Author Archives: d2wk58

Quote of the Day: On the Usefulness of Stable Currencies

by d2wk58 Posted on April 11, 2013

Mother Jones

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From Felix Salmon, on the usefulness of Bitcoin:

Bitcoin only works for payments if you can be reasonably sure that its value will remain reasonably steady for at least the next hour or so.

Quite so. Two hours would be even better.

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Quote of the Day: On the Usefulness of Stable Currencies

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Last coal-fired car ferry to keep dumping waste in Lake Michigan

by d2wk58 Posted on April 2, 2013

Last coal-fired car ferry to keep dumping waste in Lake Michigan

By John Upton

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The S.S. Badger, still crossing Lake Michigan on coal power.

It’s bad enough that the S.S. Badger is still powered by coal — the only car ferry left in the country that runs on the dirtiest of fossil fuels. But what’s really going to blow your mind is how the ferry disposes of its coal ash after burning: It is mixed with water into a slurry and dumped overboard. More than 500 tons of it every year. Straight into Lake Michigan. Just like its operators have been doing since the 1950s.

In 2008, the U.S. EPA told Lake Michigan Carferry, the company that operates the Badger, to cut that crap out. The company must switch to another fuel or start dumping the waste somewhere on land, the EPA said. The ferry company responded by asking for more time to study how it would switch over to natural gas, and the EPA was all, OK, but just four more years, and that’s it.

That four-year grace period expired over the winter, and guess what Lake Michigan Carferry plans to do once the ferrying season begins next month? That’s right, it plans to continue dumping its coal ash into Lake Michigan. And the federal government is pretty much OK with that.

From the AP:

The company had applied for a permit to continue dumping the ash while researching how to retrofit the ship to operate on liquefied natural gas. Under a proposed consent decree [between the EPA and Lake Michigan Carferry] filed in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, the company would scrap that option in favor of onboard storage.

Disposal into the lake would be reduced over the next two years and stop altogether by the end of the 2014 sailing season.

After a 30-day public comment period, a judge will decide whether to approve the deal, which also would require the company to pay a $25,000 civil penalty for exceeding mercury pollution standards last year. Coal ash contains low concentrations of arsenic, mercury and other heavy metals, although it’s not classified as hazardous. The company denied violating federal or state mercury regulations.

“This consent decree offers the fastest and most certain path available to EPA to stop the discharge of coal ash from the Badger into Lake Michigan,” said Susan Hedman, EPA regional administrator.

The feds would like to know how you feel about this deal. From the Ludington [Mich.] Daily News:

“Now it’s important that our community step forward and start submitting its comments on this agreement between the EPA and carferry owners,” Ludington Mayor John Henderson told the Ludington Daily News recently. “I hope everybody sees there is true progress being made that totally eliminates that discharge into Lake Michigan and make it a more environmentally friendly operation.”

Here’s a comment for Lake Michigan Carferry: Join us in the 21st century! It isn’t so bad here. We’ve got cleaner air and cleaner water now, because other people started cleaning up their acts last century.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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New York Times is a Killjoy Over Obama’s Dinner Party

by d2wk58 Posted on March 8, 2013

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In the New York Times today, Jeremy Peters delivers some major buzzkill about President Obama’s friendly little dinner with all those Republican senators last night:

Lawmakers in both parties say the president’s efforts may make him a few new friends, but he is not going to change ideologies. Others privately complained that convening such a high-profile meeting seemed like an effort to distract from his failure to help forge a solution to avert the automatic budget cuts that went into effect last week.

Asked Thursday morning about the president’s new social schedule, Speaker John A. Boehner chuckled before saying he hoped the talks would produce real compromise….“I think it’s a sign, a hopeful sign. And I’m hopeful that something will come out of it. But if the president continues to insist on tax hikes, I don’t think we can get very far.”

Those who have studied the relationship between presidents and Congress doubt seriously whether Mr. Obama’s latest outreach will yield much. “It’s a rather shallow notion,” said George Edwards, a political scientist at Texas A & M University and an expert who has written extensively on presidential power. “You’re not going to get committed conservatives to change their long-held ideological commitments because you play a round of golf or invite them to the White House.”

Roger that. And how did Phase 2 go on the other side of Capitol Hill today?

On Thursday, Obama’s charm offensive set the table for one of the hardest nuts to crack — the top Republican budget expert, Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, who as the GOP vice presidential candidate tried to evict Obama from the executive mansion where he was invited to lunch.

Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, and his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, sat down with Obama for lentil soup and sea bass in a meeting that Ryan described as a “frank” and the White House called “constructive.”

We all know what “frank and constructive” means, right? Usually it means that no fistfights broke out, but only barely.

We’ve been through a dotcom bubble, and then a housing bubble. Right now, I feel like we’re in a presidential schmoozing bubble. I don’t think there’s much question that Obama could stand to improve his social skills, just as there’s no question that he might do himself some good by making sure his positions—and his concessions—are better understood in the halls of Congress. But the boomlet of excitement we’re seeing over a few dinners and lunch meetings with the opposition is hard to fathom. Maybe we’re all so desperate for something—anything—to convince us that our political system isn’t completely broken that we’re willing to latch on to even a routine bit of socializing as a lifeline of hope. Unfortunately, I suspect this says more about how miserable we all feel than it does about the possibility of Republicans ever agreeing to higher taxes.

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New York Times is a Killjoy Over Obama’s Dinner Party

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This Cheat Sheet Will Make You Win Every Climate Argument

by d2wk58 Posted on March 4, 2013

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“I don’t see what all those environmentalists are worried about,” sneers your Great Uncle Joe. “Carbon dioxide is harmless, and great for plants!”

Okay. Take a deep breath. If you’re not careful, comments like this can result in dinner-table screaming matches. Luckily, we have a secret weapon: A flowchart that will help you calmly slay even the most outlandish and annoying of climate-denying arguments:

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This Cheat Sheet Will Make You Win Every Climate Argument

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for February 26, 2013

by d2wk58 Posted on February 26, 2013

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U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Chester Thomson, 1st Squadron, 33rd Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, runs up an embankment during a security patrol in a remote village of Khowst Province, Afghanistan, Jan. 31, 2013. U.S. Army Photo by Staff Sgt. Zach Holden, 115th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment.

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for February 26, 2013

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Can Yahoo be more ‘efficient’ with more workers driving to the office?

by d2wk58 Posted on February 26, 2013

Can Yahoo be more ‘efficient’ with more workers driving to the office?

By Susie Cagle

Adam Tinworth

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer puts the kibosh on telecommuting.

In a decision that sent the internet into a tizzy today, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has decided that employees will no longer be allowed to telecommute to work. USA Today reports:

Yahoo’s decision is meant to foster collaboration, according to a company memo sent to employees Friday.

Yahoo’s head of human resources, Jackie Reses, wrote that communication and collaboration will be important as the company works to be “more productive, efficient and fun.” To make that happen, she said, “it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people and impromptu team meetings.”

According to Census figures from 2010, about 9.5 percent of the U.S. workforce telecommutes at least one day a week. That’s actually not very much, considering telecommuting can be more productive for some workers, not to mention more comfortable. Millions of Americans working from home or local co-working spaces each day save millions of tons in emissions each year, and potentially cut down on traffic deaths.

According to a source inside the company, many workers across all of Yahoo’s divisions have been telecommuting for a long time now, in arrangements distinctly unlike those at other Silicon Valley tech giants.

The telecommuting issue is relevant to many office workers in America, but especially so in the Bay Area, with its crappy regional transit options and big distances between desirable office parks and desirable bedroom communities. Some of the biggest Silicon Valley tech companies have enlisted their own private busing systems to cut down on telecommuting and also keep up with the desires of their workers to live in dense urban areas outside of sprawly, beige, boring Silicon Valley.

It’s not like we’ve looked to Yahoo for leadership in tech in a long (long, looong) time. Still, this is a sudden switch for the company’s culture, and it may be bad news for telecommuters at other organizations that want to get more “collaborative.”

So, Yahoo workers intending to keep your jobs by moving to the Bay Area: Please just don’t move to Oakland. Hey, I hear San Jose is pretty nice!

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Can Yahoo be more ‘efficient’ with more workers driving to the office?

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The Hidden History of Waterboarding

by d2wk58 Posted on February 25, 2013

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Try to remain calm—even as you begin to feel your chest tighten and your heart race. Try not to panic as water starts flowing into your nose and mouth, while you attempt to constrict your throat and slow your breathing and keep some air in your lungs and fight that growing feeling of suffocation. Try not to think about dying, because there’s nothing you can do about it, because you’re tied down, because someone is pouring that water over your face, forcing it into you, drowning you slowly and deliberately. You’re helpless. You’re in agony.

In short, you’re a victim of “water torture.” Or the “water cure.” Or the “water rag.” Or the “water treatment.” Or “tormenta de toca.” Or any of the other nicknames given to the particular form of brutality that today goes by the relatively innocuous term “waterboarding.”

The practice only became widely known in the United States after it was disclosed that the CIA had been subjecting suspected terrorists to it in the wake of 9/11. More recently, cinematic depictions of waterboarding in the award-winning film Zero Dark Thirty and questions about it at the Senate confirmation hearing for incoming CIA chief John Brennan have sparked debate. Water torture, however, has a surprisingly long history, dating back to at least the fourteenth century. It has been a US military staple since the beginning of the twentieth century, when it was employed by Americans fighting an independence movement in the Philippines. American troops would continue to use the brutal tactic in the decades to come—and during the country’s repeated wars in Asia, they would be victims of it, too.

Water Torture in Vietnam

For more than a decade, I’ve investigated atrocities committed during the Vietnam War. In that time, I’ve come to know people who employed water torture and people who were brutalized by it. Americans and their South Vietnamese allies regularly used it on enemy prisoners and civilian detainees in an effort to gain intelligence or simply punish them. A picture of the practice even landed on the front page of the Washington Post on January 21, 1968, but mostly it went on in secret.

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The Hidden History of Waterboarding

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Coal Country Bank First to Report Carbon Footprint to Shareholders

by d2wk58 Posted on February 21, 2013

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There’s a growing interest among enviros these days in combating climate change with direct offensives against the fossil fuel industry, sights locked on its bottom line. The idea is that while we scramble to invent more efficient light bulbs and throw up solar panels, we also chip away at the mountain of money that gives the industry its power, by turning shareholders on to the idea that unwise investments can make them accomplices in global warming.

Activist investment is nothing new, of course, the best-known case being the massive movement to divest from apartheid South Africa in the 1980s. But it’s gaining traction in the realm of climate change: Bill McKibben in particular has campaigned recently for colleges and universities to divest their endowments from fossil fuels, and Al Gore this month backed the efforts of Harvard students to do so.

Shareholders at a host of corporations nationwide—including Exxon Mobil, fracking giant Nabors, and, incongruously, Dunkin’ Donuts—have climate-related resolutions on the table this year that aim to require companies to account to shareholders on everything from mountaintop removal to greenhouse gas emissions to renewable energy use. This week, an unexpected institution became the first major bank to join their ranks and have its climate impact interrogated by shareholders. From the LA Times:

The resolution, which follows years of protests over banks financing certain coal operations, is to be included in proxy material being sent to shareholders of PNC Financial Services Group of Pittsburgh before the bank’s April 23 annual meeting.

It asks PNC to assess and report back to shareholders on how its lending results in greenhouse gas emissions that can alter the climate, posing financial risks for its corporate borrowers and risks to its own reputation.

PNC is the only major bank based in Appalachia, a region where coal and gas extraction is a major business. It has long lent to mining companies, including those engaged in mountaintop removal, which involves blowing up peaks to reach coal seams below and has been blamed for degrading landscapes, destroying habitat and polluting streams.

You might not expect a bank smack dab in the heart of coal country to have the most environmentally progressive shareholders, but then again PNC, heavily entwined with the coal industry but not as unbreakably massive as, say, Bank of America, could be fertile ground for climate leadership. The bank has in recent years tried to give itself a green makeover, but apparently not enough to satisfy the shareholders behind the resolution, including a Roman Catholic group and Walden Asset Management. The case PNC ultimately makes to its investors should be an interesting study in the practical power of wielding shares as a weapon against climate change.

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Coal Country Bank First to Report Carbon Footprint to Shareholders

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Who Pays the Corporate Income Tax?

by d2wk58 Posted on February 19, 2013

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Who pays the corporate income tax? Corporations, obviously. That’s like asking who’s buried in Grant’s tomb. One way or another, though, actual people have to ultimately pay the tax. Consumers pay it if companies respond to corporate taxes by raising the price of their products. Workers pay the tax if corporations respond by lowering wages. Shareholders pay the tax if it simply eats into profits and lowers share prices.

But which is it? Bruce Bartlett reports today that the March issue of the National Tax Journal has four articles that address this question. Here are the answers:

Article #1: Shareholders pay 100 percent.
Article #2: Shareholders pay 100 percent.
Article #3: Shareholders pay 40 percent, workers pay 60 percent.
Article #4: Shareholders pay 82 percent, workers pay 18 percent.

The old saw says that if you ask ten economists about something, you’ll get 11 answers. By simple arithmetic, this suggests that if you ask four economists, you’ll get 4.4 answers. But in this case we only got three. Not bad!

So what’s the real answer? By using the blogger’s expedient of simply averaging all the responses, it looks like shareholders end up paying 80 percent of the corporate income tax. That’s probably close enough for water cooler arguments, anyway.

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Who Pays the Corporate Income Tax?

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Bloomberg proposes banning plastic foam containers, probably because they can hold soda

by d2wk58 Posted on February 14, 2013

Bloomberg proposes banning plastic foam containers, probably because they can hold soda

By Philip Bump

When I was a kid, you could come to New York City and buy a big soda in a large styrofoam cup. (You could also get murdered a lot more easily or score some drugs or afford a place in Soho, but that’s not my point here.) Big soda kept cool in a nice big cup — paradise, in its way.

Reuters / Eduardo Munoz

Last year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg decided that the big soda had to go. And this year, according to reports, he’s got his eyes on that cup. From Bloomberg (the media company, not the mayor for whom the company is named) (New York is a complicated place) (the city, not the state from which the city is named):

In his final State of the City address today, the third-term mayor will attempt to cement his legacy as a leader who made the most-populous U.S. city healthier and more environmentally friendly. His office previewed portions of the speech that focused on three initiatives intended to boost air quality, recycling rates and sustainability.

A requirement that 20 percent of all newly constructed public parking spaces be outfitted to charge electric vehicles would create 10,000 such spots within seven years. The plan would need City Council approval. A pilot program to collect curbside food waste from Staten Island homes to use as compost for parks would expand citywide if successful, cutting down on the 1.2 million tons of scraps sent to landfills each year.

(Apparently the city could use more charging stations.)

These are significant initiatives but, as suggested above, it’s the mayor’s proposed ban on Styrofoam cups and containers that’s gotten much of the attention. It fits nicely with the image of Bloomberg as anti-fast-food, but he will note that it’s actually anti-trash. As the Bloomberg article notes, New Yorkers throw away 20,000 tons of plastic foam a year. While the city’s garbage production is in decline, that’s still a lot of waste.

Bloomberg gave his State of the City address on a stage at Brooklyn’s new, leaky Barclays Center under sports-arena-appropriate banners celebrating his accomplishments. “419: Record Low in Homicides in 2012.” “52 Million: Record Visitors in 2012.” And one he’s put specific focus on: “80.9: Record High Life Expectancy.”

Not listed: “7 million: Fewer pounds of garbage a day.” Perhaps because he’s waiting for that number to improve a little more.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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