at its warming edges. Gulf Stream: few scientists believe it could be switched off completely this century but its collapse is a possibility. El Niño: the southern Pacific current may be affected by warmer seas, resulting in far-reaching climate change. Indian monsoon: relies on temperature difference between land and sea, which could be tipped off-balance by pollutants that cause localised cooling. West African monsoon: in the past it has changed, causing the greening of the Sahara, but in the future it could cause droughts. Amazon rainforest: a warmer world and further deforestation may cause a collapse of the rain supporting this ecosystem. Boreal forests: cold-adapted trees of Siberia and Canada are dying as temperatures rise.

At my age I guess I'm lucky that I won't be around to see the shit hit the fan. There's no way we, as a fucked-up civilization, are going to be able to coordinate the development of a cooperative among nations to reduce/reverse global warming in a short enough time. Kids: you guys are screwed! Sorry.

Why do we need a progressive government? How else would we prevent this from happening?

UC policy report says chemical exposures cost state estimated $2.6 billion By Sarah Yang, Media Relations | 17 January 2008 BERKELEY – Serious gaps in existing laws regulating the production and use of hazardous chemicals fail to protect public health and the environment, according to a new report to be released Thursday, Jan. 17, by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and UCLA. As a result of this inadequate oversight, chemical and pollution-related diseases among children and workers in California cost the state's insurers, businesses and families an estimated $2.6 billion in direct and indirect costs, says the report, which includes a set of recommended policy reforms for the state. In 2004, more than 200,000 California workers were diagnosed with deadly, chronic diseases - such as cancer or emphysema - attributable to chemical exposures in the workplace, according to the report. Another 4,400 died as a result of those diseases. The new findings, based upon well-established methodology for analyzing economic impact, indicate that those diseases resulted in $1.4 billion in both direct medical costs and indirect costs that include lost wages and benefits. An additional $1.2 billion in direct and indirect costs is attributed to 240,000 cases of preventable childhood diseases in California related to environmental exposure to chemical substances, the report says. The existing problems and recommended policy changes are detailed in the report, "Green Chemistry: Cornerstone to a Sustainable California," which has been endorsed by 127 faculty members from seven UC campuses, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The California Environmental Protection Agency commissioned the UC Berkeley and UCLA Centers for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH) to prepare the report. COEH is a multi-disciplinary research program based at the UC campuses of Berkeley, Davis and San Francisco in Northern California, and at UC Irvine and UCLA in Southern California. Additional funding for the report came from the UC Office of the President, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This report, for the first time, puts cost estimates on the consequences for Californians of current chemical and product management policies," said Dr. John Balmes, COEH director, UC Berkeley professor of environmental health sciences and UCSF professor of medicine. "California has shown that creating new jobs and investment opportunities can go hand in hand with protecting human health and the environment. We have been doing this with vehicle emissions and energy use, and this new report makes it obvious that we will need to do the same with chemicals and products." The report was authored by Michael Wilson and Dr. Megan Schwarzman, both COEH research scientists at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health; Timothy Malloy, professor at the UCLA School of Law; Elinor Fanning, COEH assistant director of research at UCLA; and Peter Sinsheimer, a COEH affiliate and director of the Pollution Prevention Education & Research Center at Occidental College. The report presents data from the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control showing that 61 of the state's 85 largest hazardous waste sites are leaking toxic material directly into groundwater. In addition, an estimated 1 million California women of reproductive age have blood mercury levels that exceed what the U.S. EPA considers safe for fetal development, and biomonitoring studies have detected more than 100 synthetic chemicals and pollutants in breastmilk, umbilical cord blood, and other bodily fluids and tissues, the report says. With global chemical production predicted to increase 330 percent by 2050, health problems related to environmental contamination are likely to grow unless comprehensive steps are taken now, say the report authors. Green chemistry  the use of renewable and safer raw materials, manufacturing processes and products  offers a sustainable solution, according to the report. "Research conducted in the past decade has provided ample evidence of significant health impacts from exposure to toxic chemicals," said John Froines, COEH director at UCLA and professor of environmental health sciences. "It is timely for California to reduce the use of toxic agents through innovative technological approaches available through green chemistry. New policies that prevent hazards rather than cleaning up problems after the fact will foster innovation and help green chemistry emerge as a central part of our economy." The report calls on California to lead the nation in implementing a comprehensive approach to the management of chemicals and products. Policy recommendations include: ...Passing new laws to remedy the insufficient data available on the toxicity of chemicals so California businesses, regulators and consumers can make informed choices about the products they use ...Providing California agencies with a new legal framework to enable them to act when there are reasonable concerns about a product's safety, even when complete hazard or tracking data are unavailable ...Investing in the design of chemicals, materials and manufacturing processes that are inherently safer for humans Some of these recommendations echo a 2006 UC report to the California Legislature on green chemistry policy, which contributed to the introduction of new state legislation in 2007 to require improved reporting on the sale of high quantity chemicals and reductions in some uses of the most toxic chemicals. That legislation is expected to be reintroduced in 2008. A PDF of the report is available for download at: http://coeh.berkeley.edu/greenchemistry/briefing or http://www.coeh.ucla.edu/greenchemistry.htm.

Dan Fogelberg - Leader of the Band

RIP Dan.

It was Fogelberg's enivormental activism that initially got me believing that our Earth is the only Planet that man has to live on. So it's up to Man to take care of our home. We certainly cannot rely on corporations and their minions to look out for our Planet when the almighty dollar is the bottom line. His song "Face the Fire" told the story of 'the 3 Mile Island accident' and the dangers of corporate overlords.

Face The Fire I hear the thunder three miles away The Island's leaking into the bay The poison is spreading The demon is free And people are running from what they can't even see (Chorus) Face the fire You can't turn away The risk grows greater with each passing day The waiting's over The moment has come To kill the fire and turn to the sun They'll take your money And then take your health To line their pockets with unequalled wealth These men are under the power of gold We won't be safe until we shut them down cold (Chorus) The people came to the capitol town One hundred thousand of them laid their hearts down They screamed in anger and broadcast their fears Just to have them fall on deaf ears (Chorus) Kill the fire and turn to the sun

"Leader of the Band" was one of the few songs I could find.

The New Pentagon Lie: "No Soldier Illnesses from Depleted Uranium"

Somebody should tell this so-called "expert in the field of Depleted Uranium" and Pentagon staffer, that he is not coming off very convincing in the recent article from Stars and Stripes.

The U.S. military has yet to discover a case of an American servicemember becoming ill due to its use of depleted uranium over the past few decades, a Pentagon official says. Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director of force health protection and readiness for the Pentagon’s department of health affairs, doesn’t rule out the possibility of that happening.

Is he paid to say this or to just cover everyone's ass? Later in the article he plainly states:

But Kilpatrick said the DOD has been monitoring 70 servicemembers who were heavily exposed to depleted uranium in the Gulf War — some still carrying small fragments of the substance in their bodies — and they haven’t developed illnesses linked to the substance. He said more than 2,000 U.S. servicemembers have been tested in recent years and only 10 were found to have traces of depleted uranium in their bodies. Most of those were exposed during the first days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when U.S. forces were battling enemies in tanks.

Let me reiterate: "10 were found to have traces of depleted uranium in their bodies." Did these troops ask for treatment for a sickness? Were they volunteers? What about servicemembers who have complained of different maladies but were told by the VA that it had nothing to do with DU?

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The Pentagon can temporarily try and cover their asses (and the bu$h administration) but like Agent Orange, in the coming years, Depleted Uranium will prove to be more costly in dollars but more importantly, human lives.

Here is some 2001 research that has surfaced from the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute.

The Persian Gulf War resulted in injuries of US Coalition personnel by fragments of depleted uranium (DU). Fragments not immediately threatening the health of the individuals were allowed to remain in place, based on long-standing treatment protocols designed for other kinds of metal shrapnel injuries. However, questions were soon raised as to whether this approach is appropriate for a metal with the unique radiological and toxicological properties of DU. The Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) is investigating health effects of embedded fragments of DU to determine whether current surgical fragment removal policies remain appropriate for this metal. These studies employ rodents implanted with DU pellets as well as cultured human cells exposed to DU compounds. Results indicate uranium from implanted DU fragments distributed to tissues far-removed from implantation sites, including bone, kidney, muscle, and liver. Despite levels of uranium in the kidney that were nephrotoxic after acute exposure, no histological or functional kidney toxicity was observed. However, results suggest the need for further studies of long-term health impact, since DU was found to be mutagenic, and it transformed human osteoblast cells to a tumorigenic phenotype. It also altered neurophysiological parameters in rat hippocampus, crossed the placental barrier, and entered fetal tissue. This report summarizes AFRRI's depleted uranium research to date.

If we have only scratched the surface of studying the effects of DU on these soldiers, one thing is certain: these Doctors aren't walking the same footsteps the troops have taken.

The Arctic Melting

Time elapsed from NASA, from Andrew Sullivan.

In The Beginning of the End for Life as We Know it on Planet Earth? author Paul Watson asks if there is a way for humanity to survive on this planet. Excerpts:

. . . Today, escalating human populations have vastly exceeded global carrying capacity and now produce massive quantities of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste. Biological diversity is being threatened by over-exploitation, toxic pollution, agricultural mono-culture, invasive species, competition, habitat destruction, urban sprawl, oceanic acidification, ozone depletion, global warming, and climate change. It’s a runaway train of ecological calamities. It’s a train that carries all the earth’s species as unwilling passengers with humans as the manically insane engineers unwilling to use the brake pedal. The latest reports from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List (IUCN) – a database measuring the global status of Earth's 1.5 million scientifically named species – states quite confidently that we will lose half of them by 2150.... ....Species work interdependently to develop mutually beneficial strategies that maintain and strengthen ecosystems. Every species removed diminishes the system and weakens the collective body of the biosphere. Humans are presently acting upon this body in the same manner as an invasive virus with the result that we are eroding the ecological immune system. A virus kills its host and that is exactly what we are doing with our planet’s life support system. We are killing our host the planet Earth. I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the “AIDS of the Earth.” I make no apologies for that statement. Our viral like behaviour can be terminal both to the present biosphere and ourselves. We are both the pathogen and the vector. But we also have the capability of being the anti-virus if only we can recognize the symptoms and address the disease with effective measures of control. John Muir once wrote that when you tug on any part of nature, you find that it is intimately connected to every other part of nature. The symptoms are right here before our eyes. Bee diminishment is causing diminishment in plants dependent upon bee pollination. Army ants support 100 known and identified species from beetles to birds. Grey whales are returning to Mexican lagoons under-nourished. Shark and large predatory fish populations have been reduced to between 65 to 95 percent in our oceans. Entire fish species are in a state of rapid collapse, especially the commercially valued species like cod, wild salmon, swordfish, and tuna...

There's a lot more food for thought in this article. Some critics of the author claim that he's asking for the mass extermination of 5 billion humans. That's a warped, gross mischaracterization of the autor's intent, which is to point out the interactions of the planet's ecosystems and the damaging effect on it by humans.