Kirk Murphy

No wonder billionaire Resnick and the Westlands deadbeat millionaires were in such a hurry to see the Water Bond on the ballot. We pay for the public works project they’ll use to take our subsidized ag water and turn around and sell it back to California’s cities at a huge mark-up. And the same taxpayers who pay off the water bond will pay higher rates for their water.
What’s not to like? Ask Ana Lopez’ ex-neighbors – the people who had to abandon their now worthless homes when the Kern Water District and billionaire Kenneth Resnick’s Water Bank pumped away their aquifers.

Hey, buddy – you want to buy subsidized public water? I can get it for you cheap…..

No wonder payout czar Feinberg’s a succeessful well-connected insider DC attorney. He’s so slick he’s decreed the fisherman who contracted to work cleaning up the poisons BP spews will have their income from that work deducted. From what? From what ever settlement he may award them for damages…damages from BP’s oil apocalypse.

Yep, Czar Feinberg, in his generosity, demands the fisherman cleaning up BP’s posions from our public waters do their work for free. Such an opportunity! Shock Doctrine, meet Czar Doctrine: Feinberg’s gone neo-feudal on the Gulf. This Czar’s using the job Obama and BP’s top man picked him for to get back to his roots….in 16th centruy Russia. Is that where the President hopes to bring the wounded Gulf?

“By sinking and dispersing the oil, BP can amortize the cost of the cleanup over the next 15 years or so, as tar balls continue to roll up on the beaches, rather than dealing with the issue now by removing the oil from the water with the proper equipment,” McCallister testified earlier this week before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. “As a financial adviser, I understand financial engineering and BP’s desire to stretch out its costs of remediating the oil spill in the Gulf. By managing the cleanup over a period of many years, BP is able to minimize the financial damage as opposed to a huge expenditure in a period of a few years.”

OSHA’s director claims the workers trying to clean up BP’s oilpocalypse don’t need breathing protection. Hey, at least OSHA’s consistent. OSHA pretended the 9/11 rescue and clean up workers didn’t need respiratory protection. We all know how well that worked out. Now that EPA OK’d dumping a million gallons of incredibly toxic dispersant into the Gulf, NMS OK’d the catastrophically negligent and incompetent drilling/clean-up permits, and the Coast Guard’s OK’d their owner BP’s orders to detain and repel media from BP’s crime scene, why should we expect OSHA to do any better? As with all the other Executive Branch “regulatory” agencies, the corporatist servants revolving through the Oval Office long ago perverted the agency’s mission from one of public protection into one of permitting pollution.

If there’s a competition for most ecologically illiterate proposal of
the 21st Century, the Jindal-Nungesser plan must be a leading candidate.

Outside of Planet Jindal, turns out the shallows of the Gulf Coast are
the anterooms of the Coast’s aquatic nurseries. Digging them up to
protect against BP’s oil volcano makes as much sense as pulverizing
neonatal ICU’s entrances to protect against asbestos in the hospital
walls.

Moreover, what keeps grasses and trees rooted in riparian / tidewater
islets is *soil* – a living ecosystem. Not fill dirt. Jindal’s
proposed barrier islands will have all the viability of mine tailing
mounds sprayed with fertilizer and grass seeds: a combination that
will sprout seeds on your roof, but will never grow a lawn.

Oh – the sediment that eco-idiots Nussgesser and Jindal want to dig up has one other small problem. That sediment that washes down the Lower Mississippi? The sediment that forms the shallows is thoroughly mixed with long-lasting deadly persistent organic pollutants. The very same “shallows” Nungesser and Jindal want to heap up in piles off Louisiana’s already poisoned coast: the perfect mechanism to ensure winds, tides, and hurricanes carry the once-buried toxins inland to the marshes and wetlands these crackpots purport to be saving.

Tonight major Canadian media informed me and the world that earlier today US Special Ops “Colonel W” testified at Khadr’s Gitmo trial military tribunal that he had altered his written report years later…after prosecutors talked with him.

Tonight when I searched Google news for reports today from Beltway/Village based reporters at Gitmo that today Col W. testified he’d revised his historical record account of alleged murder years after the facts – but shortly after talking with prosecutors I found….*crickets*.

If there’s a social program left standing in the moonscape Obama’s Hamilton Project masters inflicted on America, Greenstone and the Project are there to ensure Obama nukes it.

If someone you care deeply about depends on Social Security – or will depend on Social Security – call them up today and tell them you love them. Because Team Obama has targeted Social Security…and your loved ones are just the MOTU’s version of collateral damage.

Deaths you can believe in, right?

The executive order Obama released today effectively rescinds rights the Supreme Court previously extended to over half the people in America. What a cruel and bitter joke identity politics has played upon us all. Today America’s first person of color in the Oval Office robbed a greater part of our neighbors of their rights than any President since the Great White Fathers in their White House made war upon the First Peoples. Hey – at least Obama’s consistent. He’s the finance and insurance sectors’ faithful servant. The Hamilton Project chose their candidate wisely.

For all practical purposes, Obama’s proposed executive order effectively rescinds rights the Supreme Court has extended to over half the people in America. What a cruel and bitter joke identity politics has played upon us all. America’s first person of color in the Oval Office is ready to rob a greater part of our neighbors of their rights than at any time since the Great White Fathers in their White House made war upon the First Peoples.

This morning Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn broke the news that Obama plans to resume US funding for Indonesia’s military death squads. Nairn describes how the death squads that once terorrized occupied Timor are up and running – and killing – peaceful opponents to Indonesia rule in Papua and elsewhere. Change? Last year Obama chose Admiral Dennis Blair – who had defied the chain of command and civilian authority to keep funding Indonesia’s death squads in Timor. At least Obama’s consistent: his Attorney General left the DOJ for a white shoe law firm where he successfully protected Chiquita’s CEO’s from responsiblity for paying for and running guns to Central American death squads. Change we can bloody well believe in, no?