Entries by tag: pollution
Last week I had a major spiritual crisis that had me implanted on a metaphorical crossroads. Each path demanded a set of adherence to belief systems that held both valuable insights and codes I consider abhorrent. I was nearly in tears from the weight of feeling like I had to choose one way or another, and I knew that whatever path I took would determine the course of much of my life for a long time to come.
Luckily, I was in a New Age bookstore on Melrose at the time, so I had plenty of reading material with which to work through this, and in the end, I found my path and renewed my confidence. I want to share my moment of apotheosis/transcendence/meaningful creation with you, not because I want you to believe as I do, but because I feel that articulating this in a coherent prose form will help me understand it better. I hope you do get some amusement, enlightement, or entertainment out of it, of course. I may lose some friends or turn some of you off with what I say, but I have faith in the people whom I love and trust that it won’t happen.
And faith is at least partially what this is about.
So the talks to lend automakers money to survive broke down last night, leading to the expected misery on Wall Street this morning. The spin on the cable news shows and in the corporate press was that it was all the unions’ fault for having the temerity to demand honest money for honest work, rather than accept the model of so many other hollowed-out American businesses, and take pay cuts, losses of benefits and health care, etc. I don’t really care much about the CEOs wanting to take a $1 salary as a condition for the bailout, especially when you consider the net worth of Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli, the guy who ran Home Depot into the ground and has now capitalized on that first shining failure, still has investments and payoffs that lend him a cushy income. Guys like him could take a $1 salary for years and never miss it for a minute, so seriously, fuck him.
GOP members who opposed the bailout are being hailed as heroes, which makes sense until you realize how much of their opposition was based in crass political calculation. Some of them, like Richard Shelby and Bob Corker, represent states who have heavily wooed foreign automakers into building plants in their states, with non-unionized workers who make half as much as their counterparts from the Big 3. Others realize that Bush is on the way out, and have no incentive to support him or his aims, so they’re agitating just like they did with the Wall Street meltdown and TARP passage.
But Bush, never one to pass up spoiling a party, has signaled that he will indeed shift his position and consider using funds from the untapped $350 billion set aside for the Wall Street bailout to rescue the automakers. I’ll explain why this is a good idea after the jump.
“You will go down as the greatest chairman in the history of the Federal Reserve Bank,” declared Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican who was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee when Mr. Greenspan appeared there in February 1999.
“He had a way of speaking that made you think he knew exactly what he was talking about at all times,” said Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa. “He was able to say things in a way that made people not want to question him on anything, like he knew it all. He was the Oracle, and who were you to question him?”
These are quotes from a fantastic New York Times article yesterday that explores the legacy of Alan Greenspan, his unyielding support of a completely unregulated and unrestrained investment market, and how his being totally fucking wrong directly contributed to the meltdown of the global economy.
This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around. Let’s get it on. You can also follow my random observations about the debate on my Twitter feed.
Where is the promised land
Where is the brave new world
Where do all dreams go when they die
We can move the streets today
– “Brave New World,” Covenant
At any time of radical change or transformation, two things happen. First, you have increasingly radical and virulent reactions of anger, borne of frustration and hopelessness, that often descend into outright racism and xenophobia. Second, you have a bunch of pundits, commentators, hacks, and bloviators falling over themselves to claim they knew this was coming all along, and that they can see what’s going to happen next.
If you were grossed out by the generally reasonable idea of drinking recycled sewer water to preserve supplies, you’ll love this–as many as 41 million Americans have been drinking water tainted with trace elements of pharmaceuticals of all shapes, sizes, and effects:
• Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city’s watersheds.
• Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.
• Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.
• A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco’s drinking water.
• The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.
The AP article is worth reading in depth–not only for the sheer staggering weight of the findings, but for how state, local, and federal officials charged with monitoring our water supplies uniformly respond with denials and ignorance. But does this really come as a surprise?
We’re one of the most overly medicated societies in the world, with every mysterious new ailment we suffer from naturally having some kind of drug or pill to remedy it. Chronic fatigue syndrome, Restless Leg syndrome, erectile dysfunction, Asperger’s, bipolar disorder, OCD, etc. I have often wondered, in fact, if many of these bizarre ailments that never seemed to exist until the last thirty years or so were not, in fact, products of our continual exposure to trace elements of harmful chemicals in our everyday life. It’s a vicious circle–we get sick from these poisons and are poisoned further with the “treatments” (Never a “cure,” mind you, it’s always a “treatment”), and we end up recycling these poisons right back into our environment. Hell, we start right away with our children, exposing them to lead-tainted toys–get ‘em while they’re young, I say.
Back to the AP article:
Perhaps it’s because Americans have been taking drugs — and flushing them unmetabolized or unused — in growing amounts. Over the past five years, the number of U.S. prescriptions rose 12% to a record 3.7 billion, while non-prescription drug purchases held steady around 3.3 billion, according to IMS Health and The Nielsen Co.
“People think that if they take a medication, their body absorbs it and it disappears, but of course that’s not the case,” said EPA scientist Christian Daughton, one of the first to draw attention to the issue of pharmaceuticals in water in the United States.
We shape our environment as much as it shapes us, and if we’re ingesting billions of samples of these chemical cocktails, then shitting and pissing them back into our water, food, and air supply, is it any wonder that we’ll start soaking them right back up? Even beneficial chemicals can be dangerous in the wrong amounts, or if taken for too long a time. But because our governments and local authorities are sticking their heads in the water sand, we may need a lot more of these independent inquiries to find out just how deep and far the problem goes.
At least we can rest comfortably knowing our troops in Iraq are drinking safe water and don’t have to worry about this. Oh, wait, never mind that.
Just as an amusing coda, as a D.C. resident, it surprises me not at all that the highest amounts of chemical traces found in my water supply were naproxen, ibuprofen, and caffeine, while San Fran gets the sex hormone. It tells you a lot, actually.
So Abu Gonzales, who is ass up and balls deep in the prosecutor purge scandal, has scheduled a press conference for 2pm EST today, right after his chief of staff fell on his sword as being the guy who drew up the list of names.
A quick refresher: The Justice Department, beginning in late 2006, suddenly started firing government prosecutors for what it called “performance issues,” even though the vast majority of them had stellar approval ratings and solid careers. It quickly came out that the goal of the purge was twofold–to remove prosecutors looking into intra-Administration scandals (such as Carol Lam), and replace them with fresh-faced appointees chosen chiefly for their loyalty to the Republican party and the conservative establishment (such as Rachel Paulose). Thanks to the efforts of blogger-reporters like Josh Marshall, the issue started to snowball, and now Gonzales is looking like he’s about to be claimed by the Annihilation Wave.
The New York Times succinctly summarizes Abu Gonzales’ repeated affronts to the Constitution, privacy, civil liberties, and the responsibilities of his office. Yet again, this is merely emblematic of the Bush regime–cronyism, incompetence, political hackery, and disregard for principle in favor of opportunism.
Abu should go, make no mistake. But his boss and the inner circle–Cheney, Rove, Addington, etc.–should not be long in following him.
UPDATE: Well, it looks like Gonzales is refusing to resign with dignity. I guess, like Cheney tossing Libby to the wolves before him, he gave up Sampson as a sacrificial lamb. Looks like it’s time for the lawyers to lawyer up.
Or would you campaign to get your odious views not only in the Philly Inquirer (Never mind that you actually live in Leesburg, VA), but end up as a Fox News talking head, and enjoying corporate welfare at the latest in the seemingly endless parade of conservative think tanks.
Some people should just get killed.
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chestervhe and I discuss the issues of the day. Larry is one of the smarter and more reasonable people I know, and he always provides me a good counterpoint for my arguments.
I woke up this morning to find out Saddam Hussein had gone to the gallows.
There was no cathartic sense of triumph. No relief. No bloodthirsty satisfaction.
What did it change? Nothing. Iraq is still a quagmire of brutal violence, religious repression, and utter chaos. Thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead. We’re wasting billions of dollars and wrecking our economy on this nonsense.
After reading a gruesome article lovingly detailing the angle Saddam’s neck hung at when the noose snapped it, I can’t fathom anyone still supporting the death penalty. It’s disgusting, brutal, and barbaric. I used to think it was justifiable for serial killers, mass murderers, and yes, genocidal dictators, but with the way armchair quarterbacks fetishize the violence and the death, I have a harder time articulating this position.
Between this, the deaths of Gerald Ford and James Brown, and the FCC/BellSouth megamerger, 2006 is ending on a thoroughly depressing note. Obviously, 2007 will not bring an end to death, but here’s hoping it can open the door to ending the cycle of violence in Iraq, and bringing our people home.
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