Taliban attack Nato base in Afghanistan BBC
Analysis: Why Silicon Valley should fear ACTA ITNews
Cheerio! Rolfe Winkler. Congrats! He is going to the Wall Street Journal.
New Legislative Effort to get Bankruptcy Exemption….For Guns. MIke Konczal
Rob Parenteau gets sectoral balances right Steve Waldman
The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration John Schmitt, Kris Warner, and Sarika Gupta, CEPR (hat tip reader Gordon). Bottom line: if you need to cut state and local budgets, the vogue for locking people up would be a very useful fad to reverse.
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu Confirms that Some of BP’s Oil Well Casing Has Been Demolished George Washington
NASA to Do More Flights to Measure Change in BP Oil-Spill Size Business Week (hat tip reader Doc Holiday)
Bank Fee Is Eliminated in Financial Bill New York Times
The Procrustean Democracy of AmericaSpeaks: Part One Lambert Strether. This is a disgrace, I had wanted to post on it tonight, will hopefully address it later today.
Time to shut down the US Federal Reserve Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
Crisis is back with a vengeance as ECB’s sterilisation auction flops Eurointelligence
Consumer Confidence Crushed EconomiPic Data
What Is Goldman Sachs Thinking? Simon Johnson
Financial Reform Legislation Does Not Eliminate Too Big To Fail Mark Thoma. We knew that, but glad word is getting out.
This global game of ‘pass the parcel’ cannot end well Martin Wolf, Financial Times. Today’s must read
Antidote du jour:
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In general, I find the Peterson point of view entirely odious: class warfare masquerading as bad policy.
But to discover that AmericaSpeaks is not a serious national consideration of a situation with real (and difficult) choices, but instead a sales pitch? I find it hard to muster much outrage at this discovery–mostly I can muster “duh”.
Well, at first I expected to read that Ambrose Evans-Pritchard believes shutting down the Fed was due to the impossibility of a central bank successfully managing policy over a continent, encompassing such disparate states as California, North Dakota, and Alabama resulting in the impossibility of any single monetary policy adequately addressing the unique needs of each state, thus leading to the break of the American Union, but nope.
He wants the Fed shut down because it lacks respect for economic bloggers, apparently – after all, in contrast to those people with PhDs at the Fed, a blogger like Evans-Pritchard is know what is really going on – like how Germans are rejecting euro notes from sourthern nations.
No. The Good Doctor’s Letter was a tale told by an idiot (or maybe an idiot-savant, and he may be a good dude in real life, no ad-hominem intended).
But it wasn’t even full of sound and fury, and it signified only itself, and the etiology of our distress.
Thank you to Mr. Evans-Pritchard.
At least he nails it.
In defence of Ambrose E.-P., he wants the Federal Reserve “shut down” because they made a botch of financial management – read the piece again. This is in response to Athreya’s rant against bloggers. Ambrose is saying the Federal Reserve may be stuffed to the gills with highly credentialled economists, but they managed to get it wrong just the same. He finishes up:
“As for the Fed, I venture to say that a common jury of 12 American men and women placed on the Federal Open Market Committee would have done a better job of setting monetary policy over the last 20 years than Doctors Bernanke and Greenspan.
“Actually, Greenspan never got a Phd. His honourary doctorate was awarded later for political reasons. (He had been a Nixon speech-writer). But never mind”.
I don’t think he really wants the Federal Reserve shut down, but maybe he would shut down some economics faculties.
And just by the way, the whole Athreya episode has a historical parallel in the 1920s-1930s, with the Technocracy Movement.
From the Wikipedia article (just substitute “economists” for “scientists and engineers”):
“Technocrats believed that politicians and businessmen could not manage a complex, rapidly advancing industrial society. The technocrats proposed replacing politicians with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy. The technocratic philosophy assumed that energy was the critical factor determining economic and social development. The technocrats measured social change in physical terms: the average number of kilocalories used per capita per day. Money would be replaced by energy certificates, the total supply of which would be determined by the total amount of energy used in the production of goods and services.[citation needed]
“The coming of the Great Depression created an opening for some of these radical ideas of social engineering.[3][4] By late 1932, various groups across the United States were calling themselves “technocrats” and proposing reforms.[5]
“By the mid-1930s, interest in the technocracy movement was declining. Most historians have attributed the decline to the rise of Roosevelt’s New Deal,[4] a more democratic method of accomplishing the planning and economic reconstruction that the technocrats had called for. The authoritarian, elitist, and even fascist overtones of the technocracy movement undermined its popular appeal as a political movement”.[6][7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_Movement
AEP: “The 20th Century was a horrible litany of absurd experiments and atrocities committed by intellectuals, or by elite groupings that claimed a higher knowledge. Simple folk usually have enough common sense to avoid the worst errors.”
AEP, the son of an Oxford don, who went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and writes crap for the Daily Torygraph, is surely a member of one the elite groupings that claim a higher knowledge.
I agree with numbered. It’s too funny that what sets him off, in his rant to destory the Fed, is that the Fed doesn’t show proper him (and people like him) proper respect.
This is funny because Athreya is a high caste brahmin who along with his forefathers is used to the commoners accepting their pontifications as the word of god.
Welcome to the internet age y’all.
In regard to “The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration”…
I recall that Obama shot down the idea of marijuana legalization as a way of balancing the budget, even if it is a $20b industry; I think it was during the “youtube debates”.
I’m sure he’s forgotten the amount we spend on incarcerating people who get caught smoking a joint. In my home state of Pennsylvania, if you are caught with less than 30 grams (a lot), you face 30 days in jail. If you are caught with paraphernalia, it’s a year. Intent to sell? Another year. When I used to work with people on welfare, I helped people locked up for the better part of a decade for being caught with pot.
Since weed is about as bad for you as municipal drinking water, I’d say we’d save money by legalization in three major areas:
– lower rates of incarceration
– smaller “drug war”
– taxation on the herb
– taxation on pizza that people smoking pot buy in droves
Ah, but you‘re losing sight of the big picture. The “war on drugs” is but a camouflage. It amounts to little more than a pretense to justify interfering into the internal affairs of Latin American countries (and maybe Afghanistan too?). The ultimate goal is the implementation of neoliberalism—-“at the point of a gun if necessary,” as the neocon Max Boot so candidly put it.
President Bill Clinton proclaims that “protecting our people, our territory, our way of life” are the objectives of U.S. national security policy, goals that are to be advanced “through engagement and enlargement”—-NAFTA and drug control are listed as two key elements of such “engagement and enlargement.”
“U.S. National Security is a global strategic doctrine, relative to maintaining economic, political and military supremacy in its zone of influence” is how Mexican politilogue Adolfo Aguilar Zinser defines these same policies.
U.S. “National Security” is a Cold War concept codified in the 1947 National Security Act, which also created the National Security Council, to combat Communist penetration of U.S. spheres of influence. In the name of its hallowed “national security,” the United States has mounted military invasions and suppressed internal dissent in Latin America, encouraged political assassination, civil wars and military coups, winked at torture, applauded fraudulent elections and ignored genocide. In the process, the US. Has also transformed itself into what Daniel Yergin labels “a national security state—-a nation in which external and national security concerns become dominant and domestic concerns are subordinated….”
–John Ross, The Annexation of Mexico
In Massachusetts marijuana possession was decriminalized by it’s citizenry in 2008 election, and went into effect 1/2/2009. Martha Coakley was not a fan of this new law and tried to fight it, another thing many voters held against her.
The current rules: Those who are caught with an ounce or less would get a ticket similar to a building code citation. They could appeal the civil infraction in court within 21 days or pay a $100 fine set in the law. Juvenile violators would have to pay the fine and attend a drug abuse counseling course, or have the fine increased to $1,000.
When the law was first passed there was a great hue and cry from certain quarters that wanted tougher rules, but they were successsfully rebuffed. Since then it’s been obvious that monies have been saved by this law. One early example… at the annual NORML rally at Boston Common in 2009 the police dept finally made money issuing their $100 tickets which compared favorably to other years where the event caused extra legal and incarceration expenses for the city.
Massachusetts is a very civilized state… gay marriage, health care, decriminalized pot… as well as a nice mix of city, culture and nature… and business conditions (and unemplyment) here remain less problematic than many other states.
The Martin Wolf piece is indeed excellent.
I’d just reiterate something he says but with more clarity.
Much, if not most, of what Wolf calls “deleveraging” of the private sector and “leveraging” of the public sector is nothing more than the conversion of private debt to public debt. This is one of neoliberalism’s great magic tricks.
The unfairness and unseemliness of it all is that this conversion trick is only available to the most powerful players in the financial sector. The government doesn’t buy the near-worthless assets of households, businesses and smaller financial sector players at face value, nor does it shower them with ridiculously low interest rate loans backed up by near-worthless assets. These “bailouts,” to use the popular vernacular, are only available to those with great political and economic power. This is how a neoliberal regime—-an apt description for the extant governments of the US, Great Britain and Europe—-works.
I must painfully admit you are right.
This can’t end well.
I also think it is worth noting that unless they pass this Unemployment Comp and Medcaid bill, we’re going to see huge holes in state budgets. My state, Pennsylvania, is depending on $850m, and if they don’t get it, I have family members who are in danger of being laid off.
Here’s some articles on it:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/28/news/economy/state_budget_medicaid/index.htm?section=money_latest
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20100630/States-struggle-as-Congress-fails-to-come-through-with-extra-Medicaid-money.aspx
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/29/unemployment.irpt/index.html?section=cnn_latest
Sounds like your family members are getting “austerized.”
Oh well, whatever it takes to keep the bailout wagon for the TBTF banks rolling on. Remember, on Wall Street the slogan is “Party On!”
The worst part is that somehow the austerity measures at the state education level are being blamed on teacher’s unions. I mean, really?
It’s called “blame the victim,” a favorite past time of neoliberal and libertarian ideologues.
The CNN article you linked also alluded to the phenomenon:
“The reality is that we have the worst job market on record going back to the Great Recession,” says Maurice Emsellem, policy co-director at National Employment Law Project.
“There’s only one job available for every five unemployed workers.”
For people who are apt to say, “Go find a job,” Emsellem says the predicament of the unemployed isn’t easy to escape.
“For anybody that has a thought in their head that unemployed workers are to blame for their situation, the reality is that workers are struggling hard to find work, but the jobs are just not there.”
As I have written before in the last few months, I have been hiring for two of my businesses, and I find it hard to believe how many qualified and hard-working candidates are applying for these jobs that are, frankly, beneath them. I put up and ad, and within 2 hours, I have *hundreds* of resumes, with tailored cover letters. These people are scanning the job postings *constantly* and *immediately* sending out resumes and cover letters, and many of them have been out of work for months. Yes, blame the victim!
As with all analysis of the real world, the actual situation is more subtle than the welfare queen versus victim debate (oh my, humans are stupid…I’m sorry, I know, terrible thing to say). There are loafers *and* there are hard-working talented people who are trying to, but cannot, find a job that pays a living wage.
Anonymous Jones,
funny. I’ve found the situation in Spain is quite different. With a 20% official unemployment rate, it’s difficult to find any valid candidates.
It seems most Spanish qualified unemployed are working in the informal economy.
Anonymous Jones, I think you are a bit harsh in saying humans are stupid.
The correct term is Homo Not-So-Sapiens Not-So-Sapiens.
Well, indirectly, it is the teachers union’s fault.
Those who supported bigness (regardless of the ism) have now learned that the ONLY end-game of bigness is the smartest amoral scumbags get the loot.
The teachers union, the teabaggers, and the entire bottom 99% of the country are getting pillaged by the owners of big-government. We all want government to be bigger right – as long as we’re getting the benefits.
What OTHER outcome could there be?
And you must recall, classical economic theory has a solution for the excess of workers:
It is surmounted by the second great law of the system: the Law of Population.
To Adam Smith, laborers, like any other commodity, could be produced according to the demand. If wages were high, the number of workpeople would multiply; if wages fell, the numbers of the working class would decrease. Smith put it bluntly, “…the demand for men, like that for any other commodity, necessarily regulates the production of men.”
Nor is this quite so naïve a conception as it appears at first blush. In Smith’s day infant mortality among the lower classes was shockingly high. “It is not uncommon, “ says Smith, “…in the Highlands of Scotland for a mother who has borne twenty children not to have two alive.” In many places in England, half the children died before they were four, and almost everywhere half the children lived only to the age of nine or ten. Malnutrition, evil living conditions, cold, and disease took a horrendous toll among the poorer element. Hence, although higher wages might have affected the birth rate only slightly, they could be expected to have a considerable influence on the number of children who would grow to working age.
–Robert L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers
It is a good call that an arch tory like AEP, writing for the arch Tory newspaper of record would complain about “elites” (isn’t that the whole point of Toryism? That rule by an Aristocracy is best (and frankly not the worst arguement in the world until the Aristocracy becomes corrupted and no longer dominated by ideals of service and fear of shame and dishonor). But again that changes the subject of his rant which was that a member of an institution such as the Fed which has been wrong so much the last 40 years, and particularly the last ten years, should be a little modest about his and his institution’s infallability.
I’m not taken with Wolf’s article, since it does not address how money is created, and yet hinges on an appeal for cooperation:
“The games would be better played co-operatively, as the International Monetary Fund notes in its background paper on the “G20 mutual assessment process” for the summit. But this is very hard to do. For all the fine words, unco-operative outcomes are far more likely.”
In a sense we are trapped in a global prisoner’s dilemma/tragedy of the commons situation, even though it seems there are sovereign owners of countries handling their patches, private owners of wealth handling their stuff, and so on. Regardless of what pieces of paper saying otherwise might claim, there are only the great commons of this planet, the ‘management’ of which we are badly botching up. We cannot properly cooperate until we recognize we share a planet as one species among many, and we cannot come to this realization until we address how money and its creation shape the way we organize society. There is simply no point rearranging the deck chairs, and doing so wastes precious time.
Cooperation is indeed the only positive way forward, but that path will remain totally blocked to us until we openly address and discuss the deepest elements of how we got ourselves into this terrible mess. Money is one of the most important parts of the puzzle.
Channeling my good friend Dan Duncan, cooperation to do what exactly?
Listen, I generally agree that cooperation and democracy are good things, but a “conspiracy” is also “cooperation.” The only difference between these two labels is the connotation we generally attach to each. The selection of which label we apply is based totally on a normative judgment (usually made ex post facto based on our own very subjective view of reality and “goodness”).
Not to go all reductio al Hitlerum on you (and add just one more verified instance of Godwin’s Law), but the administrators, doctors and soldiers all “cooperated” at Dachau.
Don’t take this the wrong way; I agree with your general assessment of the situation, but at the same time, humans are really, really, really fucking stupid and it would not surprise me to see them “cooperate” on a plan that would be totally counterproductive to their clear and unassailable best interests.
Hey AJ,
conspiracy is concealed ‘cooperation’ to do harm to others that somehow benefits the conspiritors. Interestingly, compete means cooperate too, or ‘to strive together’: com + petere. Words can be annoying like that. However I think it’s clear in this case. I’m calling (as are others) for open and unprejudiced (as far as we are able) cooperation to find the best way forward for humanity and environment. With those objectives fixed in our minds’ eyes, a lot of nonsense tends to fall away.
Of course you are right, the devil is in the detail. But on a blog-posting before dashing off to a school event it’s hard to lay out a fully-fleshed plan for the entire planet. I don’t have one by the way, and even if I did I wouldn’t post it here. My somewhat vague idea is to hammer away at the areas I think are being overlooked ‘out there’ and hope my ravings make sense to some. Sowing seeds doncha know.
People are not stupid, we are really intelligent. It’s wisdom that’s lacking, but I like to hope that’s changing. We’re wising up in my opinion, slowly and fitfully, but it is happening. It may well be one of the prime reasons for all this disruption.
For those living in DC, Nassim Taleb will be at Politics & Prose this evening at 7 pm.
http://www.politics-prose.com/
Some 70,000 turtle eggs to be whisked far from oil
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gPsdHDCiAyQbDM8BS-3YcKirNaEAD9GLERMO0
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will coordinate the plan, which calls for collecting about 70,000 turtle eggs in up to 800 nests buried in the sand across Florida Panhandle and Alabama beaches.
> I assume taxpayers are paying for this… so in a way this sets up a precedent for taxpayers to save other things which BP is destroying. The turtles and other wildlife obviously need help. The BP plan seems to be to either soak everything with oil or burn everything alive.
The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration
Again, this should be counter-cyclical, NOT pro-cyclical. The argument being that cutting budgets now, and pushing offenders of minor offenses out the doors is not a good thing when there are NO JOBS TO GO TO.
That’s an interesting argument – let off prisoners early would add to unemployment.
On the other hand, some might twist that into a way of reducing unemployment by sending more poeple off to jail. Was that how they did it in USSR?
Never forget Craazyman’s first law of economics:
“One man’s cost is another man’s revenue.”
NO we need to INCREASE the prison population with a few thousand banksters and mortgage fraudsters, and then pay the unemployed to gaurd them (they can even play checkers with the non-violent ones, this won’t be hard labor breaking bricks).
And how will we pay for it? We will pay for it from restitution from the banksters’ own pockets. Yes, there it is. ha ha ha
ha ha hhha ahahaha h
You could just put them in the army…
Surplus, Survival, & Evolution
Surplus is required to invest in the adaptive skills that will be needed next, but at surplus critters are least likely to consider future requirements. That’s History. So, let’s say at surplus half the population consumes and the other half invests. At deficit, the consumers raid the investors. In round 2 of surplus, 75% consume and 25% invest, and so on. And here we are, with the consumers continuing to proclaim that the planet does not collect maladaptive behavior for efficient removal.
There’s also a lot of talk about those with guns taking from those with none. Sound familiar. That works in the first or second rounds, against less well equipped consumers, but it ignores the planetary response, which is to increase variability, on an exponential curve until the fault is cleared. Having a gun in the initial phase of economic collapse may be useful, but adaptive capability will be much more important over time, and at some point the investors are going to regroup and restart the economy.
So, the best position is to maintain an adjustable gap, both versus the consumption population, and relative to planetary response. In net, as the consumption system implodes, the investment economy is growing the gap, abandoning the consumer economies, and increasing investment in natural adaptive capability, which is exactly what the planet wants.
And the consumption response is to borrow bigger and penalize investors more, at gunpoint if necessary, growing the gap. Multinationals are not investors; they are consumers, and GDP measures economic loss, on the assumption that the law can force investors to cover it, within the misdirection of a global make-work regulatory scheme, that is entirely dependent on technology it doesn’t understand.
The consumption economy will crash, but the mad max proponents will be disappointed shortly thereafter. All growth will be in the analog economy; at question is the number that will benefit, which depends on how long it takes to restore equilibrium. Bred behavior cannot be changed in real time, and the consumption system, which is 70% of GDP, disables its own children to ensure continuation, feeding the system with debt, so the parents can go shopping, which is basically a caged wheel that feeds the multinationals.
There is no way to know what the weather is going to do a year from now, but “shop till you drop” may not be the best strategy. Pension rebalancing is another way of saying liquidation, and there is no way to protect principle invested in the digital economy.
California was the prototype for the digital economy, which went viral globally. Look around. The consumers cannot stop themselves from getting in their car and going shopping to relieve the psychological and social dissonance associated with separation from nature, and the slave laborers that have been subsidizing consumer addiction are watching the s— show on the Internet, exponentially adapting relative to the addicted because they do not suffer from the addiction.
I worked on every part of the digital economic kernel.
That’s evolution.
p.s. between 500,000,000 and 2,000,000,000 is going to come out of that hole alone. The digital economy made it, cannot stop it, wants to get paid to stop it, and wants to drill more.
shop till you drop.
For those prefabbing:
education
What we want is for people to be able to migrate across government, corporation and small business without shorting out the system. The current education system is designed to direct individuals into one system and then into one cubicle within that system.
Healthcare
Doctors don’t fix anything. If you take a look, you will see that beyond prevention (chronic), getting a patient in, realigned and stabilized as quickly as possible leads to the best outcomes, preferably within 45 minutes, so homeostasis can start doing its job as quickly as possible.
i liked the part in the comment about cooperation. the 100 senators have cooperated to defraud over 300 million Americans via the Bailouts, of course with the generous help of others/Presidents/House Reps/etc., as well. we need such cooperative efforts, NOT!!
it is amazing to think there are so many of us on the receiving end of this “screwing” and no response ability to our “predicament.” I do not hear any response that includes some kind of practical or even imagined efforts to stop these Banksters, whatever else these “elites” are called.
with all these people getting screwed, all we can DO is bitch? there is no effective response at all to this War on the Have nots?
Wonderful. the Decline of Society, under the “guise” of “Cooperation.
my take on what i read here seems to be that we can only bitch about how we are getting screwed, since no one seems capable of stopping these “Thieves.”
the only alternative is to withdraw, since “Resistance is Futile.” is the operative position.
Decline of Society, under the “guise” of “Cooperation
> The Phoenix seems to always act alone (rising out of the ashes) which is an interesting dichotomy in relation to the results brought about by the group-effort of cooperation.
All right. This will make me famous.
re: Rob Parenteau Gets Sector Balances Right:
“Steve Waldman’s Blog Intefluidity: says ‘austerians’ was actually coined by Rob Parenteau.] Surely someone can come up with a cleverly risqué coinage for those in favor of stimulus?”
OK, I will, For those in favor of stimulus: I say “Viagrans”
boowaaaa hahahah ahahaha haghahahahah :) !!!!!
Maybe this will be my contribution to macroeconomics. LOL.
For the Viagran theme song, I’m thinking of Bob Marley’s song:
Stir it up
Come on and stir it up; …, little darlin’!
Stir it up; come on, baby!
Come on and stir it up, yeah!
Little darlin’, stir it up! O-oh!
I’ll push the wood (stir it, stir it, stir it together),
Then I blaze ya fire;
Then I’ll satisfy your heart’s desire. (ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh)
Said, I stir it every (stir it, stir it, stir it together),
Every minute:
All you got to do, baby, (ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh)
Is keep it in, eh!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6U-TGahwvs
Viagrans – aren’t they also called Spanishfly-ers?
Hey, craazyman …I want some of that name coining fame … for those older people in favor of a stimyoulust I say … “Erectogenarians!”
boowaaaa hahahah ahahaha haghahahahah :) !!!!!
The Erectogenarians theme song will be head Erectogenarian Allen Greenspan’s famous song — UP Yours And Away …
Would you like to
ride in my beautiful bubble …
Would you like to ride in my beautiful bubble …
We could float among the debts together, you and I …
For we can lie we can lie …
Up, up and away …
My beautiful, my beautiful bubble …
The world’s a greedier place in my beautiful bubble …
It wears a nastier face in my beautiful bubble …
We can sing a song and sail along the silver sky …
For we can lie we can lie …
Up, up and away …
My beautiful, my beautiful bubble …
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Hmmmm….just read this: California welfare payouts traced to exotic club ATMs.
What will we find out next, welfare money being used for donations to the Billionaire Preseration Society?
CNN: Everyone who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill is dead; had a life expectancy of 51 years old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRrbqBEGxiw
I’m not a big fan of CNN, and I have no idea if this woman is legit, but it’s pretty scary nonetheless.
Opinion: Innocentive and 80,000 people try to help with spill: Result, zip
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/294066
The teams at BP lack an urgency to involve the outside world. They appear to actually believe they have this crisis well in hand while putting forth that stoic, concerned face we’re all now use to seeing – working around the clock and doing everything humanly possible . BP is not the victim here. A catastrophic leadership failure, driven by a closed and arrogant culture. This does not bode well for the Gulf.
The Coast Guard Horizon Response team has also received 80,000 suggestions, and no action has resulted.
This is an oil spill, not an exercise in social networking, basket weaving or metaphysics.
The possibilities for the Gulf are catastrophic, more catastrophic, and worse. If this problem isn’t solved, it will spread, rapidly. Arguably the biggest man made disaster in history, the BP oil spill makes Exxon Valdez look like a spilled cup of coffee. Exxon was held fully liable. BP is actually providing a price for what it’s prepared to pay. There is a difference, and it’s not a good difference. It means there’ll be a precedent for minimizing corporate responsibility.
No Fishing Zone in the Gulf Expands
http://www.wctv.tv/news/headlines/97524584.html?ref=584
The closed area now represents more than 80-thousand square miles, which is approximately 33.2% of Gulf of Mexico federal waters. Officials say it’s a precautionary measure to ensure that seafood from the Gulf will remain safe for consumers
Oil dispersant does not pose environmental threat, early EPA findings suggest
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063004358.html
But environmentalists questioned the kind of testing EPA conducted, noting that its scientists applied the chemical compounds to mature marine life and then examined the impact either 48 or 96 hours later, instead of observing what would happen after repeated applications.
Alaska-based activist Riki Ott noted that “fresh oil and fresh dispersant are being released constantly” in the gulf, so the lab results could not capture that sort of repeated exposure. “Right off the bat it’s more toxic than a standard, static test,” Ott said, adding that EPA officials did not test the impacts on “young life forms” such as juveniles and larvae, which are more vulnerable to toxic chemicals.
Gulf oil spill: Air pollution a new health concern
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/06/gulf-oil-spill-air-pollution-health-workers.html
A team of UCI scientists, including Nobel laureate F. Sherwood Rowland and Chemistry department Chairman Donald Blake, has detected concentrations of toxic chemicals such as alkyl nitrates, methane, hexane and butane compounds that can irritate or burn skin and eyes or cause dizziness, according to studies.
EPA conducted, noting that its scientists applied the chemical compounds to mature marine life and then examined the impact either 48 or 96 hours later, instead of observing what would happen after repeated applications.
==> That is retarded …. this has been going on 70 days — not 70 F’ing hours — WTF? The EPA is just a massive group of retarded shills that have jobs because of nepotism and the good ol’ boy network. Why don’t they just soak a congressman in oil for 48 hours and then compare that to the toxicity of a senator in oil for 70 days …. these creepy bastards are all pathetic pigs!
Hay Doc old boy…they knew from the very first days this was going too be an_epic chapter_in man-made (criminal) disasters, hence the heavy curtain drawn from its conception. I would add that only a few people in the Babel Tower that is BP would have a_wide enough_scientific back ground to understand the total effect this will have going decades into our future. Then compound that by the vertical drug cartel administration of which said individuals must operate in.
Skippy…this is a cosmetic operation.
PS. really wish I could offer you and some others around here a glass of BVE E&E 2004 black pepper shaz and a Cohiba tonight…its really lonely out there these days…is the world really one of those anatomy exhibitions, degrees of dissection accompanied by degrees of gut revulsion.
I note that Al Gore is heading for a fate worse than death:
While not diminishing the nature of the allegations, he faces the prospect of becoming known for a personal misdemeanor/ offence and not for his political efforts culminating in the office of vice president.
As if taking politicians seriously was a problem!
Torturing POWs, misappropriating public money, corrupt regulatory bodies left and right _is_ debatable, sexual harassment is a clear cut case– even if it’s only allegation.
“I didn’t inhale and never tried it again…”