Tag: do-nothing

Welcome to back-to-school shopping day in America…El Paso

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At this moment, in one shopping mall in El Paso, Texas, the death toll reported is 19…with 40 injured.


Mark Lambie, El Paso Times

We are saddled – I would say politically crippled – by an institution called the 2-party system. In many ways, those two parties are equally corrupt. When issues of life-and-death are left to political hacks who only count the number of votes they can sieve through an electoral process designed centuries ago, ordinary people haven’t any voice at all.

I’d be happy to throw them all out of office and start with a blank slate. Toss Congress and all our state legislatures out of office. Call a continental Congress to rewrite federal and state election law on the basis of one person, one vote. We can survive weeks of turmoil to put an end to a system that refuses to do a bloody thing about controlling the opportunity to murder hundreds of men, women and children every day of every year. That one sleazy industry, controlled by a few corporate thugs, hands out enough dollars to our politicians to prevent regulatory measures that might slow down their profits…by making our families safer.

Every politician in Congress at this moment stinks on ice. You do not protect this nation. You just voted billions of dollar$ to fatten up the military machinery run by the Pentagon…and did nothing to protect families out shopping for back-to-school necessities for their children. You should be out of a job standing by the side of the road begging handouts for cleaning the windshield of my pickup!

I wouldn’t give you a quarter!

Massive NatGas leak followed NO inspections

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Leak caused by microbial corrosion — Earthworks/Flickr

❝ A massive natural gas leak at a storage facility in Southern California was caused by microbial corrosion of well equipment, according to a new independent report from analysis firm Blade Energy Partners. The report blames the storage facility owner, Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) for failing to conduct follow-up inspections of equipment, despite knowing about 60 smaller leaks at the facility that had occurred since the 1970s…

❝ The indirect cause of the leak, according to Blade, was a failure on the part of SoCal Gas to conduct detailed inspections of the well equipment. “Blade identified more than 60 casing leaks at Aliso Canyon before the October 2015 incident going back to the 1970s, but no failure investigations were conducted by SoCalGas,” the CPUC wrote. The company also failed to do any risk assessment focused on well failure.

Hey, just another corporate partner in the vast “Who, me?” network of do-nothing that might slow profits.

Will Cockroaches Inherit the Earth?

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gocomics.org

❝ Acknowledging that many inspect species might continue to decline in the 21st century — a time when extinction rates are about 1,000 times that of natural, expected levels — I asked Dini Miller, an urban entomologist, if the stubborn, stalwart cockroach might really inherit the Earth if other species were to bite the dust. The answer isn’t simple, but in large part it comes down to the continued success of the human race: The seven or so cockroach species we call pests, the ones we view as indestructible, have learned to thrive in our human society. That means they will continue thriving, as long as we do.

“If it wasn’t for us they wouldn’t be flourishing,” said Tim Kring, the head of the Entomology Department at Virginia Tech. “But certain species have flourished because we’ve given them nice homes, food, and water…”

❝ …We’ve certainly tried to annihilate them, using insecticides to unleash large-scale, nation-wide warfare against any roach that enters our homes.

But the roaches have resisted. “They defeat the countermeasures we deploy,” said Rick Santangelo, a cockroach control research specialist at North Carolina State University.

Our chemicals might knock out 99 out of 100 roaches, but the remaining one percent will prove resilient. Then, they’ll breed. “The more you’re exposed to something, the more tolerant you become to it,” said Santangelo. That’s not to say the resilient critters can’t be exterminated from your house. With the right strategically-placed poisons — like placing bait in hundreds of places around a kitchen — the roach dwellers can be expunged. But that’s just your house.

“You can get rid of them in a single structure, but we’re not gonna eradicate roaches,” said Santangelo.

Life might become tougher – for roaches – if we succeed in eradicating ourselves. They’ve evolved in symbiotic fashion alongside human beings. Regardless of whatever your particular bible tells you. Frankly, I’d bet their hardiness will prevail in the face of incompetent politicians and ignorant, uncaring populations of human beings.u

Feds response to Romaine E. coli deaths is to do nothing!

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Stock Image, Getty

❝ A deadly E. coli strain that contaminated romaine lettuce in early 2018, causing five deaths and more than 200 serious infections, most likely infiltrated crops through canal water used to irrigate and apply pesticides in the Yuma, Arizona, growing region, which includes farms in southeastern California.

This finding, from an environmental assessment report released Nov. 1 by the Food and Drug Administration, demands a swift response by the agency, including an accelerated timeline to implement an agricultural water standard for fruits and vegetables that protects public health.

❝ Unfortunately, FDA leaders have given no indication that they will do so. Absent a change, 2022 is the earliest that any produce farm, except those growing sprouts, will be required to meet the agency’s first food safety requirements for agricultural water. Small and midsize operations have been given even longer to comply.

This is unacceptable in the wake of last spring’s outbreak and the deaths and illnesses it caused. Food safety officials should apply in a matter of months—not years—lessons learned from the environmental assessment. Simultaneously, federal and state agencies, working together, should use their authority over canal water quality to require that water be treated to reduce foodborne pathogens before being used in produce fields.

And the time to act is NOW!

Over a million kids in the US have lead poisoning — We’re only treating half of them

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Click to enlarge

❝ We’ve long known that despite all our efforts to clean up lead, we have a serious problem with lead poisoning in American children — it’s an egregious and preventable public health issue that just won’t go away.

And it seems the problem is even worse than we thought. Researchers at the Public Health Institute reported…in the journal Pediatrics that the overall number of children with elevated blood lead levels as of 1999-2000 in the US was 1.2 million, or double what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had reported. (The number is likely even higher now, since testing rates have…declined since 2000.) These kids who are never tested or reported to the CDC also aren’t receiving treatment.

❝ Some states are doing much worse than others, according to the researchers. In the 11 states in dark blue on the map below, including Arizona and Florida, more than 80 percent of children with lead poisoning were not tested by their pediatricians or local health departments. For the other 28 states with data (in medium and light blue), anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of lead-poisoned children weren’t tested.

As for the 12 states in gray, researchers were unable to determine how many cases of lead poisoning were missed, because these states don’t share any data with the CDC…

Perish the thought these turd-brains Americans persist in electing and re-electing actually do something modern about healthcare legislation. Like make it uniform and nationwide. Require states to participate and provide information.

❝ What researchers have learned in recent years is that no level of lead is safe for children. Studies have even shown lead concentration in the blood as low as 2 micrograms per deciliter of blood (μg/dL) can lower IQ in children. And once children have blood lead levels of 5 μg/dL and above (what’s now considered lead poisoning), they can suffer severe neurological damage in the form of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders.

❝ How did the counting of lead-poisoned children get so bad? For one, testing for lead is not legally required in most of the US…And…public health departments aren’t asking if there’s missing data when they turn things over to the CDC…

❝ Civil engineers have estimated that overhauling America’s drinking water system and bringing it up to code will cost at least $1 trillion over the next 25 years, but if these investments aren’t made, we risk continuing to poison children with dangerous levels of lead.

Not that this is a priority for Congressional politicians whose single most pressing task — Republican or Democrat – is raising sufficient funds for re-election.