CALIFORNIA FRACKING BILL SIGNED

On the surface this bill does accomplish some of the concerns to the fracking operations in California.  It finally requires them to research the surrounding ground water and notify residents nearby.  They have to reveal what’s in the fracking fluids and thats a good thing.

Where they will get the water to frack with is another question.  Water from the two major sources in allocated already under long term contracts, so the only way they can find the water to frack with is ground water  or to buy up farm allocations.  If past history is contains any clues they will be willing to pay more per acre foot then they can make farming.  The most likely water purchases will probably come from the users on the lower ditch as they produce low value crops.  Just how far the drillers reach will be . The major concern regarding water use is pollution of the aquifer, and the stripping of water from producing eatable crops.

Not mentioned in the bill is the dangers of causing a big earthquake.  Arkansas has already stopped fracking in their state do to an increase in earthquakes where there had been very few in the past.  According to experts California has been quivering on the edge of another big one for years.  Fracking is like sticking a sword into a already mad giant.  Will it trigger the big one, who knows but I sure as hell don’t want to find out.

KRUGMAN IS FULL OF IT ONCE AGAIN.

In his NY  time blog  today he has seen the light of future medical coverage.  According to him it is Medicaid.  He also says that the myth that doctors won’t accept Medicaid is not true.  Well a little quick research says differently,  70% of GP’a won’t and 64% of specialists won’t.  Yet he insists that it’s just a rumor.  I invite him to check it out in person.  In a recent search for a GP I was turned down for Medicare you can imagine what a Medicaid patient would find.   You can bet the doc you do get it not at the top of his field.

HERE’S HIS BLOG

Here is the graph that he bases his claims on. The red line is projected cost of Medicaid , but of course if nobody will take it you have to call it a non insurance.

PLEASE MR. BERANAKE I DON’T WANNA GO

QE I know you have heard the term but have you ever looked at what it is actually doing vs what the stated purpose was.

They said they would keep it up till unemployment rate went down only problem is the 85 billion is not getting into the economy .  Why? Because half of the money is being used to buy up junk derivative packages from the banks at market value ( a phony number) which means they are paying full price.  This is just to get the bad debt off the banks books.  The other half buys treasuries to lower interest rates which were already really low when they started.   So there has been no real change in unemployment as shown by the graph from Shadow Stats.

The blue line is our current unemployment rate shown based on the original way to count the unemployed.

So the question of the day is, how does this 85 billion not count against the deficit everyone in worried about?

GENERATION OPPORTUNITY OR KOCHASIDE?

A new add program sponsored by Generation Opportunity  a KOCH backed group suggest to young people to pay the fine instead of signing up for healthcare under an Obama care program.   Even if you are not a great fan of Obamacare (and I’m not) this is still stupid advice.  Sure a majority in this group might escape a catastrophe some will get massive medical bill for the emergency care centers they are packed to after an accident.  If you have ever been harassed by bill collectors you know how much fun this can be.

 Senator Bernie Sanders slipped into the bill funding for  10,000 healthcare centers to supply the needs of many.  To suggest the young not have any coverage is just blindly stupid.  Another gift from the degenerate right wing.  They are dangerous and you need to reconsider your support for this destructive force.

WORKER CENTERS? NOT YOUR DAY LABORER SITE ANYMORE

The last time I looked into Worker Centers they were not much more than street corners where folks gathered to be picked for work for that day.  The same guys will be on the corner the next day hoping to get picked again.  These have existed probably forever.  They existed in the 50’s in Baltimore where I use to pick up day labor for our construction company.  Sometimes when you found a really good worker he would become full time.   Good for some ,not good for most.  Other than bringing them some income that day.

Now these Worker Centesr are becoming much more.  The latest Fast Food worker walk out was  organized through a group of these centers.  Exactly like the food workers and Walmart like workers to find the help they need to procure a working wage. Outfits like Walmart (they are the biggest example ) make it difficult to organize and have even shut down stores to stop them from going union.  You may be prone to defend Walmart but you cannot defend their labor practices.   Walmart has been worried over the recent decline in sales and have even hired a consultant to tell them why their shelves were not stocked very well and always were looking empty, boy could I have saved them money , they could have called me and I could  have told them , shelves cannot stock themselves.  The two Walmart’s in my area have damn few employees on the floor and have even  found a way to have their lighting perform at half light.  Like walking into a slum.

Workers cannot pull off changes in this kind of environment. They have found a way to get that help through these new Worker centers.   If they are eventually successful in getting $15/hr. Walmart and others might find what Henry Ford found out many years ago , if you pay them well they will buy.

If you are looking for answers of why the economy not being able to climb out of the hole we are in  look at this graph.

 

HOUSE PLAYING AT CONCENTRATION CAMP LIFE STYLE

The House today is debating a bill to cut 40 billion from the SNAP program , a program to help feed the poorest of this country.They are proposing a 40 billion dollar cut out of a 74 billion dollar program.  That’s a whooping  54% cut .  The cost of 10 days of the old Iraq war.  But the bible pounding folks of the right haven’t read the part of the bible that talks of feeding the poor.  They scream of all the waste fraud and abuse in the system.  No doubt there is some like in all programs, but you can bet the majority of the program goes to those in need.  In 2010 the investigation into fraud  found 67 million dollars of fraud out of 744,000 investigations.  A drop in the bucket.  But here’s a question for your warped little mind , HOW MUCH DID THE INVESTIGATION COST?  Good luck trying to find the answer to that.

SNAP STATS

The link above dispels most of the rights grievances inside the program.   The basic eligibility is  14000 bucks a year, chump change in this society.  With a fraud rate of 3% you can bet your ass the money spent in weeding out the bad eggs is much more than is being mistakenly given out.

It’s time for all those who think they are like the right wing politically need to really rethink their position.  No I don’t thinK the big time left is much better but who says we have to vote for one of them.  The Tea Party showed us that it is possible to put together a coalition of like mined people to go to the House and change things in our favor.  All it really take as shown by the Tea Party is one rich cat with a lots of money to fund some of the loud voices out there.   Who you might ask who, for starters  Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Representative Grayson.  Aided by the loud voices on Facebook.

OUR FOREIGN POLICY MAKES US EXCEPTIONAL. REALLY!!

Putin’s OP ED 

Called Obama out on that statement in his NYT piece.  The bitch of it is I agree with him.  I won’t go back into ancient history (Korea, Vietnam,Panama, Granada) I will start with the first Gulf War another war that wasn’t our job.  The war’s that really make us not exceptional started with the second Gulf War that we were lied into.  From George Bush’s own mouth and his flunky Colin Powell they laid out a completely manufactured data to start the war.  Then the fun really started, torture , murder of prisoners, detention without trial ,locked away on an island inaccessible from the outside.   The prisons inside of Iraq where all kinds of illegal actions on prisoners of war were committed time after time.  The whole chain of command knew what was happening and they did nothing.

Atrocities on the battle field happened time after time , some of it on film showing civilians gunned down from  helicopters.  Falougha, where illegal weapons were used in destroying the town.  In Afghanistan the battle field crimes are too numerous to list but none of them make me proud.

For 27 years of Navy service we were always told that the Geneva convention protected us from those kinds of things and now we are doing all the stuff that is not supposed to happen in a civilized army.  Hardly events that doesn’t make me proud.

In fact I cannot say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag anymore, because the flag does not represent a country that I served for so long.   We may never be able to earn a place back at the honor table, memories like that don’t die easy. 

Now Putin is no puritan, god knows what criminal acts he has committed , but he is not wrong in challenging the Exceptional status of America’s foreign policy.

WERE ONCE AGAIN RIDING ON A RAILROAD!

Once again we are being led by the nose into a war that is not justified.   We have no solid information and neither does our members of congress.  Check Out what Alan Grayson says about his access to intelligence information.  Seems like our allies are calling bullshit on the data.

We flat out were lied to about WMD in Iraq and the country bought it.  Today it seems like the public has wised up since then and is holding out for evidence.  Hang in their public!

 

 

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE

Half of the country working for survival wages, 9 million out of work completely (and that’s just the one we count). If you use the old way to compute unemployed the number in 24% of the workforce.  The same holds true for every other number the government publishes.  Inflation at 1 or 2% , yeah sure if you only count the crap you don’t buy.  If you count what the average family buys the inflation rate is closer to 10%.

So considering that every number the government publishes why should we believe all the hollering about the deficit. The simple answer is we shouldn’t.  It really isn’t a problem at present ,by fall the deficit will be at 3.5 % pf GDP , and the historical average is 3.3%.  So deficit be damned , there is too much to fix to worry about that.  

Better to focus on bridges , roads, schools and such , putting people back to work, and turning the country around.  

ROBERT REICH says it better that I can HERE

 

THE ATTACK ON SYRIA =NOT A WALK IN THE PARK

Yeah, Yeah I know American is the last great super power.  But is it unbeatable in conflicts like an attack on Syria.  If you been paying attention the last week or so , all you have heard is the attack on Syria and how mighty our forces are.  It is anticipated by the public that this will be a piece of cake.  Stand out and blow them away with our neat little missiles.  Not once has the defenses of Syria been mentioned.  There has been some talk of the spreading of this war to other countries, and there is a high probability of that happening.

What has not been talked about is the Syrian missile capability to take out  our ships before they can get within striking distance .  Nor do we know how many of these things they have.  We do know they have the latest Russian Sunburn missile to which there is supposedly no defense at present.  They have other older yet proficient missiles the number of which I can’t find out. 

How do we weigh the odds that Iran will enter the fray or maybe even Russia.  Both have submarines capable of using missiles to destroy our ships.  You can bet that somewhere in this fray if it happens we will see pictures of American ships headed for the bottom.  We may be the baddest ass in the valley but we are not the only deadly one.  One can only hope we don’t find out that this guess of  mine is correct.s

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