I thought these were the bad old days. Now they’re beginning to seem like a more innocent time:
The Bush-Cheney White House and the media went nuts after 9/11 and then deviously used the event to further long-standing geopolitical goals. Now we would have Trump, Flynn, Bannon, Sessions, Kobach and all manner of authoritarian, extremist imbeciles running around doing God knows what. That combination is even more lethal than Cheney and his band of neoconservative wetdreamers. And the neoconservative wetdreamers were very, very lethal.
The Republicans have now completely abandoned all pretense of democratic norms. We know that Trump has no intention of avoiding conflict of interest . He’s going to run his company out of the White House and become the richest man in the world. Nobody will stop him — what’s good for Trump is good for the USA.
Newt Gingrich said on NPR today that Trump could appoint his children to White House jobs and then simply pardon them in advance. Why not? The president has the power to do it, half the people would complain and the other half would shrug and after some handwringing we’d all move along to the next outrageous stunt.
There is this, but I doubt it would matter:
Rehm asked Richard Painter, President George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007, for his reaction to Gingrich’s comments.
“There is no billionaire exception in the Constitution of the United States,” Painter said, adding later: “The pardon power can not be used by the president to pardon himself, or to cause other members of his administration to engage in illegal conduct or unconstitutional conduct and then simply use the pardon power in that way. If the pardon power allows that, the pardon power allows the president to become a dictator.”
That would be correct. Of courses the founders probably assumed the congress would impeach such a person but they didn’t anticipate the former constitution revering Republican party of 2016, did they? They assumed that there would always be people who put the country first and even if they didn’t, they’d put the prerogatives of their own branch of government ahead of loyalty to the president.
Oops.
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Seriously. They believe they keep us from overusing the medical system:
“There’s definitely going to be changes in the health care delivery system,” said U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland. “We can’t just continue to squeeze providers to say this is how we are going to save money. It’s forcing health care providers … into some very different actions that in most people’s opinion is unhealthy.”
Instead, Huizenga says more responsibility needs to shift to the shoulders of patients to reduce costs. One way to do that is having them pay a bigger share of their medical expenses by increasing their insurance deductibles and incentivizing them to use HSAs, health savings accounts, to sock away pre-tax money to pay medical bills.
“At some point or another we have to be responsible or have a part of the responsibility of what is going on,” Huizenga said. “Way too often, people pull out their insurance card and they say ‘I don’t know the difference or cost between an X-ray or an MRI or CT Scan.’ I might make a little different decision if I did know (what) some of those costs were and those costs came back to me.”
The father of five offered a personal example of how this shift might play out. He says his youngest son fell and injured his arm. Not sure if it was sprained or broken, he and his wife decided to wait until the next morning to take the 10-year-old to the doctor’s office, instead of going to the emergency room that night. The arm was broken.
“We took every precaution but decided to go in the next morning (because of) the cost difference,” Huizenga said. “If he had been more seriously injured, we would have taken him in. … When it (comes to) those type of things, do you keep your child home from school and take him the next morning to the doctor because of a cold or a flu, versus take him into the emergency room? If you don’t have a cost difference, you’ll make different decisions.”
The man let his 10 year old son suffer all night with an un-set arm because he didn’t want to pay for the emergency room visit. For all he knew there could have been a nerve or blood vessel injury or a fat embolism (all of which I found simply by googling.) Not to mention pain. Broken bones are very painful, even if they are simple. What kind of sadist would do that to his own kid? It’s medieval.
I had thought that maybe the GOP was just bluffing on repeal and replace because it’s really stupid and they would do some “abracadabra” phony changes and then just call it Trumpcare. But that’s not going to happen. They really believe this nonsense.
I wish I understood why people who are already squeezed financially vote for this stuff. But the sad fact is that they’re so angry that people they believe to be “undeserving” are allowed to access medical care that are willing to suffer themselves.
And some of them are just cruel, heartless people:
I know I’m supposed to feel empathy for them and I’m trying. I wonder when someone is going to ask the same of them?
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The chief of staff to Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson issued a public apology Sunday for his responsibility in having a cedar tree cut down at Public Safety Memorial Park Friday and transported to Ladd-Peebles Stadium as a prop during President-elect Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday.
Colby Cooper, who has been Stimpson’s chief of staff since 2013, said he became “overzealous” in making sure “every detail was covered and the expectations” of Trump’s team were exceeded ahead of Saturday’s televised rally.
Here’s what the jerk who did it said:
Yesterday’s visit by President-Elect Trump to the City of Mobile was an incredible opportunity to showcase our City and offer a great event to those attending.
In preparing for this event, I worked closely with the advance team. In an effort to make sure every detail was covered and the expectations of the President-Elect’s team were exceeded, I became overzealous.
I now know there are citizens who are upset and offended that a tree from a City park was used as part of the decorations for the event. I accept full responsibility for having this done.
For this, I sincerely apologize. Going forward, I will be more sensitive to the spectrum of concerns regarding trees.”
– Colby Cooper, Chief of Staff, City of Mobile
That little event sums up so many of Trump’s supporters. They are cheapskates who take anything they want without regard to their fellow citizens, all in the name of venerating their leader. And when someone objects they respond with juvenile commentary worthy of a snotty tween.
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It looks like we’re about to get another round of 2016’s most successful game show, “Here Comes the Pivot.” Over and over throughout the campaign, the press would seize upon certain moments that seemed to provide a perfect excuse for Donald Trump to finally turn into the dignified, disciplined candidate many pundits apparently believed he was underneath all the bluster.
As I get closer and closer to the goal, it’s gonna get different. I will be changing very rapidly. I’m very capable of changing to anything I want to change to.
After years of hearing everyone in the political world insist that “authenticity” is the most valued trait in any leader, this was a bit startling and even refreshing in a way. Here you had a candidate openly admitting that he was putting on an act. Unfortunately, the crude, brazen, insulting persona persisted. Apparently, Trump’s promise that he could control his behavior was actually another example of his deceit.
Nonetheless, Republicans all assured the public that Trump was going to pivot — any day now — and members of the press eagerly accepted the promise. When he was head of the Republican National Committee and not yet Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus told George Stephanopoulos:
I think as he pivots to the general election, picking Mike Pence, I think he’s much more precise in his rhetoric, in his tone, in his attack, I think he’s got a lot of room to grow. . . . He knows the pivot is important. He has been better and I think he’s going to be great moving forward. . . . I mean, if people — No. 1, who do you want to have a beer with is a — is a great question on the ballot. He can win that. He’s likable. And people that don’t know — they want to like him. He’s interesting to people. He’s intriguing. But they want to see that Donald Trump in the White House. And he’s getting there and he’s going to pivot there.
I am fairly sure that’s the only time anyone has ever described Trump as the guy you want to have a beer with. He doesn’t drink but more than that he truly believes that people do not see him as an equal and that’s why they like him. Explaining why he didn’t do the one-on-one-style campaigning in living rooms and diners that candidates usually pursue in Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump said, “I think if they ever saw me sitting in their living rooms they’d lose total respect for me.” He told Time magazine:
I’m sitting in an apartment the likes of which nobody’s ever seen. And yet I represent the workers of the world. And they love me and I love them. I think people aspire to do things. And they aspire to watch people. I don’t think they want to see the president carrying his luggage out of Air Force One. And that’s pretty much the way it is.
And to think poor John Kerry was excoriated for drinking green tea and asking for Swiss cheese instead of Cheez Whiz. After all those years of believing that real Americans demand a leader who was a down-to-earth regular guy who understood their deepest needs, it turns out that what they really wanted was a king.
Needless to say, Trump did not make that Priebus pivot to salt-of-the-earth, regular dude. Instead, he channeled Popeye the Sailor Man in mid-August, saying, “I don’t want to pivot. . . . If you start pivoting, you’re not being honest with people. No, I am who I am.” A few days later he gave a speech, obviously written by someone else, that sounded like an allocution — a statement of guilt made along with a plea bargain.
Sometimes in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that. And believe it or not I regret it.
The press was rapturous. The long-awaited pivot had finally arrived. It even featured a public apology, which media representatives demand from politicians on a regular basis as a self-abnegation ritual. This speech set the tone for the final stretch of the campaign, in which it was assumed that because Trump avoided the press and (sort of) used a teleprompter, he was “moderating” his stand on his most contentious issues, despite no evidence that he was actually doing that.
There was no pivot. There has never been a pivot. There is just Trump saying whatever he wants to say, which might be different from one day to the next but this never represents a tactical or strategic shift. And media outlets have not learned this lesson. Over the past couple of weeks, Trump has been taking his victory lap around the states that he won in the election. And he’s been saying this:
You people were vicious, violent, screaming, “Where’s the wall? We want the wall!” Screaming, “Prison! Prison! Lock her up!” I mean you are going crazy. I mean, you were nasty and mean and vicious and you wanted to win, right? But now, you’re mellow and you’re cool and you’re not nearly as vicious or violent, right? Because we won, right?
This comment was interpreted in the following manner by Martha Raddatz of ABC’s “This Week“:
Donald Trump called out some of his supporters in Florida for what he said were vicious and violence during the campaign but said, “Now you’re laid back, you’re cool, you’re mellow, basking in the glory of victory and we’re already getting to work.”
Was that Trump’s attempt at turning down the heat?
Do you expect to see, after what we have seen this week from Donald Trump, someone different when he takes office?
Just a few hours later, Trump himself answered the question like this:
If my many supporters acted and threatened people like those who lost the election are doing, they would be scorned & called terrible names!
Trump doesn’t pivot. He lurches and erupts and abruptly changes course, yes. But it’s abundantly clear that it’s entirely instinctive, without any strategy or design. He himself has said that he is what he is, and members of the media finally need to accept that.
Update: Here’s an illustration of the difference between those nice Trump voters and thoe who lost the election. This is an interview with a Trump elector who resigned rther than cast a vote for him:
Michael Hardy: Have things quieted down since you announced that you were going to resign?
Art Sisneros: I thought resigning would be the end of it and that people would sort of move on. But that’s not what happened—it became a big deal that I resigned, which I didn’t anticipate. But Chris Suprun’s announcement kind of quieted things down on my end. He started to take all the heat.
MH: Do you think your example inspired Suprun to make his announcement?
AS: I don’t know. I have spoken with him, and he did say I got him to think about stuff. He was actually in the news first, saying that he didn’t know if he could vote for Trump. My understanding is that he reached out to the Trump camp and the Texas GOP trying to get some assurance that Trump was going to follow the Constitution in certain areas. And they apparently didn’t respond to him, so he decided that he wasn’t going to vote for Trump.
MH: On December 2, you posted a photo on Facebook of a death threat that read, “You vote for Trump or we rape your wife and daughters with a knife before we kill you. Do as told or face consequences.” You said it was received by a fellow elector and was forwarded to you to post. Was that Suprun?
AS: Yes. Chris is not on Facebook that I’m aware of, but he asked us to share that. He’s getting a lot of ugly stuff, as did I. Maybe it’s just that the Hamilton Electors [a group founded by several members of the Electoral College that advocates for choosing a Republican alternative to Trump] and the groups on the left wanted something from me, but they were a little more diplomatic in how they spoke and in their persuasion. But the Trump supporters and the people on the right thought that I absolutely had to vote for Trump, and to do otherwise was some kind of treasonous act. They were far more aggressive and far more nasty.
The right has the upper hand in this country because they are more willing to be violent. They scare people. And for good reason. And now that the government is going to be in the hands of someone who encourages this behavior whenever it serves him, this dynamic will probably be more obvious.
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They’re the ones who invented the genre in the modern world:
Standing in the check-out line is all some people get of the news.
The editor of The National Enquirer is very close to Trump and Dick Morris is now its political editor. Expect more of this.
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PPP did some polling on Americans’ attitudes about Christmas. Here are the highlights:
A majority of Republicans may not believe in Santa but if he does exist they know one thing about him- he’s white. GOP voters nationally by a 54-6 margin say that Santa is white, with 41% having no opinion one way or another. 57% of Democrats have no opinion on this question and those who do are relatively divided, with 26% saying Santa’s white to 18% who say he’s not.
As it turns out the whole ‘Merry Christmas’ vs. ‘Happy Holidays’ debate is something that Trump voters get a whole lot more worked up about than Clinton voters. Only 5% of Clinton voters say they’re offended by the phrase Merry Christmas, compared to 19% of Trump voters who say they’re offended by Happy Holidays. Trump voters say by a 69-4 margin that they prefer the phrase Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays. Meanwhile 63% of Clinton voters say they don’t care, with those who have a preference split between Merry Christmas (23%) and Happy Holidays (14%).
Only 34% of Americans think there’s a War on Christmas, to 51% who don’t. That’s down from 3 years ago when 41% thought there was a War on Christmas to 47% who didn’t, so evidently the war on the War on Christmas is one we’re winning. 60% of Trump voters do still think there’s a War on Christmas to 25% who say there isn’t though. In fact 24% of Trump voters say that the War on Christmas concerns them more than a potential war with China would.
Much has been made of economic anxiety driving the support of Trump voters this year, so here’s one final data point on economic anxiety for the year. While Clinton voters view the holiday Kwanzaa favorably by a 62/5 margin, Trump voters are evenly divided on it at 30/30. If having a negative opinion of Kwanzaa doesn’t spell e-c-o-n-o-m-i-c a-n-x-i-e-t-y I don’t know what does. Overall Kwanzaa comes in with a 47/18 favorability rating, compared to 91/5 for Christmas and 75/5 for Hanukkah.
Trump’s been pimping the war on Christmas theme throughout his campaign and has been making as ostentatious display of saying “Merry Christmas” at his Nurembuerg rallies post-election.This is one of his big appeals.
No word on what his Jewish daughter and grandchildren think about all this. But then they have no reason to fear the white nationalists who are painting swastikas all over the country and saying “Heil Trump.” That’s for the little people.
Politico has a lengthy conversation between Politico’s Glenn Thrush; Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress; Guy Cecil from Priorities USA, the pro-Clinton PAC; Thomas Frank (What’s the Matter with Kansas?); and Matt Barreto, a political science professor from UCLA. The topic is how the Democrats rebuild. There are a lot of these pieces out there, plus recommendations for how the left battles back in a Trump administration. Digby linked to one here.
Two comments in particular caught my attention. Thomas Frank notes that Democrats need a message to compete with the culture war narrative people in rural areas hear coming incessantly from their radios and TVs:
Frank: And this is what the Democratic Party obviously used to do. This is not even hard to look up. This is very recent. You look at a place like Missouri. I grew up in Kansas City. And when I was a kid, Missouri was a very Democratic state. Harry Truman is from Missouri. Dick Gephardt is from Missouri. But you look at the map now, and Trump took every county except for St. Louis, Kansas City and the college town, Columbia. And it is a wipeout for Democrats out there. You go to these small towns, and there is no Democratic presence in these places.
If you don’t show up to play, you forfeit. Frank continues:
Frank: Small towns, all over America, boarded up, the businesses are all gone, the kids leave as soon as they can, the family farms are dying. OK, what do you do about that? Well, one thing that’s really easy is antitrust. You know, you start going after the agricultural monopolies. Every farmer I’ve ever met knows about these companies, and is furious about them. And those people—I mean, this is a very Republican cohort now—but, you know, you start talking about their one obsessive concern, and you might be able to win some of them over. You start going after Wal-Mart, which has destroyed the businesses in every small town in America. Do you remember when Barack Obama won Iowa over Hillary Clinton in 2008? It was a big surprise, a big shocker. And the way he did it was by promising to use the antitrust laws against agricultural monopolies, or that was one of the things that he said.
Obama spoke to local concerns and won their votes. Guy Cecil gets around to what happened in North Carolina where Trump just won but Gov. Pat McCrory lost (emphasis mine):
Cecil: Yes. And I think one of the other things besides unions, which I totally agree with, besides the infrastructure of the Democratic Party, is you look at what Reverend William Barber did down there with his Moral Monday movement. He is a civil rights leader from North Carolina who understands the connection between economics and race and identity. He has been traveling all around the country over the last six months. But, really, when he saw what was happening in the North Carolina state legislature, long before HB2 [the state bill requiring people to use bathrooms based on their biological gender at birth]—when they were gutting funding for college public education, when they were gutting funding for the state university system, when they were refusing federal dollars for expansion of different projects, when they were really moving away from sort of the moderate approach that North Carolina had become known for compared to the rest of the South—he built a coalition of people that every Monday showed up. Sometimes it might be 100 people; sometimes there might be 50 people; sometimes there might be 1,000 people who consistently brought attention to these issues and organized across identity, organized across interest group. He didn’t do it alone. It wasn’t the sole reason. Yes, we need unions; yes, we need party establishment people, but we need local people; we need progressive religious leaders; we need others who are standing up and doing this type of work in all of these states and, frankly, doing the work here in D.C.
Progressives lament their tendency to remain isolated in issue silos. If we could just ditch the silos that dilute our strength and prevent us from forming an effective, unified movement with real numbers, we all might get somewhere. Barber has created — he might say rediscovered — a model for doing so that works. Give him a chance and he’ll lecture for an hour on the history of fusion politics:
Now, if you can bridge that in a fusion, and if you can get black people and white people and Latinos to begin to see their issues together, if you can get people, for instance, the LGBT community, to understand the same people against the LGBT community are the same people that vote against public education, the same people that vote against public education normally vote against health care, same people against healthcare vote against living wages — and you can go on and on — same people against living wages are normally against voting rights, and in the states, if you can build a from-the-bottom-up, indigenously led, fusion coalition, you can have the kind of transformation we’re beginning to see in North Carolina in the South.
There are a lot of people pitching ideas for what might work. Barber has one that’s field-tested and battle-ready.
I’ve tweeted out the link to the document a few times over the past few days, but I thought this New Yorker article gave some nice background on something that’s gone viral in the progressive online world:
On Wednesday, around 7 p.m., a Google document entitled “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda” began making the rounds online. Its origin was the Twitter account of Ezra Levin, a thirty-one-year-old associate director at a national anti-poverty nonprofit, and self-described “Twitter novice,” who lives in D.C. and, until a few days ago, had roughly six hundred and fifty followers. His tweet’s simple message, “Please share w/ your friends to help fight Trump’s racism, authoritarianism, & corruption on their home turf,” belied three weeks of unpaid work by some three dozen mostly young progressives who had been collaborating on the document since the week of Thanksgiving.
Levin and his wife, Leah, had gone to Austin, Texas, where he grew up, for the holiday, and had met with a college friend of his, named Sara Clough, at a local bar. Clough was an administrator of a private Facebook group that describes itself as “a place for support, healing, helping, sharing, community and love in the wake of the 2016 election.” Clough and others who belonged to progressive online communities—such as Pantsuit Nation—were “trying to figure out how best to act,” Levin said. “They knew that making calls and signing petitions were helpful, but then they hit a wall. They didn’t know what else to do or how to effectively engage Congress.” It seemed to Levin that there would be value in “describing what Goldman Sachs and Exxon Mobil already know.” As former congressional staffers—until 2011, Levin was the deputy policy director for Congressman Lloyd Doggett, who represents a district in central Texas—he and his friends could “demystify” congressional influence.
In the end, thirty or so thirty-somethings—most, but not all, in the D.C. area—ended up contributing, often virtually but sometimes sitting around a table in Levin’s Columbia Heights living room, crafting a guide to best practices. Some wrote whole sections; others edited for content or proofread. “A lot of folks contributed specific tactics they’d seen in their own congressional offices, or had read or heard about,” Levin said. They showed the evolving document to some of their parents and to people outside their D.C. bubble, asking, “Does this make sense? If you received it, would it be useful?” Though still unnamed, the project “became our hobby,” he said.
There was no deadline, he noted, “except we wanted to get it out before people left town for Christmas and the holidays and stopped checking e-mail or reading documents that are twenty-three pages long about how to save democracy.”
Even in its publicly released version, it’s still described as a “work in progress.” It is, by design, more practical than philosophical. “It’s not rocket science,” Levin said. “There are specific steps you can take to make change happen.” The text contains four chapters, amounting to a wonky choose-your-own-political-adventure: “How grassroots advocacy worked to stop Obama,” “How your MoC thinks and how to use that to save democracy,” “Identify or organize your local group,” and “Four local advocacy tactics that actually work.” Experience and research had revealed to Levin and the other authors that, “despite the despair that many progressives may be feeling right now, there really actually is a model for success.” Unfortunately, it belonged to the Tea Party.
The document analyzes the strategic wisdom of the Tea Party, focussing on its local activism and emphasis on defense rather than offense. “We tried to be really clear in the document that, like it or not, the Tea Party really did have significant accomplishments—facing more difficult odds than we face today—and that it’s worth thinking about what parts of their strategy and tactics really enabled that,” Levin said. “We aimed to balance that acknowledgment by being very clear that we’re not endorsing the Tea Party’s horrible and petty scare tactics.”
Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and a former staffer for Senators Edward Kennedy and Harry Reid, told me that he was impressed that the document “urges people to play defensive baseball.” “I understand the need for a positive agenda, as do they,” he added. “But I think they’re correct in their assessment on copying some of the tactics of the Tea Party and trying to make Republicans feel pain or pay a price for some of the stuff they’re about to vote on.” He said that he planned to keep the document on his desktop and work with it in the future.
There was some internal debate over whether the document should have a proactive agenda, or, like the Tea Party, focus on “just saying no” a lot. “We had to accept the hard truth that Republicans have unified control of the federal government and will be setting the agenda,” Levin said. “So when we’re thinking about what strategy local activists should take when they’re talking to their own members of Congress, they’re going to have the greatest impact if they’re being extraordinarily responsive to the agenda that those Republican members of Congress are setting.” There was also a lot of discussion about the guide’s name. “I don’t think anybody is wed to it,” Levin said. “There were a lot of policy wonks involved, not branding people, and that shows. I’ve misspelled the word ‘indivisible’ several times.”
Three authorial Twitter handles appear on “Indivisible,” belonging to Levin, Jeremy Haile (who worked in Congressman Doggett’s office with Levin), and Angel Padilla (one of Levin’s friends from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he got a graduate degree). “We were three of the only people who had Twitter accounts,” Levin explained. “We also didn’t want there to be some kind of mysterious, anonymous document that came out and inspired folks to speculate about its author. To avoid that scenario, we put a handful of names on it.” Beyond that, he hoped, the document would speak for itself.
The guide declares, “Our goal is to provide practical understanding of how your MoCs think, and how you can demonstrate to them the depth and power of the opposition to Donald Trump and Republican congressional overreach. This is not a panacea, nor is it intended to stand alone. We strongly urge you to marry the strategy in this guide with a broader commitment to creating a more just society, building local power, and addressing systemic injustice and racism.”
[…]
No print edition is planned, Levin said, “unless the folks out there that have the guide decide to print it. I hope they export it to a Word document and make it their own. That would be amazing to see.”
One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true — they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They ore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, “You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and bred without love.” They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.” — John Fowles, The Magus
AQUA America water tank north of Raleigh, NC (from Google Earth).
With all the hot-and-heavy, super-session legislatin’ going on in Raleigh, NC this week, I’m just getting around to another issue near and dear to America’s Most Avaricious: water.
Something smells foul about the water in Corpus Christi, TX. The BBC:
The contaminant, they say, is Indulin AA-86, an asphalt emulsifier which can burn human skin in concentrated form.
On Wednesday the city of 320,000 people announced that residents should not touch, drink or use the water.
The ban has since been lifted for some city dwellers while officials investigate the origin of the spill.
“Boiling, freezing, filtering, adding chlorine or other disinfectants, or letting the water stand will not make the water safe,” officials cautioned. The BBC continued:
City spokeswoman Kim Womack told a local news station that officials had inspected the suspected site of the contamination and had not found a “backflow preventer”.
“They’re saying there is one and we’re telling them ‘show us,'” she told KRIS-TV.
This lefty blogger is a piping engineer by trade, kiddies. Backflow preventers are required in city water lines connected to industrial users to prevent this sort of contamination. They are kind of hard to miss:
Ergon Asphalt and Emulsions Inc. issued a statement Saturday evening that confirmed Indulin AA-86 and hydrochloric acid did escape the confines of a mixing tank it operates in the industrial district.
“A soap solution, which is comprised of approximately 98 percent water and 2 percent Indulin AA-86 and hydrochloric acid, back flowed into the separate water line within the Valero terminal,” the statement read.
The statement did not indicate when the backflow may have occurred, or how much of the chemical is believed to have seeped back into the system.
Nobody knows just what the threshold effects are. The contamination may date back to November 23 and a few people are reporting symptoms of Indulin exposure.
This is the third water crisis for the area in two years. And it will not surprise you at all to learn that there are already lawsuits flying in the direction of Valero, the parent company of the firm in question, Ergon Asphalt and Emulsion of Jackson, Mississippi. The whole country is in the middle of a “backflow incident” right now. I think we’re going to wash up, finally, in 1879.
But let’s look at another source of fouled drinking water which the residents of Flint, MI might recognize. Some 81,000 homes in Pittsburgh received letters this summer warning of possible lead contamination in their water. Financially stretched public utilities around the nation are turning to the private sector water companies to help out with their aging infrastructure: global water barons such as Nestle and Suez, and smaller for-profit outfits such as Aqua America. Mother Jones from October:
Pittsburgh’s utility called in Veolia, a Paris-based company that consults with utilities, promising “customized, cost-effective solutions that reflect best practices, environmental protection and a better quality of life.” Veolia consults or manages water, waste, and energy systems in 530 cities in North America, with recent contracts in New York City, New Orleans, and Washington, DC. Last year, the company, which operates in 68 countries, brought in about $27 billion in revenue.
By the end of 2015 “the utility had laid off or fired 23 people—including the safety and water quality managers, and the heads of finance and engineering.” Veolia switched from soda ash to a cheaper corrosion inhibitor:
Such a change typically requires a lengthy testing and authorization process with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, but the DEP was never informed of the change. Nearly two years later, as news spread about the disaster in Flint, the utility switched back to soda ash.
After Veolia took control in Pittsburgh, prices went up, billing became erratic, and customers initiated a class action lawsuit over “grossly inaccurate and at times outrageously high bills.” Mother Jones reports:
Last December, facing the class-action lawsuit, a state citation for changing corrosion controls, and mounting debt, Pittsburgh terminated its contract with Veolia. All told, PWSA had paid Veolia $11 million over the course of the contract.
Earlier this month, the utility announced it was suing the company. According to a press release, Veolia “grossly mismanaged PWSA’s operations, abused its positions of special trust and confidence, and misled and deceived PWSA as part of its efforts to maximize profits for itself to the unfair detriment of PWSA and its customers.”
I’ve written plenty about water privatization and our decaying, once great American infrastructure. Our interstate highway system, for example, and other national projects worthy of a great nation. Now we are a country so fixated on the bottom line, we are turning our backs to public oversight, maintenance and capital investment. Wake up and smell the austerity. America can no longer afford Americans.
Mario Piscatella (one damned smart campaign manager) wrote this hours ago on Facebook:
As I come to the end of another cross country journey, my mind is stuck on the audacity of a different generation of political leaders – the Eisenhower interstate system was an unfathomably large undertaking, and any discussion of the cost must have induced gut tightening sticker shock in even the most strident supporters. But programs like the interstate system, the WPA, and so many other things that became the core of America were taken on and achieved before the rise of the self-centered quarterly profits first right.
Those leaders of the middle of last century inspired people to understand that by doing these big things, by investing in our infrastructure and our communities, everyone’s lives would improve* and the investments would enable greater opportunity for individual innovation, entrepreneurship, and prosperity. These are the same outcomes falsely promised by trickle-down-greedonomics, but actually realised.
I’ve been tremendously privileged to see at least some piece of nearly every interstate highway coast to coast. I’ve seen many national and state parks, as well as forests, monuments, and other landmarks. We have a beautiful country filled with wonderful people.
Over the past few decades, we haven’t been without the big ideas, the innovations for national prosperity, but those ideas have consistently been stomped on by those who wish to preserve their wealth and power. They have kept high speed rail offline while allowing our existing public transit systems to decay. They have allowed the state, federal, and municipal buildings built all those decades ago to crumble, giving people the vision that government is old and broken. Those highways and bridges that have powered our economy were consistently underfunded, ratcheting up the costs of repair in an insane fiscally irresponsible manner. They point to the pot holes and tell us it is because government can’t do it right.
Then they privatize and pocket the profits… While the quality of service to the end user declines… And the cost escalates uncontrollably.
We don’t just need big ideas. We need leaders able to inspire us. We need leaders that can make Americans believe in America again.
* Not really everyone. Communities of black, brown, and poor Americans, and basically everyone else but the wealthy white communities were systematically shafted time and again.
Well said. Somehow I don’t think those are the kind of leaders taking over in January, or the kind of greatness they have in mind.
