Barbados Imposes 24 Hour Curfew On Islanders - "We're Not Making Sport!"

Unlike the U.S. of A, which basically is saddled with a mock government - incapable of finding its ass with both hands- Barbados (the island state where I lived for over 20 years) is not "making sport" in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.  This was after the cases first jumped to past 25 ten days ago, prompting a public health emergency declaration from Prime Minister Mia Mottley. And then enforcing tighter restrictions after the positive cases jumped to 46 today.   Those numbers may seem minuscule to most Americans, but for a tiny island nation of 166 square miles, with 280, 000 citizens - and hospitals only able to hold a hundred - it is deadly serious.

Hence, unlike here where leaders can bloviate, lie and delude too many gullible people - only  half paying attention - in Barbados everyone listens up when the P.M. speaks, or the Deputy P.M. Santia Bradshaw earlier today:  E.g.

https://youtu.be/UXG0yy5E7nA 

According to The Barbados Nation:

"A 24-hour curfew will come into effect for Barbados tomorrow as Government continues to fight against the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19).

The decision to increase restrictions on Barbadians less than 24 hours after Government had imposed new hours of business and restricted movement was delivered moments ago by acting Prime Minister, Santia Bradshaw.

From 5 p.m. tomorrow, persons will now only be allowed on the street for legitimate business, inclusive of the purchase of food from village shops, or medication from pharmacies, Bradshaw said.

In a press conference from Government Headquarters at Bay Street, St Michael, Attorney General Dale Marshall also made it clear that police would be taking a no-nonsense approach to keeping law and order and would be rounding up any persons found on the street without a legitimate reason, or who break the curfew.

The penalty for infraction is a $50,000 fine, one year in jail, or both.   All supermarkets will be closed and other options will have to be found to secure food, including enlisting a delivery service from select super marts, grocers.  (Orders to be placed by email as most islanders don't have apps, and neither do the stores) The alternative is for citizens to obtain provisions at the nearest bread shops in their villages.    These orders were made necessary because too many Bajans had "continued to exhibit panic buying" - with supermarkets and gas stations "struggling to maintain control".  

Rather than let lawlessness prevail, the government clamped down.

Meanwhile, here in Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis is going directly to the Chinese to secure "thousands of (N95) masks, surgical gowns, protective face helmets and hundreds of ventilators".  This after Gov. Polis conceded the Trump government is too lame to be depended upon for even minor bupkiss. (Denver Post today, p. 1A)

See also:

Heather Digby Parton

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Donald Trump

This Humiliating Failure Is Actually Our President During a National Crisis

by Heather Digby Parton | April 2, 2020 - 7:37am | permalink

— from Salon

Excerpt:

"There have been a number of great articles written in recent days about the "lost month" of February when Trump consistently downplayed the crisis even when people who understood the clear and present danger were running around the government with their hair on fire. The failure to get testing up and running in the early days will be remembered as a deadly blunder. His recent lurch from a promise to end all public health mitigation strategies by Easter and relaunch the economy to predicting the deaths of 100,000 to 200,000 people has been dizzying."

And:

The Trump Administration | Coronavirus | Donald Trump

The Trump Coronavirus Task Force’s New Stance Should Bury It in Shame

And:

The Trump Administration | Coronavirus

We Need a 9/11 Commission-style Probe to Investigate the Coronavirus Calamity

And:

Coronavirus | Healthcare Policy

While Trump Plays President, New York's Doctors and Nurses Are Forced to Decide Who Lives, Who Dies

Colorado & The Mountain West - The Next Firestorm States?

"Tropical regions with one day of severe humid heat now can expect 100 to 150 days by 2070, if current greenhouse gas emissions continue.  World population of 8.6 billion is forecast as 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100...in a world shrinking for human use, and more of it uninhabitable, unproductive and submerged."   - Bert Melcher, letter to the Denver Post, Dec. 2, p. 3D)

The apocalyptic scenes in the final '60 Minutes' segment last night were hair raising and outright terrifying - and that's for people watching them from afar. I refer to the horrendous Camp fire that tore through northern California leaving over 173,000 acres barren and full of ash and detritus, with recovery workers having to sift carefully through incinerated remains in search of human bones, teeth.  If they were found, they were carefully placed into paper bags then carried back to a makeshift lab for DNA analysis.   Using this technique, 41 bodies-identities were recovered from the ashes.

The scenes of the fire itself, taken by a fire brigade team, could have been out of Dante's Inferno. Flames reached everywhere and in no time - making escape almost impossible. The head of the Fire rescue team described flames two hundred feet in height - that's as tall as a twenty story building-- and "miles in width" - burning up the equivalent of "one football field a second".  A computer simulation was then rendered to show how fast it spread on a scale topographical map. The question arose as to whether this conflagration was unusual or other states could also experience it.

Ironically, barely two hours earlier I'd just finished reading an unnerving article ('Climate Change Clobbering Colorado And Western U.S.) in Sunday's Denver Post (p. 1B). The map accompanying the article (see below) made it clear western Colorado has had at least the same increase in temperature as the torched areas of California, and also many of the same conditions, especially prolonged drought, many dead or dying trees and people who are building homes close to them.


Basically, the changes in temperature as well as increased drought -  compared to California-   shows all these states are also on track for raging firestorms.  The 300 scientists who produced the National Climate Assessment, including several based along Colorado’s Front Range, point to recent ruinous climate events as evidence that global warming is affecting the United States as never before and threatening to disrupt lives coast to coast. Those impacts are pretty much locked in until 2050 due to past emissions that raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to 410 parts per million. What happens after 2050 depends on how fast humans reduce air pollution from burning fossil fuels, clearing forests and other human activities that further load the atmosphere with heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

I already made one unpopular forecast in a previous blog post, to wit,  that humans needed to get 500 million autos out of circulation in the next few years to have any chance at all limiting a greenhouse hell. Will that happen? How can it when so many of our species see the motorcar as their primary ticket to "independence".  Even wifey admitted she'd shudder to think of doing without her Buick Encore - even for a day.  But what about it and the hundreds of millions of cars like it pumping the atmosphere full of CO2?   "Do not go there!  We are not having this conversation!"' she retorted.  Fine, then we all just agree to do or say nothing and let any 'outsiders' bear the burdens, while the planet slowly roasts and us with it.

Look, folks, no one said this was going to be easy.  And if no one is the first to act, then no one else will do so.  We could as well become like slowly boiling frogs.  According to Brad Udall, Colorado State University climate scientist quoted in the Post:

“The message just gets louder and clearer as the years go by. We have got to deal with this problem. We’ve had event after event after event over the last 10 years with climate change written all over them. We have another 80 years ahead of us. And with the current projected air emissions, the future is bleak,.. We need a sane and safe way to wean ourselves off fossil fuels over the next few decades, doing the least harm we can do to our economy but doing right by the environment. … We have to cease all greenhouse gas emissions as soon as practical.”

Jared Polis, our state's newly elected governor, added:

"States must lead the way, because the federal government has dropped the ball.  My administration will be looking carefully at various options to not only deal with the potential short- and long-term impacts from climate change, but how to do our part to combat the root causes of global climate change through bold, proactive policies to transition to renewable energy.  Climate change is a blinking red light, and we have to act now or our children will end up suffering the consequences of inaction.”

What gives in the Mountain  West?

Well, bigger wildfires and a lengthening “fire season” for starters.   These have combined with population growth and reckless home building in burn zones, making destruction of people and property more likely.  For example, as seen in California’s recent devastating wildfires and fierce burns in Colorado this summer. Additionally, the record-low mountain snow in southern Colorado and higher temperatures has accelerated a climate shift toward aridity that favors frequent ignition.

Already, since we moved to this state in 2000, we've been affected by no less than three monster wildfires, including the Waldo Canyon fire, and the Black Forest fire, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/aaarghh-smoke-fills-air-again-more-wild.html

No surprise then the cumulative forest area burned is increasing rapidly as the graph below shows:


.
Federal wildfire analysts have calculated that the 24 million acres burned across the West between 1984 and 2015 was twice what would have burned had global warming caused by humans not happened.  Fires incepted by climate change worsen the problem of more people building homes in forests and flammable former agricultural fields. Colorado state forester Mike Lester said in an interview with the Post that house-building and other urbanization in burn zones has left more than half of Colorado’s population — 2.9 million people — threatened by wildfire. That’s up nearly 50 percent from 2 million in 2012. State task force recommendations to limit construction in what insurers designate as the “wildland urban interface” mostly have been ignored by state lawmakers and property developers.

The more people moving into burn zones, the harder it becomes to restore forest health because safety margins are narrower.   Forests need fires to regenerate, to a point, but totally suppressing fires sets up bigger fires in the future..But this shows again that a large part of the problem is too many people moving into this state, which has too little available land for them to live. (And the situation isn't helped by all the fracking that's going on, and no greater offsets allowed from homes after Prop 112 was defeated. See my post tomorrow).

Global warming is disrupting water flows, too, complicating the water supply necessary to allow more population growth in Colorado and other parts of the arid West. Rocky Mountain snowpack dipped to record low levels this year. Climate scientists have documented lower flows in rivers, including the Colorado River that farmers and urban developers tap as the main source serving 40 million people across seven states. Looming shortages already compelled state officials to prepare emergency plans for curbing use of water from the government-built reservoirs and irrigation systems that enabled settlement of the West.  And there is more and more serious consideration of adopting "toilet to tap" water recycling systems.

Beyond water conservation, some cities are pushing for construction of new and expanded reservoirs to try to store more water when rain falls.

Higher temperatures alone  have forced lifestyle changes, keeping people and pet animals indoors. Since we moved here from Maryland, the number of 90-plus degree days have increased from barely ten to more than twenty-five.  The increasing temperatures even forced us to install a central air conditioning system 5 years ago - something we didn't want to do because of the adverse impact on global warming. Up to then we'd been using a swamp (or evaporative) cooler which is much more eco-friendly.  But as daytime temperatures topped 90 degrees for consecutive days the system simply wasn't able to handle the thermal burden.  All you'd end up getting is hot air blowing out the vents.

Besides, climate scientists say the rising heat hits the elderly hardest, along with children and low-income people who cannot afford to run air-conditioning systems. Still, I already noted two posts ago  how a/c units are forecast to increase to 3.5 b or more by 2050 placing inordinate demands on power grids.  So apart from keeping older farts and kids from croaking of heat stroke, this is not necessarily a good thing.  Increasing demand for artificially cooled air dramatically pumps more CO2 into the atmosphere even as it strains electricity grids, leading to power outages.  Indeed,  at the cusp of the runaway greenhouse effect - say by 2060-  one can argue the various power grids around the world will not be able to keep up with demand - not with 40-50 day heat waves at 110-115 F temperatures.

 Add to all that the fact  the conditions are favorable for mosquitoes and ticks to spread more sickness, including the Lyme disease, and you have a vastly higher misery index. One of the newer additions is the  Asian Longhorned tick, i.e.


 that can infect humans with a form of hemorraghic fever.  The critters are asexual so one of them can lay as many as 2,000 eggs at a time without ever mating.

The Zika virus is  also spreading northward.

According to Gregg Garfin, a University of Arizona climatologist who co-authored parts of the national assessment focused on Colorado and southwestern states:

"The droughts, fires, threats to water supplies and heat waves — those things are all amplified and exacerbated by these increases in temperature,   Fossil fuel extraction is probably really good for the economy in the short term, If you look at the long term, then we have to take into account the effects of heat-trapping gases warming up the lower atmosphere. It is important to see the connections."

Will we see the connections, or will we wait until it's too late to do anything? My bet is the latter.  So long as so many view their automobiles and "independence" more important than the planet's capacity to support present day humans - and future generations - we are for the high jump.  Even Janice agrees with that but it will not be her car put on the sidelines first.

No, It Wasn't A Blue Tsunami - But A Genuine Blue WAVE ("Pussy grabber payback") - Update

Dems celebrate with yet another big House win on Tuesday night.

The Reepster codger clique at the local BK this morning could barely contain themselves as they spat out invective at the midterm election results.  They babbled such predictable effluent as the following in one exchange.

"Yeah, just imagine, them damn Dems put a gay guy in as governor!"

"What'cha expect? It was the cemetery vote, and that's why them Demo-crats got the House too! I kept seein' all that blue on the tube, state after state."

"Heck, that's all them minorities  and migrants votin' who want free stuff. They like socialism and the Dems promised 'em lotta benefits."

Of course, that's why the Reepturds will soon be going the way of the dinos and Whigs. It's a cult party populated by  too many ossified oldsters, incapable of rational thought, and also doting Trumpster cultists who worship at the altar of the Dotard Joker: 


As gratifying as it was to hear these old farts piss, whine and moan - even if the basis was moronic- things did not initially look good on the home front last night. At around 6:30 James Carville appeared on MSNBC's 'Your Vote' and began pontificating that he "didn't really see a blue wave coming". This was soon after results showed the FLA governor's race likely going to Trump toady Rick DeSantis and Bill Nelson possibly losing to Rick Scott.  At that point Janice burst into tears, and I had to do some major psychological damage control by telling her Carville's definition of a blue wave was too excessive - likely 50 or 60 net seats gained.

As another commentator (Chris Matthews) appeared, he confirmed my take that Carville defined a "blue wave' too extravagantly."  In Matthews' opinion a 30 seat win in the House qualified as a wave and I agreed. It now looks like that's exactly what transpired with the Ds at 230 seats - or 22 more than needed to take the House back. Indeed, there were major House flips - from red to blue- in hard red Texas as well as Oklahoma. As I told Janice, "That should cheer you up!"  To which she replied, "Yeah, but Beto still lost to that damned Cruz."

I turned in by 11:30 MT  but Janice stayed up hoping to see if John Tester would win in Montana, but that contest still seems too close to call. Even if Tester loses, I will tell Janice that it's more or less offset by Jacky Rosen's win in Nevada over Dean Heller.  (Update: Tester ultimately won by a very narrow margin, reported the next morning. Needless to say, it almost made J's day - until the news of the Dotard appt. of Whitaker came on and she burst into tears once more- see next post.)

But MSNBC political commentators Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace put it best: "This is like an earthquake because the Democrats now control the House and can mount investigations" (Even though idiot Dotard barked this a.m. if the Dems do he will "mount investigations of them".  LOL!)

Also, Schmidt made no bones about the fact it marked a repudiation of Trumpism, at least from the nation's suburbs and cities - from which most House districts derive their political support. The rural areas? They predictably went for Trump Reeps, and that led to expanding the GOP margin in the Senate.   Never mind! Taking back the House, even in spite of gerrymandering and voter suppression was huge  - and it took at least a generic blue wave to do it!

The takeaway from all this is that enough American voters  (mainly women) brought a semblance of  sanity back to the nation, realizing that a one party state doesn't redound to any citizen's benefit.  Look, the GOP while it had all branches of gov't didn't do diddly or squat to control or check Trump's excesses, they merely enabled him. This required intervention by the adults in the room and arrived when the Democrats recaptured the House of Representatives.  At last now we are done with the enabling traitor goon  Devin Nunes, e.g.

Who as head of the House Intel Committee had been in charge of a third column effort to make the special prosecutor the target of his own bastardized, specious House probe, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/03/house-intel-committee-case-closed-no.html

Now the jig is up for Trump as the Democrats sweep into Washington in January with significant new power to shape the national agenda and especially to mount  REAL investigations for the first time that could change the nature of the Trump presidency. Make no mistake as one female firned of wifey's put it, "This is pussy grabber payback, for that Access Hollywood tape!") Indeed and now women are on track to take over 100 seats in the House.

At the top of the list of  House initiatives will be efforts will be getting Trump's tax records.  After that, the House Intelligence Committee will likely  reopen its investigation of Trump to do the job that Nunes and his traitor collaborators refused to do.

As Adam Schiff  had to say concerning the then GOP mock investigation:

"By ending its oversight role in the only authorized investigation in the House, the Majority has placed the interests of protecting the President over protecting the country, and history will judge its action harshly."

Now Schiff gets to shine a spotlight on  Trump as well as GOP House chicanery in enabling him, which every red blooded American ought to cheer. Yeah, Dotard the past few weeks has displayed a bunker mentality, sensing attack from all sides – Democrats, TV talking heads, distant caravans, hidden conspirators, the media. BUT...now he is about to face an opposition with actual teeth, many of them female.

In the end, let's be clear the House vote was a much needed referendum on the disruptive and disgraceful presidency of  Trump. The Dotard himself on Monday admitted that “even though I’m not on the ballot, in a certain way I am on the ballot.” The press, he whined, considers the election “a referendum on me.”  Well, it was and he failed the test as the sane contingent of Americans restored checks and balances.  That majority comprised mainly of women voters holding their fire for two years to issue payback - and they did- with votes still being tallied.

Thw  “blue wave” didn’t reach tsunami, so never reached the Senate, but it attained massive wave level on a pace to flip almot 40 Reep House seats. . Note also this massive flip occurred despite the supposedly "great" economy: low unemployment, rising DOW etc. under the Reepo reign.  In other words, the big D- House win likely should never have occurred under a normal presidency in such economically beneficial times. As one commenter (Ezra Klein)  put it: "Republicans managed to make people angrier even despite the low unemployment of only 3.7 percent.This  is a political failure of a startling proportion."

 Apart from that,  the Dems had  to overcome monumental gerrymandering,  as well as the earlier SC decision to shelve the Voting Rights oversight, and even more recently ruling against Native Americans voting in North Dakota because they lived on reservations and lacked a street address. (At the last minute, the ACLU came to the rescue in court but it wasn't enough to pull out a win for Ms. Heitkamp). Meanwhile, Reep degenerates voted for three soon -to -be jailbirds to keep their House seats: Duncan Hunter (CA),  Chris Collins (NY), and Ken Paxton(TX) - the latter for AG.

As one Dem observer in Texas put it: "If Paxton can't follow the law, how can he enforce it?"

Good question.  But see the Trumpies don't care about laws or norms.  Look at the shenanigans of Kemp in Georgia.

The shift in the House clearly constitutes a repudiation of Trump’s reckless policies, his violation of political and ethical norms and his repeated falsehoods. It is also an unmistakable rejection of the contemptible rhetoric of fear and prejudice that he has resorted to in recent weeks to rile up his base, especially his claim that a caravan of dangerous asylum-seekers from Central America was heading north to the border to “invade” the United States.

As for Colorado, the Dems took the governorship with Jared Polis besting Walker Stapleton by nearly 5 points.  They are also set to regain a “trifecta” of elected power for the first time since 2014.
As of 9:30 p.m last night, Democrats held strong margins in all five of the critical Senate races. This would give Dems the state Senate, state House and the governorship.

It was also gratifying to see Wayne Williams lose Secretary of State to Dem  challenger Jena  Griswold.  Williams is best known for punishing the Hamilton electors in Colorado, as well as other missteps. He deserved to go down in flames.

Another biggie was Reep House Rep Mike Coffman going down to Dem newcomer Jason Crow.  As all these results from state Senate, House results poured in Democratic strategist Steve Welchert, declared:

"Those are huge numbers. This is a royal blue wave in Colorado.  Colorado is going to be a blue thumb sticking out of the country a little bit.”

Another big win:  Coloradans voted Tuesday for Amendment A,  to officially abolish slavery.  See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/10/yes-ive-just-voted-to-abolish-slavery.html

On the downside, the Amendment 73 to fund schools, education, failed to pass, as well as Proposition 112 which would have increased offsets to fracking wells by 2,500 ft.  It is  an unfortunate outcome, not only because the noise and odor adversely impact home owners located within 500' of wells (currently the limit) but also because of the attendant health issues. (The Colorado School of Public Health showed in 2012 that those living less than a half mile - 2, 680 feet- from a fracking site, were at greater risk for neurological and respiratory diseases as well as congenital birth defects.)

Well, maybe next time around - especially as more newcomers moving into our state feel the adverse effects to their well being, as well as on property values. Just two years ago the slavery prohibition item failed in Colorado, but passed this time around. So who knows?

Update:  Nov. 9: As the size of the Dem Blue Wave continues to  increase to mini-tsunami level, with Kyrsten Sinema now ahead of Trump troll Martha McSally in AZ, and Stacy Abrams staying faithful to voters in GA - to count every damned vote -  despite Kemp's and Trump's pressure to cease.  Let's be clear the Reeptards, Trumpies, and GOOPr stooges are playing their usual card - calling "Fraud!"  Do not be surprised, as these fuckers are incapable of winning fairly and squarely, without putting their grubby paws on the scale. If they can't cop seats via voter suppression, omitting absentee or provisional ballots, or machine tricks  they play the vote fraud card.   Hopefully, enough citizens, including in the Dem party  - raise a hue and an outcry against these anti-democratic, nee fascist forces.  It is bad enough that a minority government controls most branches (SC, Senate, Presidency), we can't allow it to tilt even worse.

See also:

Steven Rosenfeld

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2018 Elections

It Was a Blue Wave Election—And the Republicans Are Feeling the Fallout

And:

Autocrats, Incorporated: Thoughts on Election Day 2018

Libertarian Columnist Jon Caldara Needs An Education On Human Rights

The impetuous libertarian gun fanatic and rabble rouser Jon Caldara is at it again in his latest Denver Post op-ed ('Jared Polis and the New Human Rights', Perspective, Oct. 7). Caldara writes:

"Jared Polis insists: 'Health care is a human right'.   Either my understanding of human rights is completely wrong or Polis's understanding of the English language is. I thought human rights were guarantees through natural law that you can do some things even if the society around you wants to stop you. Those activities and beliefs behind them, can't be ripped from you even if you're in the political minority. The government can't take away your speech, and expression, yur ability to assemble, own firearms. Government can't take property without due process, inflict cruel punishment."

Here Caldara demonstrates the typical truncated libertarian view that only negative rights count. In other words,  there are only “negative” rights inherent in the Bill of Rights, and there can be no “positive” ones.   A negative right implies that there are ‘x’ things the government can’t do to you, e.g.  take away your guns or your property without good legal basis ("eminent domain"). . By contrast, positive rights assert there are actual positive rights to which you are entitled under the Bill of Rights, say health care and privacy. Most of those on the Right (as well as libertarians like Caldara) , who have only passing acquaintance with the Federalist papers, assert positive rights don’t exist, but they are wrong. They merely show they fail to grasp the concept of an "unenumerated right", i.e. under the ninth amendment of the Bill of Rights..

The latter has been well explicated, for example, by Prof. Garry Wills (‘A Necessary Evil: A History Of American Distrust of Government’, Simon & Schuster, 1999).   As Prof. Wills has pointed out, the unenumerated rights are all those rights not already specifically declared or described in the existing Bill of Rights.  The Founders thereby realized and understood there could exist rights in the future they hadn’t conceived of at the time of the Constitutional Convention, and so allowed those (then) undefined rights to become realized later. In other words, the rights allotted citizens are not limited to the rights actually and specifically delineated, i.e. in the Bill of Rights.

This opens up the basis for positive rights, not merely negative ones. Hence, Jared Polis - unlike our friend Jon Caldara- simply grasped the concept of the unenumerated right and how it paved the way for rights such a health care and privacy.

And why not? (Apart from the fact the U.S. is a signatory to a 1994 UN Declaration that health care is indeed a right.)  Think about it carefully, from the perspective of Caldara that health care must not be a right, never and no how.   So let us say I have no access to competent health care and in Caldara's view, no right to it.

I then contract Avian flu, Ebola or some other highly virulent disease, but for which I can get no care. (No money to pay for it) I am turned down at place after place and end up circulating amidst large crowds merely spreading the particular  contagion to others. HOW is this helpful to the community I live in, how is it beneficial to our national security? It isn't! 

This is where Caldara's ill-informed logic breaks down, i.e. "The new progressive bill of rights means the people around you owe you stuff".

No, that is Trump think.  What it means is that by conferring positive rights like health care the whole community benefits because that one loose end which could unleash an epidemic is sealed. Closed, not left open.  Rather then thinking in a limited fashion about "grabbing others' stuff" one is led instead to concur that all partake of the protections afforded by the tax commons. That goes for national defense - but also for health care.

It also includes an inherent right to privacy - another positive right. For example, if the presumption is no right to privacy then the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights is meaningless. To restate that Amendment:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

But note, “secure in one’s person, house, papers, effects” implies PRIVACY! These are after all MY private papers, my private effects, my house, etc. If an inherent right to privacy was a myth then by all accounts being secure in one’s person, papers, effects wouldn’t matter. Hell, let the whole freakin’ world see ‘em! This is why in a fascist dictatorship “personal effects” don’t exist. “Personal papers” has no meaning. The state has full monopoly, de facto ownership on whatever the person has, even his own body. Hence, in fascist dictatorships, such as existed in Nazi Germany, all personal effects, papers could be seized by the Nazis on a whim or remote suspicion - under the Reich Laws. A fundamental right to privacy, meanwhile, insists there exist bona fide entities that one can uniquely own, e.g. papers, effects – including photos or what not- that are private. Without this fundamental right, then, “personal papers, effects” has no meaning hence the 4th amendment is meaningless.

Again, this is not exceptional so Caldara's limited view of rights  as only negative breaks down. Caldara is correct that a right (positive or negative) retains that property irrespective of the population affected, as when he writes:

"In a society of only three people it would still be a violation of human rights for two of them to force the third into a religion, or take his arms".

 

True, but this is not the same as a government of three agreeing to a contract that health care for all members is a right - a shared responsibility - to protect each from a terrible disease that may befall one and spread to the others.  In other words, the extension of the positive right is a matter of mutual self-interest.   This is why Caldara's logic also breaks down when he writes:

"If it is a right to demands goods or services at someone else's expense then one person out of our fictional society of three could demand health care...and the other two must provide him that human right."

Well, they could also refuse - and die themselves- say if he contracts cholera.  Caldara's claim is that "it's not a freedom" i.e.  for the recipient of the care (say oral rehydration with salts in the case of cholera) but rather a "liability for the other two to provide".   My argument is that it is not a liability but a very wise form of self protection to take proactive care of the 3rd member of the fictional society.  Hence, it is beneficial to this mini society to deem health care a right, just as it would be for any larger society.

The whole problem, as I see it, is a failure of vision (and political moxie and will) to see positive rights as beneficial to whole communities or nations, not as liabilities to be avoided.   Caldara is right about one thing, all human rights are unconditional - and that includes health care and privacy.

Colorado Proposition 112 Will Be A Brutal 'Wake Up' Call For State's Oil Shale Frackers!

Shale oil fracking in Colorado has presented enormous dangers for inhabitants of our state and nothing clarified the need to increase distances between oil and gas wells and neighborhoods more than the home explosion in Firestone nearly 18 months ago that killed two men. The incident was blamed on a leaky flowline from a nearby well that hadn’t been capped properly.   

Now, what many portray as an existential battle for the "soul" of the state is nearing resolution as the November midterm elections approach. This concerns Proposition 112 - known during  the petition process as "Initiative 97", which adherents insist will bring long sought sanity to neighborhoods throughout the state.

 If it works as planned it will bolster the health and safety of tens of thousands of state residents living above or on the edge of Colorado's increasingly fossil-fuel industrialized landscape. The statewide ballot measure would dramatically increase the distance ("offsets")  from homes as well as waterways for new oil and gas wells.   However, standing opposed are a coterie of oil and gas allies who use insane PR ploys to try to terrify state residents into compliance with their frack happy images for the future. For example, they claim it will cost "147,000 jobs"  and "deprive cities and towns of millions of dollars in tax revenues".  

The truth? The loss of 147,000 jobs is wildly overblown. According to the University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business'  Economic Outlook, there were roughly 26,100 jobs in natural resources and mining in 2018.  That number of workers could easily be integrated into the state's burgeoning marijuana industry.  (In fact, the number includes not only oil and gas workers but also coal and metals mining. There were actually only 11,5000 jobs for oil and gas operations.)

Oh, another complaint is that Prop. 112 will  "rob thousands of mineral rights owners of access to their underground property" (Clarification: Some guy named 'Bubba' in the early days of development of a community bought up tracts A, B and C in a current development.  You now happen to live on tract A.  But Colorado law states that while you own the surface area, e.g. lawn etc., Bubba is the owner of anything found underneath, including any minerals, oil or gas. And so, he can extract those goodies anytime he desires.

These are the opposing narratives Colorado voters will have to resolve on November 6th. 

The real nexus of the clash, of course, is between the yen for the shale drillers to go on reaping their climate -destroying treasure and the state's ongoing population boom .     Given these colliding forces - increased population vs, increased drilling. - it was inevitable something would have to give. 

The graphic shown above basically encapsulates the issues as one beholds the far flung oil drilling active wells.  So given all the new people  (estimated half million since 2008) that have moved to the state, bought new homes - many very expensive - it was expected they'd not find proximate drilling activity conducive to their property values. (And many only learned of the activity after they moved in.)  

So there is an existential collision: On the one hand the people having moved to the state in search of quality of life, versus the intensifying hunt by fossil fuel companies for the resources  (natural gas and shale oil) that power modern life. The central question at the heart of the collision: Economy or citizen health? is quickly becoming a high stakes battle - especially in the governor's race.   That pits pro-fracker GOP candidate Walker Stapleton against Jared Polis, who advocates for sensible offsets and more local control of drilling activity.  

For perspective, the state currently requires oil and gas wells to be located at least 500 feet from buildings and 350 feet from recreation areas like playgrounds. The  Prop. 112 ballot initiative would increase those setbacks to nearly half a mile. Effectively, this would ban drilling  on 85 percent of the state's nonfederal public land, according to an analysis by state regulators.

All this has been used by the fracking industry to fan hysteria, while not informing people there are already nearly 50,000 wells in the state and also that the passage of 112 would not affect offsets of the existing wells.  

In terms of economic effect, the REMI Partnership - a nonprofit research group projects that if the measure passes it will reduce state and local revenue by $201 million to $258 million in the first year. It will also result in the loss of 33,500 to 43,000 jobs.  As I already showed above such job loss exaggerations are absurd given oil and gas fracking accounts for barely 1 percent of all Colorado jobs.

One thing for certain: Colorado voters will have to keep their bullshit detector caps on tight as November 6th approaches!

English County Puts Kibosh on Fracking - What Are WE in the U.S. Doing About It?

Anti-Fracking protestors in Preston, England, after the local government rejected fracking applications from Caudrilla Resources

What a great and noble thing it is to have control of whether despoliation of one's environment can occur via the use of local control of fracking! We almost had it here in Colo. back in 2014 except that Jared Polis (who tendered two different referenda on it) punked out at the last minute - no doubt coerced by the oil and gas and lobby. As well as kowtowing to empty promises by Gov. John Hickenlooper, aka "Hick", who once drank a large glass full of fracked water to try and show it was harmless. (Rumors later circulated that he had diarrhea for three days after, but we can't verify this.)

We know New York at least got the message and banned fracking last year, but most state government haven't given they're so in control by outside interest e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.tw/2015/05/fracking-state-governments-determined.html

Now, we also know an English county government on Monday rejected application from Caudrilla Resources for the first onshore hydraulic fracturing in Western Europe since 2011, according to a Wall Street Journal report ('Fracking Suffers Setback In England', p. B3, June 30).  Thus, as the piece observed, "the industry suffered another blow to develop a shale gas industry outside of the U.S."

Well, let it suffer! We don't want or need no stinkin' fracked air, soil and water!

And as for the bollocks pumped out by the industry's PR tanks, i.e. that it "provides energy independence" do not believe that codswallop for one second! All it is doing, as Jim Hightower also observed in his latest column, is being shipped outside the U.S., e.g.

"In shale fields across the country, you'll see fracking rigs festooned with Old Glory, and they even paint some of their rigs red, white and blue. This ostentatious, patriotic pose is part and parcel of the industry's cynical public-relations campaign to convince you and me that its assault on our health, water, air and economic future should be mindlessly saluted, rather than questioned.

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE! is their deafening cry — this shale gas boom, they exclaim, most certainly will free America from dependence on foreign producers.

"Oh say can you see [through the frackers' big lie?]"

He goes on to pointedly note:

"Far from independence, we're going to get the pollution and other problems, but foreigners will get the energy, for the gas extracted from our fractured land is destined for the export market.

How do we know that? First, because the industry and its government enablers admit it in their internal communications. But, secondly, guess who's paying for the fracking of America?"

Bloomberg News,  indeed, reports that China has pumped over $5 billion into the U.S. drilling "boom" — not only so it can export the energy back to their people, but especially so the Chinese can "redeploy the best U.S. practices and technologies" back to China. Japan has done the same and India has plowed in $3.5 billion to grab our fracked oil and gas.

 Other Asian nations will reap the benefits of this cheap, degraded energy for their own development - once the TPP is finally passed (if it is). Then every signee nation from Vietnam to the Philippines will be able to demand untold fracked shale oil from us and we shall have to comply.  So we are being asked - nay expected- to allow our own nations in the West to be fucked over as far as water, air quality and depredation of the environment - to provide cheap energy to others!

And the insidious effects on resources - especially water - are such that we MUST reject the efforts to blind us to what this dastardly methodology is doing.

The latest news, according to a comprehensive new analysis from the U.S. Geological Survey: fracking is using up much MORE water than originally assumed -  as much as 9.6 million gallons per well.  To give you some point of comparison, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, for comparison, hold just about 660,000 gallons. Thus one single frack well can consume more than 14. 5 Olympc -sized swimming pools.

On average, the study calculated that gas wells are using 5.1 million gallons of water each. Not only is that a lot, it’s more than 28 times the amount of water they were using just 15 years ago.  The greatest atrocity? Many of those operations, as Climate Central notes, are located in regions that recently saw severe droughts — Texas, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains – and which can expect to confront even more water shortages as global warming progresses:

It's estimated that fracking now consumes up to 30 percent more ground water than previously believed. At this rate, and with new water data showing an ever diminishing resource base, there won't be any left for future generations.  Kids today who grow up in water-ravaged drought states - or even in many other places- will have to rely on toilet to tap water, or else.... go without.

In the case of the UK vote, while supporters inflated the "economic benefits"  - most sane people weren't biting, noting the host of toxic chemicals used during fracking, most of which got into the ground water. In their rational reckoning, there was no issue of dubious "cost benefit" calculations, there simply was too much cost and very little benefit to them - the cost including devastating health issues and devaluation of property. Because NO one wants to buy a home in a frack area. So the elites can tout this shit all they want, but they can afford to live in their little rich enclaves which won't tolerate it!

Meanwhile, in the UK Scotland has also banned fracking and Wales is considering a similar measure. It is also banned in France and on hold in Germany where my friend Reinhardt has vowed he will fight "tooth and nail" to keep it out since he's seen what it's done here in the U.S.  He agreed that letting it get started would be almost as bad as "allowing the Nazis to regain control of the country."

Indeed, and this is largely why the frack craze - while it's unleashed an oil and gas boom in the U.S. - has proven politically toxic in the more advanced European nations whose citizens take care not to elect frack -crazy political whores. Instead,  blocking it at every turn because of its calamitous health and environmental damage.

We need to start mounting unabated pressure on our political cretins....errrr....creatures...now, to halt this crap. Our future and our kids future depends upon it!