MaxRedline

Cap&Trade Trouble

Inslees and the Dalai Lama

As discussed here a few weeks ago, Oregon's gov. Retread got together with Washington gov. Inslee and a British Columbia bureaucrat down in San Francisco, where they hooked up with Moonbeam and all decided to Save The Planet™ all by their very selves. One of the things they agreed on was implementing a carbon tax, which B.C. and California already have. So Retread and Inslee decided we'd do the same. But they forgot to check with the lawyers:

Oregon’s attempt to impose a Cap & Trade-like system on gasoline and diesel took a new twist recently when the Ninth Circuit Court sent California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) back to the lower courts. The proponents in California see this as good news (it wasn’t declared unconstitutional), but raises serious doubts about its legality in Oregon.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals noted that only California was exempt from the Federal Clean Air Act’s preemption on individual state fuel blends thus raising the argument that Oregon’s program is preempted by federal law.

Whoopsie; this means that Oregon can't go all California, and if they try, it's going to be tied up in the courts for years. Retread desperately wants a specially-blended-for Oregon LCFS fuel with increased amounts of ethanol. Of course, under his plan, fuel prices in Oregon would "necessarily skyrocket" - to say nothing of the increased costs to consumers due to engine damage. 

Another tiny issue that Retread's conveniently overlooked involves the potential liability to the state due to tourist and commercial lawsuits; if Retread was able to impose higher ethanol concentrations specially for Oregon and thereby causes engine damage in out-of-state vehicles, there's almost certain to be some blowback. As is so often the case around here, there's a tendency to run with "feel-good" and "trend-setting" without actually thinking things through. See also: Coverup Oregon website.

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You're Toast

The hard-working folks at the FDA have issued a 37-page guideline on acrylamide, and among the recommendations:

– Toast bread to a light color, not a dark one

– Don’t store potatoes in the refrigerator; a closet or pantry is better

– Dark roast coffee beans are better than light roast

Evidently, cooked food is bad for you, and will give you cancer.

They've spent eleven years "studying" this. Or about as long as folks have been "planning" the CRC.

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The Comatose Kid

Parkour 

A 15 year-old Santa Rosa kid appears to have fallen some two stories from the roof of a high school gym during the course of a parkour stunt that went inexplicably wrong. Parkour, derived from the time-honored French martial art of running away, is apparently quite popular among teens in northern California, and involves using features in the urban environment as an obtacle course. Leaping from roof to roof, bounding over railings, and scaling rockwork are among the activities which have generally been employed by highly trained French soldiers in order to escape during times of conflict, but the teens have taken it on as a form of extreme sport.

Unfortunately, not being highly trained French soldiers, their escapades often end in disaster, as was the case here. The kid's in a medically-induced coma for the time being.

You Read It Here First

Cattle on the alp (Photo credit: Darkroom Daze)

For a number of years, we've discussed the relative importance of methane versus the dreaded carbon dioxide emissions that drive our local self-professed science writer to distraction, along with his mentors, such as AlGore. Encapsulated, we've noted here that methane is far more potent than CO2, and that most biological sources of methane are derived from termites, cows, and other non-human sources.

Our local "science writer" has consistently rejected that view; yammering endlessly on about CO2 "forcing" as the driver of "anthropological global warming", and its attendant horrors which will soon Kill The Planet, despite the fact that planetary warming halted nearly two decades ago. Now, despite the fact that The Science Is Settled™, it has emerged that, as noted years ago here, cow farts are a significant source of methane, which is 21 times more potent than CO2.

A single cow can produce between 250 and 500 liters, or about 66 to 132 gallons, of methane a day (the average U.S. vehicle gas tank can hold about 16 gallons of gas).

Well, see there? It's "anthropogenic" because people raise cows - as has been the case for thousands of years. But now it's a problem, because humans. And termites! A lot of termites would be homeless, and thus farting less, if people would stop building houses and other shelters.

These have become huge planetary problems during the past forty years or so, though they weren't problems before then. Obviously, the solution is for you to live in an unheated cave and eat earthworms. Until that becomes a problem.

But wouldn't that adversely affect the population of cattle egrets?

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Huffing CO2

Gosh, our resident troll was over on The Oregonian's website today, yammering on about "man-made global warming" again. He must not have got the message yet:

Weakest Atlantic storm season in 31 years coming to a close; ‘Al Gore hardest hit’

Barry Loses USA Today

It's one thing to play the imperious monarch when they're fawning over his every word, but Barry's in his second term now, and even the media aren't all that impressed. Gannett, publishers of USA Today and other media, just told him to go get stuffed:

Less than a week after mainstream media outlets banded together to protest the Obama Administration’s restriction of press photography at events, the White House issued a firm, unmistakable message to the press:

“You get access when we say you do; quit your whining.”

The White House answered the mainstream media’s respectful missive with a shot across the bow; now, USA Today has become the first paper to take a principled stand and has declared that they refuse to publish the “official” photos offered to media outlets from the Obama Administration.

No soup for you, Barry - and no more free publication of your staged photos.

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."
"Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", May 7, 1918

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Rise Of The TEA Party

Tea Party rally 

Despite the fact that Republicans made significant gains, due in large part to TEA Party activism, the establishment Republicans hate them. They want to be able to pat them on the head, send them on their way, and then call them back in a couple of years to knock on doors in the runup to the next election. They're really upset that the little guys and gals won't won't just go away and let them eat their brie in peace, and so they're declaring war.

That's an especially bad move.

Still, Steele said the party’s effort to stifle activists will fail because many activists see themselves as conservatives, not Republicans, first.

“The establishment thought, ‘Oh, once they get to Washington, we’ll wrap our arms around them, we’ll put a shrimp in one hand and a committee assignment in the other and they’ll be ours,’ and they were like, ‘Keep your shrimp, I don’t want your committee assignment and I’m not voting for the same old crap you put out every year,’” said Steele of the ongoing fight.

That's the former RNC chairman, Michael Steele, talking. There's a reasonably good chance that he knows what he's talking about. And there's no better way to lose elections than for Republicans to take on Conservatives. 

They've been hounding the K Street money sources, begging for help in taking on the TEA party, and while they've garnered some interest, money's not exactly pouring from the trees. Maybe the finance guys know something the establishment Republicans don't.

 

Roweing His Boat

Dirty Jobs 

The host of tv's "Dirty Jobs" (when not doing Ford commercials) has a foundation established to support folks who want to get into skilled trades, and he appeared on the Glenn Beck show to flack for it. Naturally, he caught a lot of Lefty flak over it.

Miss Shannon Walsh wrote, “How could you associate with such a horrible and psychotic person that is Glen Beck? I wouldn’t accept a dime off that hateful, nasty racist.”

Mike Rowe's response makes me wish we could clone the guy. Of course, Shannon will likely never buy another Ford, now.

Morning After

Sorry, lady - not for you!

The so-called "morning after pill", it has emerged, is discriminatory:

The European manufacturer of an emergency contraceptive pill identical to Plan B, also known as the morning-after pill, will warn women that the drug is completely ineffective for women who weigh more than 176 pounds and begins to lose effectiveness in women who weigh more than 165 pounds.

Weight data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that, at 166 pounds, the average American woman is too heavy to use these pills effectively.

The average weight of non-Hispanic black women aged 20 to 39 is 186 pounds, well above the weight at which these pills are completely ineffective.

Thus far, although warnings are coming out in Europe, American pharma companies are keeping quiet. And this doesn't affect just the Mooches of the country, as a casual glance around your nearest shopping mall establishes: there are a lot of women ambling around these days who fall into that 165 to 170 range; a good percentage of them weigh more than I ever have. So I'd be a good candidate for that pill, if not for some other, possibly more important, biological considerations.

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Death By A Thousand Cuts

For a place that prides itself on its "Silicon Forest", cutting-edge technologies, and copious quantities of certified Really Smart People, Oregon seems incredibly incompetent. It seems as though every couple of years, one governmental agency or another blows tens of millions of dollars on computer systems that never work. Given that track record, whoever would have believed that the healthcare insurance exchange known as Coverup Oregon would be any different?

We were one of five states granted federal dollars ($48 million) to develop the technology. The agreement was we would then share what we had developed with other states, which is a reasonable approach. The warning that immediately went up is the fact the State of Oregon has a miserable track record when it comes to IT development. In this case, even though much of the work was contracted out to a company called Oracle, we have held true to our record of failure. We have been assured all of the problems can be fixed, and maybe that is true over time, but here we are with a non-functioning web site and 400 new government employees to do manual processing. By the way, this brings the number of employees in Cover Oregon to nearly 500, which is really not the type of job growth we need.

Things have gone so horribly wrong with this "exchange" that Coverup Oregon held a couple of sign-up sessions in a local hotel this weekend, and it was like a trip to the DMV: lots of waiting, long lines, a dozen and a half pages of paper to scribble on, and at the end of it all, "You'll get a letter explaining your options in 3 to 4 weeks".  In other words, the in-person sign-up session's no different than downloading and printing out the form that's available on the functional portion of the website, because when you fill it out and mail it in (all 19 pages of it), you'll get a letter back in about a month.

Oh no - you're not actually signed up for coverage, that comes later.

A spokeswoman for Cover Oregon seemed to hope you'd forget about the website and everything it promised the half-million Oregon residents who don't have health coverage.

"There are so many people for whom this is their top choice, where they can talk to somebody face to face, avoid technology and work on paper," said spokeswoman Elizabeth Cronen.

"Based on the fantastic reaction we've gotten from folks here who are so glad to talk someone in person, it really reinforces for me this is a valuable tool for Oregonians regardless of the other technology available or not available," said Cronen.

Liz's spin is so transparent that she's not even fooling herself. And things are likely to get even more interesting a little further down the road, because "federal funding" for operating the exchange goes away in two years.

Presently, politicians refer to Coverup Oregon as "trailing the rest of the nation in health coverage signups", which is just more spin. To put it into layman's terms, what they mean is that Coverup Oregon has yet to sign up even one person.

And when people do sign up (if ever), they're going to find that every policy costs more than last years' similar product; often significantly more. But they're "affordable", in many cases, because the purchaser gets a subsidy or other credit, which brings down the cost. In essence, then, they're now on welfare.

But hey - Free Stuff™!

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