Bits & Pieces #21

I believe in the backfire. I believe that acts have consequences. That’s why I’m glad that Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson held that the EPA had exceeded its authority when it revoked a permit for Arch Coal to move ahead with the biggest most environmentally damaging mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia history. The judge held that once approved, a permit couldn’t be revoked because that would put the mining companies in the position of never knowing when they had a real go ahead; when the permit was truly final.

There is some truth in this, but it doesn’t take into account the environmental atrocity that will result from Arch’s actions. Arch plans to dump 110 million cubic yards of mine waste into streams in one county in West Virginia, burying more than 6 miles of them, degrading watersheds, killing wildlife and impacting species, including humans.

A horror you say, sure but you have to look at the long-range picture. Arch Coal in their shortsighted greed has initiated a situation that is going to come back and bite them in the ass. There are over 100 mountaintop removal permits currently pending. Knowing that they cannot rescind a permit for any reason once it is issued, how many of those pending permits do you think the EPA, knowing what they do now, will go ahead and issue? Arch’s suit may finally create the end of mountaintop removal because everyone knows a bureaucrat hates nothing more than to make a wrong decision and the easiest way avoid making the wrong decision is never to make one at all. That could be the end of strip mining permits.

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I was entranced today by two women, young, seemingly intelligent, both, energized by their message and both sure of that, in which they believed, but one so right and one so wrong.

The women, were Anjali Appadurai a student at the College of the Atlantic, in Maine, speaking at the UN climate change symposium in South Africa. The other is Governor Nikki Haley, of South Carolina, speaking on The View.

Ms Appadurai, the last speaker at the conference gave a stirring speech, accusing the organization of failing to live up to its responsibility to the citizens of the world and dooming her generation and those following to a world without hope of air to breathe or water to drink. Her accusations supported the point that despite all scientific warnings, the group had formulated and generally approved, a ten-year plan for climate control. This, despite the fact that universally recognized scientific theory tells us that we have only about five years to address climate change before its effects become irreversible.  She ended her speech with a rousing cheer, shared by many members of the audience to “Do it now!!!”

On the other hand, Governor Haley, speaking on behalf of women nowhere, expressed her crippled belief that, ”Women don’t care about contraception.” Really Nikki, all of them, or just the ones who must now plan for an abortion? Considering that almost all polls estimate that 95% of women use contraception and the other 5% are involved in unplanned pregnancies, Ms Haley’s opinion can only be considered brain dead. This description also applies to every woman in South Carolina who voted for this Tea Party hack.

*****

Well, they’re at it again. Hess Oil with operations on six of the seven continents has decided that their next target will be the California’s yet-to-be fracked Monterey Shale. Really great idea guys! The fracking process has already proved to be the cause of earthquakes in such stable locations, as Indiana and Illinois, which never before saw an earthquake, so why not try it out in California a location with real earthquake possibilities. Big business wonders why the people of the country are pissed at them. Maybe it’s this kind of brain dead grab for the gold, that’s the reason. You think?

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A group of US congress women, led by Loretta Sanchez and Zoe Lofgren a pair of California democrats have introduced the Fostering Rights through Economic Engagement bill that would bar Vietnam from enjoying special US trade preferences until the country stops its human rights abuses. Great idea girls but why not apply it to the country you live in instead of someplace in Southeast Asia. We can currently arrest and hold without trial anyone that almost any government cop or the army thinks may be a terrorist. We can stop and search anyone. We can strip search anyone that any bran dead, semi-trained cop cares to stop, We are invading the privacy of all our citizens with unlimited government intervention into their communications equipment.  Right now we are one of the countries that is most involved in human rights violations and these two clowns are worried about Vietnam.  These are the kind of people that we have to get out of congress. They are truly too dumb to serve.

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Andy Borowitz of the Borowitz report has brought up a new problem for the President. It seems that every time Obama speaks in public he has the audacity to do so in complete sentences. This is somewhat of a problem for the American public that over the previous eight years of the Bush administration had become used to a kind of inept verbal shorthand. A president who uses sentences with a subject and predicate that agree, seems kind of elitist. Another problem seems to have been Obama’s abandonment of the word nucular in favor of nuclear an affectation that appears to have been found alienating to those who are shocked to have a president who speaks English as if it were his first language.

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The resignation of Richard Grenell as foreign policy spokesman for the Romney campaign says only one thing about the GOP candidate for president. He is a cowardly punk who is willing to grovel at the feet of the bigoted degenerates who make up the far right segment of his party rather than stand up to them and show that he is a man worthy of leading our country.

Grenell, a former Bush administration official and admittedly gay, had made no bones about his predilections when interviewed by Eric Fhernstrom, Romney’s senior advisor and Gail Gitcho, his communications director. Fhernstrom indicated  Grenell’s sexual preferences  were not an issue for the campaign and they hired him. This created a turmoil among Christian Conservatives, (How do they call themselves Christian?) who oppose gay marriage and if the truth be told all gay initiatives and who went to war with the appointment. In the end, Romney caved. That’s exactly the man we want to lead the free world. If that is, we don’t expect to have it around long.

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What has Obamacare given us in the 2+ years since it passed.

54 Million more Americans are receiving life-giving care.

2.5 million young adults can now stay on their parents insurance until they are 26.

51 million seniors will save $3.2 billion on drastically reduced prescription drugs.

50,000 people with pre-existing conditions now have coverage.

20.4 million women now have access to mammograms and other care without cost sharing.

So what the hell is the problem?

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When I write about the fact that George Bush did all he could to suck the life out of this country I am not only referring to, two unfinanced wars, tax cuts for the rich, unfinanced drug benefits, the destruction of New Orleans and the beginning of the curtailment of the freedoms we have always enjoyed in this country, I am also speaking of the way he successfully, under the guise of creating jobs, allowed some of our biggest corporations to reduce their tax rate from the legal 35% to 5%. This did not create jobs, what it did do was enable huge management bonuses to the already greedy rich who ran these companies.

In 2004, companies like Apple, Pfizer, Cisco, Google and Hewlit-Packard were awarded tax cuts by Bush to repatriate money they had stashed in foreign banks in places like the Cayman Islands, Ireland and Lichtenstein, paying just a 5% tax rate on the repatriated money. This was supposed to bring money back to this country that would create jobs. In fact, in subsequent years Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and Pfizer cut tens of thousands of jobs and used the money to increase CEO salaries and bonuses.

A recent attempt by the Win America Campaign, an organization made up of the tax break companies, is trying to encourage the government to do the same thing again. And who else but Rep. Paul Ryan, that great advocate of tax breaks for the rich and less education for the rest, is backing them. In a recent speech he was heard to state that he doesn’t want repatriation for these corporate tax dodgers every seven years but every day. His is the kind of government the GOP is planning to bring us if they somehow manage to get elected in the fall. This is why the presidential election isn’t the only important race. Every seat in the house and senate is equally essential because without them we will have the same kind of stalemated government that has prevented the White House from attacking the problems of the economy the last three years.

If Obama wins in November but we allow the groveling butt boys of the rich to fill the seats in congress we will have the same kind of non-functioning government we have had since 2010. If Obama wins and we give him majorities in the house and senate we will have, despite the seeming inability of the Democrats to function, at least a chance of moving the country forward for the benefit of the majority of citizens. If Romney wins it’s time to move somewhere that works.