I was just revisiting the USA Today bombshell from earlier this week (a bombshell about which nobody gives a damn apparently) and noticed this:
The DEA used its data collection extensively and in ways that the NSA is now prohibited from doing. Agents gathered the records without court approval, searched them more often in a day than the spy agency does in a year and automatically linked the numbers the agency gathered to large electronic collections of investigative reports, domestic call records accumulated by its agents and intelligence data from overseas.
The result was “a treasure trove of very important information on trafficking,” former DEA administrator Thomas Constantine said in an interview.
The extent of that surveillance alarmed privacy advocates, who questioned its legality. “This was aimed squarely at Americans,” said Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “That’s very significant from a constitutional perspective.”
Holder halted the data collection in September 2013 amid the fallout from Snowden’s revelations about other surveillance programs.
Again folks, this was the drug war. If there’s anyone but Nancy Reagan who still thinks that ridiculous program was ever worth spending more than a dollar and change on I don’t know who it is.
And lest we think Holder’s belated decision to end the program once it was revealed that the US Government was routinely spying on just about everyone shows that the government is responsible, take a look at what’s going on in one local police department to see just how pervasive this Orwellian system really is:
On Black Friday, 2014, the biggest shopping day of the year, hundreds of protesters marched to Wicker Park, a trendy neighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side. It was the third stop in a day-long march from one commercial district to the next: starting at downtown’s Magnificent Mile, then heading north to an Apple Store, then west. Four days after the grand jury decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown, the event was part of a nationwide action decrying complacent consumerism in the face of a national tragedy. Wicker Park’s retail epicenter seemed an appropriate place to go.
A Chicago police officer, however, couldn’t figure out the route. He took to his radio and called in a request to the local “fusion center,” the Chicago Police Department (CPD) intelligence hub. “One of the girls, she’s kind of an organizer here, she’s been on her phone a lot. You guys picking up any information, uh, where they’re going, possibly?” the officer asked.
“Yeah, we’re keeping an eye on it.”
The conversation was quick, but when the audio from the call leaked online, activists saw proof of something they’d long suspected: Chicago police were tracking their cell phones, using a controversial new technology.
The StingRay—both a brand name and a generic term—is a suitcase-sized device that acts as a wiretap for the wireless age. But while a wiretap monitors a single line, a stingray acts like a roving cell phone tower, vacuuming in data from all nearby phones, tablets and other wireless devices. This includes call history and current and previous locations. Enhanced stingrays can also record and eavesdrop on phone calls.
An assortment of add-ons are now available: The FishHawk listens in on calls; the Harpoon broadens the StingRay’s range; the AmberJack antenna helps pinpoint individual phones; the KingFish analyzes call patterns, doing in one stroke what might have taken Detective Lester Freamon an entire season of The Wire to accomplish.
U.S. military and intelligence agencies developed stingray technology in the 1990s, and police departments began using it as early as 2003. Before receiving StingRays, police departments must sign non-disclosure agreements. It wasn’t until 2011, when the FBI presented information gathered from a stingray in court, that domestic use of the devices came to public attention. Civil liberties groups immediately sounded the alarm.
The ACLU says stingrays violate privacy rights because they capture information from every phone in the vicinity, not just a suspect’s. There are also concerns regarding Fourth Amendment restrictions on unreasonable search and seizure, since stingrays can penetrate the walls of a home and track a person’s movements even while inside.
The ACLU has identified at least 48 state and local law enforcement agencies that are using stingrays. While the Harris Corporation, maker of the StingRay brand device, assured the FCC the devices were for emergency use only (because they interfere with cell networks), the few available examples of their deployment show they are used for routine police work—and to spy on peaceful activists.
But hey, if you aren’t a peace activist you’ve got nothing to worry about, amirite? If you don’t want to have the police monitoring your calls, don’t be in the vicinity of someone who might be committing a crime or participating in political activity. And don’t worry, the police never make mistakes or engage in corruption so “good guys” like you have nothing to be concerned about. There are no innocent people in jail.
Of all the denial, delusion and hypocrisy among gun proliferation activists around the nation, this latest report from Rachel Maddow takes the cake:
The National Rifle Association’s annual convention kicks off in Nashville this week, with 70,000 people expected to participate in the three-day gathering.
Attendees can expect to find the usual NRA fare and exhibitors at the 350,000-square-foot Music City Center, but they shouldn’t expect to find functioning weapons. The Tennessean reports this week on the “multilevel security plan,” which includes an important safety measure: “All guns on the convention floor will be nonoperational, with the firing pins removed, and any guns purchased during the NRA convention will have to be picked up at a Federal Firearms License dealer, near where the purchaser lives, and will require a legal identification.”
The devil is in the details here. It is apparently common practice to remove the operational aspects of firearms on the floor of a gun show, one presumes in order to avoid the unpleasantness of someone accidentally killing a conventioneer. Maddow also reported that while the convention was going to ban operational firearms in the convention, it planned to allow them in the hall where the speeches would take place.
The NRA has gone to some lengths to explain that they are simply following Tennessee state law which allows those with a permit to open carry and also allows venues to ban firearms if it chooses. But let’s not kid ourselves: They would prefer it if they could let everyone carry fully loaded bazookas and M-16s, but they are restrained by the State’s jackbooted thugs from doing so.
Still it’s somewhat amusing that the National Rifle Association does not allow working firearms at their own convention, and that they would hold it in a state which requires gun permits and allows the banning of guns in public places. One would naturally assume from their propaganda that they would go someplace with looser gun laws under the assumption that their gathering would be the most polite convention in history, what with all the “good guys with guns” there to stop any “bad guys with guns.”
A Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, Donna Edwards, pledged on Thursday to swear off all campaign donations from Wall Street banks, the latest Democrat to assail big financial institutions.
Edwards, who sits in the U.S. House of Representatives, is vying for the Democratic nomination in Maryland along with fellow Representative Chris Van Hollen. She said she was “outraged” by a Reuters report that major Wall Street banks had met to discuss ways to urge Democrats such as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to soften their tone against the financial sector.
“Wall Street won’t be happy until Democrats stop listening to progressives like me and Elizabeth Warren – and instead carry out orders from the biggest banks in the world,” Edwards wrote in a campaign announcement that slammed “massive Wall Street corporations” she said had crashed the U.S. economy during the 2007-2009 financial crisis.
Edwards urged Van Hollen, the leading Democrat on the House Budget Committee, to also forgo Wall Street donations. The election is in November 2016.
The announcement is a victory for the advocacy group Democracy for America, founded by former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who lost a bid for the presidential nomination to John Kerry in 2004. The group has been lobbying candidates to forswear Wall Street donations.
“If Democrats want to prove that they’re not owned by Wall Street bullies, it starts by making clear that you can’t be bought and we’re hopeful that other House and Senate candidates will join Donna Edwards in boldly speaking out,” said Jim Dean, the group’s chairman.
I hope Sachs is right and the people will rally to the cause. Democracy is the only tool we have to fight the malefactors of great wealthy and it has to be employed skillfully. Electing people like Edwards is hugely important.
But if she’s eschewing Wall Street money she’s going to need progressives to step up. You can do that here.
The shooting of yet another unarmed, black man this week in North Charleston continues to plague the mind. Rather than pursue the unarmed man on foot, Officer Michael Slager is seen in the witness video drawing his weapon and firing at the fleeing man until he is brought down. Over a broken taillight. For three black men recently, “misdemeanors became capital offenses,” writes Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post:
But it doesn’t take data analysis to realize that when police treat communities like occupied territory — and routinely automatically classify black men as suspects — the opportunity for tragedy grows exponentially.
Walter Scott’s broken taillight was an excuse, not an offense. Slager knew that Scott had to be guilty of something. It was just a matter of finding out what that black man’s crime might be.
Because living in a poorer neighborhood has itself become a crime in this country, especially if one is black. We worship wealth here, or didn’t you know? By definition, the poor are sinners.
Emily Badger of the Post’s Wonkblog writes that from drug-testing aid recipients to passing new laws restricting what foods the the poor can buy with SNAP benefits, the odd double standard applied to government support for the poor raises several questions about why, one of them moral:
We rarely make similar demands of other recipients of government aid. We don’t drug-test farmers who receive agriculture subsidies (lest they think about plowing while high!). We don’t require Pell Grant recipients to prove that they’re pursuing a degree that will get them a real job one day (sorry, no poetry!). We don’t require wealthy families who cash in on the home mortgage interest deduction to prove that they don’t use their homes as brothels (because surely someone out there does this). The strings that we attach to government aid are attached uniquely for the poor.
At Salon, Alex Henderson offers seven cases of cruelty towards the poor becoming the new normal. He begins with this story:
In Portland, the courts spent months prosecuting a homeless woman for—of all things—using an electrical outlet in a sidewalk planter box to charge her cell phone in July. The woman, who the website Street Roots News identified as “Jackie” (she didn’t want her real name used), was charged with theft. And when “Jackie” missed her arraignment (she was homeless, after all), a bench warrant was issued. Months later, she turned herself into police and spent a night in jail. “Jackie” (who had never been arrested before) was offered a plea bargain, which she turned down because she was on a waiting list for housing and feared that having a criminal record would jeopardize her chance at putting a roof over her head. Eventually, the theft charge was dropped, but the very fact that “Jackie” was arrested and prosecuted in the first place shows that the “throw the peasants in the Bastille” mentality is alive and well in the U.S.
Missouri’s proposed surf-and-turf law prohibits food-stamp recipients from using them to purchase, among other things, seafood or steak. This might include prohibiting the poor from purchasing canned tuna. (Sorry, Charlie.) Where’s a seafood industry lobbyist when you really need one?
The surf-and-turf bill is one of a flurry of new legislative proposals at the state and local level to dehumanize and even criminalize the poor as the country deals with the high-poverty hangover of the Great Recession.
We kiss up and kick down here. Steal trillions through your too-big-to-fail bank, and at most you’ll draw a fine. Plug in a cell phone on the street and go to jail if you’re lucky enough not to be tasered or shot. The new impoverishment is one of the soul.
Remember when Tucker Carlson’s idiot brother sent this disgusting email the other day?
Whiny little self-righteous bitch. “Appalling?” And with such an ironic name, too… Spitalnick? Ironic because you just know she has extreme dick-fright; no chance has this girl ever had a pearl necklace. Spoogeneck? I don’t think so. More like LabiaFace.
Given a chance to distance himself from such woman-hatred, Tucker Carlson declined, telling BuzzFeed of his brother’s language: “I just talked to my brother about his response, and he assures me he meant it in the nicest way.”
In his chat with C-SPAN’s John McArdle, Tucker Carlson summed things up this way: “So she, recognizing a publicity opportunity, sent it to all these websites that printed it and all of a sudden I was somehow a misogynist because my brother wrote some mean e-mail to this chick accidentally. Or something. No one was ever asked to explain why this was a significant story.”
Carlson is an especially proficient purveyor of a very special kind of right wing provocation. He’s a quintessential Mean Girl, king of the smug, sanctimonious defense with a wink and a nod to creeps like his brother. Eddie Haskell meets Cruella deVille.
He pretends here to be very confused as to why simply making harmless workplace jokes about women using terms like “sploogeface” should be a cause for controversy:
Tucker Carlson says that the episode has affected Buckley Carlson. “It really affected his job and he had all kinds of problems as a result….For some reason it became, like, this big thing because, I guess, they don’t like my politics or something. I really don’t know, but it was an accident and he apologized for it and I don’t really see why it was a big news story.”
The woman who is the subject of that hideous email says he’s never apologized.
The reason it’s a significant story, of course, is that Carlson’s brother wrote a bogus story for Carlson’s magazine and the magazine refused to correct it. Carlson’s brother called the person who was asking for the retraction names in an email and sent it to her. When it was publicly revealed, Carlson defended him with a puerile wisecrack thus proving that this magazine not only hires puerile idiots it is being run by an overgrown 12 year old boy who has serious issues with women. (This is not surprising to anyone who has followed Carlson’s career over the years.)
One can only imagine what it must be like for women who work there if they have the nerve to get uppity. One can also only imagine how much liability Carlson’s magazine must be facing if any of those women decide they’ve had enough.
This Senate Iran bill may shape up to be one of those very important votes that really clarifies how certain people lean when it comes to war and peace, particularly in the middle east. This whip list from The Hill is something to bookmark and keep your eye on:
The bill drafted by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) requires Obama to submit any agreement to Congress along with verification that Iran is complying with the terms.
Obama would be barred from eliminating any sanctions on Iran for two months to give Congress time to debate the deal. The president would need to send updates on Iran’s compliance every 90 days with any breach leading to a fast-tracked vote to restore sanctions.
But The White House and liberal groups are pushing Democrats to not support the measure. The bill was dealt a blow when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) came out in opposition on Wednesday.
Obama also called Corker on Wednesday to sell him on the framework agreement reached last week by international negotiators.
Some Democrats are seeking changes to the bill. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) offered an amendment Wednesday that would strip measures linking sanctions to Iranian support for terrorism.
The Foreign Affairs panel is expected to approve the measure next Tuesday, but the level of Democratic support could be crucial. It is unclear when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will bring it up for a floor vote.
Here is a list of how Democratic senators are expected to vote on the Corker-Menendez measure. The Hill will update this list continually.
Yes (8)
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) — Bennet is a co-sponsor of the bill.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) — Blumenthal is a co-sponsor of the bill.
Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) — Donnelly is a co-sponsor of the bill.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) — Menendez is temporarily stepping down as the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee as he faces federal corruption charges. He will remain a member of the panel, but his legal issues could complicate the push for the Iran bill. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who is taking over his leadership role, has yet to support the measure.
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) — Heitkamp is a co-sponsor.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) — Kaine, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, is a co-sponsor of the bill.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) — King is a co-sponsor of the bill but has warned against it being used as a political weapon against the president.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) — Schumer, the next in line to become Senate Democratic leader, co-sponsored the bill before the congressional recess. “I strongly believe Congress should have the right to disapprove any agreement and I support the Corker bill which would allow that to occur,” he said in a statement Monday, reaffirming his support.
Undecided (7)
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) — Cardin, who is taking over the Democratic leadership spot on the Foreign Affairs panel temporarily for Sen. Menendez, has not formally backed the bill. “He is working on language to ensure that the legislation is consistent with the agreement negotiated,” said a spokesperson.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) — The Senate Foreign Relations member offered an amendment Wednesday that would remove measures tied to Iran’s support for terrorism against the U.S. He told Politico earlier this week that his backing “depends on the changes made to the bill, and it depends on the level of engagement on the White House.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) — Gillibrand is open to backing Corker-Menendez with changes, according to a report in Politico.
Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) — Manchin has yet to make a decision, according to a spokesman. “He is planning to get more briefings and speak with his colleagues once he gets back to DC,” said Jonathan Kott in a statement.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) — Aides told Politico McCaskill is open to voting for the bill if there are changes.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) — “Sen. Nelson is an original cosponsor of the bill and he’s intending to make some modifications that will be acceptable to the White House,” Ryan Brown, Nelson’s press secretary, said in a statement.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.)
No (10)
Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.) — Boxer is pushing her own bill that allows Congress to quickly reinstate any eased sanctions if Iran breaks the nuclear deal. She also sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and on Wednesday called on Corker to delay the vote.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio)
Sen. Tom Carper (Del.) — Carper does not support Corker-Menendez. “He thinks Congress should have a role, but this preferred way is outlined in the bill he sponsored with Sen. Boxer last month,” Carper press secretary Rob Runyan told The Hill. Carper is also a sponsor of Boxer’s bill.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) — The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence panel told CNN’s “State of the Union” that she would not support the current version of the bill.
Sen. Al Franken (Minn.) — “Sen. Franken believes that Congress has a very important role to play, but he does not support the Corker bill as it stands,” said press secretary Michael Dale-Stein.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (N.M.) — Heinrich is a co-sponsor of Boxer’s Iran bill.
Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) — Murphy, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, opposes any Iran votes while negotiations are ongoing.
Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.) — “Congress should allow the hard work of diplomacy to continue and not try to derail the next steps in the negotiation,” said the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee in a statement after the framework deal was announced. “We should not give Iran an excuse to walk away or fracture the international coalition.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii) — Schatz is a co-sponsor of Sen. Boxer’s alternate Iran bill.
Sen. Tom Udall (N.M.) — “Sen. Udall will look at any modifications that are proposed or made to the Corker bill, but the timing is a problem regardless. As it stands now, he opposes the bill,” said a spokesperson. Udall sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Democrats will excuse their vote for this by saying it’s just a “process” vote to allow the Senate a say in such an important vote. But they know they are actually interfering in delicate negotiations by doing this and they know that if they get involved to the extent the Corker bill anticipates, the deal will likely fall apart because the Senate will vote it down. They know that by voting with the Republicans they will be helping them get what they want which is more war.
They all have their local issues to deal with. We get that. But this is war and peace. It’s about nuclear proliferation. It’s arguably worse than voting for the Iraq war since the consequences are so grave. A vote against a peace agreement in the middle east is unforgivable. Let’s hope the liberals in the congress can save these warmongering Democrats from themselves.
Is mass surveillance to fight the War on Drugs ok too?
by digby
I’m going to guess that everyone who thinks mass government surveillance for “terrorism” is a-ok must think this is ok too?
Secret mass surveillance conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration is falling under renewed scrutiny after fresh revelations about the broad scope of the agency’s electronic spying.
Citing anonymous current and former officials “involved with the operation,” USA Today reported that Americans’ calls were logged between the United States and targeted countries and regions including Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America.
The DEA’s data dragnet was apparently shut down by Attorney General Eric Holder in September 2013. But on Wednesday, following USA Today’s report, Human Rights Watch launched a lawsuit against the DEA over its bulk collection of phone records and is seeking a retrospective declaration that the surveillance was unlawful.
The latest revelations shine more light on the broad scope of the DEA’s involvement in mass surveillance programs, which can be traced back to a secret program named “Project Crisscross” in the early 1990s, as The Intercept previously revealed.
Documents from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, published by The Intercept in August last year, showed that the DEA was involved in collecting and sharing billions of phone records alongside agencies such as the NSA, the CIA and the FBI.
The vast program reported on by USA Today shares some of the same hallmarks of Project Crisscross: it began in the early 1990s, was ostensibly aimed at gathering intelligence about drug trafficking, and targeted countries worldwide, with focus on Central and South America.
It is also reminiscent of the so-called Hemisphere Project, a DEA operation revealed in September 2013 by The New York Times, which dated as far back as 1987, and used subpoenas to collect vast amounts of international call records every day.
There is crossover, too, with a DEA database called DICE, revealed by Reuters in August 2013, which reportedly contains phone and Internet communication records gathered by the DEA through subpoenas and search warrants nationwide.
The precise relationship between Crisscross, DICE, Hemisphere and the surveillance program revealed by USA Today is unclear. Whether or not they were part of a single overarching operation, the phone records and other data collected by each were likely accessible to DEA agents through the same computer interfaces and search and analysis tools.
That’s a wonderful use of government personnel and such an extremely important priority considering how successful the War on Drugs has been over all these years. Lord knows that ignoring the constitution for such a purpose is totally worthwhile. But I’m sure grateful the DOJ has finally seen fit to close down one of these programs. It sure must have been complicated to do it since it tooks so long.
This is the thing I’ve never understood about people’s casual attitude about all this surveillance. They seem to think that the Al Capone logic of government agents finding any crime they can to put someone behind bars couldn’t possibly apply to them and will only be used against real “bad guys.” But the Drug War should show if nothing else does that these agencies have a need to perpetuate themselves and will use whatever means at their disposal to ensure a steady supply of bad guys. These mass surveillance programs basically give them a permanent record of everyone’s activity just in case they need to find some evidence of something against a person they want to target. And you may never even know that’s what they did since they routinely lie about how they were informed of certain crimes citing the need to protect their confidential informants which can very well be the secret government program that’s collecting all your information.
It’s crazy. If you don’t think the government should be allowed to scan every piece of mail that goes through the post office and keep it on file just in case they might “need” to sift through it and find something in your past or among your associations to use against you, you shouldn’t be so sanguine about this stuff. These things could happen. They have happened.
Runferyerlives! The nannies and gardeners are coming!
by digby
I’d love to know exactly what kind of “threat” all these people believe illegal immigration presents to America:
Nearly half of Americans think that people picking their strawberries, babysitting their kids, and washing their dishes is threatening. Over a quarter of them think it’s an “imminent” threat of … what?
I’d guess most of those folks believe that having “foreigners” in the land of the free is just scary no matter what.
Still, even with all that, what surprises me the most is that only 10% said that illegal immigration was no threat at all. Huh?
My piece at Salon today discusses the disturbing news that Dick Cheney’s ghost is walking the halls of congress in the guise of Tom Cotton — and Dick himself is back on the road pimping his new book — and war, of course.
Move over Lindsey Graham and John McCain, there’s a new bellicose sheriff in town. He may be just 38 years old and his only prior jobs of note might have been as a low-level officer in the military and a one term congressman; but now that he’s been in the US Senate for three months, Tom Cotton evidently sees himself as a geopolitical and military genius, the GOPs new leader on national security.
Cotton appeared on a conservative radio show this week to assure Republicans that a hypothetical war with Iran would be a cakewalk:
COTTON: Even if military action were required – and we certainly should have kept the credible threat of military force on the table, it always improves diplomacy – the president is trying to make you think it would be 150,000 heavy mechanized troops on the ground in the Middle East again as we saw in Iraq. That’s simply not the case.
It would be something more along the lines of what President Clinton did in December 1998 during Operation Desert Fox. Several days of air and naval bombing against Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction facilities for exactly the same kind of behavior, for interfering with weapons inspectors and for disobeying Security Council resolutions. All we’re asking is that the president simply be as tough in the protection of America’s national security interests as Bill Clinton was.
As my colleague Simon Maloy observed yesterday, Cotton obviously believes he is being especially clever by evoking Bill Clinton as an allegedly “tough” protector of America’s national security interest with his allusion to Operation Desert Fox back in 1998, but in fact the history shows that Clinton’s action was seen by Republicans at the time as a cowardly case of wagging the dog. (In his defense Cotton was still a teenager and was undoubtedly more interested in the lurid details of the Starr Report which was in all the headlines at the time.)
I was going to write about the collapse of the Democratic Party in the Senate (thanks, Harry Reid; you too, Patty Murray), but I think I’ll save that. The other news is this — the battle over water in California. This isn’t a drought story. It’s a story about money, power and the “next oil” — in other words, another “free” market story.
First bottom line — If you live in Los Angeles or San Diego, your governor is giving your water to the growers. Because, capitalism. I’ll explain why after the quote. Also, bribery. You’ll see why if you read the quote. To get you started, listen to this great Chris Hayes segment.
Now some thoughts.
California and the Southwest Have Reached Peak Water
The first part of this story is the squeeze. Peak water has been passed in the American Southwest. California — its population and its economy (both) — will be more and more under the pressure of less and less. This will continue, whether we successfully address climate change or not, through the year 2100 at least. The most we can do to address climate change — James Hansen’s “literal stop now” scenario, a mental exercise — returns atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm by 2100, after a mid-century peak. That’s the boundary case. See Figure 5B below and follow the dashed green line. (And notice, please, that if we continue with “business as usual” until 2050 and then stop dead — I know, there are no “dead stops” in the carbon emissions world — CO2 goes to more than 500 ppm.)
Figure 4. Decay of atmospheric CO2 perturbations.
(A) Instantaneous injection or extraction of CO2
with initial conditions at equilibrium. (B) Fossil fuel emissions
terminate at the end of 2015, 2030, or 2050 and land use emissions
terminate after 2015 in all three cases, i.e., thereafter there is no
net deforestation. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081648.g004
Here’s a description of the “squeeze” from the Daily Beast (my emphasis):
How Growers Gamed California’s Drought
Consuming
80 percent of California’s developed water but accounting for only 2
percent of the state’s GDP, agriculture thrives while everyone else is
parched.
“I’ve been smiling all the way to the bank,” said pistachio farmer
John Dean at a conference hosted this month by Paramount Farms, the
mega-operation owned by Stewart Resnick, a Beverly Hills billionaire
known for his sprawling agricultural holdings, controversial water
dealings, and millions of dollars in campaign contributions
to high-powered California politicians including Governor Jerry Brown,
former governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis, and U.S. Senator
Dianne Feinstein.
The record drought
now entering its fourth year in California has alarmed the public, left
a number of rural communities without drinking water, and triggered
calls for mandatory rationing. … Nevertheless, some large-scale farmers are enjoying extraordinary
profits despite the drought, thanks in part to infusions of what experts
call dangerously under-priced water.
We’ll deal with that phrase “dangerously under-priced water” in a moment. Danger and disaster indeed lurk in one word in that phrase. It’s not “under” and it’s not “water.” But back to our first story:
Resnick, whose legendary marketing flair included hiring Stephen
Colbert to star in a 2014 Super Bowl commercial, told the conference
that pistachios generated an average net return of $3,519 per acre in 2014, based on a
record wholesale price of $3.53 a pound. Almonds, an even “thirstier”
crop, averaged $1,431 per acre. … At the end of the day, conference attendees filed
out to the sounds of Louis Armstrong singing, “It’s a Wonderful World.” …
Now keep that 80% of the water vs. 2% of the state’s GDP ratio in mind:
Although no secret, agriculture’s 80 percent share of state water use is
rarely mentioned in media discussions of California’s drought. Instead,
news coverage concentrates on the drought’s implications for people in
cities and suburbs, which is where most journalists and their audiences
live. Thus recent headlines warned that state regulators have ordered
restaurants to serve water only if customers explicitly request it and
directed homeowners to water lawns no more than twice a week. The San Jose Mercury News pointed
out that these restrictions carry no enforcement mechanisms, but what
makes them a sideshow is simple math: During a historic drought, surely
the sector that’s responsible for 80 percent of water
consumption—agriculture—should be the main focus of public attention and
policy.
But isn’t. Why?
For years, California was the only state in the arid West that set no
limits on how much groundwater a property owner could extract from a
private well. Thus nearly everyone and their neighbors in the Central
Valley have been drilling deeper and deeper wells in recent years,
seeking to offset reductions in state and federal water deliveries. This
agricultural version of an arms race not only favors big corporate
enterprises over smaller farmers, it threatens to collapse the aquifers
whose groundwater is keeping California alive during this drought and
will be needed to endure future droughts. (Groundwater supplies about 40
percent of the state’s water in years of normal precipitation but
closer to 60 percent in dry years.)
But when it comes to fixing the problem, this happens:
Last fall, the legislature passed and Governor Brown signed a bill to
regulate groundwater extraction. But the political touchiness of the
issue—agricultural interests lobbied hard against it—resulted in a
leisurely implementation timetable. Although communities must complete
plans for sustainable water management by 2020, not until 2040 must
sustainability actually be achieved. The Central Valley could be a dust
bowl by then under current trends.
So that’s the problem statement. Not enough water as far into the future as you can look. Now the solutions. Careful; this is even less pretty.
Will the “Free” Market or Government Control Water Allocation?
This is a tricky question, since government always has control. The question really is, will government surrender control to the billionaires and other capitalists — the “free” market — or take control in the name of the people … actual people? To answer this question, go back through the Daily Beast article and using your Search In Page function, highlight every instance of the word “price,” then read. For example:
[A] modern capitalist economy values a given commodity only as much as
the price of that commodity. Current pricing structures enrich a handful
of interests, but they are ushering the state as a whole toward a
parched and perilous future.
The price of water, however, is not determined by inalterable market
forces; it is primarily a function of government policies and the social
forces that shape them. Elected officials may dodge the question for
now, but the price of water seems destined to become an unavoidable
issue in California politics. “As our water supply gets more variable
and scarce in the future, we’re going to have to look at how we price
water so it gets used more efficiently,” said Cooley of the Pacific
Institute.
There’s more like that in the article. Now consider:
If “price” is used to allocate water, the rich will have more. This includes billionaire farmers and farming corporations like those named in the first quote in this piece. It also includes the masters of google and the enclaves of their workers … only.
If “price” is used to allocate water use, the ones who will drink last will be the poor, just like they eat last and get medicine last in our “free” market economy.
The rallying cry of water privatizers, a multi-billion-dollar global industry, is “properly priced water.” When you hear that, you know the privatizers are at the door.
About using price as a “given” for water allocation, consider this from Forbes:
Of Course Water Should Be Properly Priced: How Else Should We Ration Things?
Whatever the charges per unit to households (adjusting, of course, to
the fact that a household will want water that’s been treated more
thoroughly, the costs of the pipeline network to each house and so on)
the price of a unit of water should be equal over all uses. Because
that’s how we then get the allocation of water to the use of the
greatest value. Porter goes on to point out that San Diego is
desalinating water at $2,000 per acre foot while not that many miles
away farmers are lathering it on fields at an implied force of $920 an
acre foot. This is crazed nonsense. Move the farmers’ water to San Diego
and the world is a richer places by $1080 per acre foot that is moved.
And if it’s moved from the Imperial district then it’s near entirely a
pure gain in wealth.
As is always true when we move an asset or resource from a lower to a
higher valued use. It’s the very definition of wealth creation. …
You’ll hunt in vain for a Forbes mention of the social good, or the most good for the most people. Yet “properly priced water” is seen as the solution, including in an indirect way, in the Chris Hayes segment above. Relisten now that you’ve read this and you’ll see what I mean.
Did Government Use the “Free” Market to Build Tanks in WWII?
The answer to that question is blindingly obvious. Of course not. The Forbes writer asks, in effect, “How else do we allocate water?” Answer: In the old fashioned way — by government telling people what to do. Yes, this is “picking winners and losers,” but government will pick losers anyway if it picks the “free” (billionaire-controlled) market and hands the answer to those who will pick themselves as the only winners. There’s a “free” market for labor. Do you feel free? When there’s a “free” (properly priced) market for water, will you feel fairly treated, relative to, say, Stewart Resnick, the billionaire grower from the quote at the top?
So the second problem, worse than the drought, is capture of the water supply by the wealthy, because drought, especially drought, is a profit opportunity of the first water (so to speak), and the wolves, those who supply politicians with their jobs and financing, are circling.
World’s ten largest privatized-water companies (source)
… [W]ater is still abusively undervalued relative to its real economic worth, so huge room exists for asset price expansion. Combined with the vigorous market drivers, shown below, that are now becoming globally and undeniably apparent, hydrocommerce presents a very compelling investment theme for the predictable future.
Supply/Demand Imbalances
• Available fresh water is less than ½ of 1% of all the water on earth. 6.5 billion people now compete [my emphasis] for this finite resource, with 8 billion by 2025.
• 80% of the global population relies on groundwater supplies that are dangerously depleted, if not exhausted, as they are mined beyond natural replenishment.
• Pollution and climate change further exacerbate supply shortages, damaging vulnerable resources and causing drought and desertification at an alarming rate.
• Per capita water consumption has roughly doubled in the last century, a rate that will accelerate as more economies industrialize and populations become more urban. …
And it gets worse. Just read. These people are predators, and they’re gaining power. And why wouldn’t they? With “free market” ideology a given, a known-good, and droughts as far as the next century mark, they’re in a perfect position to do well, so long as they keep control of government, including Jerry Brown’s government.
Will Californians Let Their Government Give Water To the Wealthy or the People?
So here’s your other bottom line. Because until we get a true “national emergency” economy, and that economy is bent to serve the “rest of us” first instead of the rich, we won’t have solutions to the first of a cascading list of problems.
But don’t lose heart; this isn’t over. It’s just that it’s time for an “Easter Island solution” in which we depose the chief — meaning the masters of the “free” market, as explained here. The longer we wait, the worse the “best case” solution becomes. Government’s gotta serve somebody.
