All Creatures Great and Small

This story is yet another example of what happens when humans screw-up the balance of Nature. California wildlife managers are having to relocate mountain lions (Puma concolor), a threatened species, hundreds of miles to prevent them from eating endangered Sierra bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis sierrae) of which only 600 survive. The sheep are a genetically distinct subspecies and were listed in 1999 when their population was estimated at only 125. They live in 14 bands, and a single mountain lion can stop a small herd from expanding or even wipe it out.

At first the California wildlife agency resorted to lethal removal, but a law change appropriately requires that non-lethal methods be used first. So, a young female mountain lion that was preying on a sensitive herd was the first to be relocated a hundred miles away. At first her movements revealed by tracking data were erratic as she became accustomed to her new surroundings. Her latest location data shows she is still alive and settling in to her new territory. A five year old male cougar who had killed at least nine sheep since 2018, displayed more stubbornness when he was relocated a hundred miles away. He blazed a direct path back to his old hunting grounds.  Not be defeated by the lion, officials captured him again and sent him 200 miles away in the opposite direction. Lions have an acute sense of direction aided by excellent vision and smell, which they use to hunt and locate mates. The increased distance and direction change appeared not to faze him as he began walking in the correct direction within 24 hours of release. But, probably to his long-term benefit, he veered off course and has so far not returned home.

Officials did not think cougars they captured for relocation would not try to go back to where they were taken. The idea was to protect the sheep, at least for a while. Biologists think that lack of other big predators exterminated by man in the Sierras such as bear and wolves, allowed the cat to occupy a larger niche in the ecosystem--bad news for vulnerable sheep. So if man wants bighorn sheep to remain in the altered landscape, he will have to artificially strike a new balance between predator and prey, a task Nature does effortlessly. How long must the earth mourn, the green of the whole countryside wither? For the wickedness of those who dwell in it beasts and birds disappear, because they say, "God does not see our ways." Jeremiah 12:4

High Court Clears Lula

Update: An indication of turmoil the Bolsonaro regime is experiencing is the resignation of all three military chiefs of staff after he fired his Defense Minister. The resignations are unprecedented since the end of military government thirty-six years ago. Brazil has been hit hard by the pandemic with over 300,000 reported deaths. Bolsonaro is under increasing criticism for his handling of the public health emergency. Observers see the resignations as an attempt to increase his control of the government and his political support as he faces an increasingly serious challenge from former president Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva.  

{28.03.21}It what could be a major break for conservationists and the future of the Amazon rainforest, the Brazil Supreme Court cleared Luiz da Silva, former President, of his corruption conviction. Lula will undoubtably run for office in 2022 against the nationalist Jair Bolsonaro, who has made rainforest exploitation a major policy of his administration. The progressive Lula presents a serious challenge to Bolsonaro. He leads in major opinion polls.

Lula received a 600 day prison sentence at one point in his lengthy prosecution, but the Supreme Court found that the prosecution was unfair and intended to end in his conviction. Prosecutors wiretapped his phones and coordinated each step of his trial with the trial judge, Sérgio Moro. Moro later accepted an appointment as Minister of Justice in the Bolsonaro government. Moro also has connections to the US State Department, and paid a visit to the CIA during his 2019 US trip as Justice Minister. 

Lula may have benefited from an opinion shift in the country's power elite. Recently they have been critical of the Bolsonaro government's response to COVID-19. Bolosonaro made world headlines comparing the virus pandemic to the flu and refusing to wear a mask in public. The ensuing acceleration of the virus spread in Brazil has had tragic consequences.

The oligarchy's pact to remove Lula's leftist government as part of its desire to dismantle social programs was aided by the pandemic, which has devastated Brazil's health care infrastructure. Lula faces the greatest challenge of his lifetime--restoring Brazilian environmental protection, now that he is free. A recent study published in Biological Conservation indicates Environment Minister Ricard Salles began in ernest to deregulate environmental protections while the country was focused on battling the pandemic . Since Bolsonaro took office at the start of 2019, fifty-seven pieces of environmental regulation were set aside or weakened. Twenty-eight of these actions occurred during the first seven months of the pandemic. There was also a 70% drop in fines imposed for regulatory violations between March and August, 2020. Bolsonaro had made his intentions clear even before he became president. During the 2018 election campaign, he declared he would do away with the “industry of environmental fines” and combat the “eco-Shiites.”

'Toontime: Black Get Back, Brown Turn Around

credit: D. Whamond; Wackydoodle axes: Do you want fries with that?

After what the Party of Sedition wrought in Georgia last night, they should no longer be considered a liberal democratic institution. They have become a death cult organized around one leading principle--maintaining electoral viability through voter suppression and anti-democratic procedural rules. The Georgia legislation allows a POS dominated legislature to overrule local boards of election and select their members, thus insuring the candidates they want will win. In a repeat of Reconstruction-era oppression, Georgia troopers even arrested a black Democratic lawmaker wishing to witness the governor signing the repressive legislation that was passed with lightening speed in less than one day. Here is what a German said when asked by an American writer how the Nazis rose to power in a otherwise liberal democracy:

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security....To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop."

The same process is happening in Georgia and potentially in other states like Wisconsin and Iowa where the POS works feverishly to restrict access to the ballot box in ways that disproportionately affect minorities and youth, constituencies that tend to vote Democratic.

Their totalitarian strategy of milking the BIG LIE of a stolen election to change election laws in their favor is effective. Georgia governor Brian Kemp won office against a black woman by just about 55,000 votes after he had ordered a purge of the Georgia rolls as secretary of state removing thousands of black voters, and then refused to register 53,000 new voters gathered by his opponent Stacey Abrams. Abrams was 17,000 votes short of forcing a run off. As governor he has signed into law the largest contraction in voting rights in the state since the sixties. 

Sinclair Lewis warned us. It is happening here because we have neglected tending the garden of democracy. The Senate must pass the federal election standards if democracy is to withstand the creeping fascist onslaught. That requires crypto-reactionaries like Joe Manchin to get on the correct side of history.

Oh, Jimmy, where are you now when we need you!

End the Fillibuster--NOW

Whether you call it a "Jim Crow" relic or just partisan obstructionism, the filibuster has lost any functional purpose in the Senate. It has become a tool of bourbon obstructionists like Mitch McConnell. Either a bill has the support of a handful of Senators who are willing to grind the body to a halt, or it does not pass at all. Democrats, especially so-called "centrists" which US Person prefers to think of as DINOs, do not have the courage of their convictions, only the fear of losing their privilege. Changing the rule is not "breaking the place" because the institution is already broken.

The supermajority cloture rule was instituted in 1917 in order to pass wartime legislation. (arming merchant ships) The filibuster was historically used by white supremacists to block civil rights legislation like the anti-lynching law. See history of Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina or Richard Russel of Georgia. One hundred years later, only the context has changed in the Senate. The filibuster in its present, effortless incarnation (it literally can be invoked by email) will be used by the Party of Sedition to block voting rights reform, not to mention gun safety laws, taxing the rich and corporations, expanding Medicare, or other parts of Biden's agenda that they find objectionable. It took a hundred years and a pandemic for the choice to become inescapable--either you vote for democracy and social justice for all, or maintain a racist bulwark erected in the aftermath of the Civil War. To choose that path would be to disrespect the nation's extreme sacrifice to preserve a "more perfect Union". As the  stands now the Union is suffering from a filibuster-induced paralysis.

Exposure of the revanchists in the Senate who block social progress is the way forward; once exposed, the procedural rule should be altered to allow the upper chamber to function. Minority consent to move forward is neither necessary nor advantageous to the nation. In fact the rule has been used to place civil rights legislation out of bounds, in return for a dysfunctional chamber. Civil rights bills were doomed, but most other bills could pass with a simple majority. Southern elites realized the same thing Madison and Hamilton knew: supermajority requirements empower a small minority to game the system in their favor.

After the hard fought passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1965, the filibuster was no longer so tightly tethered to maintenance of white supremacy. The number of filibusters and cloture votes by both sides shot up. But McConnell has taken obstruction to new heights, where nothing can pass without a sixty-vote majority. Obstructionists need not even hold the Senate floor against a majority. Paralysis has ensued, as the founders predicted. To Alexander Hamilton, any rule that required a supermajority vote served “to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.” [emphasis added] The filibuster was, and is, a bargain with the devil. As a elderly black lady in Austin, TX once told US Person, aka "ace of spades", "They's the devil!". He cooly replied, "they are a reasonable facsimile, ma'am". So end this Faustian bargain, or would you prefer DC statehood. Mr. Manchin?

Two African Elephant Species Declared Endangered

After a century of habitat loss and unrelenting extermination, two African elephant species are declared endangered by extinction.  The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) critically endangered, and the more numerous African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) endangered. Population of the two species combined is considered to be 415,000, down from 26 millions that once roamed the entire continent before European colonization began (1800).

Population of forest elephants has dropped 86% over three decades, while savanna elephants have suffered a 60% decline in fifty years.  Poaching for their ivory is a continuing mortal threat despite efforts to control or eradicate the world-wide illegal trade. IUCN director-general, Bruno Oberle, said in a press statement that,  “Several African countries have led the way in recent years, proving that we can reverse elephant declines, and we must work together to ensure their example can be followed.”  Botswanna is one such country that has managed its great elephant herds successfully. The country is currently home to more elephants than any other African country, and southern Africa remains a stronghold for 293,000, or 70%, of the estimated remaining African elephants. [photo credit: WWF]

In a related new story, a Colorado Springs, CO man, Iniki Vike Kapu, was banned for life from hunting earlier this month. The ban effectively prevents Kapu from hunting legally in 48 states of the Union. He was convicted of poaching big horn sheep, turkeys and deer since 2018. A Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesperson said, “Mr. Kapu’s crimes against wildlife are the essence of what defines a poacher by taking wildlife without regard for the laws protecting them...[He} is viewed as a serious threat to Colorado’s wildlife and his violations are among the worst. The severity and level of indifference for wildlife in this case are rarely seen and cannot be tolerated.” Kapu was forced to surrender the weapons he used for poaching.

Some Pistol!

This assault weapon (Ruger AR-556), which would be classified as a sub-machine gun if it were fully automatic instead of just semi-automatic, was purchased by the Boulder supermarket killer just six days before the slaughter. The weapon comes compete with a thirty round magazine designed for NATO 5.56mm (.223 high-velocity) caliber rounds. The barrel has a flash suppressor, and is threaded so you can attach a silencer if you want. The manufacturer has taken pains to exempt the weapon from ATF classification as a short barrelled, semi-automatic carbine. Just the thing for deer hunting if you are having a bad day! Rep. Boebert, have you got one of these?

Boulder's assault weapons ban was overturned in court on the grounds that it violated Colorado's state preemption law. That ruling came ten days before the supermarket slaughter. The city has decided to appeal the ruling in the wake of yet another mass shooting. A ban may not have stopped the killer since he lived in another suburb of Denver, Arvada, and did not purchase the machine pistol in Boulder. Local laws are of limited value in controlling mass shootings. Congress needs to reimplement the assault weapons ban passed during the Clinton administration. Biden, who supported the measure when he was in the Senate, has already stated publicly that he supports a new ban. Does this country really need to tolerate some 20,000 deaths a year (2019) due to mass shootings, facilitated by high-volume weaponry? US Person does not think so, nor should a rational citizen who is not anti-social.

COTW: Making a Pizza, Digitally

For all of you boomers out there challenged by the digitalverse while looking for a job, here is the chart for "making a pizza' in the 21st century:

Thanks to a reader for providing the above graphic to PNG--you know who you are! 

Giggles aside, the next chart is perhaps superficially unrelated to the one above. But think about it. Most of the new wealth created in this country is directly related to technology and computers. (Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Gates, Ballmer et al)

What this chart means is that the average wealth (assets-debts) of the top 1% is $11,700,814. The average wealth of the bottom 50% is $15,065! Most of that wealth for the bottom 50% is in depreciating assets like cars and other durable consumer goods, not financial assets that generally appreciate in value and produce income. Which brings US to the stock market and the private national bank known as the Federal Reserve. It has been restlessly pursuing a policy of asset inflation to stave off depression. That policy explains why the market and the economy are going in opposite directions. Here is the kicker: the top 10% own $29.6 trillion in stocks and equity funds, about $10 million per person. The bottom 50% hardly own any stocks, about $190 billion, or just $1,150 per person.

When the Fed sets monetary policy and expands its balance sheet to create the largest asset bubble in history, it knows who will benefit from that policy--the already rich. Life is not getting less expensive at the bottom. This gross inequity must be corrected, and one way to do that is with a wealth tax. Mr. Manchin, of the top 10%, are you listening?  Or do you care?

'Toontime: State of Delusion

credits: P. Bagley--Salt Lake Tribune

Acquitting a criminal chief executive twice is not low enough for the Party of Sedition (POS). They gave aid and comfort to armed insurrectionists who attempted to take over the Capitol on January 6th and block certification of presidential election results. Their latest assault on democracy after being out-voted at the polls, is to pass restrictive voting laws reminiscent of Jim Crow. Pleas for unity and bi-partisanship should be ignored, if not derided. The Big Lie is still being espoused by party officials and die-hard Trumpists.

McConnell's threat to turn the Senate into a 100 car pile-up is ridiculous in the extreme since a majority can alter Senate rules. After all, It was McConnell who rammed through another Supreme Court justice by breaking the rule he made to prevent a former Democratic president (Obama) from naming a Supreme Court justice. The nation and Democrats would be much better served passing popular legislation, which would preserve their slim congressional majority, rather than coddling the recalcitrant POS. If that requires altering the filibuster rule to place the onus of obstruction squarely on McConnell and cohorts, then so be it. Why a supposedly Democratic senator is doing the work of seditionists by preserving a super majority rule, is inexplicable to US Person.  Inquiring minds of the "hard left" want to know!

 

BC Idonwanna sez: Half million dead no hoax!

Sperm Whales Communicated Data About Whalers

More: Norway announced it will allow hunting of Minke whales this year. Norwegian whalers killed 503 common minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata)in the previous two years. The quota set by the ministry of fisheries is set at 1,278. Once again whale hunting is caught up in nationalist fever and cultural identity. Demand for whale meat is miniscule, but whale hunters apparently have a pipeline into governement decision making. In response to international criticism, the government claims the hunt is sustainable. A global moratorium went into effect in 1986, but a few countries, notably Japan, Iceland and Norway have ignored it. Conservationists argue the hunting whales unethical and cruel and the history of whaling indicates that the industry is anything but sustainable. They also say there is a growing scientific awareness of the role whales play in the functioning of a healthy marine environment.

Despite continuing whaling in the face of an international ban, Norway is positioning itself as a leader in ocean conservation. It recently joined the Ocean Panel along with thirteen other natioins committed to sustainable managing 100% of their territorial seas. The country is also playing a role in cleaning up marine litter. It published useful guidelines on how to release whales entangled in so-called "ghost gear"--nets, lines and other debris abandoned by fishing vessels. Animal welfare advocates say harpooned whales do not die humanely Roughly about 18% of the animals in the Norwegian hunt every year do not die instantly. Some take as long as 15 minutes to die. Killing a whale at sea, even with high powered rifles to administer a coup de gras is not easy. The northeastern Atlantic population of minkes, which is targeted by Norway, is around 86,000, counted in 2010. Thirteen ships are anticipated to sign on by April when the hunt starts. Since 1993 Norway has killed more than 14,000. Japan also hunts minkes in the Southern Ocean.

{17/03/21}Cetacean scientists published a paper in the Royal Society journal that concludes 19th century whales communicated information about their killers. Using digitized log books from whaling vessels, Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell found that the harpoon strike rate fell 58% within just a few years. The inevitable conclusion is that whales, a global population, shared information about lethal human hunters and avoided them if possible. Sperm whales form defensive rings with powerful tails pointing outward against orcas, their only other predator. Such behavior made them easy targets for whalers. Abandoning their usual defensive formations, the whales swam upwind to escape hunters’ ships hampered sailing into the wind.

Sperm whale bulls were known to attack whaling ships. Infamous bulls were giving nicknames by seaman, such as 'Tom' or 'Dick'  The 70 ft long albino whale known as 'Mocha Dick' was greatly feared by whalers for he succeeded in destroying about 20 attacking vessels before being killed himself in defense of a mother whale and her calf.  Melville's Moby Dick was inspired by another huge bull that sunk the USS Essex in 1820 off the coast of Chile. Wreck survivors took their three boats and wandered for 95 days over the vastness of the Pacific's "desolate region"--the South Pacific Gyre.  Only five seaman survived the ordeal after having resorted to cannibalism to save themselves.

Whitehead and Rendell have written persuasively of whale culture in which local populatioins adapt their feeding techniques to suit their environment. One example of this are the grey whales in Puget Sound who risk stranding to pursue clams buried in shallow mud banks at high tide. Humpback whales make subtle changes in their songs, which scientists are trying to understand. The same shared learning decreased the kill rate by 19th century whalers. Now there are man more technological hazards that whales cannot escape, such as harpoon cannons, long- line fishing rigs, pervasive ocean noise, and climate change affecting their food sources. Whale culture is much, much older than man's--we need to learn from it just as Leviathan learned from ours.

See the USA, via Railway!

'Merika is exceptioinal--in a bad way. This country is the only developed western nation without a high speed rail newwork. Most western EU countries have them as well as our Asian competitors Korea, Japan and China. Show this chart to "Amtrack Joe":

It is a map of a possible high speed network of tomorrow. Think of it as the Interstate network on steroids. After seeing Germany's network of dual-lane highways built to move men and material quickly around the country, General Eisenhower decided a similar "autobahn' would be good idea for his country. It boggles the mind to think that a solidly conservative president like Eisenhower subsidized a national infrastructure project like the Interstate Highway System by creating a trust fund that guaranteed the federal governemt would pay for 90% of the cost of construction. Definitely sounds like socialism! It took thirty-five years to build the highwway system. The federal-state partnership still functions with states responsible for maintenance, but with reliable, long term federal funding. Rail in 'Merika has never had such a long-term federal commitment. Sure, there is Amtrak and it has the Accela express service in the northeast corridor that 'Commuter Joe' road to work from Delaware, but that road is anemic, the butt of conservative jokes, when compared for example to the Très Grand Vitesse of France.. By the way, US Person rode the TGV from Paris to Provence. It is impressive--at 200mph it makes the Accela look like a snail. A TGV recorded a land speed record of 357.2 mph in 2007!

All of this may change if "Amtrak Joe" and "Mayor Pete", his new Transportation Secretary, get their way. Mayor Pete was responsible for bringing a commuter rail service to his city of South Bend from Chicago. His experience with railway funding could prove invaluable. An interstate network of exclusively passenger high-speed rail is no mean accomplishment. Two conditions are absolutely necessary: federal funding, and a long-term policy commitment that must span several administrations. Establishing a trust fund similar to the one that fianced the interstate highways is a good first step. However, influential, deep pockets have lined up against a national rail system, llike the Koch Brothers, those perennial ghouls of reaction. In their playbook public transit is the handmaiden of Marxist revolution.

In his green infrastructure plan, Biden is calling for every city to have quality, zero emissions transportation options, including funding rail projects with the goal of creating the fastest rail system in the world. He will have to succeed where Obama could not. A high-speed rail network could replace the polluting and unprofitable short hall and commuter air lines crowding our overcrowded skies. Powered by green electricity, such a system would be almost carbon neutral, a giant step forward to protecting the planet from catastrophic climate change. DOT now has the expertise to pursue this long-term goal. High speed rail has support among the public too, especially younger voters. California is already building high speed rail to connect San Francisco with Los Angeles using federal funds. The California road has been delayed by conservative political opposition. Nevertheless, stars may be finally aligned for building high speed rail in this country. Who would not like to travel in leg-stretching comfort from the center of Washington DC to the heart of Chicago in four hours, a trip that now takes twenty hours. That is progress, baby!

Fukushima Ten Years On

John LaForge writing at Counterpunch tells US that the Fukushima multiple nuclear meltdown in 2011 after a massive 9.0 earthquake spawned a tsunami that inundated the seaside Fukushima Diaichi power plant is still leaking radiation and contaminated cooling water. The continuing impacts on the planet and the region fall into these categories: 

• Disease-- Only one human disease caused by exposure to radiation has been studied--thyroid cancer. 380,000 children from the region were screened for the disease. In January 2018 a scientific journal reported 187 cases of cancer in five years from that sample. A typical population of the same size would normally produce only 12 cases. The marked increase is consistent with radiation exposure.  

• Aftershocks-- Fukushima has suffered six major aftershocks since 2011. The latest, a 7.3 earthquake, hit the region on February 13th. At a Feb. 15 meeting, government regulators said the quake had probably worsened existing earthquake damage in reactors 1 and 3, or broken open new cracks causing the cooling water level drop, according to AP. TEPCO knew Fukushima Daichi was built in a high-risk earthquake zone. 

• Contaminated Soil--A major typhoon slammed the shore in October 2019 dispersing bags of radioactive debris that were stacked near a river. Since March 2011, 22 million cubic meters of soil and debris have been collected in large plastic bags and piled in temporary mounds in thousands of locations. According to one press report in the Indian newspaper, The Hindu, no decontamination of forested areas covering 75% of the contaminated region of 9,000 km² is planned.

• Radioactive Fallout--Highly radioactive, large particles of cesium isotopes have been found. A Japanese scientist who has studied the cesium particles told the press “the newly found highly radioactive particles have not yet decayed significantly. As such, they will remain in the environment for many decades to come, and this type of particle could occasionally still be found in radiation hot spots.” Smaller radioactive particles of uranium, thorium, radium, cesium, strontium, polonium, tellurium and americium were found afloat throughout Northern Japan in areas cleared for human habitation.

• Cleanup Failures and Deceptions--The international environmental organization, Greenpeace has issued two reports critical of the clean-up process and lack of transparency about efforts. Most of the 840 km² area the government is responsible for decontaminating remains contaminated by radioactive cesium. In the areas where evacuation orders were lifted in 2017, specifically Namie and Iitate, radiation levels remain above safe limits, potentially exposing the population to increased cancer risk. For years, TEPCO claimed that the treated water stored at the plant contained only relatively harmless tritium, but data on its website shows that the treatment process has failed. The tanks now hold almost 1.25 million tons of highly contaminated waste water, containing dangerous strontium-90, which it plans to dump into the Pacific. Greenpeace concluded in its study of decommissioning that the current decommissioning plan in 30-40 years is impossible to achieve and is illusory. Radioactive waste created at the site should not be moved. Fukushima Daichi is already and should remain a nuclear waste storage site for the long term. That conclusion is essentially the same one the Russians reached after the meltdown of Chernobyl in April, 1986.
  

Are you sure want nuclear power to remain a significant part of our energy generation portfolio? NIMBY!: the last nuclear power station in Oregon (Trojan) went off line in 1992 after cracks were discovered in steam turbine tubes. Decommissioning began in 1993. The highly contaminated reactor vessel was entombed in concrete, transported upriver, and buried forty-five feet deep at the Hanford, WA nuclear waste site. The cooling tower was finally imploded in 2006, but the radioactive fuel rods are still stored on-site along the Columbia River awaiting a permanent storage solution, which has eluded regulators since the 1960's. All of these extraordinary costs are just part of the incredibly expensive nuclear fuel cycle that would never produce electricity "too cheap to meter".

Georgia's New Jim Crow

credit: KAL, Boston Globe,  Wackydoodle sez: If you pull the right lever, you win!

Georgia's legislature, dominated by the POS, is racing to pass voter laws intended to restrict minority participation in elections. After the party lost two Senate seats in 2020, they want to make sure there is not a repeat performance by minority voters in 2022. Because Senator Warnock (D-GA) is filling in an uncompleted six year term, he is up for re-election in the off-year. Democrats have little chance of stopping this new Jim Crow at the state level. Its hope rests on passing election reform bills, HR 1 and 4, in the US House and Senate.

Here is the Catch-22: these bills have passed the House where Speaker Pelosi has a ten vote edge, but the Senate is evenly divided and at least two DINOs have expressed opposition to modifying the filibuster rule. Majority Leader Schumer cannot use reconciliation to pass the election reform legislation since it is obviously not budget related. Majority Leader Schumer and progressives are going to have to resort to some heavy leverage to get the filibuster modified in some form to allow passage of the voting right bills or risk loosing the Senate majority in 2024. A difficult choice, but that is the state of play the Repugnants are counting on.

Migratory Birds Get Help

The Trump rule allowing incidental "takes" under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) has gone into effect. The good news is that the Interior Department under new management announced it will begin a new rule making to return to the original understanding of the MBTA that protects migratory birds from all unauthorized deaths, purposeful or incidental. This return to the Acts original intent is important since new science shows that North America has lost 3 billion birds in North America since 1970 and that two-thirds of those birds are at risk of extinction due to climate change.

In August of 2020, in response to a lawsuit filed by Audubon, other organizations, and states, the Southern District of New York ruled that the administration’s 2017 Solicitor’s Opinion excepting incidental deaths did not align with the intent and language of the 100-year-old law, and overturned the policy. The Migratory Bird Protection Act was passed out of the House Natural Resources Committee in the 116th Congress and had a bipartisan group of more than 90 co-sponsors. In January Audubon filed another suit in the Southern District against the ensuing illegal final rule. The organization said it will continue the litigation while a new rule is implemented by the Interior Department. [photo credit: M. Wright]

Colorful Colorado?

The well-known slogan of the Centennial State refers to the incredibly beautiful landscapes that exist in the Rocky Mountain west. But some parts of the state--those regions where and gas lies underground--have been defaced by the drilling boom to extract shale oil and gas. The photo below shows drilling pads and access roads spreading across the Roan Plateau near Grand Junction. Colorado is dealing with the legacy of spoliation created by its oil & gas industry. One way it does this is to required drillers to pay for bonds intended to cover the costs of land reclamation. There is a problem with this system however. Plugging a non-producing well is expensive. One climate consulting group, Carbon Tracker, estimates one well costs on average $140,000 to plug and clean a well site, and there are an estimated 60,000 wells that need treatment. The state only requires a driller owning more than a hundred wells to post a fixed bond of $100,000 covering all the company's wells. The figure is set at $150,000 for wells on public land. This blanket bond system has led to a shortfall in the money available from the industry for an estimated reclamation bill of $8 billion.

Colorado has been in the oil and gas business since 1860 when the first western oil well was drilled. This extraction legacy has left a damaged landscape the state is not prepared to repair. Unplugged wells present a toxic environmental hazard, and the state is on the hook for cleaning the mess up. About 200 wells are in its "orphan well" program--wells that have been abandoned without a solvent owner to pay for reclamation. [photo credit: High Country News]

If that figure represented the extent of the problem, it could be worse. And it is. A closer look at state data shows that half of Colorado's unplugged wells are so-called "stripper" wells. These are low producing operations that are on the edge of profitability. In many of these cases it is cheaper and easier for the drillers to walk away, or transfer the operation to other owners. These marginal wells change ownership often. The owner at the end of the transfer chain often winds up bankrupt. An industry financial analyst says, “This is a common tactic in the oil and gas industry: Spinning off liabilities to progressively weaker companies, until the final owner goes bankrupt and none of the previous owners are on the hook for cleanup.” This industry version of holding the bag goes on despite the preferential tax treatments for their operating expenses oil and gas businesses enjoy.

There are also inactive wells on the state's books. About 10% of Colorado wells are inactive. Drillers pay a single bond for an inactive well of $10,000 or $20,000 depending on depth.  It is far cheaper for a company to pay for an idle well and the premium on the bond than plug the well, estimated by the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (OGCC) to cost an average of $82,500. OGCC also estimated that the average costs of plugging a well and cleaning up the drilling site “exceed available financial assurance by a factor of fourteen.” Two companies account for 70% of idle wells in the state: Noble Energy Inc. (now Chevron after a buyout in 2020), and Kerr-McGee.  The latter company was responsible for the home explosion in Firestone, CO that killed two people.  Kerr-McGee was fined a record $18 million last year for the accident.  Both companies own numerous wells in the prolific Denver-Julesburg Basin. Abandonment of wells is not just a hypothetical problem. Last summer California's biggest driller filed for Chapter 11, leaving billions in debt for 17,000 unplugged wells. In the fall of 2019, a small company called Petroshare Corporation went bankrupt leaving Colorado with the bill for cleaning up 90 wells, which will run into the millions. More bankrupt operators are on the way: in six out of the past seven years, energy has been either the worst or second-worst performing sector on the S&P 500.

Colorado is trying to change its dependent relationship to an industry it has lived with for 150 years. A new law passed in 2019 requires the OGCC to reform the financing of well reclamation in the state, and it rewrote the agency's mission, giving localities control over oil and gas development. The agency has banned flaring of natural gas, a common practice, and instituted a range of wildlife and public health policies. Recently it voted to institute the nation's largest set-back rule (2000 ft) for operations near homes and schools. The bottom line is that oil and gas producers are not footing near enough of the bill for their damage to the land and its inhabitants, wild and human. Industry complains constantly about increased costs of operations in Colorado due to regulatory changes. Experts predict that more marginal operations will be handed off in a game of "hot potato". When the potato explodes, its "Coloprful Colorado" that suffers.

The Legacy of 'Killer' Trump

Killer's southern wall epitomizes his legacy to the nation: a porous boondoggle that cost 'Merika and NOT Mexico billions, and that wrecked fragile desert ecosystems during its construction. {14.02.18} When he touted his great southern wall would be"impregnable" as a panacea for illegal immigration he said, "I would build a great wall--and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me. And I’ll build them very inexpensively...I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” As can be expected his rhetoric is far from reality, but then Killer does not deal in reality, only fantasy.

By the end of this term he built, using funds scavenged from other appropriations under "emergency" authorization ($14.97 billion), about 450 miles of barrier--not a wall--at a cost of at least five times that of existing border barriers. Mexico did not pay a dime. It is estimated that since barrier building began under the Secure Fence Act (2007) signed by a predecessor in office, illegal immigration was reduced about 0.4%.

Border barriers started to be erected in 1996 when 'Bubba' Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act. New barriers went up in urban areas where most illegal crossings take place, forcing illegals to cross in the desert where they could be more easily apprehended or die of exposure. Under previous administrations, about 652 miles of border barriers were built when Killer took office in 2016, mostly between El Paso and San Diego along a border 2,000 miles long. See, China, Britain and Berlin. On the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Killer said: “Let the fate of the Berlin Wall be a lesson to oppressive regimes and rulers everywhere: No Iron Curtain can ever contain the iron will of a people resolved to be free.” His pompous rhetoric did not stop him from building his own 'iron curtain'.

Truthfully the barriers do little to restrict illegal immigration since an estimated two-thirds of undocumented immigrants overstay their entry visas. Wisely, Joe Biden stopped funding wall construction when he took office. Now, conservationists are urging him to "tear down this wall" since it interferes with wildlife foraging and reproducion, as well as scarring a wildly beautiful desert landscape. No wall is truly impregnable as the photo of a cougar atop it demonstrates. Human immigrants have used homemade ladders, tunnels, and an angle grinder purchased at a local Home Depot to circumvent Killer's lunatic folly.

King no more....

COTW: Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?

One of the many excuses the POS had for not voting to give their constituents some more economic relief as the pandemic grinds on with new varients popping up, is that the $1.9 trillion in aid is too much because jobs are coming back on line. This claim is based on a modest increase in labor statistics showing about 375,000 jobs added since the last report. But look....at this chart from the St. Louis Fed:

It shows that based on a ratio of employed to the working age population, a broader and more accurate representation of the labor market than narrow BLS definitions, the miniscule increase in jobs of 0.2% since October is nowhere near the pre-pandemic levels of employment. The ratio drops during each recession cum depression but recovers each time, until 2000. That data confirms what is generally believed to be the situation: companies continue to outsource jobs to low wage zones or replace labor with automation or temporary employment. The rentless capitalist quest for lower labor costs is reflected in the bipartisan refusal to raise a minimum wage to a livable level. So the POS claims are just more reactionary propaganda that even Moscow Mitch does not believe. 

 

Once a Green?

'Toontime: March of the Loons

credit: KAL, Baltimore Sun

Update: The Senate ground its way to passing the COVID relief bill early Saturday morning after 27 hours of mind numbing rhetoric, but not without some additional, last minute histrionics by a conservative Democrat from West Virginia. A new enemy of the people was uncovered in the form of millionaire Senator Joe Manchin who forced significant concessions from the rest of his party before he assented to voting for the bill. (50-49) He trimmed the weekly federal unemployment supplement down from $400 to $300, cut it off after Labor Day when a previous compromise had it running through October, and lowered the eligibility level for the $1400 one-time grant. His fellow senator from West Virginia said she had "no idea" what he was trying to accomplish, especially since the state's governor announced his support for the bill in its original form. Manchin has emerged as a petty tyrant of the Senate--unless his colleagues can convince him to tow the party line in future votes against unanimous POS opposition. Such obstruction is certain to occur when the Senate takes up HR 1, and HR 4 the John R. Lewis voting rights bill. Power, in all its forms, corrupts.

Killer gave another deranged speech at the conservative conclave (CPAC) in Washington on Monday. The Big Lie featured prominently. Some POS adherents are having second thoughts about following him into fascist absurdity, expressed in a Wall Street Journal editorial calling him the most famous resident of Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach fortress of solitude. 

On an active front, progressives lost the procedural battle to include a $15 minimum wage hike in the COVID relief package, as expected. Democrats have to pass the relief bill using the cumbersome budget reconciliation process to avoid a POS filibuster. Eight Democrats voted with a solid Repugnant front to defeat socialist Senator Sander's (I-VT) amendment. He vowed to keep raising the issue in the Senate, where there appears to be some moderate support for increasing the wage, but not to the level progressives want. AOC called the Repugnant counter-offer of $10/hr, "legislative poverty". Corporate Democrats, led by Joe Biden, refused to overrule the unelected Senate parliamentarian who advised that the minimum wage measure violated the Byrd Rule despite Congressional Budget Office figures supporting a significant federal budget impact within ten years, a condition required by the rule. 

Sanders called the ruling, "an absurd process". A 2021 CBO report says a wage increase could lead to 1.4 million job cuts by 2025, but it also would lift 900,000 people out of poverty and raise incomes for 17 million people, or roughly 10 per cent of the US workforce who pay taxes. Another 10 million workers who earn slightly more than $15 per hour would also see pay raises. Frustration with the filibuster rule is growing in the Democratic caucus as more senators come to realize that President Biden's modestly progressive agenda will not receive any POS support. The bottom line is: the filibuster rule in its current form must go to insure passage of legislation and a Democratic majority in Congress during Biden's first term in office.

Wisdom Hatches Another Chick

The world's most famous and oldest recorded Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis), Wisdom, hatched a new chick on February 1st. Wisdom lives on Midway Island and was banded in 1956 as part of a long term study that has identified 256 albatrosses since the late thirties. Biologists say the fertile bird has given birth to 37 chicks in her long lifespan. Biologists noticed pipping from the egg in late January. Because she is old by albatross standards, Wisdom may have had more than one mate in her lifetime. Albatrosses are known to mate for life, but they do find other mates if necessary in dance displays. Wisdom has been hatching and raising chicks with her current mate, Akeakamai, since at least 2012 when the male albatross was first banded by researchers. Wisdom also outlived the biologist, Chandler Robbins, who first banded her in 1956. Cockatoos raised in captivity have reached recorded ages of over 80, but in the wild they generally live to thirty or forty years of age. Many species are fertile into their old age, excepting primates and whales.

Midway, once a stop-over for flying boats and a contested US Navy base during WWII, is now part of the Midway Atoll Wildlife Refuge where the world's largest albatross colony nests each year. The atoll is a refuge for roughly 70% of the world’s Laysan albatrosses and 40% of black-footed albatrosses, along with endangered short-tailed albatrosses and 20 other bird species. A US Fish & Wildlife Biologist told an interviewer that Wisdom is an inspiration to wildlife lovers all over the world. Each time she returns to lay an egg, we find out more about these graceful seabirds and how long they can live given sufficient protected habitat. Each time is also a small miracle given the hazards they face during two years at sea and the negative effects of global heating, which causes their prey to flee to colder waters. [photo credits: UK Guardian]

Ending Forever Wars

A rare "unity" proposal, US Person can support: Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Todd Young (R-OH) have introduced legislation to terminate authorizations to use force by Congress. These laws has been used to enable almost continuous warfare in the Middle East since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Joe Biden promised during his campaign to end so-called 'forever wars' but recently used the authorizations to justify a bombing raid on Iranian-supported militia in eastern Syria without seeking prior congressional approval. That attack, which killed between 17- 22 people, resulted in a retaliatory missile strike that killed a civilian Pentagon contractor at Ain Al Asad airbase in Iraq.

Their bill would repeal the 1992 and 2002 laws that made a decade long conflict in Iraq possible. The Iraq War began in 2003 after Iraq invaded Kuwait prompting retaliation by the US and its allies, officially ending in 2011. A 2001 congressional authorization focused on Al Qaeda and the Taliban, which justified the US invading Afghanistan after the terror attacks of September 11th. That conflict has not yet officially ended two decades later. The new proposal to end unilateral military action by the United States does not address the Afghanistan authorization.

Kaine said the latest airstrike by the Biden government showed that the executive branch has become enamored with stretching its war-making capabilities beyond the bounds of the Constitution, which entrusts declaring war to Congress. “Congress has a responsibility to not only vote to authorize new military action, but to repeal old authorizations that are no longer necessary.”, Kaine told the press. The outdated authorizations have been used to give legal cover to U.S. military operations throughout the region, targeting ISIS and other jihadist offshoots in Syria and Iraq, including a drone strike that killed the Iranian Quds Force commander, General Quasem Solemani in 2020. That assassination prompted Iran to launch a retaliatory missile strike against US forces in Iraq seriously injuring 110 service members. There is growing concern that a "tit for tat" scenario could erupt, drawing the US into a war with regional power Iran if unchecked, unilateral action in the region is not halted.

The proposal to end the authorizations has attracted supporters from a wide spectrum of Congress with bipartisan co-sponsors. The administration responded to criticism of its recent Syrian bombing by offering to brief legislators about the justification. A Democratic senator that sat in on a staff level briefing said he was not convinced the attack without prior approval was justified since there appeared to be no immediate threat to US forces in the region requiring an immediate self-defense response.

Bitcoin Is Bad for Earth

As the world struggles to shift from polluting forms of combustible fuel to cleaner
alternatives, attention has to be paid to how we use the power

we generate. Power generation is inherently consumptive and our planet pays the price of that consumption, so we have to insure we are using power wisely. Which brings us to the case of bitcoin. Anyone willing to put the cryptocurrency into an objective perspective should concede that the digital construct is wildly power hungry. Analysis by Cambridge University shows that mining for bitcoin requires massive amounts of computer power to perform vast calculations used to verify bitcoin transactions. Mining for bitcoin in the digital realm means adding blocks of transactions to the block chain for which the "miner" earns bitcoin. Currently trading at around $46,000 a token, their is plenty of incentive to use more and more computing power to add to the block chain which is used to prevent "double spending" Real money can only be spent once since a transaction involves a physical exchange; absent counterfeiting a real money exchange is self-validating.

Since bitcoin is virtual, another method is needed to confirm that a bitcoin transaction has taken place and cannot be repeated--double spending. That is where the miners come in. They act as system auditors, verifying bitcoin transactions and add verified transaction to the bitcoin database--the block chain. Two limitations exist on earning bitcoins by mining: a miner has to verify 1MB of transactions, and be the first to correctly identify a 64 digit hexadecimal or "hash" associated with a block of transactions to be awarded bitcoin. Instead of staking a gold claim first and striking a bonanza, bitcoin miners are using enormous amounts of computer power to essentially make a guess about a hash. Without them, new bitcoin cannot be released into the cryptosphere.

Right now about 18.5 million bitcoins are circulating. Without mining, the bitcoin currency would not expand. Mining willl eventually come to end under the protocol established by founder Satoshi Nakamoto around 2140, when the last bitcoin will be circulated. Until then, mining and its huge power consumption will continue. Verifying one block earns a miner 6.25 bitcoins--at $50,000 per coin that is $312,500. Before you run out and invest in a mining rig, you should know that the difficulty of getting a hexadecimal estimate correct is about 17.59 trillion to one (2020). Because of the difficulty and the amount of computing power required, most miners join mining pools comparable to Powerball pools where participants buy large numbers of lottery tickets to increase their chance of winning by agreeing to share payouts. 

Sounds like gambling, right? Commentator Wolf Richter agrees with this assessment: "This [bitcoin] has nothing to do with monetary anything, but is a form of gambling that relies on ever more new gamblers entering the casino and bidding up the price, with more and more gamblers selling each other the bitcoin, all united in the singular purpose of driving up its price so that everyone could get rich...No one can ever say bitcoin is overvalued or undervalued. It doesn’t have a value. It just has a price, and what the price is from one moment to the next is determined by gamblers trying to drive it higher by hook or crook, and by some of those gamblers cashing out while they can." One noted economist derogatorily refers to bitcoins as "sh_tcoins".

So it is, and a lot of computing power is needed to generate 64 bit guesses, or useless "nonces". The more nonces you generate, greater the chances you have of being first to submit a correct lower estimate of the actual 256 bit hexadecimal number and hit the big casino. Electric power consumption is therefore built into the cryptocurrency system. Cambridge researchers say bitcoin mining consumes around 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year, or more than consumed by the country of Argentina, and is unlikely to reduce unless the value of the currency slumps. Most bitcoin is speculative and exchanged for fiat money, but the crytocurrency is beginning to achieve traction in the real world. The electric car company, Tesla, recently made a $1.5 billion 'investment' in bitcoin and announced that it plans to accept bitcoin in exchange for one of its electric cars in the future. Tesla got $1.5bn in environmental subsidies in 2020, funded by taxpayers. After Elon Musk bet on bitcoin, the price accelerated to a record $48,000. The token also has rising popularity in conflict zones where cash is difficult to access or poses unusual risks from regulators and thieves.

Mining is inherently inefficient. Miners hook up more and more computing power in networks--some the size of a warehouse--constantly churning to solve the hellishly difficult hexadecimal problem. This mass churning requires more and more electricity, which produces more carbon dioxide and destroyed ecosystems. China has already taken the unprecedented step of banning bitcoin mining in Inner Mongolia, a coal producing region that accounts for 8% of the world's bitcoin mining operations.The bitcoin casino is literally a planet killer.

COTW: The Experts Rate the POS

This is an interesting chart from Vox of a survey of 2000 political experts in which they rate world political parties on two axis: the extent of their commitment to liuberal democratic principles, and protection of ethnic minority rights. Guess which red dot represents the Party of Sedition (POS), formerly the GOP: 

Yes, you got it! In the lower right hand corner is the POS. In the upper right is  the Democratic Party.  No longer a dime's worth of difference in the age of neo-fascist Trumpism.  Experts agree that the POS is among the least democratic parties in the world.

 

F-35: The Fighter that Could NOT

Close readers of PNG probably think that unpatriotic US Person is obsessed with the F-35 Lightening II. {19.07.19} Perhaps he is, but only because it epitomizes the Pentagon's out-of-control weapon procurement programs. Built to be the "Swiss army knife" of the skies the multi-role fighter has proven to be the Edsel of the US military-industrial complex.

Why? Built to hover, land on a carrier, and fly Mach 2.0 with an impressive array of weapons (up to four different missiles depending on the target) and electronic gear, the airplane has been plagued with problems primarily due to the fact that no one design can effectively perform all of the complex tasks of each service. General Dynamics has built about 4600 of the aircraft costing $100 million each after huge and continuing cost overruns.

It is supposed to fly at twice the speed of sound, but comes with a label on the control panel warning the pilot to fly supersonic in case of emergencies only. Hardly the label you expect to see in a robust jet intended for sustained combat operations. Then there are the switches; most combat aircraft make do with reliable mechanical switches. The designers choose to use touch screens, in keeping with its hyper-technical selling points. Tech is fine when it works, however pilots report the screens do not work 20% of the time, a rather annoying glitch when you have a supersonic enemy aircraft in your sights. The list of defects gets worse. The heat coating on the engine rotor blades is failing at a rate that keeps 5-6% of the US fleet grounded for replacement of the engines. The canopy bubble delaminates making the aircraft impossible to fly. So many have failed that the Pentagon had to fund a new canopy vendor. Canopies are not the only thing peeling on the F-35. One of its highly touted features, stealthy operation, is compromised by the special anti-radar coating flaking off at high speeds. The Navy version had problems with its tail hook for two years. The Marine STOL version is too heavy, and the duct work enabling hovering takes up room from missile storage. The jet has become the Ferrari of the Air Force--you only drive it on Sundays at a sedate speed.

The Pentagon solution to this embarrassing failure of an airplane? Build another "fifth generation" fighter, of course. This one will be more like the good "old" F-16. Hey, we have those already! Could not we update and modify a successful existing design? After all, the US still flies the B-52 and Russia still deploys the TU-95 "Bear", both designs that are over half a century old. NOT--too easy and cheap a solution for the generals who are riding the Pentagon gravy train fueled by overly ambitious designs, and planned obsolescence. Meanwhile™, we should ask the Russians and Chinese to only start a war on Sunday. [photo credit: Getty Images]

 

US defense contractors get 'golden showers'