What's the Matter with Oklahoma?

Damn near everything, as it turns out. This list of record breaking meteorological and geologic events is pretty eye-opening:

State records set this year have ranged from the lowest temperature (31 degrees below zero in Nowata in northeast Oklahoma) to snowfall in a 24-hour period (27 inches, also in Nowata) to the largest hail stone (a spiky, six-inch piece recovered in Gotebo, in southwest Oklahoma).

This year also produced the state's highest-ever-recorded surface wind speed (151 miles per hour near El Reno, outside of Oklahoma City) and biggest known earthquake (5.6 magnitude, breaking the 1956 record).

On Wednesday, Governor Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency for 20 counties because of earthquakes, tornadoes and severe storms.

The article could also have mentioned that this year was the hottest summer on record for the state.

The weather events, of course, are likely being exacerbated by climate change. But what about the earthquake?

The reason behind last week's earthquake in Oklahoma is still eluding scientists though they think it might have been connected to the growing use of hydraulic fracturing.

The process, commonly called 'fracking', pumps water into the earth in an effort to release natural gas and oil.

Scientists first noticed that small earthquakes in Oklahoma- with magnitudes between 1 and 2.8- near a fracking site in August, though they did nothing to stop its usage.

It sounds to me like Oklahoma has become ground zero of a perfect storm of natural events resulting from mankind's insatiable thirst for fossil fuels. But that's okay, ma. People who worry about shit like this are just a bunch of damn hippie socialists. Fire up the Suburban, we're goin' to the mall.


Bonus: They really need to change the lyrics of this song.

Florida GOP Voters Suddenly Realize that More Spending on War Means Less for Them

So what’s a warmongering Republican presidential candidate to do who wants to place the boot heel of the American military upon the neck of every “rogue regime” around the world where the locals actually have the audacity to be living on top of America’s oil? Ever since President George Bush the Lesser lied the country into the Iraq War, it always seemed that you could reliably count on Republican voters to mindlessly back whatever harebrained military misadventure the neoconservatives could cook up next.

But not anymore, apparently. As reported by the Miami Herald, according to a recent poll likely Republican voters in Florida appear to be waking up to the fact that America’s out-of-control military spending is hitting them in their pocketbook:

Florida Republican voters have a clear feeling about cuts to Medicare and Social Security: Don’t do it, according to a new poll by the AARP.

By wide margins, the survey shows that Republicans of all kinds — whether they’re Hispanic, moderates or in the tea party — would rather fix the nation’s budget by withdrawing from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, eliminating foreign aid or eliminating so-called tax loopholes.

But despite these sentiments of GOP voters, many of the Republican frontrunners for president are more likely to support trimming benefits than raising tax revenues or getting out of foreign entanglements.

“There’s a major disconnect between what the candidates and other folks in Washington want and what the voters think when it comes to Social Security and Medicare,” said Jeff Johnson, AARP’s interim Florida director.

“For the candidates and lawmakers, Social Security is a budget problem we need to fix the math on. Medicare is a budget problem we need to fix math on,” Johnson said. “But this isn’t about math for voters. This is about voters’ retirement.”

So what were the specific results of the poll?

When specifically asked if they favored Medicare cuts over withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, only 9 percent wanted the former and 66 percent favored the latter. The numbers were similar for Social Security.

Wow—that’s pretty overwhelming. Enough so that you would think the more belligerent Republican presidential candidates are probably running scared right about now, right? Well, not so fast:

The poll also reflects an irony, of sorts, with voters: The candidates who most want to withdraw from foreign wars, Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul, were among the least likely to be favored.

Face palm! Herein lays the real problem with public opinion polls. Respondents are likely to say whatever dumb shit they think sounds good when the pollster calls them, but unless they are willing to actually change their behavior when they go to vote, nothing is going to change in the real world.

Rationally, these people may realize that the wars represent a threat to their cherished government benefits in a time of gigantic budget deficits. But many people vote based upon their emotions rather than logical thinking, and the politicians are well aware of that. It's the same dynamic that will cause millions of liberals and progressives disgusted by Obama's selling them out on nearly every issue of importance to them to traipse back to the polls and cast another ballot for him next year. Which is why you can also expect this result to have exactly zero effect on the presidential campaign and that the eventual Republican nominee, whomever he or she turns out to be, will continue to aggressively promote unfettered American Exceptionalism, regardless of the costs.


Bonus: Doug Stanhope doesn't care what your opinion is.

Health Care Companies Paid $37 Million for "Access" to Newt Gingrich

I'll say one thing for Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich: the man has more gall than you would have thought it possible for any single human being to have. Whatever else you might have thought about Obamacare (as I've said before, I consider it a corporate-giveaway boondoggle), the whole thing was driven by a desire to address the spiraling costs of health care in this country. One side issue that doesn't get examined nearly enough is WHY are health care costs of control? Perhaps part of the problem lies with WHO is getting paid, as reported Thursday in the Washington Post:

A think tank founded by GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich collected at least $37 million over the past eight years from major health-care companies and industry groups, offering special access to the former House speaker and other perks, according to records and interviews.

The Center for Health Transformation, which opened in 2003, brought in dues of as much as $200,000 per year from insurers and other health-care firms, offering some of them “access to Newt Gingrich” and “direct Newt interaction,” according to promotional materials. The biggest funders, including firms such as AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Novo Nordisk, were also eligible to receive discounts on “products and workshops” from other Gingrich groups.

Given Gingrich's past sexual escapades, "direct Newt interaction" has an unfortunate connotation I don't think the author of this piece intended. I'm sorry, but one man's "access" is another man's "bribes." The health care companies were bribing Gingrich to push their agenda, plain and simple. And what was that agenda, exactly?

The health center advocated, among other things, requiring that “anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year must purchase health insurance or post a bond,” a type of insurance mandate that has since become anathema to conservatives.

The group also pushed proposals to build centralized electronic medical records and use such data to research treatment effectiveness, both central features of President Obama’s health-care reforms.

So in essence, Gingrich was given $37 million in bribes to push for...drumroll please...Obamacare!

And yet, here is how the Newster has positioned himself on the campaign trail:

Gingrich has clashed with other Republican presidential candidates over his evolving positions on health-care issues. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, whose own state health-care reform plan was a model for Obama’s national approach, attacked Gingrich at one debate: “We got the idea of an individual mandate from you!”

The Gingrich health center’s support for such a mandate was part of an “Insure All Americans” plan that appears to have disappeared from the center’s Web site Thursday.

Gingrich has characterized his previous support for insurance mandates as a response to President Bill Clinton’s more government-focused health-care proposal in the 1990s, and he has said he turned against the idea.

“I am completely opposed to the Obamacare mandate on individuals,” he says in a recent campaign video. “I fought it for 2&1/2 years at the Center for Health Transformation.”

The amazing thing here, of course, is not that Newt engaged in the same same kind of legalized corruption as do all major politicians, especially after they leave office and "cash in" on their service, but that he has the audacity to then turn around and run for president and campaign against the exact same thing he was bribed to help implement. That this thoroughly corrupt little toad just rocketed to the top of the polls for the Republican presidential nomination shows exactly how hopeless the whole political system has become. Welcome, to third world America.

Saturday Night Music Video - "Sick of You" by Cake

Rarely does a song and a video so perfectly capture the essence of modern day America as in this effort by indie rocker wiseguys, Cake.

Enjoy!

SP Newsprint Files for Bankruptcy

Everyone knows that the dead tree newspaper business model is...well...dead. The latest casualty was reported the other day by Reuters:

SP Newsprint Co, owned by newsprint magnate and fine art collector Peter Brant, filed for bankruptcy protection because of rising raw material costs and too much debt, and said it may sell itself to its lenders.

Tuesday's filing by the Greenwich, Connecticut-based company, which has called itself the fourth-largest North American newsprint manufacturer, followed a Sept. 7 bankruptcy filing by NewPage Corp, North America's largest maker of magazine paper. New Page is owed by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP.

Paper makers have struggled in recent years with rising costs, increased competition from Asia and Europe, and falling demand as more advertisers and readers move online.

Ed Sherrick, SP Newsprint's chief financial officer, in a statement said weak economic conditions and record prices for key raw materials shrank profit margins, leaving the company unable to continue paying its debts.

Nothing terribly surprising here, although I did find this part of the story amusing:

Brant was once a billionaire, though he no longer appears on Forbes magazine's annual list of the richest Americans. His second wife is supermodel Stephanie Seymour.

He has also run Brant Publications Inc, whose magazines include Art in America, The Magazine Antiques and Interview, which was created by the artist Andy Warhol.

Brant was also the breeder of the horse Thunder Gulch, which won the 1995 Kentucky Derby.

Poor bastard. I wonder how long it will be before she leaves his bankrupt ass? Clearly, he needs a tax cut.


Bonus: Sorry Joe, but the world just isn't fair.

More Proof that the Drug War is a Failure

I've asserted here several times that the War on Drugs is a costly boondoggle and a bitter failure. Filling our prisons and clogging our court systems with non-violent drug offenders is the height of stupidity. Give these people treatment, not jail cells. Then hardcore drug usage might actually drop.

There is no better example of the insanity of the drug war than the case of the woman pictured in the mugshots above. Here is her story:

Sheriff's deputies arrived at a trailer on Monday and were shocked to find severely disfigured Heather Raybon there with another man, both surrounded by drug paraphernalia in the midst of a working meth lab, reported Fox10TV.com.

The 31-year-old had been permanently scarred when a drug den blew up in 2004 but even with her face left a distorted, melted mask she couldn't keep away from the addictive drug.

In the latest incident, narcotic detectives found materials and ingredients to cook up crystal meth, along with 13 grams of meth powder and 32 grams of meth oil. There was such a strong risk of explosion from the one-pot lab that police called the fire department to safely neutralize it.

Of all the illegal narcotics out there, crystal meth is arguably the worst. Cheap, easy to make, highly addictive and terribly destructive to the addict's health. You'll get no argument from me that it is not a scourge upon the earth.

And yet, what social good has come out of arresting the unfortunate Ms. Raybon four more times since that awful day when she melted her own face off? If that horrific experience wasn't enough to get her to quit, sticking her in a jail cell again certainly isn't going to do the trick. It is long past time for America to stop treating drug addiction as a crime, since doing so is nothing but counterproducutive and insanely expensive to boot.


Bonus: Crystal Meth really is as awful as this song is harrowing.

Last Bookstore in Delaware's Capital City Closes

Dover is the capital city of the state of Delaware and is about to become notable as a capital where there are essentially no remaining physical stores that sell newly published books:

DOVER, Del.- It's the end of an era for a popular bookstore chain in Delaware. Atlantic Books is going out of business after more than 30 years. The chain will close stores in Dover, Rehoboth and Bethany Beach.

Customers will now be left looking for other places to buy their books. Atlantic Books is the last major bookstore in Kent County.

To me this is a very sad story. I've been a book lover all my life. In my home I have custom built shelves weighed down with about 1,000 or so of my absolute favorites. I've never really enjoyed shopping as an activity, except that I can easily spend several hours in one sitting at a bookstore perusing the shelves.

The article continues:

Customer Theresa Stancliff said, "It's almost as if you like a real book in your hands, you're not allowed anymore without driving and making the sacrifice. It's very disappointing."

People like Theresa love the feeling of a real book in their hands. But, a tough economy and the rising popularity of e-readers have made it difficult for general brick and mortar bookstores to compete.

This is where I have to put on my peak oil writer's hat and say that you will not catch me dead with an e-reader, ever. I could say it's a sacrilege to read books that way, but that would make me sound like an old fuddy-duddy. Instead, I will make this argument: what's going to happen to all of those e-books in the coming powered down world of the future? Why, they're going to disappear into the electronic ether, that's what. To me, it's bad enough that someday I'm going to lose all of my music when the power goes out for good.

But at least I'll still have my books.


Bonus: Bill gets asked the question, "What you reading for?"

Rising Pension, Health Insurance Costs Cause Layoffs at Nassau Hospital

This story from Crain's New York Business is like the perfect storm of issues I've been writing about for months here at TDS:

NuHealth System, which runs Nassau University Medical Center, announced a $50 million deficit caused by a $25 million rise in employee pension costs, a $15 million fall in Medicaid disproportionate share hospital reimbursements, and a $10 million hike in health insurance, pharmaceutical and supply costs.

NuHealth cut 175 employees, mostly from the Civil Service Employees Association, and the tally included 15 doctors—on top of another 77 workers who took an incentive for early retirement in late October. The cuts will save about $20 million at NuHealth, which had been profitable in 2009 and 2010.

“A $25 million increase in pension costs is not sustainable, at current staffing levels, for a public benefit corporation with a $553 million annual budget,” Arthur Gianelli, NuHealth's president and chief executive, said in a statement.

With the corporation's new 2012 pension bill, contribution costs will have risen by $25 million, to $42 million. It now pays an average of 18.9% of payroll to the New York State Employee Retirement Fund, an amount it said far exceeded the contribution levels of its competitors. “The cost of a public-sector workforce is simply too great to sustain at current staffing levels of 3,800 employees,” Mr. Gianelli said.

The takeway lesson here should be pretty simple: even though the economy has at least temporarily stabilized thanks to the massive amounts of federal deficit spending, good paying jobs are still being destroyed because of fast-rising health and pension costs. In this environment, how many such jobs are likely being created out there or are going to be created anytime soon?

As long as the federal government can continue to borrow a trillion and a half dollars (or more) every year, it will continue to prop up the creaking facacde of the real economy (note too, that cuts in Medicaid payments were another factor in these layoffs). But all it can do is delay the eventual day of reckoning rather than prevent it.

Next Up in Municipal Bankruptcies: Detroit

Here is a story that should surprise precisely no one:

It's a race against the clock in Detroit.

The home to America's Big Three automakers has until spring to straighten out its budget problems or the city could face bankruptcy or, worse, potential default on its largest debt obligations.

"Without change, the city could run out of cash by April, with the potential cash shortfall of $45 million by the end of the fiscal year," Mayor Dave Bing said in an address to Detroit residents Wednesday night.

The mayor said $40 million could be saved in the city's budget through pension reform, cuts to medical care costs, and strategic layoffs -- all key points in the budget reform proposal he announced in the televised speech.

While many government jobs are on the chopping block under the mayor's proposal, many more could be lost if major changes are not made to the government's deficit, warns David L. Littmann, senior economist with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

The fiscal situation in Detroit has become so dire that "now even modest changes are not going to be sufficient to avoid default in the next four months," he forecasts.

Going into default could result in the shutdown of public works such as garbage collection and public transportation.

Littmann also said that if the mayor's proposal is not approved, it will "100%" file for bankruptcy. If the city fails to overhaul its budget, it's not a matter of if the city will file for bankruptcy, it's when, he said.

When you think about just how bad the economic situation is in Detroit and how long it has been that way, the only surprise is that this hasn't happened sooner.

New Poll: 41% Think the American Dream is Dead, the Other 59% Believe in Unicorns

A recent poll conducted by Yahoo Finance shows that Americans are slowly waking up to the basic truths that I write about every day here at TDS:

A new survey by Yahoo! Finance shows Americans have a disturbing lack of hope and a frightening lack of retirement planning.

Among the highlights of the poll:

-- 41% of Americans say the 'American Dream' has been lost.

-- 37% of adults have NO retirement savings and 38% plan to live off Social Security.

-- 63% of Americans believe the economy is getting worse, including 72% of those over the age of 55.

These findings are consistent with broader trends The Daily Ticker has reported on in the past year: Despite macro data showing the economy has technically recovered from the 'Great Recession', the majority of Americans just aren't feeling it. Considering 49 million Americans are living in poverty, the "real" unemployment rate is 16% and millions of Americans are facing foreclosure, it's no wonder many believe the recession never ended.

Bad as that first number is, the second one is even more scary given how, as I have demonstrated here at TDS, Social Security is effectively bankrupt just as the Baby Boomers are beginning to retire in large numbers.

The poll goes on to show the flip side of these numbers:

-- 53% of Americans ages 18-34 still see America as the land of opportunity.

-- 45% of parents believe their kids will be better off than they are.

-- 68% of Americans say their currency financial situation is either "excellent" or "satisfactory."

Here too, the survey is consistent with trends we've reported on: In an era of rising income inequality, those doing well in America today are doing quite well, indeed.

Yep--most of those who still have their jobs remain completely in the dark about what so many of their fellow citizens are experiencing. They are the ones who stare uncomprehendingly at the Occupy protests and wonder what all of the fuss is about. Many will no doubt be lining up at midnight next Thursday so they can trample some of their fellow citizens trying to be the first to save 20% on the new flat screen teevee.

God Bless America.


Bonus: God Bless America (alternative version)

Friday Rant: Retail Drones "Fight Back" Against Early Black Friday Store Openings

image: a holiday tradition, Americans give thanks right before trampling each other in an orgy of mindless consumerism

Seems like some of the retail workers expected to come in on Thanksgiving night to allow their employers to get an earlier-than-ever jump start on this year's "Black Friday" are none too pleased about the prospect:

As more retailers try to turn Thanksgiving Thursday into Black Friday — some employees are fighting back.

More than 7,000 people signed an online petition on change.org asking retail giant Target to reverse its decision to open its doors on Thanksgiving Day — and allow workers to spend the holiday with family and friends.

There are hundreds of comments on the petition supporting retail workers’ rights to Thanksgiving Day off, including this one from Caroline Hemenway: “This is absurd! Corporations are treating their workforce like serfs and fomenting a toxic consumer culture. Pure, unadulterated greed.”

Ummm...yes they are, Ms. Hemenway...cause that's the AMERICAN way, don't you know. What are you, some kinda socialist?

Here is what the organizer of this effort had to say:

The campaign was launched by Anthony Hardwick, a Target employee from Omaha, Nebraska, following news that the company’s management had moved the standard Black Friday opening time from 5 a.m. on Friday to midnight on Thanksgiving. The new opening time will require employees to arrive at work by 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day.

“All Americans should be able to break bread with loved ones on Thanksgiving,” said Hardwick, who works as a part-time parking attendant at a Target store in Omaha. “With the midnight opening, employees like myself will have to leave for work right in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner. We don’t mind hard work, but cutting into our holidays is a step too far.”

“If Target doesn’t reverse its decision and allow associates to spend Thanksgiving holidays with their family, they might suffer from a fast-growing consumer backlash,” Hardwick added.

Will they? After Target, Macy’s, Best Buy and Kohl’s announced plan to open at midnight on Thanksgiving – the biggest fish of them all — Walmart — decided to go even further and open at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving.

Sadly, I agree with the author of this article in questioning whether there will be any backlash whatsoever against the box stores, or whether it is more likely instead that millions of slackjawed, drooling consumer zombies will be trampling each other at the stroke of midnight all across this once-great land trying to get $20 off on that loss-leader video game. Any employees who fail to show up for work as instructed will no doubt be shitcanned. After all, with the real unemployment rate well into the double digits, they can easily be replaced.

I found this article to be profoundly depressing. "Black Friday" has gone from being a quaint tradition that even my own family enjoyed when I was growing up to being a shameful annual display of the worst aspects of our mindless consumer culture. Look at the crazed idiots in that picture above from one of the notorious trampling incidents that seems to be an annual feature of this sick ritual. You just want to shout at these people: what in the FUCK is WRONG with you? Are your lives REALLY so fucking empty that you think the only thing that can possibly fill the void is the latest hot toy cheaply made in China?

You want to know why our democracy is failing? Because the same millions of people who cannot see how fucking absurd it is to spend the wee hours of Thanksgiving night elbowing each other and standing in long lines at godforasken, ugly ass box stores are the same fucking bozos who complacently go to vote for the parade of shit that is on the ballots on election day. They don't pause to reflect any more about just how awful their choices are at the polling place than they do about how Madison Avenue's soulless marketing cretins manipulated them into those stores in the first place. To be successful, any representative form of government needs informed citizens capable of critical thinking. Here's your proof as to how little of that we have these days.

So I while I certainly wish the retail employees who are signing this petition the best of luck, they have to know that if they seriously challenge the consumerist steamroller they are going to get flattened. And if the economy continues to get worse, no doubt next year the big box stores will be open at 8:00 on Thanksgiving, or 6:00. Or hell, why not just open them at noon? That way you can take your Thanksgiving dinner with you in a picnic basket to eat while you are waiting in line. That's a win-win if I've ever heard one.

The otherwise pedestrian filmmaker George Romero hit upon one genius idea back in 1978 when he set his second zombie movie, Dawn of the Dead, in a shopping mall. But even Romero must these days be amazed at just how apt his snarky metaphor has become. I get sick and tired of hearing clueless conventional liberal and progressive commentators who are always coming up with unworkable political ideas as to how we can "save" our economy. What are we saving, exactly? This? I say let it all fucking burn.


Bonus: The Dead are already walking the Earth.

Criminal Prosecutions for Financial Fraud FALLING Under Obama

In the latest example of the Same-Old-Shit We Shouldn't Believe In, it was reported on Tuesday that prosecutions of financial institution fraud under the Obama administration are far LOWER than they were under President George Bush the Lesser (though in fairness, as you can see in the chart above, the annual total dropped throughout Bush's presidency and would have no doubt continued to do so had he stayed in office).

Federal prosecutions for financial institution fraud have continued their downward slide despite the financial troubles reported in this sector. The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during the first eleven months of FY 2011 the government reported 1,251 new prosecutions were filed. If this activity continues at the same pace, the annual total of prosecutions will be 1,365 for this fiscal year, down 28.6 percent from their numbers of just five years ago and less than half the level prevalent a decade ago. See Table 1.

The comparisons of the number of defendants charged with financial institution fraud offenses are based on case-by-case information obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys.

What more evidence do you need that Obama has merely been running Bush's third term? After the financial crash of 2008, the federal government should have put at LEAST as much effort in combating financial fraud as it does on terrorism. The numbers on that chart should have quickly doubled or more from Bush's last year in office, and yet exactly the opposite has occurred.