Later On

I’ve observed before that I think the Right would be the natural supporters of the ACLU, except that the ACLU often ends up defending representatives of marginalized populations that the Right actively hate (the poor, women, people of other races than white and other religions than fundamentalist Christianity, people who have been arrested, outright criminals, etc.). Conor Friedersdorf has a nice post on the how the Right even attacks the ACLU for not taking action (in this case, defending students who wore American-flag shirts on Cinco de Mayo) even when the ACLU is in fact taking action. (The Right has never had much regard for facts, it’s true.) It’s worth reading the column for the various comments from Right-wing voices (Rush Limbaugh, for example), tearing the ACLU a new one for not doing what they are in fact doing.

Brad Johnson at ThinkProgress:

The latest attempt by BP to shut down its apocalyptic oil gusher — the “top kill” maneuver — has failed, despite BP CEO Tony Hayward’s assurance yesterday that it had a 70 percent chance of success. There’s no question that the federal government, if the president so decides, can take over the challenge of mitigating the damage of BP’s oil to the shores and waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But can President Obama take charge of stopping the wellhead gusher from the foreign oil giant? The administration argues it’s keeping BP in charge of the attempts to shut down the blown out well because government doesn’t have the equipment or expertise to solve this engineering problem without BP:

Adm. Thad Allen, Incident Commander: “To push BP out of the way, it would raise the question, to replace them with what?” [White House briefing, 5/24/10]

David Axelrod, White House adviser: “They’ve got equipment that our government doesn’t have.” [Fox News, 5/24/10]

Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior: “This administration has done everything we can possibly do to make sure that we push BP to stop the spill and to contain the impact. We have also been very clear that there are areas where BP and the private sector are the ones who must continue to lead the efforts with government oversight, such as the deployment of private sector technology 5,000 feet below the ocean’s surface to kill the well.” [White House briefing, 5/24/10]

The administration has been keeping an ecological criminal in charge of the crime scene during a national crisis. Seventeen nations have offered assistance — but “the final decision is up to BP” to accept it, according to the State Department — and only Canada, Mexico and Norway have been allowed to help so far. The law — Title 33, Section 1321 — mandates that President Obama “shall direct all Federal, State, and private actions to remove the discharge,” using any means necessary. There are not any resources — people or equipment — that Obama doesn’t have the authority to seize and put into service.

It’s certainly fair to expect that private sector resources may be needed for this disaster, but BP’s only unique qualification for the disaster response is that it is the perpetrator. Although BP is by default a party responsible for implementing the cleanup plan, it is by no means the only possibility. The rig was operated by Transocean; the cementing done by Halliburton; the blowout preventer built by Cameron. Other companies involved in ultra-deepwater drilling include engineering giant Schlumberger, Norway’s nationalized oil company Statoil, Shell, and Chevron.

If the Navy can’t direct the undersea mission after it’s given authority over any needed private resources, it calls into question why we entrust it to operate aircraft carriers and nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered submarines.

Obama does not need to keep working with BP management — like CEO Tony “Very Very Modest” Hayward, BP America president Lamar “No Certainty” McKay, BP Chairman Carl-Henric “Big And Important” Svanberg, or COO Doug “Very Optimistic” Suttles — who have repeatedly laughed off the scale of this catastrophe. If federal officials believe that BP engineers should continue to work on the problem, the President has the authority to have those people working directly for the federal government.

In fact, the president has the authority to nationalize BP America and seize all of its assets, rendering the question of reliance on BP moot. If Obama does not believe that the Clean Water Act’s “spill of national significance” provisions give him sufficient authority, he can rightly declare a national emergency, or demand that Congress deliver him necessary legislation. Or there’s an easier option: BP is on the hook for all costs of this apocalyptic disaster. Obama can simply buy BP America and send the bill to its foreign parent company.

Whenever a measure is taken for the public welfare it is relentlessly attacked by the companies whose profits might be affected. Following the tobacco-struggle years, all industries now seem to follow the tobacco-company playbook: dispute every finding, form seemingly independent organizations (the more scientific-sounding their title the better: "Tobacco Research Institute," for example) to issue reports from hired scientists to contradict every negative finding from actual scientists, and stall, stall, stall—the longer the day of reckoning can be put off, the more time to rake in profits.

The oil and coal industries are using those tactics to fight efforts to combat climate change, and now the salt industry is readying itself to fight restrictions on salt content in processed foods. Michael Moss has an article in the NY Times that describes how the industry’s preparing itself. From the article:

With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food giant Cargill kicked off a campaign last November to spread its own message.

“Salt is a pretty amazing compound,” Alton Brown, a Food Network star, gushes in a Cargill video called Salt 101. “So make sure you have plenty of salt in your kitchen at all times.”

The campaign by Cargill, which both produces and uses salt, promotes salt as “life enhancing” and suggests sprinkling it on foods as varied as chocolate cookies, fresh fruit, ice cream and even coffee. “You might be surprised,” Mr. Brown says, “by what foods are enhanced by its briny kiss.”

By all appearances, this is a moment of reckoning for salt. High blood pressure is rising among adults and children. Government health experts estimate that deep cuts in salt consumption could save 150,000 lives a year.

Since processed foods account for most of the salt in the American diet, national health officials, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Michelle Obama are urging food companies to greatly reduce their use of salt. Last month, the Institute of Medicine went further, urging the government to force companies to do so.

But the industry is working overtly and behind the scenes to fend off these attacks, using a shifting set of tactics that have defeated similar efforts for 30 years, records and interviews show. Industry insiders call the strategy “delay and divert” and say companies have a powerful incentive to fight back: they crave salt as a low-cost way to create tastes and textures. Doing without it risks losing customers, and replacing it with more expensive ingredients risks losing profits.

Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t shave yesterday, which was a take-it-easy day, but since we’re seeing other friends today, out came the tools:

The Edwin Jagger synthetic-bristle brush generated an extremely good lather from the Kell’s Original Energy shave stick. As you can see, he perhaps should look to finding better label technology.

The Pils, Swedish Gillette blade loaded, did its usual great job, and New York remains a favorite aftershave.