Bush administration wont read emails it knows it wont like.

White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

They didn't like what the E.P.A. was going to tell them about greenhouse gases, so they didn't open the email. How juvenille.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.

In order to get the administration to even read their emails, the E.P.A. has to rework them so that they offer no substance, no oppinion, no scientific fact. The Bush administration wants nothing stronger than white bread reports, since anything more would upset their world view that global warming, although happening, is not the danger we scientists and concerned citizens make it out to be. The reason is the same as it has ever been; aknowledging the dire threat of global warming compels them to do something about it, and that would hurt the big corporations that support the Republican party.

Simultaneously, Mr. Waxman’s committee is weighing its response to the White House’s refusal to turn over subpoenaed documents relating to the E.P.A.’s handling of recent climate-change and air-pollution decisions. The White House, which has turned over other material to the committee, last week asserted a claim of executive privilege over the remaining documents.

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Fratto, the White House spokesman, said the committee chairmen did not understand the legal precedent underlying executive privilege. “There is a long legal history supporting the principle that the president should have the candid advice of his advisers,” Mr. Fratto said. Emphasis added.

Not that he'll actually listen to it.

Dear Public Masturbator

I dunno about you Dad, but mine prefers a beer, Mom's the liquor drinker. I also don't know about your dad, but mine was a hippie skateboarder in the 70's, not a booty chasing booze hound. He still is, but now its bikes. He made pancakes in the morning, played with bikes, and went grocery shopping for the family.

Happy Father's Day.

Regards,

E.M.

The Story of Underfunded Mandates and Tomatoes

F.D.A. Reports Progress in Tracing Salmonella

167 people are sick with a salmonella infection from certain types of raw tomatoes.

The agency warned consumers over the weekend to avoid certain raw red plum, red Roma and red round tomatoes and products containing them. Cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes and those sold with the vine still attached are not associated with the outbreak, officials said.

This pops up from time to time. But with food traveling farther and being spread farther, its harder to pin point things and to regulate them. Think how much more trouble Dr. Snow would have had if the water from Broad Street was being shipped, nearly unregulated throughout Europe.

But the incompetence of the current administration overwhelms even my interest in epidemiology.

In November the food and drug agency released a “food protection plan,” but the Bush administration did not ask for the money to finance parts of it until Monday night. The health and human services secretary, Michael O. Leavitt, said on Monday that he would amend the administration’s budget request by asking for an additional $275 million for next year, $125 million of which would go to food protection.

I feel I might need to kick my cynicism up a notch. Unsurprised is not enough, one must now assume that whatever part of the government was put in place to take care of whatever is falling apart now, is currently massively underfunded.

Substance and Misogyny

I am hesitant to wander into this discussion because it has erupted elsewhere in great spewing volcanoes of vitriol and bile. But as someone who caucused for Hillary and was later disappointed by some of her choices, I would like to try to maybe talk about this carefully.

Misogyny alone did not kill her campaign, but it did play a role. There were substantive disagreements I, and many others, had with some of the ideas she put forward. I can't support a summer gas tax holiday, and I thought the 3AM add was a little tasteless. But I don't expect that I will always agree with a candidate or politician on all issues, and am willing to overlook somethings in the search for a viable alternative to the waning Republican stranglehold.

One thing that is markedly different between the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign is the structure of the support. Clinton was much more involved with insiders and people who have been doing this all their lives. Obama's supporters tended to have come into their own politically much more recently. Grassroots wont always get you elected, and lord knows you can get elected without them, but this time around, grassroots was more productive and more profitable. Just how it went this time.

That said, there was plenty of misogyny that was spewed out. Its one thing to bring up that a gas tax break would not be passed on to the consumers, but eaten as profit by the oil companies. Thats a substantive critique.

"I have often said, when she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs." -Tucker Carlson

That, I think we can agree, is not a substantive critique of any part of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Moreover, that specific comment is something that could be applied to any uppity bitch that scares Tucker Carlson, so really any of us. Tucker Carlson is an easy target, but many of the non substantive comments were pure misogyny. See Kristen Schaal.

What about those questions that walked that uneasy line between pundit drool and honest criticisms of her policy proposals? All those questions that wouldn't have been asked if she were a man? Those comments with pregnant pauses, meaningful tone of voice, those vocal cues that have come to be the modern wink and a nudge? That is where all this gets really nasty. When some hear a comment and think that its something that should be asked, and others think it would never even come up if there were no women in the race. We could hash every comment, try to come to a ruling of misogynist or just stupid, but I don't really want to see this at that high of a resolution. I'd really rather focus on getting a Democrat in the White House, and more in Congress.

The political world keeps on spinning.

I supported Hillary Clinton on Super Tuesday, and when I went to my district convention. I still think that she's a wonderful person, a superb Senator and would make a great president. But an absolute inability to admit defeat, to the point of moving the goal posts is a little much.

Neither Senator Obama nor I have won the 2210 delegates required to secure the nomination. And because this race is so close, still separated by less than 200 delegates out of more than 4,400, neither Senator Obama nor I will have reached that magic number when the voting ends on June the 3rd. Source

The talkers on MSNBC last night were saying that this is positioning, that this is a way to make sure that, come the right moment, Clinton can get something in return for bowing out. My father was talking (over the TV talkers) about how Hillary would be good for the VP slot. I'm not 100% sold on that idea, but he was making good arguments.

We are anxious for November around here. We're crunching numbers, looking at maps and graphs, talking over the cable talkers, spinning our own yarns about where this is all going to go. I can barely wait.

No Boomer, actually you don't know what its like out here.

Here's a pair of articles, neither about the US, but talking about the same trend and I'm willing to bet that the same is true here.

After the boomers, meet the children dubbed 'baby losers'

'Some talk of a war between the generations, but that's a little simplistic. It is more that the system means that the haves are keeping what they have and no one is helping the have-nots,' said Chauvel. 'The big determinant in France now of success is not your educational level but the wealth of your parents, if they can support you during your twenties as you fight your way into a closed employment market.'

Young people entering workforce still earning less than parents did

Across all age groups, median salaries for full-time workers have changed little in 25 years. Workers today make, on average, a mere $53 more than they did in 1980, when adjusted for inflation, according to the census.

One could argue that this is the US, not Europe or Canada, but I seriously doubt that the demographics there are really that much different than the demographics here.

But as the boomers retire, surely jobs will open up. Maybe.

The looming retirement of the baby boom generation and the labour shortage that's expected to ensue could, however, spell good news for young folks anxious to enter the labour market or earn more cash.

Still, Morissette cautions the jobs may not materialize.

"In the face of labour shortages, some firms will make use of foreign outsourcing of services and will use labour abroad to fill up their orders," he said.

"These labour shortages might not necessarily lead to wage increases for younger workers."

Lehmann added there's also a good chance young people struggling to find well paying work today may simply be too old to take advantage by the time the market opens up.

Great.

So the boomers retire, here in the US they get on to the already stressed Social Security roster, and the people that are supposed to be earning money to refill the coffers, can't earn enough to build the stability that the middle class needs.

I'm not expecting to live beyond my means. I don't want a big house, two big cars and a huge TV, but I want to be able to buy a house in the next five to seven years. I want to be able to afford a child. I want a job that puts food on the table. I know that my grandparents gave my parents the down payment on the house I grew up in, and I'm not too proud to accept that kind of help. But I want to make it on my own, and that looks harder and harder everyday.

By the way, congrats to all the new college grads. I've been out here in the real world for a year, and let me tell you, that shock you're feeling, your parents don't actually know what its like.

The Age of Oil Must End.

Clearly I've been neglecting this. I've got a steady 9 to 5 at a law firm thats been a steady 8 to 6 as The Big Case got ready to go to trial. But the case is settled into its court room and my part is pretty much over until the case ends in a few weeks. So I'll be back up to posting three or four times a week. Hopefully. Anyway, since I haven't posted in weeks I don't feel bad about not being on my usual topic schedule.

Oil Costs To Offset Stimulus Package

Since Congress and Bush unveiled an economic stimulus package Jan. 24, the price of the OPEC basket of crude oil has jumped by $32.51 a barrel, raising the cost of U.S. oil imports enough to offset the entire stimulus package over the course of the year.

Does this really surprise anyone? The stimulus package was supposed to be a shot in the arm for an economy where most people's ARMs had already exploded. The price of oil will never go down, maybe it will go down a little bit, small daily or weekly fluctuations. But like global climate change, the small day to day changes can't mask the relentless march upward.

"We're engaged in a painful experiment in discovering how high the price [of oil] has to go before it really, really hurts, before it hurts enough to slow demand globally," said Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist for Deutsche Bank.

He's dead on. Something has got to give because we can't go on like this. We've known for some time now that eventually the economics of limited resources would drive the price of oil beyond what is reasonable.

The price of oil will never come down.

No gas tax holiday, no ethanol blend, no hybrid technology, no fuel efficiency standard, no maximum purchase at the pump, no drilling offshore, in oil sands or national wildlife reserves can change that. Even if we could get the cash price down, the climate change cost is, its increasingly obvious, more than we can really afford. The heyday of petrochemicals must end. We have no choice in that. What we can choose is what kind of withdrawal from oil addiction we will have. Are we going to deny that this is killing us until we hit rock bottom, or are we going to come to terms with whats going on here and get help?