BP's Gulf of Mexico Disaster and America's Own Private Dead Sea
Hillary Clinton said “never waste a good crisis.” I have no idea how extensively invested or not the Secretary of State and the former president are in biofuels, but if they are, no one can ever accuse the former first couple of not being red-blooded, astute and enterprising agents of personal and political change. Only a dope would miss out on lucrative alternative energy investments, even if they're longterm. And that goes for current and ex-politicos alike. Besides, nobody ever said that holding high office led to the poor house, although maybe it should to keep them honest. But to read articles like this that would suggest a despicable cause and effect link to the BP disaster and President Obama's investments, for example, you'd think that no one with financial portfolios should ever make a buck. (Again, this is not to say that if someone deliberately turned the Gulf of Mexico into one big, gigantic toilet, they shouldn't meet Lucifer's own bitch, Mother Nature in the shower for one infinitely timeless, long, hot soak of acid rain with a shark-tooth coated loofah scrub. Forever.)
Could BP's monumental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico potentially deliver a timely, silver lining payday for at least a few investors and transitional enterprises experienced in reaching into government coffers to fund private R & D start-ups and partnerships? Leaving Big Oil for Big Algae may be a sign of the times, ushering in shifts of investments and new investors from unlikely sectors alike.
Take technology billionaire Bill Gates who backed Sapphire Energy, an algae start-up based in San Diego. Gates now has a distinct interest into using the power of pond scum to replace fossil fuels, quite possibly not unlike his legendary hiring practices of substituting cheap workers for educated Americans. In 2008, Bruce Bigelow at Xconomy reported that Gates backed the alternative fuels company which didn't at the time want to “get caught up into the hype”:
"Sapphire Energy has not provided many details about its technology since CEO Jason Pyle stepped into the limelight six months ago to announce the San Diego startup has developed a revolutionary process for turning pond scum into high-octane gasoline.
“I have no intention of being secretive,” Pyle told me at the inaugural networking meeting of the newly formed San Diego Biotechnology Network, or SDBN. But after seeing the effects of the boom-and-bust cycle in two recent tech bubbles, Pyle says, “My goal is to maintain a serious and thoughtful approach in a frothy market. I don’t want Sapphire to get caught up in that hype.”
Certainly, keeping a young company's secret sauce under wraps is almost as common as venture backed start-ups with ties to the Beltway who know how to secure government subsidized handouts that stick U.S. taxpayers with the bill for their own lucratively free lunches. But now that BP's unprecedented environmental disaster down in the Gulf of Mexico is said to render the once bio-diverse ocean ecosystem into a dead pool that will, however, create an abundance of algae, will BP's coincidental accident in the Gulf of Mexico successfully transition into corporate America's own private algae farm?
Could algae be the new black when it comes to energy fuels? Is Sapphire Energy - which also hosts a former BP executive on its management team, president Cynthia “C.J.” Warner, be the real deal?
Commenter “Pappa Daddy” says not so much below:
“Sapphire Energy sounds like a scam. Sapphire says their “green crude” is chemically identical to gasoline. (Sirens going off!!!) GASOLINE is made up of varying chains of hydrogen and carbon. How does something chemically identical to gasoline not produce CO2 as a by-product? Any chemical engineers out there? As we’ve seen recently with the Maddow investment scam, because someone has money does not make them a good investor…or because Bill Gates knows software doesn’t make him a chemist.
These companies are currently in business to milk up government funding and then disappear (or grab subsidies and disappear). There will be US government grants and loans pissed away soon under the new administration to anyone who sounds like they know anything about renewable energy. Banks are not going to loan these people money. The only place they will be able to get it is from our fearless leaders in government. There is NOT ONE independently verifiable algae fuel production facility on Earth. If there is please point it out and tell me where I can buy some “green crude”. Even a long-term pilot plant would do.
That mental retard Rep Inslee from Washington state is a supporter of Sapphire. You can find his incoherent speech on the House floor on youtube.”
Others conclude that the algae market, while promising, is “fairly far off” from making a dent into replacing fossil fuels for capital intensive reasons and consequently would even be a lousy stock for public investors:
“Algae has great promise for producing liquid fuels in sufficient quantity to replace petroleum, and it can do so without using excessive water or farmland. That potential, however, is fairly far off. The technology is capital intensive and far from commercialization, a combination almost certain to make investors in the public stocks poorer rather than richer. If and when fuel made from algae is available in significant quantity to make a dent in our thirst for fossil fuels, it will probably have been developed by companies that public investors cannot currently buy. Stock market investors should wait until this industry matures from its current infancy to something closer to adolescence. Buyers of the current batch of infant companies are likely to suffer the fate of other new parents: many sleepless nights.”
San Francisco – GE (NYSE: GE) Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt announced today a “$200 million open innovation challenge that seeks breakthrough ideas to create a smarter, cleaner, more efficient electric grid, and accelerate the adoption of more efficient grid technologies.” Immelt unveiled the “GE Ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid” to a handpicked crowd of venture capitalists and others interested in participating in a “global commitment to build innovative clean energy technologies”. Will GE's stealthy move to partner with venture capitalists and foreign outsourcing firms create more jobs for American citizens? LWOH readers will recall this last post about GE's backshoring plans here.
Today's announcement reveals that the enterprising “global challenge invites technologists, entrepreneurs and start-ups to share their best ideas and come together to take on one of the world's toughest challenges - building the next-generation power grid to meet the needs of the 21st century." The challenge is said to be one of the "largest ever" and is open immediately at www.ecomagination.com/challenge.
“The Challenge, launched in collaboration with leading venture capital firms Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer and RockPort Capital, and Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired magazine, is part of GE’s ecomagination initiative, a global commitment to build innovative clean energy technologies and will help fund the most promising ideas. Proposals are sought in three, broad categories: Renewables, Grid and Eco Homes/Eco Buildings.”
The announcement also explains below “Select Challenge” entrants who will be offered the opportunity to develop a commercial relationship with GE through:
Investment: the $200 million capital pledge of GE and its partners will be invested globally into promising start-ups and ideas
Validation: evaluate entrant’sbusiness {sic} strategy through in-depth discussions with GE's technical and commercial teams
Distribution: explore partnership opportunities with GE to scale a business and create global reach
Development:: leverage GE‘s technical infrastructure and GE Global Research Centers to accelerate technology and product development
Growth: explore opportunities for utilizing existing GE customer to take Challenge products to market
The $200 million commitment "will help bring these new ideas to market by providing businesses and individuals with theopportunity {sic} to secure growth capital through GE investment and/or investment by participating venture capital firms. It is open to anyone aged 18 years or older and all legally formed entities.” Imagine that.
Click to read more about how GE is harnessing the power of special partnerships here.
New Jersey's Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State Privatization Agenda: SELL OUT U.S. Middle Class
Hackensack, NJ – The Hubris Disease is swarming into New Jersey.
Armed with think-tank mumbly-jumbly speak, indecipherable presentations, graphs and spreadsheets, Economic Hitmen go into third world countries and offer all kinds of infrastructure and social services goodies on the promise that the impoverished countries pay back the astronomical loans. Once these third world countries predictably default, multinational elites under the banner of 'government' (don't ask “whose government”, for it's en vogue these days to have no ties or allegiances to your own) swoop in and pick off the fixin's. Emm, good, says the corpulent, self-described, “inleague” band of banking and beltway black crows as they unconscionably plunder the plebes from Honduras to Haiti to Hoboken to Hackensack. Ethics and morals? Those are for mugs.
Which lands us today in New Jersey, where plans to sell off the public trust via privatization are on a roll.
NorthJersey.com reports that Governor Christie's faulted privatization plan includes a task force recommendation for higher fees, selling off the Trenton War Memorial which includes an 1,800-seat concert hall to a private contractor and worse services for New Jersey “residents”, among several other sell-off schemes. Note that the article references New Jersey taxpayers as “residents” and not citizens. Hardly surprising, as the State's massive “best and brightest” non-citizen population is from India on H-1b work and L-1 student visas to take U.S. jobs when the New Jersey (and U.S.) unemployment rate for American citizens is soaring, and would explain the neo-linguistic framing from “citizen” to “resident”.
Joel Stein reports on this curious convergence of "best and brightest" cheap imported labor from India and the demise of his hometown in this pithy Time Magazine article My Own Private India which raises the question: If Indians are truly the “best and brightest” as corporate America's billionairre CEO's like Bill “Vista Rocks” (haha) Gates desperately insists and the state of New Jersey is flooded with them, why is the Garden State now blighted with run-down “strip malls” and wallowing smack-dab in the red? Wasn't the vast importation of millions of (dubiously) skilled cheap workers supposed to create MORE prosperity and jobs for American citizens and bolster Main Street? HA! And why are Microsoft's products and services quality a laughing stock when compared to successful corporations like Apple – which most coincidentally, imports very few Indian workers? But why blame the workers, whether “temporary” or perm for corporate management's policies? With respect to Microsoft, it may indeed be no small coincidence that lousy management and locally unsustainable hiring practices were directly responsible for elevating Microsoft's tanked status.
Stein's article isn't a referendum on any specific culture's culpability in New Jersey's demise, much less against any of the hardworking people there from India who continue to make contributions to the local economy. It IS a wake-up call, however, for all ethnic, non-corrupt, ethical and moral New Jersey “residents” (both U.S. citizens and non-citizens) to take a closer look at the Great American Labor Shortage Mythmaker's unsustainable and destructive socio-economic polices that are destroying all middle class, multi-cultural communities across America. Despite Stein's tongue-in-cheek observation of these convergent cheap labor and declining socioeconomic forces with migration patterns, his article received moronic and divisive, yet predictable “xenophobe” and “racist” accusations when he in fact lauded the much deserved Indian cuisine and its role in improving the local foodie scene while he mocked the non-creativity of his fellow native Edison, New Jersians.
I don't know whether Stein's Time piece was deliberately intended to throw down the counterproductive race card gauntlet by caste-ing around for divide and conquer victory, but political and neo-media entertainment elitist hacks with India Inc. lobby agenda$ pitting neighbor against neighbor is as old as Methuselah. This “I Got Mine Mine” ilk knows no cultural boundaries outside the inner sanctums of their man-crushes, and both Time Magazine and the enterprising HuffIPO have no shortage of willing propaganda tools.
Will the State of New Jersey end up a casualty in this war on America's middle class where corporate and political insiders sell out our jobs to the cheap labor lobby? Shouldn't other States' leaders work to stimulate job opportunities for American citizens and not foreign companies and imported labor? The NorthJersey.com article says the task force also cited New Jersey’s 18 career centers (that currently are set up to help the unemployed with job training and searches) could be privatized as well.
When it comes to good jobs, is privatization good and sustainable for the citizens of New Jersey and those of other states?
Privatization = Unsustainable numbers of outsourced or insourced workers and labor arbitrage to displace and degenerate earnings for American citizens and disproportionately generate profits for those in the upper One Percent income bracket.
One commenter had this to say below about “privatization not being a cure-all” regarding Christie's woeful plan:
“New Jersey Governor Christie's task force has suggested there are savings in privatizing state services. Unfortunately this can come at the expense of the very same public who expects savings. The easy example for this former Pennsylvania resident is auto inspections. Pennsylvania used a completely private state inspection system. Any time I took a vehicle to a Pennsylvania mechanic for anything an old chestnut was brought out with the mechanic saying it the law, you have to fix this, whether or not the fix was really needed. I was glad when, on moving to New Jersey, I found that the State ran the inspections and if I kept the vehicle in proper shape it would pass inspection without my having to submit the vehicle to someone who had a financial interest in denying me the inspection certificate. So my questions are how credible are the suggested savings, and who is really benefiting? I do not expect the public will be benefiting.”
Happy Birthday Wishes to Sir Paul McCartney! Turn up the volume!!!
Welcome back to The Gay Swami Times. Clickhere for previous issues. Since we can no longer count on our New Jersey “web developer” Sanjay, to send us timely copy without holding it ransom,we're down to recycling images (such as the one above).
In our previous issue entitled MAN-CRUSHINOMICS 101: Keep Your Hands on Your Puts and Keep Your Man-Crush Closer,we examined the otherworldly field of MANCRUSHINOMICS where our nation's leading politicians and “thought leaders” plumb and thumb the depths of the highest rollers in the land who turn the otherwise scholarly field of economics UPSIDE DOWN. From the Beltway to the board room, these casino capital derivatives beastshave their fraternal fingers all over the place. Omm...
Today, infinite lifetimes of celebratory congratulations go out to dreamy Sir Paul McCartney on the 68th anniversary of his birth in this current life.
Sir Paul is The Gay Swami's most favorite, hands-down Beatle! Sir Paul was in the news, most recently appearing at the White House to rock Barry and serenede Michelle (he sang “Michelle) while all HELL was (and still is) breaking loose in the Gulf of Mexico!
But don't worry, because many lifetimes of prayers are with swoony and heavenly Al Gore to be taking care of business to clean up the black hole in the Gulf.
In honor of celebrating Sir Paul's special day, click on the video above to hear The Gay Swami's most favorite “Paul song” with the Beatles, Fixing a Hole!
Land of the Free (Trade), Home of the (Slave/Black Market Trade) Brave?
Heads on a Plane!
Tails from the Crypt
Little Rock – A Southwest Airlines employee discovered what was described as 40-60 human heads inside an improperly packaged shipment bound for a Ft. Worth facility of medical researcher Medtronic.Although the practice of utilizing and shipping human body parts for medical instruction and research is common, a company official remarked that it is “rare for a shipment to be seized.”
Skullduggery or just more glorious black market monkey business as usual in the loophole ridden, Neo-Frat Boy Corporate States of America? We don't know, but a coroner had this to say:
"We've come to the conclusion that there is a black market out there for human body parts for research or for whatever reason," said Pulaski County coroner Garland Camper. "We just want to make sure these specimens here aren't a part of that black market and underground trade."
Whether dead or alive, human trafficking apparently isn't just limited to the LEGALIZED practice of living H-1B, F and L visa holders responsible for driving down wages and taking jobs from American citizens via the importation of cheap foreign labor, either! The article states that dealing in human body parts is LEGAL, too! Is America the ultimate Holy Land of Skullduggery?
“Federal law generally prohibits the sale of human body parts, although suppliers can be reimbursed for expenses in cases of legitimate medical education or research.
"It is a lucrative business. There is money to be made," Camper said. "We're hoping that this isn't the case."”
Don't worry. Just remember to keep your heads – and any other body parts belonging to your body's temple even closer.
Schumer Call Center Bill to Stem Job Outsourcing: Will it Boost Insourcing?
New York – The New York Daily News reports DemocraticNY State Senator Chuck Schumer is proposing a bill that would tax businesses for transferring U.S. based call center jobs to foreign countries by charging them 25 cents for every service call placed abroad. The bill would also require companies to inform their customers when their calls are transferred out of the U.S. and to which specific country they are being transferred to. Is this bill that is also requiring foreign call centers to disclose their specific country due to a major decline in quality and service for U.S. citizens?
"1.6 billion calls are being transferred to call centers, often without the customer's knowledge," Schumer said.
Although outsourcing proponents claim that initial savings of up to forty percent occur with sending U.S. jobs overseas, some assert that companies “could see productivity losses of up to 60 percent when the full cycle of application development is outsourced, leading to longer development times."
In other words, giving U.S. jobs to cheap foreign workers is not locally sustainable – neither economically or from a competency/quality of services perspective. While India has been the largest recipient of U.S. jobs both there and here, no wonder we are seeing jobs vanish for our locals. But mounting and unprecedented job losses for American citizens have prompted U.S. policy makers to address the employment needs of their American constituents (ahem, voters) to halt the bleeding of jobs to foreign countries.
What good is it if U.S. companies like NCR, GE, and Dow bring their call center and/or development and manufacturing operations back home when they support foreign outsourcing companies and imported workers from India instead of American workers? Could Senator Schumer be taking a page right out of Ohio governor Ted Strickland's playbook?
Is Schumer's bill truly addressing the employment needs of American workers by penalizing U.S. businesses for handing jobs to workers in other countries or will this bill prompt an increase in the already unsustainable numbers of IMPORTED workers under student and labor F-1 and H-1B visa programs to continue taking jobs away from American graduates and professionals and driving down local wages and compensation plans?
Where is the equivalent bill to stop the influx of IMPORTED Indian outsourcing companies like Wipro, Tata and Infosys along with workers from India to take jobs from Americans in professions like health care, electronic healthcare records, information technology and the legal profession? As the article notes:
"On their part, India’s top outsourcing companies Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro and HCL have already started setting up development centres in locations such as Atlanta and Michigan. While TCS aims to double its foreign workforce from 10,000 currently to 20,000 over next five years, Infosys and Wipro could see non-Indians account for 10-15% of their total employee base in next 3-5 years, from around 5% currently."
“Barack Obama: Wasn't he supposed to turn the water into wine, not Texas tea?”
-Quincy
Happy Memorial Day, Everybody!
I hope you are all having a nice day remembering the soldiers who defended the United States of America. Serving one's country is an honor and a privilege, especially if you make it out of there alive.
I tried to enlist in the armed services but got disqualified because I am, you know, a PIG. I'm an actual PIG and our distinct minority faces all kinds of discrimination way, way beyond Gays in the military with DADT (Don't Ask Don't Tell). What many people don't know is that being a PIG means automatic disqualification from all kinds of public outings and opportunities you normally take for granted, like go-kart racing and especially employment. Try applying for Maître d' at the Boom Boom Room and you're not only (rather rudely) shown the door, but banned from ever dining there.
Last month, I found myself at a Fellini-esque crossroads, trying to decide what to do with my life. Should I take an Introduction to Photoshop class at the local community college or clandestinely and bravely serve my country? After being approached by a camouflage pants wearing military recruiter (well, that's what he said he was) in the SafeWay parking lot, I was encouraged to enlist after looking at the exciting pamphlet about all the places I could go – kind of like Dr. Seuss, only with attitude. Anyway, this was not to be. Besides, after my previous tour of duty on a stealthy, highly classified mission, you might say I was already overqualified.
On account of this, my plans to spend this Memorial four day weekend at Mr. And Mrs. Crisp's Ft. Myers beach front condo were scotched after the historic, man made disaster down in the Gulf of Mexico. The smell is beastly, and the mood of the locals is worse. The gusher is STILL gushing, and nobody knows how to really fix the mess.
That's why I was tapped by the State Department to go down to Houston this week to root out the culprits behind this non-stop, vicious and voracious volcano of black gold, Texas tea. Not only are wild PIGS highly experienced in rooting out farm profits, but we're also creatures willing to get down into the dirty muck of rooting out inconspicuous feral animals and blowhards guilty of poaching everything sustainable for the rest of those in the sty.
It won't be easy, since everybody involved is either a big fat liar and/or incompetent, but somebody has to help investigative journalist Mr. Greg Palast skewer a few rolling carcasses on a spit. As he wrote in his article Smart PIG: BP's OTHER Spill BP has a history of “cheaping out”:
“By not properly inspecting the pipeline for over a decade, BP failed to prevent that March 2006 spill which polluted Prudhoe Bay. And cheaping out on remote controls for their oil well blow-out preventers appears to have cost the lives of 11 men on the Deepwater Horizon.
But then, failure to implement proper safety procedures has saved BP, not millions but billions of dollars, suggests that the company's pig is indeed, very, very smart.”
You can say THAT again, Mr. Greg Palast! This guy really, really knows what he's talking about.
I'm heading out now to join friends for an afternoon barbecue. Later on, in remembrance of Dennis Hopper, we plan to pop open a few Red Tail Ales and watch one of the best movies ever made, Easy Rider.
Is Steve Jobs Robbing Americans of Jobs, While Simultaneously Robbing the Chinese of Their Youth?
Don Sears at eWeek reports that after 11 attempted suicides in 2010 of Chinese factory workers at its Foxconn subsidiary facility in Southern China, planned pay raises for worker salaries are expected to jump by 20 percent. “Exactly when these raises of workers who build products for Apple, HP, Dell, Sony and others will take place has not been announced.” Sears explains:
“The Foxconn factory is located in the Shenzen province of Southern China and employs about 420,000 workers in this facility. Earlier this week, a worker ended his life by jumping off the factory building, and another worker who tried to slit his wrists survived.”
The new Foxconn "pay-to-delay suicide pact" between the Asian outsourcing electronics manufacturer and their young workers raises the question:
Obama andGeithner Entry Level Man-Crushinomics Exclusive: The Gay Swami Times
MAN-CRUSHINOMICS 101: Keep Your Hands on Your Puts and Keep Your Man-Crush Closer
Welcome back to The Gay Swami Times for our first-ever tutorial special MAN-CRUSHINOMICS 101: Keep Your Hands on Your Puts and Keep Your Man-Crush Closer issue where we investigate the sublime and sometimes plunging depths of the highest rollers in the land who have their manly fingers all over the place. Our exhilarating Man-Crushinomics journey takes us to the pulse of Washington and Wall Street's long-term capital portfolio lusting, pay-to-play casino derivatives beasts dripping in lifetimes of infinite pleasure trysts. A mysterious inner-sanctum where technocratic man-crush e-dicts and rigged casino economics rule! Clickhere forprevious issues.
In this breathtaking special issue, our BROMANCE detector alert has been raised to an all-time high as new reports surface in the White House that Barack Obama and “embattled” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner...they have a thing, goin' on...Cue up “Me and Mrs. Jones” and then sing “Me and His Cahones”!!!
Although no juicy specifics about the purported Barry on Timmy man-crush were uncovered, uber Brahman (note: to the ladies only) David “Axe” Axelrod revealed that Geithner's “looming large” persistent presence might have something to do with Timmy's mystical abilities at imposing pleasing, nocturnal “stabilization” and “stress tests” (sorry, no details yet available) that are reported to work very, very well:
“Indeed, the president's support for his Treasury secretary has been unwavering. (Axelrod would laugh at rumors that Geithner was about to get the boot: "Don't these people realize they have a man-crush on each other?") And Obama's loyalty has been repaid with results. Geithner's stabilization plan is now widely regarded as having worked -- mainly thanks to the once-derided "stress tests" that he imposed on the banks, which showed the world that their circumstances weren't as dire as many feared and let them raise the requisite capital to get back on their feet.”
Yes, the magic of entry level MAN-CRUSHINOMICS is like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and anything else from exotic, secret and taboo places! What results are these that are said to work? Although you can't see, taste or smell any of them (much less understand what the hell they are) SOMEBODY can...Ask TimBama.
In another exciting expose, we thank Cenk Uygur for his wonderfully manly exclusive video (above) further detailing Barry and Timmy's “peas in a pod” like attraction!
Avi Buffalo? What's that? Is this some Jewish dude on a Montana ranch? Click on the above video “What's In It For” and enjoy a great throwback to what I first heard in London's electric bubble gum 60's days:
“Avi Buffalo was once just the kid named Avi (short for Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg). He’s now singing and playing guitar, but was then a vaguely aspirational skateboarder living in Long Beach, who figured between hip trauma and a never-quite-conquered fear of dropping into a half-pipe that he might need to come up with something else to do with the rest of his life. (Maybe journalist? If there were gonna be any left?) His parents never got around to getting him the Game Boy he wanted, so he turned to a handily local guitar. Years of 12-hour days attacking that (plus lessons-to-mentoring with seriously iconoclastic local blues guys) revealed a pretty preternatural talent for making a very special kind of bent but lovely pop song. “You know why it’s good? Because it sounds OLD, but it’s NEW!” said Blues Mentor, sparing the world more labored analysis. And that is the connect-the-dots story of how Avi Buffalo became a band—boy meets guitar. It’s a good old story.”
“Mommy Mommy! What's that nukey smell in the sap?”
Strontium-90 Detected at Vermont Nuke Plant A Catastrophe a Day in the Rat Race to the Bottom?
Leaking News
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — "Vermont Yankee officials say that while cleaning up after a leak of radioactive tritium at the nuclear power plant, they found another, more potent radioactive isotope in soil near where the leak occurred. Strontium-90 is a byproduct of nuclear fission that has been linked to cancer and leukemia.
Vermont Yankee spokesman Larry Smith said Friday that the substance hasn't been found in any groundwater and plant officials believe they've removed all the soil containing it. He said they believe it poses no threat to public safety or health. Vermont Health Commissioner Dr. Wendy Davis didn't immediately return a call seeking comment late Friday."
New Orleans-basedEntergy Corp. owns the plant. In the wake of BP Oil's worst disaster to sully our shores, coincidentally you'd almost think somebody in the government of Louisiana is sleeping at the switch.
Did you know that unlike the oil industry, U.S. taxpayers subsidize insurance for the nuclear power industry? The free government-granted insurance Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act given to for-profit nuclear plant operators has been cited by Ralph Nader as an example of colossal corporate welfare. But who is looking out for the welfare of our citizens and communities?
Wikipedia includes criticism of The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act below from a number of environmental and other organizations/think tanks including Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace International, Public Citizen and the Cato Institute. According to watchdog group PublicCitizen, no other government agency provides the same level of taxpayer indemnification to private corporate non-citizens:
Public Citizen has been particularly critical of Price-Anderson; it claims that the Act understates the risks inherent in atomic power, does not require reactors to carry adequate insurance, and would therefore result in taxpayers footing most of the bill for a catastrophic accident.[3] An analysis by economists Heyes and Heyes (1998) places the value of the government insurance subsidy at $2.3 million per reactor-year, or $237 million annually.[4] In 2008 the Congressional Budget Office estimated the value of the subsidy at only $600,000 per reactor per year. [3] Due to the structure of the liability immunities as the number of nuclear plants in operation is reduced the public liability in case of an accident goes up.[5]
Talk about the ultimate public-private man crush. While the Price-Anderson Act indemnifies the Department of Energy and private contractors from nuclear incidents “even in cases of gross negligence and willful misconduct (although criminal penalties would still apply)”, the DOE shrugs off critics of taxpayer funded insurance:
The Energy Department counters those critics by saying that the distinction is irrelevant, since the damage to the public would be the same.[4]
The damage - It would be the same! Got that? Taxpayers picking up the tab for private industry catastrophic disasters should be IRRELEVANT. Unlike British Petroleum whose oil spill disaster may quite likely have been caused by cutting corners, (but didn't get that sweet deal), why should the nuclear industry insure itself against potential disasters? Thank heaven for the best and brightest, public-private master caste, the neo-frat boy corporate state – to innovate a permanent neo-feudal caste of serfs to hedge their unsustainable, negligent bets. Will U.S. citizens take another slow as molasses response to demanding accountability from our elected government officials?
1. To fill beyond capacity, especially with food; satiate.
2. To flood (a market) with an excess of goods so that supply exceeds demand.
v.intr.
To eat or indulge in something excessively.
n.
An oversupply.
glut [glÊŒt]
n
1. an excessive amount, as in the production of a crop, often leading to a fall in price
2. the act of glutting or state of being glutted
vbgluts, glutting, glutted(tr)
1. to feed or supply beyond capacity
2. (Business / Commerce) to supply (a market) with a commodity in excess of the demand for it
3. to cram full or choke up to glut a passage
Imagine that you put one end of a hose in your mouth and kept threading it through until it came out of your butt. That's more or less what the alimentary canal is. You put food in one end of the tube and it's processed during its journey to the other end of the tube, where the waste material comes out. Now, let's abuse the process and imagine it gets CRAMMED with more food than it can accommodate leading to the eventual gushing and puking and exploding of its excess. Still with me?
With the unprecedented rise of U.S. unemployment and white collar jobs being outsourced/insourced to Indian nationals, outsourcing and the H-1B visa program originally intended to fill skilled job openings when no American professionals can be found should have gone the way of the dinosaur. Oh – but that might force a few sociopathic corporate managers and CEOs to reform the current corporate culture of greed and neo-feudal overlording and begin rebuilding local civility and economic sustainability into our own communities. Can't have that! Charity, after all, begins in the man-crush bedroom boardroom.
In his excellent new CIS report entitled More Adventures for the H-1B Program, David North cites a study that quotes Michael Teitelbaum, vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (which funds basic scientific, economic and civic research) who has confirmed the great labor shortage lie. Teitelbaum said:
“Over the past few years that there are “substantially more scientists and engineers graduating from U.S. universities than can find attractive jobs.”
The socioeconomically unsustainable, wholesale sell-out of local U.S. jobs and plummeting wages doesn't stop with STEM jobs and now includes journalism, marketing, healthcare, and the legal professions. With a glut of educated unemployed and underemployed U.S. citizens, why hasn't our government scrapped the legalized visa practice designed for corporations to displace American workers? Although there are laws on the books in place to investigate visa abuses, North has found that the U.S. Labor Department has now decided to do something about them by “mounting a series of 25,000 investigations of the H-1B operation.”
So why the sudden uptick in this massive number of investigations to monitor H-1B abuses?
North notes esteemed UC Davis computer science Professor Norm Matloff's summary of the H-1B program's intent who “has reminded us from time to time, that the program is designed quite specifically to allow employers to hire high-tech talent at below-market rates.” As Matloff puts it:
“The law ITSELF is the problem, not lax enforcement. If the law were to allow drivers to go 80 mph in a residential neighborhood, you wouldn't blame the police for lax enforcement, would you? The law itself would be the problem, not the police.”
Indeed, the (gluttonous) H-1B law itself is the problem. Rather than budget millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to investigate H-1B visa fraud, why not just scrap the whole socioeconomically unsustainable practice of importing a glut of workers? The H-1B visa program, has, like the BP Oil disaster, over-saturated our fragile and scarce supply of jobs like giant plumes of oil mixed with water in the depths of the finite gulf.
A closer look into North's investigation reveals “a bit of information on the funding of these H-1B investigations” which he uncovered this past week into a Congressional Research Service report which “managed to escape Capitol Hill secrecy.” North explains:
“The most interesting point to me, perhaps well known to others, was that most of the congressional funds set aside for the investigation of fraud in the H-1B program have been diverted by the Executive Branch to other programs. There are $500 and $150 fees, per petition, that are supposed to be going into the "Fraud Prevention and Detection Fee Accounts" and DoL's nominal share of those moneys has been $31 million a year in recent years.
"However," the report continues, "DOL reportedly used only $6.7 million in FY 2007, $5.5 million in FY2008 and an estimated $5.5 million in FY2009 for H-1B, H-2B [farmworker] and L visa [international exchange of managers] fraud investigation activities." (See pp. 21-22 of the Wasem document.) There was no discussion of what happened to the non-DoL share of these funds, which apparently was about $62 million a year.
The Obama Administration is estimated to be using $12.5 million of these funds for fraud detection in FY2010.”
Fox guarding Hen House? While a “moratorium on such visas might be prudent” and even an understatement, North reveals that the budget for this massive number of H-1B investigations may have an economic imperative/profitability motive. He concludes that getting the Congress to fund fraud investigations in non-immigrant programs won't do much good if the Executive Branch (hey, Obama?) diverts most of the monies to other activities. The open question is, where/to whom are they being diverted to?
But the gluttonous parallels between the socioeconomically unsustainable and destructive H-1B visa program /outsourcing disaster and the BP Oil disaster are striking. Below, insert “H1-B” for the BP Oil gushing disaster and, well, you get the picture about the whole unsustainable practice of human labor arbitrage and exploitation that has to be stopped.
In the decisive words of Janet Napolitano, it's time to also extend her oil clean up vision for America to permanently plug this gushing well of cheap imported labor siphoning U.S. jobs and to restore local labor civility to U.S. citizens:
“The right thing to do is permanently plug this well, and that’s what we will do,” Mr. Suttles said.“We want to slowly optimize it to try to capture as much of the oil and gas as we can without taking in a large amount of seawater,” he said. Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Salazar cautioned that the tube was not “a solution.”“We will not rest until BP permanently seals the wellhead, the spill is cleaned up, and the communities and natural resources of the Gulf Coast are restored and made whole," Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Salazar said in a joint statement on Sunday."
(CNN) -- "I need a freakin job" yours truly recently reported. From CNN:
That's the message on a billboard that went up in Buffalo, New York, just in time for President Obama's town hall meeting there Thursday.
On CNN's American Morning, the creator of the billboard, Jeff Baker, said he was inspired to help pay for the eye-catching gimmick because he wanted to "refocus the national dialogue" back to "basic job creation."
When the economy went south, Baker and his brother lost their 10-year-old textile business, which employed 25 people. Their family's woes are reflected throughout the city of Buffalo, which suffers from one of the country's highest poverty rates, with nearly 30 percent of its population living at or below the poverty line. Buffalo's unemployment rate is at 8.6 percent, while the national average is 9.7 percent.
"Like many other businesses in the country, we got caught in the banking collapse and were basically forced out of business," Baker said of his family business. "So for the first time in my life, I found myself as an unemployed dad and husband and person."
A Congressional Oversight Committee report out Thursday said the biggest Wall Street banks slashed their small-business loan portfolios by 9 percent between 2008 and 2009, more than double the rate at which they cut their overall lending.
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. (AP) – In yet another sudden blow to Tiger Woods who was supposed to be on the ninth hole at the Celebrity Championship, the celebrity pro golfer “withdrew suddenly with neck pain” in fear it might be a bulging dick disk.
The revealing comment raised several eyebrows from at least three reporters, as a “frustrated” Woods slumped down in front of his locker and gave the following unofficial statement:
“I’ve been playing around with a bad neck for about a month,” the troubled star said. “But after my emergency trip to the hospital on Nov. 27 to fix my busted up lip and very sore neck after being hit by a bitching wedge when I drove my Escalade over a fire hydrant and into a tree, I'm taking every precaution to avoid any further stiffness and monitor my swing.”
Viva el Cinco de Mayo! "The 5th of May is not Mexican Independence Day, but it should be! And Cinco de Mayo is not an American holiday, but it should be. Mexico declared its independence from mother Spain on midnight, the 15th of September, 1810. And it took 11 years before the first Spanish soldiers were told and forced to leave Mexico.
Mexicans, you see, never forget who their friends are, and neither do Americans. That's why Cinco de Mayo is such a party -- A party that celebrates freedom and liberty. There are two ideals which Mexicans and Americans have fought shoulder to shoulder to protect, ever since the 5th of May, 1862. VIVA! el CINCO DE MAYO!!"
t)
