On Holding Down The Conversational Fort, Or, Jobs, Republicans, And Hooey

As the next Congressional fight over payroll tax extensions and unemployment benefits and pipelines gets set up in the next few weeks for either its final chapter or to be kicked down the road a bit farther, one or the other, you’re going to hear a lot from our Republican friends about how much they value work and workers; most especially, they’ll tell you, they value American jobs for American workers.

After all, they’ll say, creating American jobs is the most important thing of all.

But if we were to look back over just the last few months, some would tell us, we could quickly find examples of how Republicans promote ideas that don’t seem to value work or workers at all, much less American jobs.

Well as it turns out, “some” seem to be right; to illustrate one of those examples we’ll look back a month or two or three to a time some Republicans might wish was long, long, ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

A successful comedian usually becomes more megalomaniacal as the success barometer rises. Initial success might be achieved from stand-up but then the comedian envisions a sitcom, then Broadway, albums, extended tours, Europe, and then his or her own production company. These things are all fine. Don’t do dinner theater. Don’t open stuff, like shopping centers or bowling alleys. Don’t do fairs, especially if you follow the pig contest.

--From the book “How To Be A Stand-Up Comic”, by Richard Belzer

So…the House Republicans went and promoted and passed out their payroll tax cut plan, and within that plan was a demand that the Junkie XL Pipeline – sorry, that should be Keystone XL Pipeline – get special “expedited” approvals, despite the objections of those who are worried about their water supply, and we have to do this, right now, those same House Republicans tell us, in order to put more or less 6500 folks to work getting the thing built.

And as we mentioned above, this is because the House Republicans care about American jobs and American workers.

So…it may strike you as a bit odd that the exact same House Republicans sent to the Senate in September the “Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act” (HR 2587), which has only one purpose: it tells the National Labor Relations Board (the “NLRB”) that if workers at a company decide to form a union, or the company even thinks a union might be coming, and the company, in retaliation, decides to move work from that plant – or, for that matter, decides to move the entire plant – then neither the NLRB nor the United States Courts shall have the authority to do anything about it.

All of this stems from an effort by Boeing to move work from Washington State to South Carolina in retaliation for union activity by the Puget Sound workforce; the NLRB has ruled that Boeing cannot move the work, and the Company and its friends in Congress have joined forces with other anti-Union Members of Congress to move this legislation.

Need a third-party expert opinion to help make sense of the NLRB’s involvement and remedies? Consider this comment from University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Ellen Dannin, via Dennis Kucinich:

The NLRB has decades of experience with cases of this sort, and the National Labor Relations Act is clear that employer actions like Boeing’s violate the law. If this were a murder case, it would be a case in which the police found a person saying : “I did it,” while standing over a fresh corpse with smoking gun in hand.

Decades of experience, did she say? Yes she did – and she was right. In 1964, the Supreme Court ruled that the NLRB had the power to order remedies that include making companies “bring work back”, the relevant case being Fibreboard Paper Products Corp. v. Labor Board, 379 U.S. 203.

The 250 law professors who wrote a letter explaining why HR 2587 is such a bad idea point out that it’s not just about Boeing: companies will no longer have any reason to even bargain with unionized workers (or those who wish they were) before closing plants and moving work overseas, as they have to do now under the law; again, that’s because no one will have the power of enforcement in these cases anymore.

As you might imagine, that’s going to accelerate the departure of jobs overseas, and it won’t take very long to get to 6500, which makes all that Republican fussin’ and fightin’ and sanctimoneoussin’ about Keystone look a bit hollow, eh?

Let’s jump to the side track, as it were, and take a moment to talk about why the question of which Party controls Congress matters: HR 2587 was introduced into the House, and if the Democrats controlled the Chamber it would have died in Committee, and that would have been that…but they don’t, and it didn’t, so the bill made it to the House floor, where it passed with no Democratic “aye” votes and six Republicans voting “nay”.

Then it went to the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Sometimes Frustrating) has a bit more power than a Speaker of the House to kill any bill before his Chamber, if he’s so inclined; in this case the bill sits on the Senate Legislative Calendar, and unless he says otherwise, that’s where it’ll stay. Of course if Mitch McConnell (R-Hates Obama With The Fire Of A Thousand Suns) were Majority Leader, he would have that bill on the Senate Floor in a heartbeat – and it would pass with a Republican majority, unless Democrats were willing to stand firm and filibuster the thing or the President was willing to use the veto pen, neither of which seems particularly certain.

A companion bill, S 1523, was introduced by Lindsey Graham; it was referred to Committee, possibly to never be seen again – which is also thanks to Harry Reid, with an assist from Tom Harkin, who is the relevant Chair.

At this point I was going to move on to the “what have we learned today” part of the deal, but before I do, I want to take a moment to show you just what kind of legislation our GOP friends will bring to the table, given the chance:

S 1720, the “Put All Your Crazy Eggs In One Basket Act” (not the real bill title, but close enough), was introduced by John McCain just before Halloween (it’s now on the Legislative Calendar, not doing much), and it’s a classic.

This one single bill calls for a Balanced Budget Amendment vote, a semi-flat income tax, repeals “ObamaCare”, repeals Dodd-Frank (Wall Street reform), says you basically can’t sue for medical malpractice anymore, says that if Congress fails to approve any Federal Agency regulation in 90 days, it’s invalid, and then says no Agency can pass any regulation, of any kind, until unemployment hits 7.7%...and there’s a lot more besides, including, I kid you not, forbidding the EPA from regulating the discharge of pesticides into water.

So now let’s get to “what have we learned?”

How about this:

We are going to hear a lot over the next 60 days about how the GOP loves you, the American worker, but at the exact same time they are looking to…well…put all the crazy eggs in one basket, if they can get away with it, and at the same time they’re looking to make it easier and easier to send more jobs to more countries than ever before, even to the point of trying to tell courts and regulators that they can no longer enforce laws Republicans can’t get repealed.

As our GOP friends stand before you, these next couple months, professing their undying love, remind them of this conversation today, and HR 2587, and S 1720, McCain’s “Crazy Egg Basket” bill, and then ask them if they think the GOP really cares about American jobs, or if they’re just getting hustled by slightly-slicker versions of used-car dealership credit managers?

Then you lean in close, look ‘em in the eye, smile just a bit, and you say to ‘em: “And hey, while you’re here…what do I gotta do to get you into a slightly used 1993 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon…today?”

Then you can both have a little laugh – while you take their money and run.

On Not Doing 9/11, Or, Right Now, I’ve Got A Desk To Clear

I’m going to be really honest with you: after all the fights at the mall to get just the right present for everybody and the giant hassle of going to the Post Office so I can get the perfect stamps for my cards – and then worrying that I left someone off the list – I am just not in the mood to do a 9/11 story. And it’s been getting worse every year. I mean, just like the “It’s Christmas Every Day Store”, I know there’s one of the “9/11 Every Day” stores open, in the all-too-human form of Rudy Giuliani, and I’ve learned to live with that, but it seems like they got started with the 9/11 earlier than ever this year – and by the time the TV memorials and analysis and retrospectives are all over, to paraphrase Lewis Black…I’m going to hate freedom. In an effort to stave off this fate, we’ll be headed in a different direction today: I have three stories to pass along; each is important enough that you really should know about them, and yet they’re each very much bite-sized and easily digestible. It’s all good stuff…so let’s get right to it.

ASHES TO ASHES FOREST TO DUST KEEP WISCONSIN GREEN OR WE’LL ALL GO BUST BURMA-SHAVE --Burma Shave sign, 1949, as quoted in the book “Verse By The Side Of The Road”, by Frank Rowsome, Jr.

So let’s start with AIDS. If you have it, you need AIDS drugs – but you might not be able to afford ‘em. So what do you do? Well…one obvious choice is to die, slowly – but another is to seek help from the State. In most States, that is done in a fairly routine matter, but in some Sates it is not; for some of the folks in these States, instead of drugs, they get a waiting list. And since AIDS doesn’t really recognize waiting lists…this is bad. (Fun Fact: See if you can guess where the 12 States who have waiting lists are located; if you guessed more or less the Old Confederacy, you get a cookie. Of the 9200 Americans on waiting lists, only about 225 live above the Mason-Dixon Line; almost 6000 are in Florida and Georgia alone.) But it can be fixed, for about $105 million, if we lean on the right people, and as our friend D. Gregory Smith over at Bilerico tells us, Congressman Denny Rehberg (MT-01) is one person to be leaning on. A petition is circulating that you can sign to help move this along, or you can call Rehberg’s DC office Monday at (202) 225-3211 – and whichever one you do – or both – you’re going to be doing a whole lot of folks you never met a whole lot of good. So now that you’ve done your part to help out those who need it…how about a bit of a thought experiment? You are no doubt aware that you’ve been subsidizing, with your hard-earned tax dollars, the use of fossil fuels – and in fact, if you’re a typical American, you spent just about $500 over the past five years to do just that. Of course, over the same time period you’ve been subsidizing solar power as well, and here’s where the thought experiment comes into play: Try to imagine how much you’ve spent on that subsidy. Whaddaya think? $250, $150, $900? $825, $3350, $847.63? How about none of the above. How about…wait for it…$7.24. That’s right: at the same time you’ve been handing over an extra $100 a year to oil companies…for no particular reason…even as the price of oil keeps going up…you’ve been providing about a $1.40 a year to encourage the rollout of a technology that can potentially pay for itself, might just help get us off oil as a transportation fuel, and could even provide a few million jobs along the way – and as we all know, if we build “solar stuff” in the USA and throw it right up on our roofs, then it’s gonna make it pretty tough for OPEC or China or whomever to raise the price of the Sun as we back away from oil and build out electric cars. Pretty much all of this argument is presented in one handy graphic by the folks at 1 Block Off The Grid, an organization that seeks to put solar electricity generation on your roof, and I became aware of this because it was Tweeted to me (and to be honest, I get enough Tweets a day that I’m not going to go back and figure out who it was (mea culpa) – although I can tell you that Roger Ebert posted the handy graphic at his blog on the “Chicago Sun-Times” site; he’s also Tweeted on the subject. That’s two out of today’s three stories down, and the last one is a good one: If you don’t know The Yes Men by now, you should; they’re a modern version of the “Merry Pranksters” who blow minds by helping corporations stumble over their own deep embarrassments - very publicly. Here’s the most recent example: Peabody Energy mines coal that is associated with air pollution that is threatening the lives of the kids who live near…well, air, anyway, and The Yes Men did a little collaboration with a group called Coal is Killing Kids that involved creating a fake “health campaign” supposedly orchestrated by Peabody (the “Coal Cares” Project). The fake announcement said that Peabody would begin giving free inhalers to kids living near coal-fired power plants – and to make asthma more fun for the kids, “fake Peabody” announced their new line of kiddie inhalers: “the Bieber”, “My Little Pony”, “Baby’s First Inhaler”, and, of course, the “Harry Potter”. There’s also a webpage with fun activities for the kids (try the wordsearch…or perhaps you’d rather color in “Puff” and “Ash”); just swing on by CoalCares.org to join the fun. Naturally, the real Peabody had to deny everything, and they’re not at all happy about it – and that is what equals victory in these “assaults of embarrassment”. (There was an additional, coincidental, victory: Scholastic Books decided to sever their ties with the coal industry, and CoalCares helped; as a result coal industry-funded curricular materials will no longer be distributed to schools.) Now the reason all this happened is because The Yes Men have decided they couldn’t fix the world all by themselves, and they’re sort of “growing the brand” by launching the YesLab (it’s another collaboration, this time with New York University). Are you in New York on the 14th? Attend the launch event. It’s free, and it will be fun. But amidst all the fun and frivolity, there’s a serious side here: this thing is not going to be cheap, and while I almost never ask you to donate to anything – even me – I am going to ask you, if you have a few extra bucks, to help out the YesLab, which you can do by hitting that “Donate” button on the left side of the YesLab.org page. So that’s it for today: you can help fix the world, you can help spread the word about energy subsidies for fossil fuels, and maybe you can help someone get off a waiting list that, at the moment, is leaving them waiting for death. Or, I suppose, you could go pop on the TV and watch the rest of that 72-hour 9/11 marathon that’s been on every single channel in the world – but with my 9/11 cards now sent out and the presents all delivered…I know which one I’d prefer.

On Hole Cards, Or, "Drill, Baby, Drill"? Why? Is Canada Out Of Sand?

In America, today, there are three kinds of drivers: those who look at the other gas pumps down at the ol’ gas station and think: “Oh my God, I can’t believe how much that guy’s spending on gas”, those who look at their own pump down at the ol’ gas station and think: “Oh my God, I can’t believe how much I’m spending on gas” – and those who are doing both at the same time.

Naturally, this has brought the Sarah Palins of the world back out in public, and once again the mantra of “Drill, Baby, Drill” can be heard all the way from the Florida coast to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But what if those folks have it exactly backwards?

What if, in a world of depleting oil resources, the last thing you want to do is use yours up?

To put it another way: why isn’t all our oil part of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

Consider the inexorable logic of the Big Lie. If a man has a consuming love for cats and dedicates himself to the protection of cats, you have only to accuse him of killing and mistreating cats. Your lie will have the unmistakable ring of truth, whereas his outraged denials will reek of falsehood and evasion.

--From the book “Ghost of Chance”, by William S. Burroughs

So here’s the thing: we produce a surprising amount of our own oil right here in the USA (in fact, we’re the world’s third-largest oil producer), but we don’t produce enough to cover our current use, and that’s why we import about half of the roughly 19 million barrels of oil we use daily. The vast majority of that is used in vehicles or for heating; almost none is used to generate electricity.

Our largest suppliers of oil, despite what you might think, are not all from the Middle East: instead, it’s Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Venezuela, in that order.

(Perhaps you’re thinking: “Canada? Oil?” Yes. Canada and Oil. They provide us with more than twice as much as Saudi Arabia from huge “oil sand” resources, primarily in Alberta; the exploitation of those resources has created a huge environmental controversy.)

Now if you ask me, an ideal situation would be one where we decided to get out of the business of using oil altogether – and to help make my point, we have some helpful numbers from a guy that you pay every day to figure this stuff out: Mark Doms; he’s the Chief Economist for the US Department of Commerce, and, to paraphrase Little Feat, he’s always handy with a chart.

According to Doms, 60% of our 2010 trade deficit (about $265 billion) represents the cost of imported petroleum products, and if things continue through December as they did the first three months of this year, in 2011 every American, man, woman, and child, will pay a “tax” of about $1000 to import all that petroleum.

Do you know what we, individually, spend on gas? In March of this year, the average household spent just over $300 on that month’s gasoline; 5 months ago that number was $56 lower. The way it works out, every time gas goes up 10¢ a gallon, it costs the average household another $7 a month.

And that’s not all: less than half of the total cost of imported oil is paid at the pump: about 44% of imported oil is used by businesses; another 15% is used by governments across the USA, and that means almost 60% of the cost of imported petroleum is “folded into” the price of everything else.

(A quick author’s note: you’ve seen the words “oil” and “petroleum” used liberally in this story; the exact literal reality is that in each instance we should really be referring to “petroleum products”, and that’s because we import and export not just crude oil, but a variety of other petroleum products. I get tired of using the phrase “petroleum products” over and over, and I’m probably using “oil” and “petroleum” more interchangeably than I should.)

So get this: if we were out of the importing oil business, we’d save about $300 billion a year – and as it turns out, over a 10-year period we could actually convert the entire US auto fleet to electric cars powered by windmills by providing $15,000 cash “buy-outs” for today’s 135,000,000 gasoline cars and building the wind generation and “smart grid” we’d need to support the effort…and doing all that would cost…wait for it…about $250 billion a year.

If I get the math right, 20 years after we first started building windmills and subsidizing cars, everything would be paid off; and every year after that the US economy would generate a $300 billion “profit” on our investment – unless the price of a barrel of oil goes up. If it does, the amount of money coming back to our wallets every single year from then on, obviously, also goes up.

And if we were out of the “using oil for driving” business, once everything was paid off we could put almost $4000 a year (in today’s dollars) right back in the pocketbooks of every family in this country – which, if you ask me, represents a pretty good “tax cut”.

Let’s also keep in mind that any new oil drilled on our public lands might not necessarily end up in the US; that’s because even if oil companies were 100% free to “Drill, Baby, Drill” in our waters to their hearts’ content…they’d also be perfectly free to sell as much of that same oil, anywhere in the world, to whatever entity might end up being the highest bidder – and today, our friends in places like India and China are desperate to be that high bidder.

Put all of this together, and you get back to the question I posed at the top of the story: why in the world would we be in a hurry to “Drill, Baby, Drill”, when we could, instead, put all our efforts into getting out of oil, which would save us so much money that the conversion pays for itself?

Then, when oil’s running $400 a barrel or so, let’s use our oil to pay China back the trillion dollars we owe ‘em…which, at current production rates, would only take about 400 days, assuming it were possible to divert all our production for that purpose.

To state it a bit more ironically, it may be that the smartest thing we can do right now is to conserve every possible drop of oil we have…until we don’t need it any more, and it becomes a sort of Strategic Cash Reserve that can help strengthen the dollar and reduce the national debt in the years to come, both at the same time.

Or to put it another way, the next time someone tells you they want to “Drill, Baby, Drill”...you can step right up, look them square in the eye, and ask: “Why do you hate America?”

And won’t that be fun?

On Being A Titan, Part One, Or, See It, Say It, Sue It

Got a simple little story for you today of a multinational corporation that wants to build a great big cement plant in North Carolina really, really, bad, and the local opposition to what appears to be a corrupt and distorted decision process.

Two local activists in particular have drawn the ire of Titan Cement, the Grecian corporation who seeks to build the plant—and because the Company doesn’t like what the activists have been saying about what the impact of that plant will likely be or how the deal’s going down…they’re suing Kayne Darrell and Dr. David Hill, residents of North Carolina’s New Hanover County, and the two folks who are doing the complaining the Company dislike the most.

The Company further claims that they were slandered and defamed by the damaging statements that were uttered by the two at a county commissioners’ meeting and that they have lost goodwill and the chance to do business with certain parties as a result of these statements.

But what if everything the Defendants said was not only true…but provably so—and the Company was, maybe…just looking to shut people up by sending teams of lawyers after them?

As I said, it’s a simple story today—but it’s a good one.

We have tomorrow
Bright before us
Like a flame.

Yesterday, a night-gone thing
A sun-down name.

And dawn today
Broad arch above the road we came.
We march!

--From “The New Negro”, by Alain Locke

So here’s the deal, as it sits today: for a number of years now Titan Cement has been looking to build this great big cement plant near the environmentally sensitive North Carolina coast (part of the site includes 600 acres of “pristine wetlands”), and part of running a cement plant is running cement kilns.

Ya gotta cook limestone, sand, and clay, along with some other ingredients, at very high temperatures (above 2700o F), which sort of fuses everything together; that makes “clinker”, which eventually becomes cement, and that’s why you need giant kilns and, often, pre-heater towers.

You need fuel for those really hot kilns and towers, and our friends at the Army Corps of Engineers advise that, in the kiln fuel game, you can actually kill two birds with one limestone by burning hazardous waste as a substitute for anywhere from 20% to 50% of your original “fuel of choice” (which is often coal).

According to the Corps, you can burn 12 tons of fuel an hour in one kiln, and that means up to six tons of…

byproducts of pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and electronics manufacturers;
solvents and inks used to print newspaper and other publications;
solvents used to recycle paper;
dry-cleaning solvents;
paint thinners and paint residues;
sludge from the petroleum industry;
used motor oil;
agricultural wastes;
and scrap tires.

…might be going into the mix every hour—and as it turns out, that stuff might contain:

…arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, nickel, thallium, and zinc.

Now if you’re burning that stuff, it’s either going up the smokestack or out the door as a component of the clinker you just made, and if you live anywhere near this plant, you’re going to be at least a little concerned…and if you have the impression that the people who are trying to get the permits are running a big ol’ hustle to get those permits, you’re going to be even more concerned…and it looks like that’s what’s been going on…and if you put all this together, and you lived in the neighborhood, you might show up at a local County Commissioners’ meeting and say something like this…

“From lawsuits for price fixing and court-ordered mine closures of Titan’s Florida plant, to allegations of corruption coming from Raleigh, to emails raising suspicion whether Titan was ever even considering any other location, which would make incentives completely unnecessary, the clouds of corruption grow dark as new controversies emerge almost daily.”

…or this…

“The bottom line is we know from numerous studies that if we build this thing, more children will get sick, a handful of them will die. We also know from the adult studies that more adults will get sick and quite a few more of them are going to die as well. Which ones? Can’t tell you. That makes it difficult, but there will be some.”

...which are the two utterances which are today at legal issue. (Ms Darrell is being sued for the first statement, Dr. Hill, the second.)

The reason we are all gathered here today is to figure out whether either of those statements are truthful or not…because if the statements are truthful, they cannot be either slanderous or defamatory.

So let’s break it all down, one clause at a time:

Ms. Darrell talked about lawsuits for price fixing, and sure enough, CemWeek (“Global Cement Industry. Knowledge”) ran a story in October of ’09 entitled “Nine US cement companies accused of price fixing”, describing a lawsuit filed for price fixing in which Titan was one of the Defendants.

Court-ordered mine closures? Coffey Burlington, attorneys at law, recount their success with a certain case on their website (Sierra Club v. Army Corps of Engineers, Rinker Group, Tarmac America, Florida Rock Industries, APAC-Florida and Miami-Dade Limestone Products Association), which did in fact result in a court-ordered mine closure of Florida facilities operated by Tarmac America, which is a Titan subsidiary.

Allegations of corruption? How about this, reported in January of 2010 by the Wilmington, NC, StarNews:

A corporation that shares an address and president with a Titan America subsidiary bought a Wilmington office building for more than twice its tax value from Democratic fund-raisers under scrutiny by state and federal prosecutors.

To add to this element of the story, the current Governor, Bev Perdue, has asked the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) to look into Titan's permitting process, which is something that usually follows allegations, if I recall correctly.

Let’s move on: the folks in the Wilmington, NC, area have a private economic development committee that has negotiated secretly with Titan for some time; the result of that effort was the decision to provide $4.2 million in local government incentives to Titan.

But here’s the thing: if Titan never meant to build anywhere but on that one site, and they still hustled the community for the incentives by using the threat of building somewhere else…well, that’s why Ms. Darrell was talking about:

“…emails raising suspicion whether Titan was ever even considering any other location, which would make incentives completely unnecessary…”

In 2008, Keith Barber, he of Wrightsville Beach Magazine, documented Titan’s multi-decade interest in this particular location:

Titan has made very little effort to conceal the fact it plans to move forward with construction of a cement plant and limestone mining operation on the banks of the Northeast Cape Fear River. In a 2005 interview with Titan CEO Aris Papadopoulos in Cement Americas magazine, Papadopoulos confirmed the Greece-based company had been considering building a plant in Castle Hayne for nearly two decades…

… In addition, even though the permitting process is 18 months to 2 years out, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) Web site reveals that CSX Railroad is already constructing a new spur track at the site of the proposed Carolinas Cement Company.

The Charlotte News & Observer documents the existence of those pesky emails in a January 2010 editorial:

…[Titan lobbyist John] Merritt said he would talk to then-Commerce Secretary Jim Fain. Earlier, he had advised a company spokeswoman on how to respond to questions without raising suspicions that Titan might not qualify for a state grant.

"It is very important that the company not do anything that suggests that this is the only site you are looking at," Merritt e-mailed. And sure enough, in its application for incentives Titan asserted that it was considering sites elsewhere.

Let’s jump in for just a second and take a look at where we are:

Ms. Darrell made this statement…

“From lawsuits for price fixing and court-ordered mine closures of Titan’s Florida plant, to allegations of corruption coming from Raleigh, to emails raising suspicion whether Titan was ever even considering any other location, which would make incentives completely unnecessary, the clouds of corruption grow dark as new controversies emerge almost daily.”

…and based on what we’ve seen so far, every single word of that statement turns out to be absolutely, provably true:

--There was a price-fixing lawsuit.
--There was a court-ordered mine closure of Titan’s Florida plant.
--It’s alleged that something funny was going on with that office building, and North Carolina’s SBI is investigating.
--We did in fact discover that emails exist raising suspicions as to whether Titan was considering any other location.
--And here we are, talking about one of the new controversies that emerge almost daily.

Today’s tale of legal bullying is running pretty long already, and we still have half of the story to go…so let’s take a break for today, and we’ll pick this up by looking at the statement made by Dr. Hill when we get together next time.

In the meantime, if you’re keeping score…I’m thinking that after Round One, it’s Defendants, 1, Titan, 0.

On Why Voting Matters, Or, Could You Outrun The Toxic Red Flood?

It is about a week before early voting begins for a bunch of us around the country, and that means this may be one of the last times I have to convince you that, frustrated progressive or not, you better get your butt to a ballot box or a mail-in envelope this November, because it really does matter.

Now I could give you a bunch of “what ifs” to make my point, or I could remind you how we spent all summer watching oil gush into the Gulf, and how that came to be...but, instead, it’s “Even More Current Event Day”, and we’re going to visit Hungary for a extremely real-world reminder of what can go wrong when the environmental cops are considered just too much of a burden by the environmental robbers—and if today’s story doesn’t scare you to death, I don’t know what will.

It ain’t Texas, but we will surely visit a Red River Valley...and you surely won’t like what you’re gonna see.

“...Oui, ma foi, c’est un bougre déterminé...”

--A sailor aboard the French ship Héros describing his Admiral, Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez, 1783. Quoted from the book “Command at Sea”, by Oliver Warner.

So here’s the long and the short of it: Monday afternoon a sludge pond failed near the town of Devecser, Hungary. That failure has so far released about 265,000,000 gallons of extremely toxic sludge from a facility that mines bauxite as part of the process of making aluminum.

That release manifested itself as a full-scale flash flood, which (courtesy of the RT network) looks something like this:



The red lake and the red mud that you see flowing like a river in the video has killed four people so far, injured hundreds, inundated four towns, and is on its way to the Danube River if it can‘t be stopped, where it will become part of the water supply for millions of Europeans.

It turns out that bauxite ore contains alumina, which eventually become aluminum, but to get that alumina you apparently need huge quantities of caustic soda, in water, to make the extraction process work. The problem is that you extract more than just alumina: the same ore can contain lead, or cadmium, or any number of other heavy metals...including radioactive materials. The waste materials are discharged as sludge into holding ponds at the mine for further treatment, and the failure of one of those ponds is how we came to today’s story.

According to the BBC, emergency workers are pouring tons of plaster into the Marcal River in an effort to stop the flow of the liquid, and Hungarian Government experts believe the top inch of topsoil will have to be removed...from the entire land area affected by the flood.

So what’s all this have to do with the upcoming American elections?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

This is not a problem somehow unique to Hungary...nor Brazil, nor Jamaica, either. We have sludge ponds of our own, many associated with coal mining, and in fact, one of those failed in Kentucky in 2000, in a massive way, and by 2004, things hadn’t improved much at all in terms of cleaning up the mess. Others are associated with the other end of that process: coal-fired power plants have coal ash containments of their own, and they also fail. A pond failure in Tennessee in 2008 probably released over a billion gallons of waste into the local rivers.

And if our Republican friends have their way, this will continue.

Even as we speak, the EPA is considering regulating coal ash as a hazardous waste for the very first time—and if Republicans gain control of Congress, wanna guess how the considerating will come out?

Look, folks, I know we’re all frustrated that we aren’t where we want to be with this Administration, but you gotta know that if you don’t show up for this election, we are going to be dealing with Republicans who are far nuttier than what we have right now—and while I know that it was a fantastic change of pace to be able to vote for someone in ’08, the plain fact is that most of the time, you’re voting against something, and this time, that something is the insanity of the Tea Party.

These Republicans are some very determined buggers, to quote that French sailor, and we have to be just as determined to stop these folks—and to do it where it counts, in places like Kentucky and West Virginia and Delaware—because if we don’t, it means another generation of people in coal towns living with water they can’t drink and cancer they can’t cure, more rivers and wetlands and aquifers destroyed all over this country...and, eventually, it means all of this contamination, one way or another, will find its way to you and your family.

Voting matters, Gentle Readers, and this is just one reason why.

On The Smartest Investment Ever, Or, Wanna Restart The Economy?

It’s been a while since we had to have a real heart-to-heart, the Obama Administration and I, and last time it was because Rahm Emanuel had been a bit snippy toward those of us who are carrying the water for this Administration.

We need to have another one of those conversations today; this time the circumstances are a lot more positive—in fact, if the Administration follows my suggestions here, we have a real chance to put the Democrats on the road to victory, not just this November, but also in 2012.

What I’m proposing will create hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs, and it will stimulate millions more as we create a national source of discount electrical power that can be used by business and consumers alike.

Here’s the best part: it’s no “pie in the sky” promotion I’m offering here; we’ve already done the same thing before, it’s been working out well for almost three quarters of a century...and even better than all that...my idea first pays for itself, and then...it actually makes the Federal Government a profit, forever after.

Lewis Black will offer today’s opening statement; he’s a bit blunt, so if you, like Mr. Krabs’ Mom, get all distressed when exposed to “sailor talk”, just move right on past his commentary and the rest of us will be with you in just about 30 seconds:



So Lewis is right: we need to build a big thing. Where he and I disagree is that I think the big thing could be distributed all across the country, and I think the big thing should make a profit for the taxpayers who will be making the upfront investment.

So how do you do that?

Franklin Roosevelt delivered a speech in Portland during the 1932 presidential campaign. He promised that the next great federal hydroelectric project would be built on the Columbia River to prevent extortion against the public by the giant electric utility holding companies then dominant in the region.

That speech marks the first day of the history of the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). Over the many years since, a string of dams were built along the Columbia River; these are operated by the Army Corps of Engineers, and the hydroelectric power they produce is marketed and distributed by the BPA to both public and private utilities.

Since the BPA is selling about 45% of the region’s power for a price not much above the actual cost of production, this “public option” keeps electricity prices in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Washington to more or less 50% of the cost of power in California, DC, New Jersey, or every single State on or near the East Coast, from the Delmarva Peninsula north. (The one exception is Pennsylvania: Northwest states pay about 1/3 less than customers in the Keystone State.)

Now what I’m proposing is to duplicate the BPA model, nationwide, with power generation assets owned by Federal agencies sited on Federal land selling that power, cheaply, but at a profit, to consumers.

If my math is correct, we spent about $465,584,000,000 on electricity in 2007 in the US (4,157 million megawatthours [MWh] times the national average of 11.2 cents per kilowatthour [kWh]); if that could be cut by 1/3, that’s $150 billion annually that could be eventually recovered by the larger economy.

(Fun Fact: Did you know that Sharron Angle has threatened legal action because she believes that if Harry Reid reposts her actual, but now deleted, Nevada Senate primary campaign website, word for word, it will hurt her chances of being elected...or that she believes that doing such a thing is a “dirty trick”? It’s all...absolutely true.)

So here’s what we do:

There’s an enormous amount of Federal land in Nevada, to give just one example, which could be “inhabited” with either windmills or solar generation assets. At this point you need some more “transmission and distribution” assets to get that power to say, Phoenix, or Las Vegas, or California, which the new entity that we create to market this new power will own.

We could also own “distributed” assets (for example, solar panels on major building rooftops), which requires investment in “smart grid”.

The same opportunities exist along the East Coast.

As we bring more of this power online, we can reduce the amount of coal generation we use on any given day, which is going to help reduce costs, both in cash and in the environment.

Now the big risk with wind and solar is that you may not have “near 100% uptime”; the solution is to hold coal and natural gas assets that you’ve taken offline in reserve; natural gas can be fired up quickly if needed, the rest of the time, you’re getting greener.

How much would such a plan cost?

That depends. The lowest costs appear to be achieved by reducing the cost of financing, finding sites with higher average wind speeds, and increasing the size of the generator—and this is especially true with windmills: the taller the tower and the longer the blades, the more power you’ll get, and the increase is more logarithmic than linear.

It’s reported that the cost of connecting to a grid owned by another utility also affects the cost of power; some utilities seem to be discouraging wind generators by imposing various conditions when they want to connect. The distance from the generators to that larger grid also impacts the cost of the power produced.

(“Distributed” assets, such as rooftop solar panels or windmills, may cost more up front and are less efficient, but there is a considerable savings in not having to build power lines to a distant power plant.)

The cost of capital and the cost of access to the grid aren't big problems for the Federal Government, and that means you could put up a wind plant that produces 150 million KWh annually for about $65 million. If you sold that power for 4 cents per KWh, you’d make about $6 million a year, and about 90% of that would go to debt and the cost of operations.

Such a plant would be paid off in 15 years, and from then on, about 60% of your $6 million in annual revenue...is profit.

Now if you applied that same math to the goal of replacing about 10% of US power generation, you’re looking at about $520,000,000,000 plus the cost of new grid. Let’s add 50% for that cost.

The eventual outcome: if we did it all at once, we’d have it all paid off 22 ½ years after construction is finished...or sooner—and after that, we’d be making a profit of just over $300 billion a year...which, if we did nothing else, would pay off our entire current debt in about another 40 years.

And that’s what I’m proposing, Mr. Obama: I want you to stand up in front of this country and tell us we’re going to do this, that we’re going to concentrate on the areas with the highest costs first, and that paying off our investment is easy and makes us a stronger economy in the bargain.

That this is your “man on the moon in 10 years” moment.

We give preference to US-sourced production, and we lend money to seed that production. We can create all kinds of jobs in the process, both in the manufacture of the generation assets, and in their installation.

If that’s not enough, lowering the cost of power in New England from today’s average of 16.8 cents per kWh by 30% or more is absolutely going to help bring jobs back into the region—particularly in the manufacturing, tech, and communications industries, each of which consume lots of power.

The same in California—and the same in the Upper Midwest, where reducing the cost of power will also help to create badly needed jobs.

So whaddaya think, Mr. President?

You need a damn good idea, especially one that creates lots of American jobs—and this one does that...and it does it by lowering the cost of power, making our environment a better place in which to live...and if all that wasn’t enough, we’re making a profit doing it, so we can pay down the national debt at the same time.

So get out and sell this sucker—and when our Republican friends rise up against this new “socialism”, ask ‘em why they’re against jobs, and lower power bills, and why they don’t want the Federal Government paying off its debts...and then just sit back and enjoy Michael Steele’s and John Boehner’s and Mitch McConnell’s efforts to respond.

Republicans Intervene In Traffic Accident, Call Settlement “Shakedown”

Brighton, Colorado (FNS)—Attorneys from the Republican Study Group (RSG) descended upon the 17th Judicial District courtroom of Judge John T Bryan today to present an amicus brief and associated oral arguments in order to prevent a settlement in a lawsuit related to an automobile accident in this Colorado city.

The intervening attorneys claim the settlement reached between the two parties to the accident is a “shakedown” because the plaintiff had not yet exhausted all possible legal remedies when the agreement was finalized, and because the agreement was executed in the presence of the plaintiff’s brother, a well-known local attorney.

They hope Judge Bryan will decline to approve the settlement in today’s hearing, and that he will order the parties to move forward to trial.

“What we have is government transferring property from one party, an admittedly unattractive one, to others, not based on preexisting laws but on decisions by one man, a car czar”, said Crush Mimbaugh, attorney for the RSG, “and we are here today to protect all Americans from this legally sanctioned rape of an innocent driver.”

The facts of the case are as follows: Ms. Maya Normousbutt, a resident of Brighton, was taking her kids to the corn maze and haunted house at Murray Farms, also located in Brighton, when her parked vehicle was struck by another car driven by a Mr. Dick Timoneous, of nearby Northglenn.

Mr. Timoneous was placing a note on Ms. Normousbutt’s car when she returned to the parking lot and discovered that the accident had occurred.

Over the course of the next several weeks, she obtained several estimates for the damage, her insurance company paid for the repairs, and, during a meeting at her brother’s law office that he helped to arrange, she, the defendant, and all insurance companies involved made an agreement to resolve all remaining issues in the lawsuit that had been filed on her behalf to effect recovery of damages.

Republican Study Group attorney Moe Barten presented this argument to the Judge during the hearing:

“We have a system in America built up based on the British tradition over 200 years of due process and fairness, where people that -- that do bad things or, in this case, a person that's responsible for a bad accident, we want to hold them responsible, do what we can to make the liable parties pay for the damages.

I'm speaking now totally for myself. I'm not speaking for the Republican Party. I'm not speaking for anybody in the America but myself, but I'm ashamed of what happened in that attorney’s office yesterday.

I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private individual can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case, a $2000 shakedown, with an attorney, who is legitimately conducting a investigation and has every right to do so to protect the interests of his client, participating in what amounts to a $2000 slush fund that's unprecedented in our nation's history, that's got no legal standing, and which sets, I think, a terrible precedent for the future.”

Barten continued for several more minutes; unfortunately, the official transcript only records him as saying: “Harrumph, harrumph, harrumph” the entire time.

Near the end of the morning’s presentations Barten’s co-counsel, Bon Joehner, introduced a novel legal concept:

“I think the people responsible in the car accident—Mr. Timoneous and the federal government--should take full responsibility for what's happening there…”

Ms. Normousbutt’s attorney, Harry Paratestes, Esq., offered a statement during the lunch recess:

“We are very disappointed at the RSG’s efforts to become involved in this case.

My client, and her insurance company, were hoping to create a simple way to avoid litigation so that all claims might be promptly settled; if the RSG prevails we will have years of legal battles ahead of us before anything can be resolved and the plaintiffs in this case can be made whole for the damage done to them by the responsible party.

You know, folks, all we’re trying to do is get paid back for getting her bumper fixed, and I have no idea why the RSG has a problem with that.

We also cannot understand why the taxpayer should be stuck with even one penny of the bill for fixing my client’s car, and we surely can’t figure out why Republicans would want the taxpayer to bail out Mr. Timoneous, or his insurer, for his bad driving. I mean, talk about moral hazard…

…After all, it’s not like Uncle Sam was behind the wheel that afternoon; it was Dick Timoneous.”

So, guess what, Gentle Reader: once again we’re using satire to make a larger point, and once again all the speeches were slightly modified from the actual words of Rush Limbaugh, Joe Barton, and John Boehner—and I figured I’d better bring this to your attention now because I know I did such a good job of “obfuscating” the names in the story that no one would probably ever figure it out if I didn’t.

And just for the record, there really is a Judge John T Bryan, and his Court was added to provide a very real location for this very fake story—and I hope he has a sense of humor about that—and even more importantly, I hope he realizes that nothing was said about him here, defamatory or otherwise, except to acknowledge his existence.

Finally: I just can not, for the life of me, figure out how Republican consultants gather around a conference table and say: “Hey, why don’t we try to stick this one on the taxpayer—and then make sure we tell the public how much we support that idea…loudly.”

But then again, I guess that’s why I’m a fake consultant, and they’re real ones.

At Black Tie Ceremony, Feith Passes Torch To Barton

Honestly, I am absolutely sick of commercial air travel these days. Just dealing with security is bad enough, but then there’s the airlines, and...hey, all you really need to know here is that there has to be a pretty good reason for me to fly cross-country.

Well, I had one Saturday night, which is how I came to be in the Colonnade Room of the Fairmount Hotel, Washington DC with about 250 of my closest friends, in a classic shawl-collar tuxedo, attending one of the most exclusive “passing of the torch” ceremonies in recent Washington memory.

And when it was all over, Douglas Feith was a happy man.

Respect to your great place! and let the devil
Be sometime honour’d for his burning throne.

-- Duke Vincentio, from William Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”.

There are probably some of you who are thinking: “That Feith name is familiar, but why?”

You know the name because, as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, he was the guy who basically planned how the Bush Administration would run the Iraq War.

To suggest he was not exactly a genius in the job would be the charitable interpretation; General Tommy Franks is famous for referring to him as the “dumbest mother@*&#er alive”, which is the official title he’s carried ever since.

But on Saturday night, the torch was passed.

And by the time the speeches had ended, and the applause had died down, Texas’ Congressman Joe Barton was the new keeper of the sputtering flame.

This was not the outcome most observers expected.

When my invitation arrived on Monday, it looked as though BP’s Tony Hayward would be wearing the sash and carrying the scepter (for those who don’t know, the scepter is a gold-colored three foot long extension cord...and if that’s the stupidest thing you ever heard in your life, you get the idea), having basically earned himself a “Lifetime Achievement Award” in a mere 60 days.

This was going to be tough for Hayward, of course, because he was already planning to skip his Farr 52 (I’m told he calls it “Bob”) in the 79th “Round the Island” race, back home in the UK on the same day (and he had a good race, too, coming second to “Leopard”).

But before BP could really address the question of who would accept the award on his behalf, Congressman Barton pulled off an amazing feat; eclipsing Hayward’s 60 days of corporate idiocracy in a mere five minutes by actually apologizing to BP for the Obama Administration’s insistence that they don’t go through all the necessary legalities before BP actually begins paying claims for damages.

Considering how he got the title in the first place, it’s fair to say Barton’s acceptance speech began with some classic “message confusion”...

“...Where I come from what we'd do about it would be take 'em out and string 'em up...We wouldn't go through the legalities that we have to because of our due process...”

...and then went on to include a few more pearls of wisdom:

“...If homosexuality was normal we wouldn't any of us be here...You have to have heterosexual behavior in order to recreate the species...”

“...In January 2009, I introduced the College Football Playoff Act of 2009. This isn't a government gridiron takeover. It simply says that the BCS can't call a game the "national championship" unless the participants are determined by a playoff. It doesn't dictate what kind of playoff or how many teams have to be involved—those decisions would rest with the BCS or NCAA.

The biggest complaint about my bill is that Congress shouldn't get involved. While this doesn't rise to the level of healthcare reform or climate change legislation, it is more important than honoring the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius—one of dozens of resolutions passed by the House in the past few months (I voted against it)...”

Luckily for me, my own prior life experience as a caterer had prepared me for the evening; I had tipped our server at the beginning of the meal, and with the amount of wine available at the table, I was already well enough along that there were no “spit takes” during Barton’s speech.

Possibly the happiest person in the room was BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg. When I caught up to him over a glass of champagne he was happy to explain Hayward’s absence, although it’s clear he really isn’t a native English speaker:

“After it became obvious he wouldn’t be leaving with the award, I told him he needed to get back and replace Captain Neil; that he should handle the “Bob” himself, and I talked to him today, and he said he got all the way to second...”

At which point I just couldn’t take any more, and the interview came to an end.

And it’s at this point that I should say that while this story really didn’t happen, and that this was satire, Barton’s “acceptance speech” was actually assembled from his own very real words, found here, here, and here.

I should also say that in real life Doug Feith might have actually caught a break here; but with several months left until November, and the Republicans looking more and more “self-defeatable”, if I were Joe Barton I wouldn’t be building any expensive “shrines” for his new accoutrement, as another awards transfer ceremony could be coming up sooner than anyone thinks.

WARNING - Blatant Self-Promotion Ahead: It's Netroots Nation time once again, and the fine folks at Freedom To Marry have chosen me as a finalist for their Blog 4 Equality contest. If I am one of the chosen, it's off to Vegas...in July. You can vote for that Don Davis guy here, which is my "in person" name, once every 24 hours, so vote early and often. Voting ends June 25th. Thanks very much, and we now return you to your regular programming.

On Prioritizing, Or, Senate Democrats: Regulating Climate Change, Or Not So Much?

Netroots Nation will be in Las Vegas in just a few weeks; with that in mind we are going to play “piano bar” and fulfill a couple of requests, one today and one tomorrow, from folks who would like to bring a couple of things to your attention.

Today’s topic: climate change.

As you know, there is a lot of legislation floating around Capitol Hill that would begin to use some sort of market-based mechanism to reduce the amount of carbon we emit.

None of it will move unless it moves through the Senate, and today, that’s what we’ll be talking about.

Matter of fact, they will be too.

Oh, there must be a cloud in my head,
Rain keeps falling from my eyes,
Oh, no they can't be teardrops,
For a man ain't supposed to cry.

--From the song “Raindrops”, by Dee Clark

Climate change is on the minds of Democratic Senators this week in a big way, with a lot of legislative proposals floating around the Hill at the moment. Some of those apply some sort of pricing mechanism to the carbon emissions coming out of the smokestacks of America’s largest polluters (also known as “cap-and-trade”), and that is highly controversial, even among some Senate Democrats.

(If you guessed that Senators Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, and Ben Nelson are among the objectors…you get a cookie. What you might not expect is that Dianne Feinstein, of California, is also an objector.)

On Tuesday Majority Leader Harry Reid met with a group of Senators seeking to advance climate-change legislation, on Wednesday the Senate Democratic Caucus heard from Reid about the politics of climate change over lunch, and today, a second luncheon will take place.

I’m being told that by the time that lunch is over the Caucus will have decided whether they will, or will not, move forward on climate change legislation this year. The question of whether the bill will include a cap-and-trade provision may well be decided at this luncheon as well.

It’s been difficult to move a bill through the Senate, what with the fact that Republicans have been trying to force virtually every bill that comes before the body to garner 60 votes, and it seems highly unlikely that a bill with a cap-and-trade provision would be able to meet that burden.

One compromise solution might be to pass a smaller bill and then introduce an amendment on the floor that would introduce the cap-and-trade provisions; the logic here being that amendments can be added with a simple majority vote, instead of a 60 vote “supermajority”.

I want to wrap this story up before we get too long, so let’s review where we’ve been, and then bring today’s proceedings to a close:

Climate change legislation is at a critical juncture, and the question of whether the Senate will move forward with anything at all is likely to be decided today.

The options include moving forward with the largest plan possible, a smaller plan that can then be amended to include cap-and-trade, a smaller plan with no cap-and-trade amendment, or no action at all.

If you have an opinion about any of this, and you have a Democratic Senator or two, you need to make a phone call, this morning, to let them know how you feel.

So get to it, right now, as all the reporting suggests the decision is literally going to be made in the next few hours.

On Poor Management, Or, Did You Know There Was Another Deepwater?

It is by now obvious that even after we stop the gentle trickle of oil that’s currently expressing itself into the Gulf of Mexico (thank you so much, BP) we are not going to be able to get that oil out of the water for some considerable length of time--and if you think it could take years, I wouldn’t bet against you.

While BP is the legally responsible party, out on the water it will be up to the Coast Guard to manage the Federal response, and to determine that BP is running things in a way that gets the work done not only correctly and safely, but, in a world of limited resources, efficiently.

Which brings us to the obvious question: can the Coast Guard manage such a complex undertaking?

While we hope they can, you need to know that the Coast Guard has been trying to manage the replacement of their fleet of ships and aircraft for about a decade now…and the results have been so stunningly bad that you and I are now the proud owners of a small flotilla of ships that can never be used, because if they go to sea, they might literally break into pieces.

It’s an awful story, and before we’re done you’ll understand why Deepwater was already an ugly word around Headquarters, years before that oil rig blew up.

“I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news –
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

--William S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan, “The Pirates of Penzance”

We’re going to try to keep today’s story relatively short (we won’t succeed, I’m afraid), and that means I’ll be a bit tighter with words than I would be normally, so let’s get right to the heart of the matter:

The US Coast Guard (USCG) works its ships and aircraft too hard, with inadequate downtime; as a result an old fleet is even older than its years.

Just like an old car, you have to work harder at maintenance, but things keep breaking down, and the costs really start to add up.

It’s not entirely their fault: they have more and more to do, especially after September 11th; they’re also expected to operate farther from home, and the tours of duty are longer.

At the same time the money they get to do it all keeps going down.

This circle had to be squared.

A decision was made to begin planning for the modernization or replacement of pretty much everything USCG owns that operates out in the deep water (that’s more than 50 miles from shore), and that’s how the Deepwater program was born.

Total assets involved: roughly 90 large ships, over 100 small boats, about 250 aircraft, and not quite $25 billion dollars.

USCG was convinced that they did not have the ability to manage this sort of program on their own, and they decided to procure everything from one prime contractor, a Lockheed/Northrop Grumman partnership.

The idea was that they would tell the contractor what they wanted the finished product to be able to do (in this case, the product was a fleet of ships and aircraft that could interact as a system), and the contractor would determine how to manage the program to completion.

With the “management” part of the process out of USCG’s hands, all the Admirals would have to do was “supervise” the contractor to make sure things were on time and on budget.

They did that by creating teams that would each watch over a small portion of the bigger picture, coordinating with each other and USCG senior management.

The next step was to determine what ships and aircraft to build; today we’ll concentrate on just four elements of the system, which should be enough to make the picture clear.

--The Coast Guard owned a number of 110 foot patrol boats, and they decided to refurbish them, to provide new capabilities within a 13-foot longer hull. This required the ships to be cut apart, and then reassembled.

As it turned out, that idea sucked.

One way to interpret the results would be to say the first eight newly-delivered craft were so unseaworthy (the hulls of the “brand-new” ships were actually cracking), so full of electrical problems, and so unable to protect classified communications that they never entered service, and they will be scrapped.

Another view: for quite some time Baltimore was continuously guarded by eight Coast Guard vessels, and the city was incredibly safe—as long as none of them had to actually leave the pier or do anything.

The loss: about $100 million. USCG is trying to get the money back.

“It’s going to be difficult to counter the bad publicity we’ve had despite the best efforts of our communications team,” admitted J. Rocco Tomonelli, director of Coast Guard business development at Northrop Grumman.”

--From the article “Coast Guard May Face Rough Seas as it Takes Control of Deepwater”, National Defense Magazine, October 2007

--USCG needed a big ship with the ability to operate as far away as the Middle East, and the National Security Cutter was it.

The job required that the vessels delivered had to be structurally sound for use in the North Pacific’s very rough seas for 30 years. The contractor was convinced the ships were sound, the Coast Guard was not, and the Navy was brought in to settle the argument.

USCG won, the taxpayer, again, lost.

An odd, but not surprising, solution was found. If USCG would just agree to not ask that the ships be so annoyingly capable, everything would be fine…so they did; this was done by assuming the ships would be at sea fewer days every year.

We now know that USCG expected some of the ships’ structural components to only last three years in actual service.

In 2006 it was reported that the first two hulls may or may not be fixable, and may have to be scrapped.

The first ship delivered, the Cutter Bertholf, was not allowed to perform any missions for almost seven months after commissioning due to its own failure to perform as expected. In October 2008 Bertholf conducted its first “shakedown” cruise and officially entered operational service.

More of these ships are being built, with fixes hopefully in place. Two are in acceptance trials; a funding request exists that would expand the fleet to five.

Our cost?
At least $650 million per ship.

--USCG planned to buy a dozen Fast Response Cutters; the contractor wanted to use newfangled composite hulls, reportedly for longer life and less maintenance.

That idea also sucked.

Officially, and I quote: “…the cutter design satisfied contract terms but did not meet Deepwater mission needs.” The resulting ships were judged to be too heavy and lacking in performance.

It is suggested that the contractor wanted to build this type of hull because they had a new composite facility available and there was money to be made. We’ll discuss that in a minute.

The plan now is to build the ships with metal hulls.
USCG is not attempting to recover the lost money on this one.

--USCG wanted Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) for the new ships. A fancy-schmancy tilt-rotor design that was already somewhat developed had to be abandoned because they couldn’t afford to produce the thing.

Current thinking is to steal something from the Navy’s UAV development program, stick a USCG radar system on it, and call it good.

The GAO and the Congressional Research Service have been looking into all this, a lot; they feel USCG has failed to properly resource the teams that are supposed to be supervising this process.

Excessive workload, transferring people in and out, failing to put team members in locations that are close to other team members, and failing to fill leadership positions were all issues noted in the reports.

The idea that the contractor would “own” the whole process, might work against USCG interests, and that USCG would be at their mercy was also noted. (Remember those fiberglass hulls?)

We’re told that teams working on the National Security Cutter tried to warn USCG senior management about the problems with the first few ships, and that they were ignored.

Total cost of all the mistakes: more than $1.5 billion.

Frankly, this is all Admiral Stuff, and the Admirals at USCG have nothing to be proud of, based on this part of the record.

USCG is now trying to turn all this around by taking over management of the program themselves, and although there is reason to believe things may be somewhat better, even that “fix” is creating problems.

For example, it’s reported that USCG is moving ahead on acquisition decisions even though they haven’t fully decided what the designs should be.

At this point, however, USCG has little choice: they can’t wait several years to train up a new crew of contract managers, then design, then build.

That’s because, right now, things are very bad for the Fleet: of the first 12 ships USCG sent to help after the earthquake in Haiti…10 broke, at various times, and that kept them from conducting rescues until they were fixed. Two of those had to return to the US for major repairs.

And here’s where the circle closes.

Admiral Thad Allen, who’s running the show on the Gulf Coast, spent the past four years as Commandant of the Coast Guard, and before that as Coast Guard Chief of Staff…which means, for good or for ill, he’s covered in Deepwater all the way up to his Cutterman Insignia.

The question now is: was he the reformer who fixed this stuff when he finally got the chance, or was he part of the problem in the first place?

I could not get the answer to this most critical question, so all I can tell you is to watch very, very, carefully—and don’t be afraid to assume the worst, until we truly do know better.

On Saving Louisiana, Or, Send Me Your Mud, Yearning To Be Free

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a story I originally posted in March of 2007 that seems so important right now I've brought it back for your consideration.

Let’s begin today’s discussion with a quick thought experiment.

What is the single most important thing necessary to ensure the survival of the State of Louisiana?

Improved government administration?
More and better levees?
The success of the “Road Home” project?

I submit it is none of these.

The single most important factor determining the future of the State of Louisiana is mud.

That’s right, mud.

Were you aware that the entire State consists of mud? When you look at a geologic map, there is nothing to be seen but sedimentary deposits dating back to the Cambrian period.

And the mud, it is a-sinking.

Katrina took out more than 57 square miles of land in Plaquemines Parish alone. That former land is now the Gulf of Mexico.

The Army Corps of Engineers has maps of the Mississippi river from 1998. When you get to the page, click on map 141. What you see is a portion of Plaquemines Parish. (Here’s the same place on Google Maps.)

Notice almost the entire map area consists of water, canals, and marsh. There’s only two narrow strips of solid ground evident. Now let’s pull out a bit. There’s just about nothing in the image but sinking ground. Now pull out just a little bit further, and guess what-there’s New Orleans.

This was the area of Louisiana most affected by Katrina.

It’s now time for you to meet Professor Oliver A. Houck. His essay “Can We Save New Orleans?”, published in the Tulane Law Journal, will be central to the remainder of this conversation, and I would encourage you in the strongest terms to take the time to read the document.

Here are some of the issues he brings to light:

--There is no consensus on what is to be done-should the emphasis be on maximizing the amount of developable land; or should the emphasis be on maximizing opportunities for natural processes to replenish the bayous? These are two mutually exclusive goals, and Houck suggests development is winning.

--The Federal government is responsible for maintaining navigation on the Mississippi, but flood control is managed locally. As a result of this and the huge amounts of money that are spread around through levee and other water control project construction, politics has more influence on the management process than science and inter-jurisdictional coordination.

--Environmental pollution-especially fertilizer runoffs-kill the marsh grasses that hold the soil together. As a result, the process of saving Louisiana starts in South Dakota, and is therefore a national, not just a State problem.

--It is easier to calculate the cost-benefit of industrial and commercial activity than the cost-benefit of saving lives-and safety advocates have fewer lobbyists.

--Money spent now, on non-development rights, for example, will be cheaper than money spent later on reconstruction or remediation.

And the most important of all:

--It’s the constant movement of silt down the river that makes it possible for there to be a Louisiana-and America’s history of “taming” the Mississippi has nearly brought that process to a stop. The River carried 400 million tons a year of silt 150 years ago, Houck reports, and today carries only 80 million. Without that “new” land to deposit in the Delta, there is no way to offset the erosion to the Gulf of Mexico.

That’s not the only reason the State is sinking, however. Pumping drinking water from aquifers has an impact, and the expansion of the ocean caused by global warming does, too. Even the weight of the levees themselves on the soft soil is affecting the situation.

Professor Houck, being a “fix-it” kind of analyst, has offered a ten-point prescription for Louisiana recovery. Here’s the “Reader’s Digest Condensed Version”:

1) Draw the map-in other words, there needs to be a set of decisions made regarding exactly where humans will be allowed to control the land, and where the river will have its say.
2) With a new map, reconsider the projects-Houck reminds us that Katrina changed everything, and that projects already designed or underway are probably the wrong solutions to today’s problems.
3) “Free the Mississippi 400 million”-open dams upriver to allow the 400 million tons of silt to do its thing downriver.
4) Free the rivers-the logical extension of point 3. Open the levees appropriately, and let the rivers do their thing.
5) Cut the upstream fertilizers-we discussed this above-fertilizer kills grass, and that kills land. This is where parties outside Louisiana have to step up to the plate-the EPA, the Corps of Engineers, the various States, and maybe even private actors such as the Nature Conservancy.
6) Heal the marsh-if grass holds the mud in place, then grass we must grow. Professor Houck uses a farming analogy-one in which Louisianans would essentially become “land farmers”.
7) Quit making it worse-dredging and filling for canals and subdivisions is the enemy. As we said above, prevention is cheaper than mitigation.
8) Make room for Nature-consolidate human development within protected areas to create room for natural restoration to work.
9) Dare to think retreat-Houck advocates completely removing residential development from threatened areas, through buyouts. He makes the argument that businesses can be sustained, however.
10) Global warming is real-Professor Houck suggests denial here just makes the problem much, much worse.

We have already seen the consequences of our desire to develop every inch of shoreline, and not just in Louisiana, but all along the Gulf Coast. And we already are beginning to understand that this is truly a national problem.

But if we hope to keep South Louisiana as a functioning economy or even as an above water piece of real estate, we better start talking about national solutions that help Nature’s solutions.

On Setting Things Straight, Or, An Open Letter To The United Kingdom

Dear The United Kingdom,

I just wanted to take a minute to say hello and to see how things have been for you lately, and to maybe bring you up to date on a bit of news from here.

Well, right off the bat, we hear you have a new Conservative Prime Minister and that his Party and Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems are in partnership, which I’m sure will be interesting; you probably heard that us Colonials are again having Tea Parties, which has also been very interesting.

I have a Godson who’s getting married this September, so we’re all talking about that, and I hear Graham Norton was even better than last year at hosting Eurovision, despite the fact that it’s…frankly, it’s Eurovision.

Oh, yeah…we also had a bit of an oil spill recently that you may have heard about—and hoo, boy; you should see how the Company that spilled the oil has been acting.

So before we go any farther I figured I’d let you know that we did get that letter from John Napier over the weekend, and to tell you the truth, we’re not really sure John understands exactly what’s going on over here.

Now it turns out that it was some company called BP that’s been out there in the Gulf of Mexico operating the oil rig that blew up, killing eleven people and leading to that uncontrollable geyser of oil that you may be hearing about, and our dear Mr. Napier worries that when we say we’re angry with BP, we’re being anti-British.

If anyone should see John, would you please let him know that nothing could be further from the truth?

I promise you, you would be hard pressed to find one single solitary American getting up this morning, seeing the live feed from the oil leak on TV, and thinking: “That BP is scandalously representing Britain, and for that I hate the British”.

I’ll tell what we are thinking, though, is that as bad as this situation is, BP’s been making it a lot worse by, time after time, being either amazingly unaware of or brazenly dishonest about what’s been going on.

Remember back in May when BP said they were capturing 5000 barrels of oil a day with their new containment procedure—while still claiming on the very same day that the total amount of the leak was 5000 barrels a day, even though anyone who could look at the image from the leak could clearly see with their own two eyes that what BP was saying could not possibly be correct?

I don’t know how far the word’s gotten out over there yet, but now even the “Daily Mail” (not the “Guardian”, for God’s sakes… but the “Daily Mail”) says it looks like BP guessed low on the amount that’s leaking into the Gulf by somewhere between 15,000 and 35,000 barrels a day…which, to us, looks like either incredibly bad guessing or an incredibly bad effort to deny how bad things really are.

You’ll love this, United Kingdom: BP continues to insist that there are no underwater “plumes” of oil in the Gulf, even though the people on the scene measuring them, and the US Government agency mapping them, say there are.

The BP position, as I understand it, rests on the definition of “plume”…and when you consider that Americans still make fun of Bill Clinton, to this very day, for basing his impeachment defense on what the definition of “is” is, you shouldn’t be too surprised if we treat BP precisely the same way for doing the same thing.

This isn’t the first disaster for BP in this country, either. You may not remember, but just about five years ago BP blew up a refinery in Texas, killing 15 workers, and just afterward had another major spill, this time in Alaska.

The US Government levied an astonishingly large £53 million fine against BP in 2009 for not fixing the problems that led to the 2005 refinery disaster.

That puts the five-year casualty total for BP at way too many people dead, two habitats wounded, and one refinery in critical condition.

If you think that’s bad, United Kingdom, it now looks like BP just made up the spill response plan that they would be putting in place now…if they had been telling the truth about their ability to execute the plan in the first place.

Now if you put all that together…don’t you think somebody’s ass needs to be kicked? Mr. Obama does, and we find that a refreshing change from Mr. Bush, who would have likely done a "heckuva job" himself in the same situation.

Mr. Napier wanted us to know that we’re personalizing this a bit too much; he reminds us that:

“If you compare the damage inflicted on the economies of the western world by polluted securities from the irresponsible, unchecked greed and avarice of leading USA international banks, there has not been the same personalized response in or from countries beyond the US. Perhaps a case of double standards?”

John, babe…if you think we’re lacking in “anger personalization”, perhaps you’ve never actually heard of the Tea Party? I know the "Daily Mail" has, and I’m surprised you missed it.

Perhaps you missed the left-leaning protesters in San Francisco that want to put the CEOs of banks in jail, or the protesters in West Virginia, of all places, or in Boston?

Perhaps you don’t think there’s a reason to take it a bit personally when someone kills a couple of dozen people or so in some sort of preventable accident or another, but over here, whether it’s a mine operator or BP, we do take it personally.

Trust me, there’s no double standard: ask almost any American and they’ll tell you they’d be equally happy to see either a Wall Street or a BP executive forced to spend several years in a really tiny jail cell with someone who has a prior record of doing disturbing things to small forest creatures.

OK, United Kingdom, now here’s a chance for you to do the Company a favor: BP announced just a couple of days ago that they have no earthly idea why their stock price might be going down.

With just the least little effort, we could fix that problem right away.

If any of you might be in London, and don’t mind making a local call for me, would you kindly ring up BP corporate headquarters at +44 (0)20 7496 4000, and when they answer, just let them know that the stock price is going down because of the oil leak and what it’s doing to the perception that BP will be as profitable in the future as they had been in the past?

I’m sure they’d be so appreciative of the assistance that they might even give you a cool BP hat or something just for helping them out—I know I would, if I were BP.

Anyway, I’m hoping this will clear up some of Mr. Napier’s questions, but before I go, I have to ask you about something:

They tell me that BP stock is a huge part of the UK’s investment portfolio; and that lots of pension funds are dependent on the stream of revenue BP dividends represent.

So dependent, in fact, that there is a great hue and cry over the possibility that BP might not be able to pay a dividend to its shareholders.

So here’s what I was wondering: in the US, if a company in which you were invested suffered a loss that might reach beyond £30 billion, it’s supposed to have a negative impact on the stockholders. It’s almost certainly going to affect any potential dividend distribution, and a company like that might find itself taken over by a stronger competitor.

Doesn’t it work that way in the UK?

I’m sorry that those folks got caught in a bad investment, and maybe the UK Government wants to extend some sort of assistance to those affected; nonetheless I can’t understand the legal logic behind the proposition that cleaning up the mess that BP caused and the payment of compensation claims based on BP’s reckless actions should have a lower priority than the distribution of income to stockholders.

To put it as simply as possible: lots of players in the UK markets were happy to accept the profits from this investment, despite the risks, and now it’s time to accept a loss. That’s how investing works; and if no one else has told you that by now, well…welcome to investing.

And while UK pensioners are worried about losing some income, American workers—thousands of them—are worried that they’ll be out of work for months, and maybe years, with no income at all, except for that provided by BP…unless they go broke and can’t pay.

So that’s what’s been going on here since I wrote you last, and I hope you do get a chance to call BP about that whole stock going down thing, so they know, and I hope you don’t think we’re in any way upset with Britain at all, ‘cause we are truly not.

British Petroleum, however, is a different story; and based on the record we feel that our anger is entirely justified…but that would have been just as true if it had been Chevron or Anadarko or any other deepwater driller—just as it was true for Exxon after the Exxon Valdez incident two decades ago.

Anyway, I have to go now, but I’ll try not to wait so long before I write again; and I hope BP is able to contain this stuff before it begins washing up on your beaches, which, believe it or not, is a distinct possibility.

As always, your friend,

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