Should your kitchen faucet catch on fire?

In the picture “Sherry Vargson, who leased the mineral rights under her Pennsylvania farm to an energy company, demonstrates that methane has leached into her well by lighting the water in her kitchen sink on fire.” Thus the American Medical News for September 3, 2012.

Energy companies in Pennsylvania and New York states, and elsewhere in the US use a process called “fracking" (induced hydraulic fracturing) to drill for natural gas.

Fracking is a delicate operation. One drills down and down to about 9000 feet to where the gas is in the shale. Then the operators pump a mixture of saline water and other chemicals down under high pressure. These chemicals the drillers treat as proprietary and therefore hide what they are. The water and chemicals break up (“fracture”) the shale, the gas comes up the pipe. But so does the water pumped down earlier, which the gas company then must dispose of safely.

That's problem number 1. How to dispose of large quantities of unhealthy water without injuring natural resources or human beings.

Problem number 2 is a really big one: is fracking safe? The industry says that, yes, of course it is a perfectly safe method for making more natural gas available. But many critics tell stories of private wells being polluted by chemicals. The drillers allege that contamination of drinking water occurs only where the drilling goes wrong in some way. For the person sickened by polluted water that is cold comfort.

Physicians report cases from different parts of the country of patients with serious skin rashes and bleeding sores, kidney failure, low platelet levels, and other serious illnesses. The patients often have their own wells located near natural gas drilling sites and their symptoms disappear—in some cases—when they stop drinking from their wells. And then there is Sherry Vargson whose drinking water will catch fire if you hold a match to it.

It does not seem unreasonable to suspect that the drillers are not speaking the truth when they claim that fracking is clean and safe. There are enough cases that suggest that fracking pollutes drinking water.

Problem number 3.  Energy companies are planning to use fracking to drill for natural gas near the Delaware River, which supplies half of all the drinking water for New York City and all of it for Philadelphia. If fracking pollutes private wells, is it safe for the clean water supplies of New York City and Philadelphia?

            Problem number 4. Drillers are secretive about the chemicals they use. That is a serious problem for the physician trying to treat patients sicked by fracking because the drillers refuse to tell them what chemicals are involved in the patients' problem.

Some states have passed laws making it mandatory for drillers to tell what chemicals are involved to the physician treating a fracking victim. But before the physicians receive this information, they need to sign a confidentiality agreement. If they need to consult with another specialist about a case, they cannot share the information they received from the drillers. (American Medical News for September 3, 2012.)

Problem number 5. Fracking is a new technique involving multiple substances whose long term health effects are unknown.

Should we, perhaps, go slow and check it all out first? Should we, perhaps, use the resources involved in fracking and in curing its victims to find ways of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels?

Should we perhaps stop and think about what we are doing?

As long as the free-market enthusiasts are on the loose, there is no chance of that. Pity our children and grandchildren.

Don't recycle that computer or cell phone!

Green is in. The big electronic box stores all offer to take your used electronic equipment for recycling. Unsuspecting consumers congratulate them for their forward looking stance. But what do they do with all this recycled material?

According to various estimates, 70% of discarded electronic equipment ends up in landfills. The rest is supposedly recycled. According to some estimates 80% of recycled material – a significant portion of it generated in the United States – is dumped in large containers to be shipped to low-wage countries. There, in China, Vietnam, and India or Ghana, recycling is done largely by children and women.

Recycling takes components of machines or appliance that have stopped functioning to convert them into raw materials for other products. Recycling a computer would involve salvaging the plastic and metal covers to be used in the production of other plastic or metal products. But that is not what happens when electronics are being "recycled."

The basic process consists of burning or "cooking" used computer components in order to melt the metals contained in old computer boards – metals like gold, copper, lead. These metals can bring in a bit of money. The plastic in the machines is worthless and hence is simply burned. The bulk of electronic waste is not being recycled at all but is being burned to be converted into toxic ash or gases polluting the atmosphere that are bound to sicken the adults doing the work.

It seriously affects the growth of today's children, who are a significant portion of the recycling workforce, and future children women, who work in recycling, will give birth to. There is no question that these backyard recycling operations not only do not really recycle, but do tremendous harm to the people who make a meager living there. Often they are undertaken in large urban settlements, for instance in Accra, Ghana, where the pollution injures large numbers of people.

It is illegal to ship electronic waste abroad from the US but the domestic recyclers circumvent those prescriptions by labeling used computers, cell phones, – with bitter irony--etc. as "charitable donations."

There exist some modern recycling plants which undertake this hazardous job in ways that are environmentally safe. One of those is in India where, with the rising prosperity, the problem of electronic waste takes on monumental proportions. Another such plant is located outside Toronto. It is not clear what percentage of electronic waste these high-tech plants process. The problem clearly is that recycling electronic components without, frankly, killing people is expensive. And no one seems to want to pay the price of building the requisite plants. (I must clearly include myself in that.)

Upgrading our electronic gadgets is very tempting. But before you do that you have to ask yourself what will happen to your discarded computers, cell phones or tablets.

Creeping Fascism?

Not too long ago President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act. Most of it concerns funding for the military but at the end there are some sections that essentially allow the military to arrest American citizens, suspected of connections with terrorism, without warrants and to hold them indefinitely without bringing them before a judge for an arraignment. This part of the act is now in litigation. A federal judge in New York has declared those sections unconstitutional, but it is not clear that the government will respect that judicial decision.

Even more recently, a story in the New York Times reveals that since 2002 the United States government has been spying on its own citizens. The National Security Agency, established for spying abroad, since 2002 has used a programs written by one William Binney for espionage on the Soviet Union to collect immense amounts of data about every American citizens, to be stored in a very large computer facility under construction in Utah. Binney has spoken out about this top secret program--”Stellar Wind”--concerned that it was clearly illegal, convened the Constitution and Bill of Rights and constitutes a serious threat to our democracy. Spying on its citizens is typical of autocratic governments.

Here are two examples of the government blatantly ignoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The freedoms of American citizens apparently do not count for much in the eyes of the present administration, or of its predecessors under George W. Bush.

Is this the beginning of fascism in America?

Fascism is a complex phenomenon. One of its chief characteristics is an authoritarian government that has no regard for individual liberties and constitutional protections of free speech or against arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention. Fascist governments tend to be very nationalistic; they are supportive of large corporations, and are vicious in their persecution of labor organizations. The directors of large corporations have a significant role in Fascist governments.

Full-fledged fascist governments come into power by arresting masses of real or imagined enemies. The first act of the Hitler regime in Germany was to arrest large numbers of political opponents, union leaders, religious leaders who seemed to be hostile to the new government. The Nazis made it very clear that opponents would end up in concentration camps indefinitely.

That is not yet happening in the United States. But the NDAA and the Stellar Wind Program of the NSA may be interpreted as preparations for just such mass arrests.

It certainly appears that there are groups in the US – some of them powerful, some of them influential in the intelligence services, some of them influential in Congress, who would not hesitate to introduce a fascist authoritarian regimes in our country. The passage in Congress of the National Defense Authorization Act indicates the willingness in the highest places – even in Obama's White House – to ignore the Bill of Rights. The program to spy on citizens similarly ignores constitutional guarantees and threatens civil liberties.

America is not yet fascist but a lot of Americans are flirting with fascism.

Before you go to sleep tonight, look under your bed for a fascist or for one of their microphones. They may be recording your snores. Be sure your snores are loyal and patriotic.

Labor Day has come around once again with its familiar speeches about the freedom and good fortune of American labor.

Labor, in our system, is a commodity. That is a long word to indicate that labor is bought and sold and that the price of labor – the workers' wages – depend on supply and demand. There is little demand for workers who never finished high school. Their wages are low. Highly skilled brain surgeons, on the other hand, are in high demand and earn a great deal of money.

All this is familiar. It strikes many people as a fine way of assigning jobs to people, of deciding what sorts of training young people need, and how much anyone should get paid. A person, as it were, rents himself or herself out for eight hours a day. After that their time is their own to do with as they like. The market in labor is no different from the market in hamburgers or in toilet paper.

But consider this story. An older man I met recently works for a manufacturing company as an attorney dealing with inventors whose inventions this company turns into machines. Some companies will pay a small sum every time the invention is used. His company, he told me, pays the inventor a small lump sum and nothing after that. He regards that as immoral but has to do what his employer demands of him. In order to keep his, admittedly well-paying, job he has to compromise his moral convictions. Selling his skills and ability to work has serious implications far beyond the workday. He is selling something of himself.

But he could of course look for a different job, many people will say. But think about that for a moment. He has lived in the same town with his wife for 50 years. They have many friends whom they encountered when they were young, with whom they shared the joys and sorrows of the intervening 50 years, of raising children and welcoming grandchildren, and growing old gradually. Were he to move somewhere else, to work for a different company, his life and that of his wife would also be very seriously disrupted.

He is not just renting out eight hours of his day to his employer. By signing an employment contract he allows the employer enormous power to damage his self-esteem as a moral person or to disrupt his life by forcing him to move elsewhere and to interrupt lifetime friendships.

The employment contract is not an innocent transaction but has a major effect on one's whole life and on one's person. Think of all the schoolteachers who, since the passage of No Child Left Behind, are forced to "teach to the test" instead of doing the sort of teaching which they believe helps students to grow up well educated and prepared for the world they have to confront. Think of all the people who do a job they like and do well, who are then "rewarded" by a promotion to a managerial job which they do not like. Changing from work one enjoys to work one despises has a serious effect on one's entire life, and often on the connection to one's family. But it is within the employer's power to turn one's entire life upside down.

When we hire ourselves out to an employer we cede enormous power over our lives to those we work for. No, we are not slaves. But we are not free either.

Remember that when you hear this year's Labor Day speech about the freedom of the American worker.

The Olympics

A Chinese weightlifter, at the end of his turn, burst into tears and apologized to his nation. He had merely won a silver medal. The radio commentator who told the story used it to illustrate the single-minded focus of Chinese media on winning gold medals. Nothing less is acceptable. But clearly the Chinese are not alone in that. In the age of nation states and jingoism, all nations are counting their gold and other medals, certainly the US.

But I find the entire spectacle strange. Think of the enormous sums of money invested not only in the Olympic Stadium and other facilities, but think all of the hundreds and thousands of athletes who have prepared for years for this event. You don't become an Olympic class athlete by going to your job 40 hours a week and spending the weekend taking care of your yard and your house, and playing with your kids. You have to be fully concentrated on this Olympic ambition and on your training. Someone has to pay your bills and has to pay for making gymnasiums, or whatever other places are needed, available for constant training.

So an enormous mass of resources is being spent on getting these very few people to be spectacular athletes. I wonder whether that is the best way of using those resources. One Chinese observer was quoted as saying that some of these resources should be made available to allow him and people like him to do sports and to allow them to improve their athletic skills and powers.

But the people who are in charge of Olympic events, the world Olympic committee, the Mitt Romney's of this world, businesses that hope to attract trade to themselves through their sponsorship of aspects of the Olympics, and other interested parties have decided that producing a few top athletes is more important than allowing large numbers of citizens to work out, to train, and generally improve their athletic skills. The peak performances of a few selected athletes have been chosen over improving the physical health of millions of people so that they feel better in their bodies and therefore may enjoy their life more.

By this decision the large number of people who are passionate about sports are condemned for the most part, to passivity. It is difficult for them to find the time and spaces in which to work out themselves. Instead, all they can do to follow their interest in sports is to turn on their television set and watch the broadcasts (and of course the commercials.). All they can do is sit and be Monday morning quarterbacks.

It is striking that in a democracy decisions of this sort are not submitted to the people. The explanation for that is obvious: the Olympics are entirely run and financed by private business. That is the domain of private ownership and democracy has no place there because in our world private property rights are more powerful than every persons democratic rights to determine the chief features of their life.

But maybe democratic rights should take precedence over the rights of private property.

Nothing but Bad News.

Two kinds of bad news stories seem to come back with ever greater frequency. Stories of mass killings of people unknown to the killer keep repeating more rapidly. First the killing in the movie theater in Aurora; now a pretty random shooting at a Sikh temple.

The other story that keeps repeating quite regularly and, it seems, with increasing frequency is that of malfeasance by banks or other financial institutions. In these cases it is often much harder to understand what exactly went on but the consequences are much more widespread and much more serious.

The most recent bank shenanigan is the manipulation of the so-called LIBOR bank rate. How do banks know at what interest rate to lend or borrow money? Some semi-public organization in London asks the big banks every day what they paid for loans and based on the replies that institution sets the current interest rate. The only trouble about this arrangement is that the banks have lied and given false information. As a consequence interest rates have been too high or too low. Depending on what was to their advantage that day, banks reported loan rates higher or lower than they actually were.

When the banks reported higher rates than they actually paid, many other borrowers paid more for their loans than they should have. In many situations that has serious consequences. The British Medical Journal reports that some public health facilities went bankrupt, partly due to having to pay higher interest rates than necessary as a consequence of the manipulation of LIBOR rates by Barclays bank. (It appears that Barclays was not the only bank cheating on this deal. Banks such as Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, RBS and UBS apparently are also under investigation).

Some states in the US worry that their pension fund money was adversely affected by artificially high interest rates due to LIBOR manipulations.

As one commentator put it: "LIBOR represents the cost of money. It affects mortgages and credit cards, as well as corporate bonds and loans, since interest rates are almost all pegged to LIBOR. " [http://prospect.org/article/libor-scandals-lies] The cheating by the largest banks may well affect everyone who has college loans, car loans, or mortgages on their house.

The numbers involved are very large ." There are at least 900,000 outstanding US home loans indexed to Libor that were originated from 2005 to 2009, the period the key lending gauge may have been rigged, investigators have said. Those mortgages carry an unpaid principal balance of $275bn, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a bank regulator." [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1b2d25aa-cb66-11e1-911e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz22tilzKvA].

A final, startling fact. In 2008 and 2009 Timothy Geithner, the current Secretary of the Treasury, then head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, knew about these interest rate manipulations by the big banks. He did nothing.

Random shootings are horrible. As in the most recent case, the shooters often die. If they survive, the courts will order lengthy sanity testing because part of us thinks that they must be insane to commit mass murder. The big bankers who cheat may seriously damage the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Do we think that they are mentally defective? No, they're just being good capitalists.

Go easy on the Patriotism, please!

 

Travelling through the South many years ago, I was struck by the Civil War Memorial one could find in almost every town large or small. Many wars later, our towns are dotted with military memorials honoring the soldiers from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and many other military conflicts. Soon we will get a rash of new commemorative monuments, by which, we think, we honor the soldiers who died and those who returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Such memorials are, however well-meaning, no more than evasions. We put some money in the basket to help pay for the monument. We may even attend the unveiling. But then we are done dealing with the war and its aftermath.

But the veterans are not and we should pay attention to that.

Here are some uncomfortable facts.

According to the Army Times of June 1, 2012 the general US unemployment rate last May was 8.2%. Unemployment among veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan was 12.7%. Veterans who returned in decent shape and able to go to work, will often find that work is not available for them.

There has been a great deal of controversy about health care for returning veterans. In 2007 some veteran groups sued the government for failing to provide adequate care for soldiers who returned from Iraq and Afghanistan injured.

The divorce rate among couples where one or both members are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is significantly higher than the divorce rate in the civilian population. The divorce rate among women veterans is more than twice that of men who returned from those wars.

Among these soldiers were, and are, 30,000 single fathers and mothers. When they go off to war they leave behind one or more children. What happens to them? A bronze statue in the middle of town will not help them grow up as happy and decent citizens.

Every 80 min. one veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars attempts suicide.

Why did they go? There is a great deal of talk about patriotism and defense of freedom. "In a time of retreat and collapse, when Americans were urged to maintain their routines and get on with their lives, a few people stepped forward and did just the opposite. . . . they epitomized a raw patriotism that bolstered the nation's spirit in the bleakest days since Pearl Harbor. " Thus USA Today of 9/8/2005. According to the Heritage Foundation, a significant number of enlistees in the current wars come from well-to-do middle class and other upper-middle-class families. (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2006/10/who-are-the-recruits-the-demographic-characteristics-of-us-military-enlistment-2003-2005)

But if you look at the facts, the reality is pretty distressing. According to the Washington Post, the bulk of new recruits come from rural areas, and from the people who are not doing well, who suffer from high unemployment rates and no prospects for getting to college.

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/03/AR2005110302528.html)

Putting all this together, we get the picture of young men and women, finding themselves at a dead end, without any prospects for getting a job, let alone a good job, or the education they need to improve their lives. They enlist in the military in order to solve that problem and after one or more tours in the theater of war, they return to find themselves unemployed once again. If they are hurt, medical care is hard to come by. In many cases, their marriages fell apart, while they were gone. On their return, many of them are sufficiently discouraged to attempt suicide.

For women the situation is even worse than for men. A significant percentage of women who served in the theaters of war were raped by fellow soldiers. If they were married when they went, when they came home their marriages were likely to end in divorce.

The picture is thoroughly disheartening. Our veterans need a whole lot of support. Their legitimate needs are not met by another war monument or flowery talk about their patriotism.