May 13, 2010, 8:40 a.m.
The IEDs Among Us: Copy Machines
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
The latest assault on our privacy turns out to be that seemingly benign office copy machine.
At a warehouse in New Jersey, 6,000 used copy machines sit ready to be sold. CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports almost every one of them holds a secret.
Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive - like the one on your personal computer - storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine.
In the process, it's turned an office staple into a digital time-bomb packed with highly-personal or sensitive data.
If you're in the identity theft business it seems this would be a pot of gold.
"The type of information we see on these machines with the social security numbers, birth certificates, bank records, income tax forms," John Juntunen [of the Sacramento-based company Digital Copier Security] said, "that information would be very valuable."
Armen Keteyian, "Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets; Your Office Copy Machine Might Digitally Store Thousands of Documents That Get Passed on at Resale," CBS Evening News, April 15, 2010 (the transcript and the video); Cecilia Kang, "Rep. Markey calls for FTC to investigate copy machines' retention of user data," Washington Post, April 29, 2010 ("The copy machine has a better memory than most may think. And that's got Rep. Edward J. Markey concerned. The Democratic congressman from Massachusetts asked the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday to investigate the retention of documents on hard drives of digital copy machines. . . . 'I am very concerned that these copy machines can be a treasure trove for identity thieves, allowing criminals to easily access highly sensitive personal information,' Markey said in a release.").
Desktop and laptop computers are, for the most part, recognizable as such -- notwithstanding Apple's creative efforts. But the other devices in our lives that function as computers, or are at least controlled in some measure by computer chips, are less so. They may look like automobiles, microwaves, refrigerators, cell phones -- or copy machines.
When it comes to our privacy, our ability to prevent identity theft, these "computers" are the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) buried along the digital road.
The Internet is a wondrous thing to which I am connected, or potentially so, during most of my waking hours. But the networking of computers that it represents is creating cyber challenges for most sectors of our society.
For the military it is cyber-warfare -- what others can do to us, and what we can do to them. It is between 250,000 and a million attempted hacks a day into DOD computers. And the threats are not limited to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the possibility of another nation, or more likely non-nation terrorists, closing down our electric grid, air traffic control, natural gas pipelines, communications satellites, and the financial networks that move trillions of dollars a day around the planet electronically -- and that's just for starters.
For law enforcement it is cyber-crime -- law breaking opportunities limited only by the human imagination.
For each of us individually it is the risk of identity theft. It is the sensation of being stripped naked electronically, as our every credit card purchase, the location and content of our every cell phone call, the content of our emails and text messages, the trail of our Web site hits, are being recorded -- along with the video tapes of our public movements. (Sylvia Hui, "New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in London to view subway system CCTV network," Associated Press/Minneapolis Star-Tribune, May 11, 2010: "Bloomberg wants to ramp up the security camera network in New York City's subways to mimic that in London's underground train system . . . one of the largest in the world.")
See generally, "Times Topics: Privacy," New York Times.
George Orwell warned of the dangers of government intrusion into our lives. The ease with which search warrants can be obtained (or searches conducted without them), the ability of NSA, CIA and FBI to track our electronic lives, and the willingness of phone companies, credit card companies, Internet service providers,banks and others to give them information about us -- sometimes in violation of law, for which Congress granted the phone companies immunity after the fact, so we couldn't sue them -- is relatively well known.
What's less well known, perhaps, and in many ways more invidious than government snooping, is the extent to which commercial firms are gathering and selling information about our every electronic move -- with neither our permission nor knowledge. Of course, in the workplace nothing is protected: phone calls, email and Web visits can be, and are, monitored.
The revelations about copy machines maintaining a full record of every document we run through the office copy machine is just the latest. And this affects us primarily not from the copies we make and can be traced back to us, but the copies that may be made within other institutions. These documents may contain personal information about us: medical and student records, Social Security numbers, address and phone, criminal records, and so forth, as the CBS investigation, above, lays out.
In fairness to those who are snooping on us, a good deal of what they know is what we have voluntarily and knowingly chosen to reveal. Most of us find the convenience of a driver's license, bank checking account, ATM and credit card, cell phone, airline miles and other reward systems well worth whatever loss of privacy is involved. They are considered by many to be useful, if not essential services in our time.
Passwords to our computers don't have to be hacked by some 14-year-old geek genius if we've left them on a post-it note on our computer screen. Credit card numbers don't need to be hacked out of the credit card company if we leave the carbon copies with the merchant, ultimately to be deposited in a dumpster.
And currently on everyone's radar are the privacy abuses by Facebook of its 400 million users. But this is different from credit cards and cell phones. Those companies may keep more data, for a longer period of time, than is necessary for our business relationship. But if a credit card company is going to bill us accurately there needs to be some record keeping, for our sake as well as theirs.
Facebook, by contrast, is neither a necessary service nor one that requires any particular information about us to function. Our decision to "join" is voluntary. If college students post pictures of themselves at their binge-drinking worst it's not really Facebook's fault when a future potential employer sees them and decides to hire someone else. If a Facebook user includes their birthday as a part of their public profile it's not Facebook's fault if a thief makes use of it when emptying that user's bank account.
Of course, it is Facebook's fault when it makes it nearly impossible for users to limit public access to their private data (it's "opt out" not "opt in," the manual is longer than the Constitution, and the FAQ explanations run 45,000 words), when it changes the rules without notice, or when it keeps, utilizes and sells this private data to others long after the user has come to their senses and "deleted" their information. These concerns, and others, are coming to be larger and clearer to the public. Nick Bilton, "Price of Facebook Privacy? Start Clicking," New York Times, May 13, 2010, p. B8; "Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options" (interactive), New York Times, May 12, 2010; Erica Naone, "The Changing Nature of Privacy on Facebook; Microsoft's Danah Boyd on social networking," MIT Technology Review, May 3, 2010.
The terms of the bargain people make with social networks — you swap personal information for convenient access to their sites — have been shifting, with the companies that operate the networks collecting ever more information about their users. That information can be sold to marketers. Some younger people are becoming more cautious about what they post. “When you give up that data, you’re giving it up forever,” [one of the Diaspora creators, Max] Salzberg said. “The value they give us is negligible in the scale of what they are doing, and what we are giving up is all of our privacy.”
Jim Dwyer, "Four Nerds and a Cry to Arms Against Facebook," New York Times, May 12, 2010, p. A19.
But copy machines spying on us, and employers disposing of the old machines without removing or cleaning the copy machines' hard drives?! That's a new one. That's the latest. Unfortunately, it won't be the last.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
# # #
May 10, 2010, 8:45 a.m.
[If you're looking for the 12 prior blog entries about the ICCSD superintendent search see, "The Beat Goes On, But Music's Out of Tune," May 1, 2010, and 11 items linked from "Superintendent Murley's Calm Seas, Smooth Sailing," April 29, 2010. If you're interested in the ICCSD redrawing school boundary lines fiasco see, "School Boundaries: There Are Better Ways," April 16, 2010, with links to 23 related, prior blog entries and other writing.]
Connecting Those Slippery, Oily Dots
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Update: May 14: A couple of the most shocking stories yet (corporate-government silencing scientists, suppressing data): Justin Gillis, "Size of Oil Spill Underestimated, Scientists Say," New York Times, May 14, 2010, p. A1; Ian Urbina, "U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits," New York Times, May 14, 2010, p. A1 ("The [MMS] gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits . . . despite strong warnings . . . about the impact the drilling was likely to have . . . [and] routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns . . ..").
Update: May 12: Editorial, "The Oil Industry Doesn't Step Up," New York Times, May 12, 2010, p. A24; John M. Broder, "U.S. to Split Up Agency Policing the Oil Industry," New York Times, May 12, 2010, p. A1; Editorial, "Raise Liability Cap for Oil Companies," Des Moines Register, May 12, 2010; Matthew L. Wald, "Live-Blogging the Senate Hearing on Offshore Drilling," New York Times/Green, May 11, 2010.
Update, May 11: "MMS Approved 27 Gulf Drilling Operations After BP Disaster; 26 Were Exempted From Environmental Review, Including Two to BP; Salazar's "Moratorium" on New Drilling Permits Allows Continuation of the Same Flawed Environmental Exemption Process that Allowed the BP Catastrophe," Center for Biological Diversity, May 7, 2010 ("Even as the BP drilling explosion which killed eleven people continues to gush hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) has continued to exempt dangerous new drilling operations from environmental review. Twenty-seven new offshore drilling projects have been approved since April 20, 2010; twenty-six under the same environmental review exemption used to approve the disastrous BP drilling that is fouling the Gulf and its wildlife. “The MMS has learned absolutely nothing from this national catastrophe,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, “It is still illegally exempting dangerous offshore drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico from all environmental review. It is outrageous and unacceptable.”).
And see the recent, related, "P&L: Public Loss From Private Profit," May 3, 2010.
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The details of one of the most devastating environmental disasters in American history on fish, wildlife and beaches is not the most important story.
The details of the technology that permits drilling for oil a mile beneath the ocean's surface -- and that fails us when that drilling goes awry -- is not the most important story.
The tragic sacrifice of workers' lives -- 11 on the Deepwater Horizon (plus 29 in the Massey Coal mine) -- to the profits of their corporate employers with "cost savings" on inadequate and malfunctioning safety technology is not the most important story.
The response of suddenly get-tough-on-oil senators and members of Congress, and what the investigations may ultimately reveal (or conceal), is not the most important story.
The newspaper and television coverage of the oil disaster is not the most important story.
All of the above are mere diversions from the most important story.
The most important story? The extent to which America's officials -- and the public, let it be noted -- have permitted major corporations' campaign contributions, lobbying, public relations, advertising, and other influence to corrupt our nation's ability to formulate, and enforce, policies that would best serve "the national interest."
We're generally aware of the extent to which Goldman Sachs alums have infiltrated the government, from the Fed to the Treasury to the White House itself, and how they influence Congress. See, e.g., the summary in Alex Floum, "Goldman Sachs alumni hold many of the top government positions," Economic Policy Examiner, May 6, 2010; Albert R. Hunt, "Scarlet Letter for the Greed Generation," New York Times, April 25, 2010 ("Goldman’s political action committee gave $290,500 to congressional candidates last month as Congress weighed the financial-regulation overhaul. Mr. Obama shook the Goldman Sachs money tree for almost $1 million in his presidential campaign.").
We are perhaps less well informed and aware of the extent to which many industries exert similar influence over governmental decision making as well.
So let us consider the case study of BP.
From the West Coast to the Gulf Coast
This picture is so revealing. 
[Photo credit: UC Berkeley Media Relations] The caption reads, "Backstage before the announcement, UC President Robert Dynes (right) flashes 'thumbs up' to BP America chairman Robert Malone . . .."
"The announcement." "What announcement?" I hear you ask. The announcement that BP is going to give UC Berkeley (my first post-clerkship employer) $500 million.
Global energy firm BP announced today (Thursday, Feb. 1 [2007]) that it has selected the University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) . . . to lead an unprecedented $500 million research effort to develop new sources of energy and reduce the impact of energy consumption on the environment. . . .
"This partnership with BP will develop new, sustainable energy technologies that can transform the landscape," said Nobel Laureate Steven Chu, director of LBNL — a U.S. Department of Energy-funded lab — and UC Berkeley professor of physics and of molecular and cell biology.
Robert Sanders, "BP Selects UC Berkeley to Lead $500 Million Energy Research Consortium," UC Berkeley News, February 1, 2007.
Why is this story relevant? Well, for starters it is an illustration of the fact that the tentacles of a multi-billion-dollar corporation like BP extend into far more major American institutions than just the federal government -- especially the large, prestigious, research universities.
It also makes the point that when you're in a position to hand out money in $500 million bundles you tend to get a thumbs up from everyone you meet -- including presidents and members of Congress.
How can a company afford to make $500 million contributions? BP's first quarter profits were $5.6 billion; that's profits, not revenue, which is of course much greater; and not annual profits, but three months' worth of profits.
But there's more. Just as occasionally when you drill you strike oil, so occasionally when you pay $500 million for favorable public relations (BP was trying to sell the public on the idea that BP no longer stands for "British Petroleum," it now stands for "Beyond Petroleum") you strike another kind of oil.
And so it was with their beneficence spread upon Professor Chu. Do you know where he is now? That's right, President Obama decided he would make a great Secretary of Energy -- the guy who's supposed to be helping us overcome our oil addiction.
And what did he have to say recently about the BP oil spill disaster?
"U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Wednesday it was not a mistake for the administration to support more offshore drilling as part of comprehensive energy reform, despite the oil rig spill in the Gulf of Mexico that continues to threaten coastal areas." John Wihbey, "Energy Sec. Steven Chu: More Drilling Proposal 'Not a Mistake,'” "On Point with Tom Ashbrook"/WBUR/NPR, May 5, 2010.
Spreading Money Like Oil
But it's BP's generosity with members of Congress that may have even more to do with its disaster in the Gulf than its generosity with Energy Secretary Chu. After all, the pollution of the Gulf is primarily the responsibility of the Secretary of the Interior, not the Secretary of Energy.
Oil behemoth BP poured millions of dollars into lobbying and campaign contributions over the past two decades, courting allies in Congress and the White House. . . . BP paid $6.2 million in campaign contributions since 1990, landing on the list of 107 "heavy hitters" compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
The company's political action committee has helped the re-election efforts of many . . ..
And that's just part of BP's political spending.
Just in the past year, BP doled out nearly $16 million for influence efforts, using both its own lobbyists and those with eight other firms . . ..
Anne C. Mulkern, "Big Contributor BP Finds Itself Without a Friend on the Hill," New York Times/Greenwire, May 4, 2010; and see Bara Vaida, "K Street Paradox; Special Report: President Obama's fight against special interests boomerangs as lobbying firms just get richer," National Journal, March 13, 2010 (subscription service) ("President Obama continues to campaign against Washington's special interests, but to what effect? The more he tries to rein in lobbyists, the more K Street rakes in.").
OK, but what does that have to do with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar? Well, before he was a cabinet secretary it happens that he was a U.S. Senator -- a senator who served just shy of one term.
Having not yet been a senator for a full term, Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) [who] hasn't had much time to collect money from the industries that will take a special interest in him as Secretary of the Interior . . . . has collected a total of $321,800 from the energy and natural resources sector during his short time in the Senate . . ..
Lindsay Renick Mayer, "Interior Motives," Open Secrets, December 16, 2008.
And what was his record as a Senator? His Wikipedia entry reports that,
In 2005, Salazar voted against increasing fuel-efficiency standards (CAFE) for cars and trucks . . . [and] against an amendment to repeal tax breaks for ExxonMobil and other major petroleum companies. . . .
In 2006, Salazar voted to end protections that limit offshore oil drilling in Florida's Gulf Coast.
In 2007, Salazar was one of only a handful of Democrats to vote against a bill that would require the United States Army Corps of Engineers to consider global warming when planning water projects.
"Ken Salazar," Wikipedia.
So we shouldn't be surprised with Paul Krugman's reminder this morning that "environmentalists were bitterly disappointed when Mr. Obama chose Ken Salazar as secretary of the interior. They feared that he would be too friendly to mineral and agricultural interests, that his appointment meant that there wouldn’t be a sharp break with Bush-era policies — and in this one instance at least, they seem to have been right." Paul Krugman, "Sex and Drugs and the Spill," New York Times, May 10, 2010, p. A23.
Regulators Make Strange Bedfellows
And so what role did President Obama's Secretary of the Interior play in bringing on this Gulf disaster?
The Interior Department exempted BP's calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents . . . [as a result of] [t]he decision by the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 -- and BP's lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions . . ..
"I'm of the opinion that boosterism breeds complacency and complacency breeds disaster," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) on Tuesday. "That, in my opinion, is what happened." . . .
While the MMS assessed the environmental impact of drilling in the central and western Gulf of Mexico on three occasions in 2007 -- including a specific evaluation of BP's Lease 206 at Deepwater Horizon -- in each case it played down the prospect of a major blowout.
In one assessment, the agency estimated that "a large oil spill" from a platform would not exceed a total of 1,500 barrels and that a "deepwater spill," occurring "offshore of the inner Continental shelf," would not reach the coast. In another assessment, it defined the most likely large spill as totaling 4,600 barrels and forecast that it would largely dissipate within 10 days and would be unlikely to make landfall.
"They never did an analysis that took into account what turns out to be the very real possibility of a serious spill," said Holly Doremus, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has reviewed the documents.
The MMS mandates that companies drilling in some areas identify under NEPA what could reduce a project's environmental impact. But Interior Department spokesman Matt Lee-Ashley said the service grants between 250 and 400 waivers a year for Gulf of Mexico projects. He added that Interior has now established the "first ever" board to examine safety procedures for offshore drilling. It will report back within 30 days on BP's oil spill and will conduct "a broader review of safety issues," Lee-Ashley said.
BP's exploration plan for Lease 206 [Deepwater Horizon], which calls the prospect of an oil spill "unlikely," stated that "no mitigation measures other than those required by regulation and BP policy will be employed to avoid, diminish or eliminate potential impacts on environmental resources."
[T]he plan . . . minimized the prospect of any serious damage associated with a spill, saying there would be only "sub-lethal" effects on fish and marine mammals, and "birds could become oiled. However it is unlikely that an accidental oil spill would occur from the proposed activities."
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal waiver "put BP entirely in control" of the way it conducted its drilling.
Agency a 'rubber stamp'
"The agency's oversight role has devolved to little more than rubber-stamping British Petroleum's self-serving drilling plans," Suckling said.
BP has lobbied the White House Council on Environmental Quality -- which provides NEPA guidance for all federal agencies -- to provide categorical exemptions more often. In an April 9 letter, BP America's senior federal affairs director, Margaret D. Laney, wrote to the council that such exemptions should be used in situations where environmental damage is likely to be "minimal or non-existent." An expansion in these waivers would help "avoid unnecessary paperwork and time delays," she added.
Juliet Eilperin, "U.S. exempted BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling from environmental impact study," Washington Post, May 5, 2010.
The disaster was predictable. Why predictable? Consider the record:
The 2005 explosion at a refinery in Texas City, Tex., killed 15 workers and injured hundreds more. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined BP a record $87 million for neglecting to correct safety violations.
Only a year later, a leaky BP oil pipeline in Alaska forced the shutdown of one of the nation’s biggest oil fields. BP was fined $20 million in criminal penalties after prosecutors said the company had neglected corroding pipelines. . . .
Last year, when the federal Minerals Management Service proposed a rule that would have required companies to have their safety and environmental management programs audited once every three years, BP and other companies objected. The agency is also investigating charges by a whistle-blower that the company discarded important records from its Atlantis Gulf platform.
Clifford Krauss, "Oil Spill’s Blow to BP’s Image May Eclipse Costs," New York Times, April 30, 2010; and see additional details and comparisons with other companies in Jad Mouawad, "BP Has a Record of Blasts and Oil Spills," New York Times, May 9, 2010, p. A22 ("BP, the nation’s biggest oil and gas producer, has a worse health, environment and safety record than many other major oil companies, according to Yulia Reuter, the head of the energy research team at RiskMetrics . . ..").
There are no simple answers to how an agency becomes "captured" by the industry it is supposed to regulate. But here are a couple of insights.
Regulators make strange bedfellows. You do recall the Minerals Management Service don't you? "Government officials in charge of collecting billions of dollars worth of royalties from oil and gas companies accepted gifts, steered contracts to favored clients and engaged in drug use and illicit sex with employees of the energy firms, federal investigators reported yesterday." Derek Kravitz and Mary Pat Flaherty, "Report Says Oil Agency Ran Amok; Interior Dept. Inquiry Finds Sex, Corruption," Washington Post, September 11, 2008. Noelle Straub, "GAO Audit: MMS Withheld Offshore Drilling Data, Hindered Risk Analyses in Alaska," New York Times/Greenwire, April 7, 2010 -- roughly three weeks before the current disaster.
So what? So, "The [Department of the Interior] inspector general said that these relationships have cost taxpayers $4.4 million in lapsed collection fees, but due to the sloppy administration at MMS, the real cost may go undiscovered. In a separate report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that MMS is plagued by inefficiency in collecting royalties, and that there is no way to backtrack and figure out how much has actually been lost. Currently, oil companies submit their own data and MMS simply takes them at their word, rather than independently confirming that the numbers are correct — what the inspector general has referred to in a letter to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne as a “Band-Aid approach to holding together one of the federal government's largest revenue producing operations.” A separate GAO report found that the United States is not collecting fair market price for royalties on public resources — which may be seriously limiting the amount of money taken in by MMS, and hence, the taxpayers." "Broken Government," Center for Public Integrity.
These consequences are reinforced as a result of what has come to be called the "revolving door."
In trying to understand why M.M.S. fails in its fiduciary and regulatory responsibilities to taxpayers, it’s impossible to ignore the revolving door between the agency and the industry that it oversees. Since leaving government service, Gale Norton, secretary of Interior under President Bush, became Shell’s general counsel, and J. Steven Griles, a deputy secretary of Interior, lobbied for numerous oil and gas industries — including BP — before he went to jail for obstructing a Senate investigation. Randall Luthi, the most recent director of M.M.S., is now president of the National Oceans Industries Association, whose mission is to secure a “favorable regulatory and economic environment for the companies that develop the nation’s valuable offshore energy resources.” . . .
Longstanding cozy ties with industry may help explain why M.M.S. failed to bolster safety requirements for equipment and processes used on the Deepwater Horizon rig — despite internal reports giving clear warnings about the risks of these devices and techniques.
At the end of the day, this spill should show Congress that there are real harms when government regulators consider the industry they oversee to be a partner or client (or future employer) rather than an entity that they should hold accountable.
Danielle Brian and Mandy Smithberger, "Our Government, Serving the Energy Business," in Editors, "Rules, Revolving Doors and the Oil Industry," New York Times, May 5, 2010.
Oil Seepage Into the White House
In fairness to the Obama Administration, it should be noted that this "self-regulation" of offshore drilling actually began during the Clinton Administration.
"We are not supportive of the extensive, prescriptive regulations as proposed in this rule," wrote Richard Morrison, BP's vice president for Gulf of Mexico production. "We believe industry's current safety and environmental statistics demonstrate that the voluntary programs implemented since the adoption of [voluntary standards] have been and continue to be very successful." . . . The voluntary approach was adopted in 1994 during the Clinton administration.
Mike Soraghan, "BP, Other Oil Companies Opposed Effort to Stiffen Environmental, Safety Rules for Offshore Drilling," Greenwire/New York Times, April 27, 2010.
Because ultimately this rot from within government, like an under-ocean oil spill, makes its way up to the White House and the President himself. President Obama is, from all indications, a bright guy, well informed, a quick study, not easily bamboozled. So when he starts mouthing oil industry propaganda it's hard to make excuses for him -- much as I'd like to believe he was simply relying too heavily on staff members, or industry spokespersons, he thought he could trust.
And yet, there he was on March 31, announcing from Andrews Air Force Base,
[A]s we transition to cleaner energy sources, we’ve still got to make some tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development in ways that protect communities and protect coastlines. . . .
[T]he bottom line is this: Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.
So today we’re announcing the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration, but in ways that balance the need to harness domestic energy resources and the need to protect America’s natural resources. Under the leadership of Secretary Salazar, we’ll employ new technologies that reduce the impact of oil exploration. We’ll protect areas that are vital to tourism, the environment, and our national security. And we’ll be guided not by political ideology, but by scientific evidence.
"Remarks by The President on Energy Security at Andrews Air Force Base," March 21, 2010.
On April 2, 2010 -- 18 days before the BP disaster -- here is what the President had to say in Charlotte, North Carolina:
[Photo credit: White House] [W]e’ve got to look at our traditional energy sources and figure out how can we use those most effectively and in the most environmentally sound way. . . .
The decision around drilling -- same approach. What we did was we said we’re not going to have drilling a mile off the North Carolina coast or two miles off. But 50 miles off, 100 miles off, where it is appropriate and environmentally sound and not risky, we should allow exploration to begin taking place to see if there’s certain reserves. . . .
But what we did was we tried to look at the scientific evidence and figure out where are areas where low risk environmentally and a high potential upside. . . .
I don’t agree with the notion that we shouldn’t do anything. It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore.
"Remarks by the President in a Discussion on Jobs and the Economy," Charlotte, North Carolina, April 2, 2010.
"Protect communities and protect coastlines"; "protect America's natural resources -- tourism, the environment -- guided by scientific evidence"; "environmentally sound and not risky"; "low risk environmentally"; "technologically advanced -- oil rigs today don't cause spills." It sounds as if it was written by a BP publicist. Hopefully, it was not -- but the result is just the same.
Wrapping Up With Democracy Now:
How is the Environmental Impact of Offshore Drilling Like a Forest Trail?
To wrap it up, here is the "Democracy Now" interview of Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity:
SECRETARY KEN SALAZAR: Minerals Management Service will not be issuing any permits for the construction of new offshore wells [after] May the 28th. . . . But today is not really the day to deal with those issues. . . .
[Democracy Now reporter] JUAN GONZALEZ: Secretary Salazar added that the existing offshore oil and natural gas drilling will continue, . . ..
[Democracy Now anchor] AMY GOODMAN: Salazar’s announcement comes on the heels of a Washington Post exposé revealing that the Minerals Management Service had approved BP’s drilling plan in the Gulf of Mexico without any environmental review. The article notes that the agency under Secretary Salazar had quote “categorically excluded” BP’s drilling as well as hundreds of other offshore drilling permits from environmental review. The agency was able to do this using a loophole in the National Environmental Policy Act created for minimally intrusive actions like building outhouses and hiking trails. Well, for more on this story, we’re joined now from Tucson, Arizona by Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. Welcome to DEMOCRACY NOW!, Kieran. Explain this loophole, how you found it, and what it means for the Gulf.
KIERAN SUCKLING: Well, when a federal government is going to approve a project, it has to go through an environmental review. But for projects that have very, very little impact like building an outhouse or a hiking trail, they can use something called a categorical exclusion and say there’s no impact here at all so we don’t need to spend energy or time doing a review. Well, we looked at the oil drilling permits being issued by the Minerals Management Service in the Gulf, and we were shocked to find out that they were approving hundreds of massive oil drilling permits using this categorical exclusion instead of doing a full environmental impact study. And then, we found out that BP’s drilling permit—the very one that exploded—was done under this loophole and so it was never reviewed by the federal government at all. It was just rubber-stamped.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, according to the Washington Post article, in one of its assessments of the agency “estimated that a large oil spill from a deep platform like the Deepwater Horizon would not exceed a total of 1,500 barrels and that a deepwater spill occurring off the Intercontinental shelf would not reach the coast.” Obviously, both of those—both of those assessments have proven dramatically off the mark. As many as 250-400 waivers a year for drilling in the Gulf?
KIERAN SUCKLING: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s also important to note that when the government says it’s very unlikely this spill will occur, it’s unlikely the spill will reach shore, those aren’t even the government’s own assessments. They’re just repeating what BP, Exxon, and other oil companies put in their drilling applications. And since there’s no environmental impact study, the government never actually does an independent review. So everyone is just repeating the industry’s statements as they rubber-stamp the approvals.
AMY GOODMAN: Reporters questioned White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Wednesday about why BP’s Gulf of Mexico drilling operation was exempted from the detailed environmental impact analysis last year. . . .
KIERAN SUCKLING: The White House and the Department of Interior are really sort of ducking their heads on this issue right now because it’s an enormous problem. Especially since just a few months ago the Government Accountability Office came out with the report on MMS’s operations in Alaska, where they also have offshore drilling, and specifically said the agency is not doing these environmental studies properly. They’re avoiding doing them at all. And then they went ahead knowing that the GAO had just done this study and continued to put them out. So, this is not something new. MMS knew they had a problem. In fact, when Interior Secretary Salazar first came into office, he announced ‘There’s a new Sheriff in town, I’m going to clean up this corrupt agency,’ and instead of doing that, he’s pushed them to put out more offshore oil drilling permits while not cleaning up what is clearly a broken process of doing any environmental review at all.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I want to play a clip of President Obama where he says that oil spills don’t come from rigs, but from refineries. He was speaking on April 2nd, just over two weeks before the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I want to point out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore. . . .
KIERAN SUCKLING: Yeah, I mean, I think what the President has said here is actually just very, very critical, because he is repeating, and I suspect without even knowing it, the big lie of offshore oil drilling. For decades, the oil companies and the Minerals Management Service have told us, ‘Oil drilling is safe, it’s fine, that’s not where oil spills come from.’ In fact, that’s the basis of not doing any environmental review is, you simply assert it will never be a problem, therefore, you don’t even have to study it. While it’s true that they don’t leak often, but when they do leak, it’s absolutely catastrophic. It’s very similar to nuclear power plants. They don’t often fail, but when they fail it’s catastrophic. And, therefore, you have to plan for catastrophe. You have to do very intensive environmental analysis, not simply say, ’It’s rare, so we can ignore it.’
AMY GOODMAN: Kieran Suckling, what do think has to happen right now?
KIERAN SUCKLING: Well, first off, I think that the President should announce a complete moratorium on all new offshore oil drilling. This three-week time-out is really too little, too late. And it’s very important to do that now because the president, under the urging of Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar, has planned to open up new offshore oil drilling in Alaska, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and on the Atlantic coast. And that just needs to end. It’s not safe anywhere, anytime.
Secondly, the president should immediately revoke existing oil permits and especially in Alaska. Shell Oil, this July, . . . is going to start doing offshore oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea of Alaska. And if you think it’s difficult to clean up oil in the relatively warm, calm Gulf of Mexico, imagine trying to do this with icebergs and sea ice, twenty hours of darkness, in the Arctic oceans. It just cannot be done. If this spill had happened in Alaska, its magnitude would have been ten times worse than has happened in the Gulf.
Then, thirdly, the President should start an initiation of an investigation of Ken Salazar and his role in allowing this to happen.
Salazar has been a major proponent of the offshore oil drilling industry. He passed legislation as a senator in 2006 to open up the Gulf of Mexico in the first place to offshore oil drilling. He gets campaign contributions by British Petroleum. And then he walks into this agency he is supposed to reform, and instead of reforming it, pushes it to do even more offshore oil drilling. So Ken Salazar is part of the problem here, not the solution. He should not be doing the investigation of MMS. He should be under investigation for helping to cause this crisis.
"Government Exempted BP From Environmental Review," Democracy Now, May 7, 2010 (video and transcript).
Most institutions only respond to internal problems when they become serious or dramatic enough to create significant adverse media coverage. The response may be helpful, or may be counterproductive -- even to the institution's self-interest.
But even after the public relations disaster there's no assurance meaningful reform will ensue. Consider our financial collapse. As I pointed out in a recent blog entry, the first thing to do if the problem is "too big to fail" is to make the institutions smaller. And yet, when the Senate tried it was the Senate that was "too" something; it failed. The Goldman Sachs alums won again.
A move to break up major Wall Street banks failed Thursday night by a vote of 61 to 33.
Three Republicans, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John Ensign of Nevada, voted with 30 Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, in support of the provision. The author of the pending overall financial reform bill in the Senate, Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, voted against it.
The amendment . . . would have required megabanks to be broken down in size and capped so that their individual failure would not bring down the entire system. . . .
In practice, the amendment required the six biggest banks -- Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- to significantly scale down their size. It was touted as a way to end Too Big To Fail.
Though top Obama administration officials have not publicly opposed the amendment, its leading economists have opposed ending Too Big To Fail simply by breaking up the nation's financial behemoths. Austan Goolsbee and Larry Summers have both fought back against this idea, as has Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
"Senate Votes For Wall Street; Megabanks To Remain Behemoths," Huffington Post, May 6, 2010.
It remains to be seen whether even America's worst environmental disaster, getting worse by the day, will be enough to change the culture of Washington anymore than our financial collapse was able to do.
But now at least we can see how to connect those slippery, oily dots; now we understand "the rest of the story."
Will we do anything about it -- you and me? That also remains to be seen.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
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May 5, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
Obesity: Causes, Cures, and National Defense
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
In Monday's blog entry, "P&L: Public Loss From Private Profit; Capitalism Pours More Than Oil on Troubled Waters," May 3, 2010, I wrote,
Two generals who were former chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are now telling us that Americans' obesity has reached not only epidemic proportions, it has become a threat to our national security. John M. Shalikashvili and Hugh Shelton, "The Latest National Security Threat: Obesity," Washington Post, April 30, 2010 ("Are we becoming a nation too fat to defend ourselves? It seems incredible, but these are the facts: As of 2005, at least 9 million young adults -- 27 percent of all Americans ages 17 to 24 -- were too overweight to serve in the military, according to the Army's analysis of national data. And since then, these high numbers have remained largely unchanged").
Our local papers cut a wide swath when it comes to picking topics for editorials.
And so it was yesterday when The Gazette flexed its opinion muscles over the topic of obesity. Editorial, "Obesity: No One-Size Fits All," The Gazette, May 4, 2010.
There is no question that childhood obesity is a serious problem in Iowa and across the country.
So it’s easy to see why . . . [the] push for tougher nutritional standards for schools as a way to fight that collective weight gain.
But it’s going to take more than a tighter federal grip on school menus to eradicate this complex problem.
We also must educate young people about diet, exercise and the costs of neglecting their health.
It will take local solutions and local attention to reduce obesity and help raise healthier kids. . . .
[A] state-by-state study performed by Military: Readiness, an organization of retired military officers . . . found nearly 40 percent of Iowa’s 18- to 24-year-olds are too fat to fight in the armed forces. Nationwide, 27 percent of young adults . . . were too fat . . ..
Those numbers led Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Norman Seip to recently tell reporters that obesity is becoming a threat to our national security.
“Too Fat to Fight” targets school cafeterias and vending machines — . . . as much as 40 percent of children’s’ daily calorie intake occurs at school. . . .
Healthier, more nutritious food at school may well be one part of that solution.
But so are a host of physical activity and lifestyle choices. States and school districts would do well to take a more holistic view . . ..
It's hard to disagree with any of that.
Indeed, I've often been impressed with how much in the way of public projects and social programs can make their way through a Congress as "national defense" efforts when that same Congress might otherwise have talked them into a slow and irreversible death.
How did the multi-billion-dollar network of wide, multi-lane, divided highways of uniform design come to be built? It was the result of the Defense Highway Act of 1956 (sometimes called the Federal-Aid Highway Act, or National Interstate and Defense Highways Act).
And what was one of our government's greatest boosts to education? It was the National Defense Education Act of 1958, passed in part because of its name. Larry Abramson, "Sputnik Left Legacy for U.S. Science Education," NPR, September 30, 2007 ("When [the USSR's] Sputnik's 'beep' first reached Earth on Oct. 4, 1957 . . . [it] created both paranoia and concern that sparked a much-needed revolution in scientific education in the U.S.").
It works for post-war programs as well: "The G.I. Bill . . . provided college or vocational education for returning World War II veterans . . . as well as one year of unemployment compensation. It also provided many different types of loans for returning veterans to buy homes and start businesses." "G.I. Bill," wikipedia.org.
Given the ability of "defense" to mesmerize the American people, and their representatives, into supporting the damnedest things (up to and including wars of choice that are endless, cost trillions, and result in weakening rather than strengthening our national security), I've often, only half-jokingly, suggested Congress use the rationale more often. It should enact such things as a Defense Dental Care Act, Defense Daycare Act, Defense Passenger Rail Act, Defense Universal Single-Payer Healthcare Act, or Defense Full Employment Act. So why not a Defense Obesity Reduction Act? The reason it's only half-joking is because each of those programs would, in fact, contribute to our national defense as well as Americans' "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
But while it's hard to disagree with the thrust of the Gazette's editorial, it's not hard to note its omissions and then expand upon them. There are three I will touch on: adults, the food industry, and community support.
Adults Children may get 40% of their nutrition from school, but that just means they are getting 60% of it somewhere else. Children eat what's served them (unless they're refusing to eat anything at all). Children value foods used as bribes or rewards. They get their idea of what people should and do eat from the example adults set. If you've seen the movie "Super Size Me," you have some idea of what happens to people (adults as well as children) who eat too much at McDonalds, other sweet-grease-salty-grease, high-calorie fast food outlets, or bring equivalent industrially produced "foods" home from the supermarket. Believe it or not, there are children who've never been fed anything but healthy diets, including lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, and seem to do just fine. (I find it also works for my cats: pick a good cat foot, never give them anything else, and they're fine with it -- and live long, healthy lives.)
The Food Industry Which are the most popular pharmaceutical products, cigarettes, and sugared soft drinks? The ones most heavily advertised. How much does Coca Cola spend to get us to drop something between 50 cents and $1.25 into a vending machine? It's $2.5 billion!
As a frustrated mother once told me, referring to the advertising directed at her children, "I try to get my kids to want more healthy foods, but I just can't make my fruits and vegetables sing and dance."
Those who advertise industrialized foods to children get a double return on their money. They implant the brand name in the child's mind for the day when the kid has some money of her own to buy stuff. Meanwhile, they benefit from unpaid child labor, as children go to work for the company, nagging their parents to buy the advertised foods, both at home and when they throw tantrums in the supermarkets.
Beer companies advertise to get teens and college students to lock on to their brand early in life and stick with it until they die. Ditto for the cigarette companies' advertising directed at their younger brothers and sisters, the "replacement smokers" who must be addicted each year to take the place of the 400,000 the industry kills off. (Youngsters' favorite brand of cigarettes is the one most heavily advertised.)
Our children (and adults) are surrounded with fast food outlets wherever they go in the real world, and advertising for those outlets (plus candy, sugared cereals and soda) during the increasingly longer time they spend in the virtual worlds of television and the Internet.
This is not the time, place or sufficient space to launch into an itemization of all they ways we might be able to modify this obesity-inducing industry's practices -- for example, when sales lag the sure fire solution is to just add cheese and bacon. See the description of David Kessler, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite (New York: Rodale, 2009), in "Fat People, Fat Profits; Need to Shed a Few Pounds? Target the Right Enemy," September 28, 2009.
The thesis of this former FDA Administrator, backed by data, is that the sweet-grease-salty-grease formula of the fast food obesity industry is actually deliberately modifying the human brain in ways that increase caloric consumption -- and corporate profits. Since I'm always up for participation as a human guinea pig in a little scientific experiment -- not necessarily because I needed or wanted to lose weight -- I tried radically reducing-to-eliminating the sweet-grease-salty grease in my own diet, while otherwise eating all I wanted. The result: I lost 30 pounds in a couple months, my appetite declined and then stabilized at that reduced level, and I haven't (at least not yet) regained the weight.
We ignore at our peril this very, very fat elephant of the food industry that is stomping around the kitchen.
Community Support Assume for the moment that America's epidemic of obesity is, at least in large part, the result of the deliberately constructed real and virtual environments that manipulate, or at least encourage and reinforce, the eating behavior that creates both an epidemic of obesity and the multi-billion-dollar profits of the food industry.
Whether or not that is the case, but especially if it is true, any successful effort to reduce obesity will have to involve a variety of forms of community support as some kind of counter force, a resistance, to that powerful industry pressure. The rates of increase in the percentages of obese individuals (of all ages) indicate how difficult it is for individuals to change eating and exercise behavior patterns when surrounded by vending machines, supermarket aisles, fast food establishments -- and their multi-billion-dollar investment in virtually all forms of advertising -- all pushing them, psychologically and physiologically, to consume more and more of the sweet-grease-salty-grease diet.
Very early in the day of "New Age" notions of "wellness," and preventive medicine, Wendell Johnson posed the question, if we can have the towers of illness and disease we call hospitals, why could we not also have "towers of health?" Wendell Johnson, "Rehabilitation As It Seems To Be And As It Might Be," ETC: A Review of General Semantics, vol. 20, pp. 203, 211-212 (July 1963), discussed in Nicholas Johnson, "General Semantics: The Next Generation," General Semantics Bulletin, 1996, No. 63, pp. 22, 39, n. 45 (the 1995 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture).
If Iowa City can aspire to be a "City of Literature," and the University to become "The Writing University," how might we go about becoming a city, and university, of health? We have a nationally recognized College of Medicine and UIHC, a College of Public Health, a variety of recreational and sports facilities and organizations (City, K-12, University, volunteer and for-profit).
I haven't even begun to flesh this out. But it wouldn't take much group brainstorming to come up with a wide ranging collection of ideas that could be conceived, implemented and promoted as a coordinated program. There's not much a local outlet of a sweet-grease-salty-grease national chain can do; its menu is pretty tightly controlled from headquarters. But there may be a little more willingness and ability to collaborate with some local supermarkets and restaurants. We could do more to promote the local "farmers' markets." There could be a public effort to supplement the for-profit exercise facilities with free or very inexpensive options -- certainly more walking, jogging and bicycling paths. We could have a cumulative community lost weight project -- so long as it emphasized eating the right foods, rather than the yo-yo fad diets that ultimately produce an overall weight gain. We could encourage more personal vegetable gardens and fruit trees, similar to the V-shaped "Victory Gardens" during World War II. The local papers could feature healthy recipes as a regular feature. We could even do some urban planning with an eye to, over time, increasing the integration of housing and work places sufficiently to encourage more people walking and biking to work.
Some of these things are already being done, of course. What I'm suggesting is that we add to them, and integrate them into an interrelated, unified, identifiable single program supported by the City, University and other community institutions.
Obesity's Health Effects The reduction in the number of Americans fit for military duty is not the only impact of obesity. The range of its adverse effect on our health is truly frightening:
Obesity can contribute to the creation of the following conditions:
* Blood (fat) lipid abnormalities
* Cancer, including cancer of the uterus, cervix, ovaries, breast, colon, rectum and prostate
* Depression
* Gallbladder disease
* Gynecological problems, such as infertility and irregular periods
* Heart disease
* High blood pressure
* Metabolic syndrome
* Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease
* Osteoarthritis
* Skin problems, such as intertrigo and impaired wound healing
* Sleep apnea
* Stroke
* Type 2 diabetes
Mayo Clinic Staff, "Obesity: Complications," MayoClinic.com.
From recruits for wars of choice, to fighting the battle of the bulge, our war on obesity has many fronts, flanks and rears.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
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May 3, 2010, 7:30a.m.
[If you're looking for the 12 prior blog entries about the ICCSD superintendent search see, "The Beat Goes On, But Music's Out of Tune," May 1, 2010, and 11 items linked from "Superintendent Murley's Calm Seas, Smooth Sailing," April 29, 2010.]
Capitalism Pours More Than Oil on Troubled Waters
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
And see the more recent, related, "Big Oil + Big Corruption = Big Mess," May 10, 2010.
A series of national disasters, legislative and otherwise, but all with ties to Washington, have caused me to realize that there's more than oil creating America's troubled waters.
On March 31 of this year the President went to Andrews Air Force Base to announce:
[A]s we transition to cleaner energy sources, we’ve still got to make some tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development in ways that protect communities and protect coastlines. . . .
[T]he bottom line is this: Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.
So today we’re announcing the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration, but in ways that balance the need to harness domestic energy resources and the need to protect America’s natural resources. Under the leadership of Secretary Salazar, we’ll employ new technologies that reduce the impact of oil exploration. We’ll protect areas that are vital to tourism, the environment, and our national security. And we’ll be guided not by political ideology, but by scientific evidence.
"Remarks by The President on Energy Security at Andrews Air Force Base," March 21, 2010.
So, oil industry executives, Republican "drill-baby-drill" cheerleaders, oil-funded Democrats -- oh, and you, Mr. President -- how's that scientific protection of tourism and the environment working out for you? Because it's not working worth a damn for the rest of us. We haven't seen much of BP's $5.6 billion in first quarter profits (an annual rate over $22 billion) trickling down to us so far, any more than we did from those of our dollars you gave to Wall Street. And it looks like this "we" to which you refer, you and BP, are on the verge of wiping out a significant portion of the economy of at least three southern states.
The disaster was predictable -- even if no one predicted it would come as soon as a month after the President's repetition of BP's reassuring words regarding its commitment to "reduce the impact of oil exploration" and protection of "areas that are vital to tourism [and] the environment . . .."
Why predictable? Consider the record:
The 2005 explosion at a refinery in Texas City, Tex., killed 15 workers and injured hundreds more. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined BP a record $87 million for neglecting to correct safety violations.
Only a year later, a leaky BP oil pipeline in Alaska forced the shutdown of one of the nation’s biggest oil fields. BP was fined $20 million in criminal penalties after prosecutors said the company had neglected corroding pipelines. . . .
Last year, when the federal Minerals Management Service proposed a rule that would have required companies to have their safety and environmental management programs audited once every three years, BP and other companies objected. The agency is also investigating charges by a whistle-blower that the company discarded important records from its Atlantis Gulf platform.
Clifford Krauss, "Oil Spill’s Blow to BP’s Image May Eclipse Costs," New York Times, April 30, 2010.
It's just another example of the consequences of the partnership and interlocking ties between corporate capitalism and Congress, known as a "corporatist" form of government (or that, in another time and place, were known as Italian fascism). Because, even if you happen to be a fan of fascism (which I am not), in its American incarnation the allocation of power and control is grossly out of balance in terms of the disproportionate influence of the capitalists on what ultimately emerges as "government policy." And while the Republicans are thought by some to be the party of big business, that is only because the Democrats were initially somewhat slow and clumsy in figuring out that "business is our friend." After all, the "self-regulation" of offshore drilling began under President Clinton and his pro-business Democratic Leadership Council -- including the regulation of those causes of disasters that are not "acts of God," or failures of technology, but rather the failures of top management.
"We are not supportive of the extensive, prescriptive regulations as proposed in this rule," wrote Richard Morrison, BP's vice president for Gulf of Mexico production. "We believe industry's current safety and environmental statistics demonstrate that the voluntary programs implemented since the adoption of [voluntary standards] have been and continue to be very successful." . . .
But when it proposed the rules, MMS said most accidents and spills can be traced to human error or organizational failures and said companies need to ensure safe and environmentally sound operating practices (Greenwire, June 16, 2009).
MMS regulations historically have focused on proper equipment operation, but the agency said at the time that equipment failure is rarely the primary cause of incidents.
An MMS review last year found 41 deaths and 302 injuries out of 1,443 oil-rig accidents from 2001 to 2007. The agency's analysis found a lack of communication between the operator and contractors, a lack of written procedures, a failure to enforce existing procedures and other problems.
"The MMS believes that if OCS [outer continental shelf] oil and gas operations are better planned and organized, then the likelihood of injury to workers and the risk of environmental pollution will be further reduced," the proposed rule said.
The voluntary approach was adopted in 1994 during the Clinton administration.
Mike Soraghan, "BP, Other Oil Companies Opposed Effort to Stiffen Environmental, Safety Rules for Offshore Drilling," Greenwire/New York Times, April 27, 2010.
. Regulators make strange bedfellows You do recall the Minerals Management Service don't you? "Government officials in charge of collecting billions of dollars worth of royalties from oil and gas companies accepted gifts, steered contracts to favored clients and engaged in drug use and illicit sex with employees of the energy firms, federal investigators reported yesterday." Derek Kravitz and Mary Pat Flaherty, "Report Says Oil Agency Ran Amok; Interior Dept. Inquiry Finds Sex, Corruption," Washington Post, September 11, 2008. Noelle Straub, "GAO Audit: MMS Withheld Offshore Drilling Data, Hindered Risk Analyses in Alaska," New York Times/Greenwire, April 7, 2010 -- roughly three weeks before the current disaster.
. Moreover, "The [Department of the Interior] inspector general said that these relationships have cost taxpayers $4.4 million in lapsed collection fees, but due to the sloppy administration at MMS, the real cost may go undiscovered. In a separate report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that MMS is plagued by inefficiency in collecting royalties, and that there is no way to backtrack and figure out how much has actually been lost. Currently, oil companies submit their own data and MMS simply takes them at their word, rather than independently confirming that the numbers are correct — what the inspector general has referred to in a letter to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne as a “Band-Aid approach to holding together one of the federal government's largest revenue producing operations.” A separate GAO report found that the United States is not collecting fair market price for royalties on public resources — which may be seriously limiting the amount of money taken in by MMS, and hence, the taxpayers." "Broken Government," Center for Public Integrity.
Apparently no one knows precisely how much oil is now flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. Originally estimated at 1000 barrels a day, then 5000, some are now saying 25,000.
So how much total oil are we talking about? Two of BP's underwater fields in the Gulf are estimated to hold over 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent -- each. Clifford Krauss, "BP Finds Giant Oil Field Deep in Gulf of Mexico," New York Times, September 3, 2009.
How can we put this daily flow into an understandable perspective? Try this: Have you ever held a can of oil while it slowly drained into your car? Let's split the 5000-to-25,000 barrels a day into a conservative 10,000 barrels a day, OK? A barrel contains 42 gallons. A gallon contains four quarts of oil. So 10,000 barrels is 1,680,000 quarts of oil. There are 86,400 seconds in 24 hours of 60 minutes each. Let's say it takes 10 seconds to drain a quart of oil; that would mean one person, working continuously, with no breaks, 24 hours a day, could drain 8,640 quarts a day. At that rate, it would take 195 people on a large boat, filled with quarts of oil, working round the clock, each emptying a quart of oil into the Gulf every 10 seconds, to equal the 1,680,000 quarts of oil BP is dumping into the Gulf every day.
So the 11 lives lost on the offshore drilling rig explosion and fire very likely could have been avoided if government had not given in to the notion of "self-regulation." The impact on the coastal economy and environment and wild life could have been prevented. The economic cost of the clean up would have been saved. And hopefully someone will follow up by reviewing the accounting after this all is over to see if the President's reassurance that BP is going to pay for it all -- including the taxpayers' share of the massive government expenses on BP's behalf -- ever happens.
Coal
Meanwhile, an almost idential story played out in a West Virginia coal mine less than a month earlier.
[T]he explosion of the Upper Big Branch mine two weeks ago, a disaster that killed 29 miners, rattled West Virginia and, once again, raised questions about Massey’s safety practices . . . with federal investigators saying they suspect that a buildup of methane and coal dust led to the explosion . . ..
Four years ago, in another southern West Virginia coal mine owned by a Massey subsidiary, a preventable fire broke out two miles below the surface. A faulty conveyor belt that should have been better maintained ignited some coal spillage that should not have been allowed to accumulate, federal investigators found in a report compiled after the incident.
One of the miners hurriedly tried to connect a fire hose to a nearby water valve, but this was futile; the threads of the coupling and the outlet were not compatible. The miner then tried to open the valve — just to get water on the fire — but the line was dry. And things only got worse.
The miner belonged to a crew working in Massey’s Aracoma Alma mine. In a memorandum issued three months before this fire and widely disseminated in 2006, Mr. Blankenship, the company’s chief executive, ordered subordinates to run coal and ignore everything else.
Dan Barry, Ian Urbina and Clifford Krauss, "2 Mines Show How Safety Practices Vary Widely," New York Times, April 23, 2010.
Here is a company that had been written up literally dozens of times for safety violations, and did little if anything to remedy its miners' working conditions. The regulatory agency had the power to shut down such mines, but refused to do so.
A systemic problem
Chris Mathews has a feature he calls "Tell me something I don't know," on his MSNBC program "Hardball." My guess is that if you're a regular reader of this blog you already know what I'm about to tell you. But it bears repeating from time to time anyway.
We've recently seen the consequences -- in human life and the environment -- from the disproportionate allocation to corporations of the business-government partnership of power. These examples happened to involve corporations in the oil and coal industries. But the problems they illustrate are systemic.
Consider unsafe workplace deaths and injuries alone:
In recent weeks and months there have been a series of workplace tragedies that have heightened concerns—the coal mine disaster at the Massey Energy Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that killed 29 miners, an explosion a few days earlier at the Tesoro Refinery in Washington State that killed six workers, and the explosion at the Kleen Energy Plant in Connecticut in February that also claimed the lives of six workers.
In 2008, 5,214 workers were killed on the job—an average of 14 workers every day—and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases. More than 4.6 million work-related injuries were reported . . ..
Federal OSHA can inspect workplaces on average once every 137 years; the state OSHA plans once every 63 years. The current level of federal and state OSHA inspectors provides one inspector for every 60,723 workers. OSHA penalties are too low to deter violations. The average penalty for a serious violation of the law in FY 2009 was $965 for federal OSHA . . ..
Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect, April 2010.
But the adverse impact of our corporatist form of government on our citizens is not limited to their preventable injuries and death.
Healthcare It's the reason that "universal, single-payer health care," the care provided most of the world's people lucky enough to live in progressive, industrialized countries, and provided at significantly less cost than here, could not even make it onto any table in Washington. It's the reason that the "public option" was quickly shoved off the table, fell to the floor, was swept up and thrown in the trash. It's the reason the pharmaceutical companies got a secret closed door meeting at the White House -- and promises they could continue to gouge America's ill. It's the reason "health care" was quickly redefined as "health insurance" -- essentially a subsidy for the health insurance industry. And it's the reason why the lessons Atul Gawande taught us were ignored: how it is that some cities in America have higher quality medicine than others -- at half the cost. Atul Gawande, "Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum; What a Texas town can teach us about health care," The New Yorker, June 1, 2009.
Financial regulation There are two obvious first steps, whatever else we may do, to bring common sense to Wall Street. One is what we did during the 1930s, and then repealed during the Clinton Administration: the Glass-Steagall Act (Banking Act of 1933). Glass-Steagall Act, Wikipedia ("The Banking Act of 1933 . . . introduced banking reforms, some of which were designed to control speculation. . . . Provisions that prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed on November 12, 1999, by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act."). The other is to break up the biggest, multi-trillion-dollar banks into banks with assets of $100 billion or less. This is not an antitrust issue; there may or may not be antitrust problems associated with the biggest banks (many economists say there are not). This is simply the smartest response to the "too big to fail, taxpayer bailout problem." You don't try to "regulate" to prevent the most obvious risks -- especially when that "regulation" will quickly come under the control of the regulated anyway -- you simply eliminate any possibility of the "too big" problem by making them smaller.
Sadly, like universal, single-payer health care, neither is even on the table, as Congress pretends to fashion regulations of derivatives and other creative casino games, regulations that will be creatively worked around by Wall Street's "masters of the universe" just as quickly as music-loving computer geeks create new ways to share copyrighted music illegally.
National Broadband Plan The FCC, commendably, wants more Americans to have access to broadband Internet connections at faster rates and lower prices. We need to be more competitive with other countries in the world. But once again, it looks like the cable television and telephone company influence in Congress may prevent the one thing that has enabled other countries to provide more of their citizens a faster service at significantly cheaper rates than American companies make available. It's called "open access" and "net neutrality" -- in other words, "competition" -- something heralded in a corporatist state only up to the point where it threatens to move in next door.
Nutrition Two generals who were former chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are now telling us that Americans' obesity has reached not only epidemic proportions, it has become a threat to our national security. John M. Shalikashvili and Hugh Shelton, "The Latest National Security Threat: Obesity," Washington Post, April 30, 2010 ("Are we becoming a nation too fat to defend ourselves? It seems incredible, but these are the facts: As of 2005, at least 9 million young adults -- 27 percent of all Americans ages 17 to 24 -- were too overweight to serve in the military, according to the Army's analysis of national data. And since then, these high numbers have remained largely unchanged.").
Once again, any remedies must confront the money to be made, and the political ties it creates, from selling sugar-sweetened sodas in schools' vending machines, "sweet-grease-salty-grease" in fast food dispensaries, and pushing tobacco and alcohol addiction on our teenagers.
The Remedies
Why do we call the money corporations give to government officials a "bribe" when it's done in other countries, and a "campaign contribution" when it's done here?
The costs of running for office are a personal expense -- as are the upfront costs of establishing any other kind of business (which a seat in Congress certainly is). If you want to run you have to pay to do it. You have to pay for your food, clothing, housing and transportation while you're running. And you have to pay as many campaign advisers, workers, and media consultants as you think you can afford. Money is fungible. If you will pay for all of my food during the campaign there will be more of my personal income I can spend on the campaign. If you will pay some of my campaign costs I may be able to send my kid to a more expensive college. The super-wealthy do end up paying for a larger percentage of their personal campaign costs. It's certainly a personal expense for them. And it's also a personal expense for those candidates who beg for bribes from the corporate representatives who seek their votes.
How much money are we talking about? Try $5.3 billion -- for federal elections alone in 2008. "U.S. Election Will Cost $5.3 Billion, Center for Responsive Politics Predicts," Open Secrets Blog, October 22, 2008 ("The 2008 election for president and Congress is not only one of the most closely watched U.S. elections in years; it's also the most expensive in history. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics estimates that more than $5.3 billion will go toward financing the federal contests upcoming on Nov. 4."). And that figure, of course, excludes the additional costs of lobbyists, said to run as much as a million dollars a day for Wall Street alone in its current efforts to block any meaningful reforms.
And what do the contributors get in return? Can you multiply $80-a-barrel oil times a 3-billion-barrel field?
Fourteen years ago I did the math -- not just for oil, but for a variety of industries. It turns out that bribing members of Congress pays even greater returns than Wall Street cons. The payback runs something between 1000-to-one and 2000-to-one. Give a million, you'll end up a billion dollars richer in return. Nicholas Johnson, "Campaigns: You Pay $4 or $4000," Des Moines Register, July 21, 1996, p. C2.
The payback can take a variety of forms: a tax break, price supports, defense contract, bank bailouts, tariff protection, subsidies, pet project earmarks -- or, as we've recently seen, permission to drill in formerly forbidden multi-billion-dollar offshore oil reserves, notwithstanding the economic and other risks to others and the relatively slight impact on our insatiable and wasteful demands for environmentally destructive energy.
As pointed out in the headline on that column, public financing of campaigns might cost every American $4. But with the 1000-to-one return the contributors are now getting that might be one of the best bargains we've ever been offered.
Because it is we who end up paying for the campaigns now. How? We pay as both taxpayers and as consumers. It's the excess taxes we pay to fund the weapons manufacturers' profits from weapons we do not need, and other transfers of taxpayers' money to corporations. And it's in the increased prices we pay those who have made the contributions, in the cost of everything from automobiles, to pharmaceuticals, to airline fares, to gasoline, to food -- in total, probably well over the $4000 I predicted.
What we've learned this past month is that we pay in other ways as well: those who provide our seafood who have lost their way of life as well as their source of income, those who enjoy the Gulf beaches who have lost their favorite vacation spot, those who've lost their homes, all of us who have lost the wetlands and wildlife they sustain -- and let us not forget the 11 BP employees and 29 Massey Coal employees whose loss was that of life itself.
Capitalism may have its virtues, but when it dictates public policy as well, the price it exacts from all of us is enormous.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
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May 1, 2010, 7:10 a.m.
Just When I Thought There Was No More School News
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Schools Update
Boundaries/Redistricting
[If you're looking for links to the prior 11-part series on the recent superintendent search, see "Superintendent Murley's Calm Seas, Smooth Sailing," April 29, 2010.]
When I was asked how I liked being a school board member I often responded, "Well, you may not get any pay, but at least you get a lot of grief." Now it turns out, when it comes to paying for our redistricting efforts we may have the reverse of that: "We may not have solved the boundaries problem during the last year, but at least it's cost us a lot of money."
This morning's Gazette reports, Gregg Hennigan, "Iowa City Schools Paid $106,000 for Consultant," The Gazette, May 1, 2010, p. A3. (Why do we have to get that news from Cedar Rapids? Why wasn't that story in the Press-Citizen -- or did I just miss it?)
But how good is the Board's data? Julie Eisele, "Letter: Where is School Board Getting Information?" Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 1, 2010, p. A11. Apparently the "dangers" of students driving to school along I-80 -- which some parents and Board members have used as an argument against one of the proposed boundary changes -- are statistically substantially less than their driving on in-city routes (according to studies by the staff of the Johnson County Council of Governments, JCCOG).
It's reminiscent of Mark Twain's observation that "It's not what we don't know that hurts us, it's what we know that ain't so." [The quote, in a variety of forms, is variously attributed to Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and others. (The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations, 1987, attributes it to Josh Billings.)
Or, as the poster in the modest office of one of my favorite one-time school superintendents put it: "In God we trust. All others bring data." (Attributed to W. Edwards Demming.)
Oh, and how is the neighboring, big city approach to redistricting going; the one that I wrote about recently? Right on schedule. It took exactly the planned two weeks from the Board's first announcement, through informing parents, public meetings -- to the Board's vote last Tuesday night. And what did their consultant cost them? Not a dime. So far as I know they didn't have one. Is there a lesson there? See "School Boundaries: There Are Better Ways; Options Include: (1) Others' Practices, and (2) Common Sense; The Rock Island-Milan School District," April 16, 2010; and Nicole Lauer, "Rock Island board changes boundaries for six schools," Dispatch-Argus Quad-Cities Online, April 27, 2010.
Now our City Council wants to weigh in on the Board's redistricting with a meeting Monday. That should be a big help -- notwithstanding a Council member's acknowledgment that, "We still feel this is a decision to be made by the School Board." Lee Hermiston, "Iowa City Council to Discuss Redistricting," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 1, 2010, p. A1.
Actually, I think the Iowa City metropolitan area should do a lot more working together (as the School District ought to do a lot more working with other local educational institutions such as Regina and Kirkwood). That's what JCCOG is about. After all, our total population is roughly that of an apartment development in one of the world's larger cities. And yet we're served with dozens of city councils, police and fire departments, bus companies, school districts, and other governmental units and institutions. The City of Iowa City (amongst a great many other organizations) does have a stake in school boundaries. Where they're drawn has an impact on City services (e.g., water, sewer, roads, fire and police), property tax revenues, and the direction of business and residential growth and "development," including that impact on green space and flood control. Unfortunately, we don't currently have the process set up to create, utilize and have the School District benefit from input provided by the City Council of Iowa City (and Coralville, at an earlier meeting).
Students' performance; SINA; and No Child Left Behind
And speaking of educational data, and "what we know that ain't so," take a look at Rob Daniel's "Schools Try to Improve in Math and Reading," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 1, 2010, p. A1.
This could be (and undoubtedly has been) a subject for a doctoral dissertation at a college of education. So I'll just make one little point.
Years ago, as a school board member concerned about our schools' performance, while doing some research on the Internet, I came upon the rankings of schools in either Massachusetts or Connecticut. I don't now remember which. Anyhow, they did not compare the schools with each other on the basis of students' test scores. They compared each school with itself. So a school with an average 82 percentile score was considered a SINA school (not literally, but figuratively) if a reasonable expectation, for that school, would have been a 94 percentile score. Similarly, a school that one would reasonably predict would have a 27 percentile score would be heralded as a great success when it came in at the 42 percentile.
Similarly, Iowa City parents and School Board members, do what you need to do under federal and state law. But if you feel some need to do a comparative evaluation of Iowa City's schools, to make sure you buy a home where your kid can go to "the best" school, make sure you're looking at the right numbers. For example, you might want to look at the progress of the children of middle and upper class parents who stay in the same school from kindergarten through sixth grade. How much progress do they make during those seven years? That's apples-to-apples, schools-to-schools. Or, similarly, consider the children of poor, homeless parents who spend only one year (but at least one full year) in the school. How much progress do those students make in a year? (The same could be done, if you cared to, for race, ethnicity, and special needs students.)
My own (uninformed by such data) opinion is that by those measures all of our schools are roughly equal. We have good teachers everywhere. It's kind of silly to make major decisions on the basis of which school is "best" -- but it's especially silly if your data mixes the test scores of the homeless kid who only stayed in the school for four months with those of the over privileged who spend seven years there. I wouldn't be surprised to discover, with an apples-to-apples comparison, that some of our SINA and high percentage "free-and-reduced-lunch" schools are actually the District's "best" schools. Why? Because, like the old Avis Rental Car ad, their teachers have to "try harder." (Avis' "We try harder" campaign was launched by then-Avis CEO Robert Townsend.)
Pounding nails. You know the concept: Don't be too outstanding in your organization or, like a nail that's sticking out, you'll just be pounded down. I don't know why institutions tend to get rid of their very best people. Oh, I have some ideas, but I won't go into that here. But we may have yet another example from within our School District.
I acknowledge a lack of first-hand knowledge of the facts. But that's never held me back before. But apparently City High has a program called Fas Trac that, while it may need some proof reading help with its spelling, is otherwise working wonders in turning kids' lives around under the charismatic leadership of someone named Henri Harper.
So what is the District doing? It's laying him off and redesigning the program he created into something much more conventional and easily managed. See Editorial, "Programs Only As Good As the Staff Who Run Them," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 1, 2010, p. A11; and two letters to the editor: Claire Ashman, "Changes With Fas Trac; Fas Trac Program is a Success, So Why Cut Teacher?" and Annie Tucker, "Changes With Fas Trac; Fas Trac is Essential in Eliminating Systemic Inequity," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 1, 2010, p. A11.
Wow! And just when I thought there would be nothing more to say about the local schools this morning, and that I'd probably be writing about the joys, campaign contributions, politics of -- and lessons from -- off shore drilling for oil.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
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