The Greeks Get It
(This article by Chris Hedges is re-posted from Truthdig.)
Here’s to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country. They know what to do when Goldman Sachs and international bankers collude with their power elite to falsify economic data and then make billions betting that the Greek economy will collapse. They know what to do when they are told their pensions, benefits and jobs have to be cut to pay corporate banks, which screwed them in the first place. Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. Do not be afraid of the language of class warfare-the rich versus the poor, the oligarchs versus the citizens, the capitalists versus the proletariat. The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it.
The former right-wing government of Greece lied about the size of the country’s budget deficit. It was not 3.7 percent of gross domestic product but 13.6 percent. And it now looks like the economies of Spain, Ireland, Italy and Portugal are as bad as Greece’s, which is why the euro has lost 20 percent of its value in the last few months. The few hundred billion in bailouts for other faltering European states, like our own bailouts, have only forestalled disaster. This is why the U.S. stock exchange is in free fall and gold is rocketing upward. American banks do not have heavy exposure in Greece, but Greece, as most economists concede, is only the start. Wall Street is deeply invested in other European states, and when the unraveling begins the foundations of our own economy will rumble and crack as loudly as the collapse in Athens. The corporate overlords will demand that we too impose draconian controls and cuts or see credit evaporate. They have the money and the power to hurt us. There will be more unemployment, more personal and commercial bankruptcies, more foreclosures and more human misery. And the corporate state, despite this suffering, will continue to plunge us deeper into debt to make war. It will use fear to keep us passive. We are being consumed from the inside out. Our economy is as rotten as the economy in Greece. We too borrow billions a day to stay afloat. We too have staggering deficits, which can never be repaid. Heed the dire rhetoric of European leaders.
“The euro is in danger,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told lawmakers last week as she called on them to approve Germany’s portion of the bailout plan. “If we do not avert this danger, then the consequences for Europe are incalculable, and then the consequences beyond Europe are incalculable.”
Beyond Europe means us. The right-wing government of Kostas Karamanlis, which preceded the current government of George Papandreou, did what the Republicans did under George W. Bush. They looted taxpayer funds to enrich their corporate masters and bankrupt the country. They stole hundreds of millions of dollars from individual retirement and pension accounts slowly built up over years by citizens who had been honest and industrious. They used mass propaganda to make the population afraid of terrorists and surrender civil liberties, including habeas corpus. And while Bush and Karamanlis, along with the corporate criminal class they abetted, live in unparalleled luxury, ordinary working men and women are told they must endure even more pain and suffering to make amends. It is feudal rape. And there has to be a point when even the American public-which still believes the fairy tale that personal will power and positive thinking will lead to success-will realize it has been had.
We have seen these austerity measures before. Latin Americans, like the Russians, were forced by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to gut social services, end subsidies on basic goods and food, and decimate the income levels of the middle class-the foundation of democracy-in the name of fiscal responsibility. Small entrepreneurs, especially farmers, were wiped out. State industries were sold off by corrupt government officials to capitalists for a fraction of their value. Utilities and state services were privatized.
What is happening in Greece, what will happen in Spain and Portugal, what is starting to happen here in states such as California, is the work of a global, white-collar criminal class. No government, including our own, will defy them. It is up to us. Barack Obama is simply the latest face that masks the corporate state. His administration serves corporate interests, not ours. Obama, like Goldman Sachs or Citibank, does not want the public to see how the Federal Reserve Bank acts as a private account and ATM machine for Wall Street at our expense. He, too, has helped orchestrate the largest transference of wealth upward in American history. He serves our imperial wars, refuses to restore civil liberties, and has not tamed our crippling deficits. His administration gutted regulatory agencies that permitted BP to turn the Gulf of Mexico into a toxic swamp. The refusal of Obama to intervene in a meaningful way to save the gulf’s ecosystem and curtail the abuses of the natural gas and oil corporations is not an accident. He knows where power lies. BP and its employees handed more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
We are facing the collapse of the world’s financial system. It is the end of globalization. And in these final moments the rich are trying to get all they can while there is still time. The fusion of corporatism, militarism and internal and external intelligence agencies-much of their work done by private contractors-has given these corporations terrifying mechanisms of control. Think of it, as the Greeks do, as a species of foreign occupation. Think of the Greek riots as a struggle for liberation.
Dwight Macdonald laid out the consequences of a culture such as ours, where the waging of war was “the normal mode of existence.” The concept of perpetual war, which eluded the theorists behind the 19th and early 20th century reform and social movements, including Karl Marx, has left social reformers unable to deal with this effective mechanism of mass control. The old reformists had limited their focus to internal class struggle and, as Macdonald noted, never worked out “an adequate theory of the political significance of war.” Until that gap is filled, Macdonald warned, “modern socialism will continue to have a somewhat academic flavor.”
Macdonald detailed in his 1946 essay “The Root Is Man” the marriage between capitalism and permanent war. He despaired of an effective resistance until the permanent war economy, and the mentality that went with it, was defeated. Macdonald, who was an anarchist, saw that the Marxists and the liberal class in Western democracies had both mistakenly placed their faith for human progress in the goodness of the state. This faith, he noted, was a huge error. The state, whether in the capitalist United States or the communist Soviet Union, eventually devoured its children. And it did this by using the organs of mass propaganda to keep its populations afraid and in a state of endless war. It did this by insisting that human beings be sacrificed before the sacred idol of the market or the utopian worker’s paradise. The war state provides a constant stream of enemies, whether the German Hun, the Bolshevik, the Nazi, the Soviet agent or the Islamic terrorist. Fear and war, Macdonald understood, was the mechanism that let oligarchs pillage in the name of national security.
“Modern totalitarianism can integrate the masses so completely into the political structure, through terror and propaganda, that they become the architects of their own enslavement,” he wrote. “This does not make the slavery less, but on the contrary more- a paradox there is no space to unravel here. Bureaucratic collectivism, not capitalism, is the most dangerous future enemy of socialism.”
Macdonald argued that democratic states had to dismantle the permanent war economy and the propaganda that came with it. They had to act and govern according to the non-historical and more esoteric values of truth, justice, equality and empathy. Our liberal class, from the church and the university to the press and the Democratic Party, by paying homage to the practical dictates required by hollow statecraft and legislation, has lost its moral voice. Liberals serve false gods. The belief in progress through war, science, technology and consumption has been used to justify the trampling of these non-historical values. And the blind acceptance of the dictates of globalization, the tragic and false belief that globalization is a form of inevitable progress, is perhaps the quintessential illustration of Macdonald’s point. The choice is not between the needs of the market and human beings. There should be no choice. And until we break free from serving the fiction of human progress, whether that comes in the form of corporate capitalism or any other utopian vision, we will continue to emasculate ourselves and perpetuate needless human misery. As the crowds of strikers in Athens understand, it is not the banks that are important but the people who raise children, build communities and sustain life. And when a government forgets whom it serves and why it exists, it must be replaced.
“The Progressive makes History the center of his ideology,” Macdonald wrote in “The Root Is Man.” “The Radical puts Man there. The Progressive’s attitude is optimistic both about human nature (which he thinks is good, hence all that is needed is to change institutions so as to give this goodness a chance to work) and about the possibility of understanding history through scientific method. The Radical is, if not exactly pessimistic, at least more sensitive to the dual nature; he is skeptical about the ability of science to explain things beyond a certain point; he is aware of the tragic element in man’s fate not only today but in any collective terms (the interests of Society or the Working Class); the Radical stresses the individual conscience and sensibility. The Progressive starts off from what is actually happening; the Radical starts off from what he wants to happen. The former must have the feeling that History is ‘on his side.’ The latter goes along the road pointed out by his own individual conscience; if History is going his way, too, he is pleased; but he is quite stubborn about following ‘what ought to be’ rather than ‘what is.’ “
(This article is re-posted from Public Citizen.)
The Senate bill contains several strong, positive elements – among them, the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, restrictions on “swipe fees” at the cash register, useful regulation of credit rating agencies and an audit of the Federal Reserve – and we welcome its passage.
But after all the damage inflicted by Wall Street, the bill should be much stronger. Even though it plunged the nation into the worst recession since the Great Depression, Wall Street has enough power on Capitol Hill to thwart reforms that would prevent it from doing the same all over again.
The bill leaves the mega-banks intact, so that they will continue to maintain a vise grip over the financial system, the economy and our democracy. And the bill fails to clamp down sufficiently on the casino economy. Importantly, however, the bill does contain significant derivatives reform language from U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.). By forcing derivatives trading out of the shadows, the Lincoln provision would – with one vital fix – significantly reform a sector with major responsibility for the financial crisis. The strong derivatives regulation contains one major, accidental loophole – no enforcement – that must be remedied in conference. The Lincoln provisions would also force commercial banks out of the derivatives speculation business, an important step to redirect banks to provide credit to Main Street, rather than engage in speculative betting. A vital measure of the ultimate significance of the Senate action is whether the derivatives reform measures can be protected from the swarm of Wall Street lobbyists who will seek to eliminate, eviscerate, defang or otherwise undermine the measures’ purpose and effect.
This legislation is not the end of the Wall Street reform effort. Just as there were multiple rounds of reform in the 1930s, we should look now to further reform efforts, fueled by more revelations about conflicts of interest, self-dealing, deception and fraud.
Bush and Rove will both be in Grand Rapids
We reported a few months ago that former President and War Criminal George W. Bush will be in Grand Rapids on June 2nd speaking to the Economics Club.
Today, the Grand Rapids Press announced that Bush’s main political advisor Karl Rove will also be in Grand Rapids, signing books and attending a fundraiser for young professionals. Rove will be signing books at the Knapp’s Corner Meijer store, 1997 E. Beltline Ave. NE, at 4 p.m. on May 27.
There is a planned protest of the Bush visit on June 2nd, with information on Facebook. As for Rove, it would be worth it for people to read independent information posted on SourceWatch and maybe folks will want to go and pay the man known as Bush’s Brain a visit while he is in town.
Update: there is now a planned protest for Karl Rove’s visit Citizens arrest of Karl Rove on Facebook.
(This article is reposted from Black Agenda Report.)
“African Americans are tumbling out of the nation’s economic orbit, wealth-wise, on a trajectory that can never achieve parity with whites.”
The gap between Black and white household wealth quadrupled from 1984 to 2007, totally discrediting the conventional wisdom that the U.S. is slowly and fitfully moving towards racial equality, or some rough economic parity between the races. Like most American myths, it’s the direct opposite of the truth. When measured over decades, Blacks are being propelled economically downward relative to whites at quickening speed, according to a new study by Brandeis University.
The gap between Black and white households ballooned during the 23-year study period, as white families went from a median of about $22,000 in wealth to $100,000 – a gain of $78,000. In the same period, Black household wealth inched up from a base of $2,000 per family to only $5,000. The sweat and toil of an entire generation had netted Black families only $3,000 additional dollars, while white families emerged from the period with a net worth of 100 grand that can be used to send a couple of kids to college, make investments, help out other family members, or contribute to the larger (white) community. The typical Black family has no such options.
Viewed another way, the median white family was 11 times richer than the median Black family in 1984 ($2,000 vs. $22,000). By 2007, the white household had become 20 times richer than its Black counterpart($5,000 vs. $100,000).
Any way one measures it, the numbers show African Americans are tumbling out of the nation’s economic orbit, wealth-wise, on a trajectory that can never achieve parity with whites. I repeat: never.
“By 2007, the white household had become 20 times richer than its Black counterpart.”
On the campaign trail in 2007, Barack Obama flippantly declared that African Americans had “already come 90 percent of the way” to equality, with only 10 percent more to go. Whatever the future president was thinking, it wasn’t economics. The meter of progress is running backwards on Black America, toward greater inequality and relative poverty. Everything else you’ve heard is propaganda.
The Brandeis study, conducted by the university’s Institute on Assets and Social Policy, showed that upper income Blacks fell even farther behind their white peers than lower income Blacks. During the survey period, higher income Blacks saw their wealth drop from $25,000 to just $18,000, while their white counterparts wealth soared to $240,000.
Black folks have been integrated long enough to know that the white family didn’t get richer by a quarter million dollars because they were smarter than the Black family. Privilege, especially cumulative privilege over generations, works wonders, like compound interest only better. Whites are both collectively privileged and capable of bestowing an endless stream of privileges on each other, while Blacks are deliberately positioned outside of the stream, and are preyed upon as a group by powerful (white) financial forces that profit from the wealth differential.
“Upper income Blacks fell even farther behind their white peers than lower income Blacks.”
The Brandies report recognizes the “powerful role of persistent discrimination in housing, credit and labor markets” – that is, the institutionally racist crimes of finance capital. Had the survey continued past 2007, the carnage of the Great Recession would have revealed even more dramatically the incredibly shrinking nature of Black wealth in the current era.
Enemies of all colors and sly servants of the rich will use the news of the evaporation of African American wealth to heap blame on Black “culture.” This “shaming” strategy is designed to keep Blacks looking inward for the source of their woes, and to simultaneously despair of finding salvation in our own capacity for group agency. Meanwhile, the Lords of Capital devour us like piranhas – quicker than they do whites, who are padded with the fat of relative privilege – $95,000 worth of it, the racial wealth spread of 23 years.
Although Black parity with whites has never been on the horizon, impatient whites have insisted since 1969 or thereabouts that “it’s time” African Americans were made to “stand or fall” on their own, minus all the imagined assistance Blacks have supposedly received from phantom federal and state agencies. After all, say the anxious whites, how long is society (meaning themselves) supposed to pay for the slavery and segregation of the past? Most white folks – and President Obama – believe, or pretend to believe, that whatever legitimate grievances Blacks might harbor against the United States stem from circumstances deep in the past. The only question is, when will Blacks finally “get over it?”
“Blacks are preyed upon as a group by powerful (white) financial forces that profit from the wealth differential.”
The Brandies study shows that the racial wealth gap, although historically rooted in slavery and Jim Crow oppressions, has grown dramatically under post-civil rights era conditions. The gap is not simply a legacy of some ancient American apartheid, but a product of the recent past and of the present. This is a different paradigm, entirely, in which past racial wrongs are compounded by additional layers of institutionalized anti-Black behavior in the 1980s, 90s and in the 21st century –wounds so harmful they set African Americans on a backward course in terms of wealth accumulation.
In 2004, United for a Fair Economy came out with the first of its annual “State of the Dream ” reports. Readers were shocked out of complacency by data that showed Blacks would not reach wealth parity with whites until the year 2099. It was surely a bummer to realize that no one then alive would see the “promised land” of evenly matched Black and white median household wealth. But at least the study indicated that “we, as a people” would eventually get there, as someone famous once predicted. There are no such condolences in the Brandies data. At the rate Blacks have been falling behind in wealth since the mid-80s, the Black and white median paths will diverge ever farther, never to connect under this system of economic and political rule. Blacks cannot shop or invest or save or borrow our way to a just society. Social justice and true human equality can only be achieved through our collective political action in opposition to the current order – by any means necessary, as another famous man once urged.
The Michigan Organizing Project (MOP) announced today that they are organizing a rally in Kalamazoo on June 7, while President Obama gives the commencement address to an area high school.
MOP wants to pressure the President to follow through with campaign promises on a comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level. In a message sent out MOP states, “This is a tremendous opportunity to show local and even national media how much the people of West Michigan care about comprehensive immigration reform.”
MOP is also organizing buses from Grand Rapids to Kalamazoo, buses that will be leaving from La Nueva Esperanza United Methodist Church (100 Burton St SE, Grand Rapids, 49507) at 5:15pm on Monday, June 7th.
The local organization is also asking for a $10 donation to cover their costs and for people to reserve a seat ahead of time by sending an E-mail to Jordon Bruxvoort jordan.bruxvoort@gmail.com. If you are unable to attend by would like to sponsor anyone else to attend the rally you can also make a donation to MOP by June 4. Their office is located at 250 Brown St SE in Grand Rapids.
MOP has been one of the main groups locally advocating for comprehensive immigration reform over the past few years. Organizers say that they expect a large turnout from the Hispanic community since some of the Spanish language radio stations will be aggressively promoting this opportunity.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, $15,824,832 has been spent to fund Congressional races across the state, with a little over half of that going to Democrats.
The candidates receiving the largest amounts so far are Democrats Gary Peters ($1,962,516) and Mark Schauer ($1,817,673). The top Republican recipient is Dave Camp at $1,370,192.
In West Michigan the money raised for the 2nd and 3rd Congressional races are not nearly as high and the money seems to be spread out between numerous candidates.
In the 2nd Congressional race Jay Riemersma (R) leads all candidates having raised $526,000 as of the last financial report deadline, follwed by Willian Cooper (R) ($225,721), Bill Huizenga (R) ($200,269), Wayne Kuipers (R) ($112,590), John Reichardt (R) ($35,974), Fred Johnson (D) ($25,703), Nicolette McClure (D) ($13,280), Jeff Wincel (R) ($11,885) and Chris Larson (R) & Edward Ted Schendel (R), which have both raised no money.
In the 3rd Congressional race Justin Amash (R) leads all candidates in fundraising with $116,063, followed by Pat Miles (D) ($107,230), Steve Heacock (R) ($88,187), Bill Hardiman (R) ($54,087) and Robert Overbeek (R) ($2,549). Louise E. Johnson (R), Michael Van Kleeck (R) and Paul Mayhue (D) all have not raised any money as of the last financial reporting deadline.
The top donor to Michigan Congressional races so far is the UAW ($800,500), followed by ActBlue, Weyerhaeuser Co., Centra Inc., DTE Energy, Ford Motor Co., and Dow Chemical. West Michigan donors are Autocam Corp. ($111,000), Bridge Street Capital ($109,000), Amway ($108,050), and Windquest Group ($100,900). Amway and the Windquest Group are essentially the same since the DeVos family is involved in both.
While it is hard to determine for sure exactly how this money will influence the Congressional races, it is likely that big money will determine the outcome of most of these races. It would also be good to pay attention to how money from specific entities will influence the political platform of individual candidates as the races develop.
Comcasteroid Heading Right for Earth
(This Media Alert is a re-posting from Stop Big Media.)
Comcast is like an asteroid on a collision course with earth, and time is running out to stop the company from taking over NBC Universal and destroying our media system. We have one month to tell the Federal Communications Commission why it should stop the Comcast merger (and save the planet? Perhaps!).
Comcast is notorious for overpriced cable service, overpaid executives, attacks on Net Neutrality and terrible customer service. Now, it wants to take over NBC Universal and expand its already massive media empire. If we don’t take action, we’re going to get hit with higher bills and fewer choices both on- and offline.
The impact will be felt by everyone. We need to avert a Comcast disaster by telling the FCC to stop the merger.
Thanks to the public outcry, the FCC is paying attention. The agency just appointed an outside investigator to review the merger and opened a month-long public comment period so we can register our objections to this disastrous deal. If the deal goes through, Comcast will be able to control what we watch and how we watch it, absorbing dozens of cable networks, a movie studio, 27 television stations, and influence over 200 NBC affiliates.
It would be the biggest media takeover in a generation. Our cable and Internet bills could skyrocket. Sites like Hulu and popular TV programming could get locked behind a paywall.
The fact is, Comcast has a terrible record on just about everything:
- It fires workers who try to join unions
- It was voted worst company in America by readers of the Consumerist
- It engages in vicious price gouging
- It was caught red-handed blocking Internet traffic
CEO Brian Roberts was rated one of the five most overpaid CEOs in America. The video below explains just how bad this Comcast-NBC deal is, and why the FCC needs to stop it. But let’s be real. This isn’t some Hollywood movie. This is our media system, and if we don’t act now, it will be struck by a merger of epic proportions. With your help, we can stop it.
OSHA Says BP Has “Systemic Safety Problem”
(This article is re-posted from the Center for Public Intergrity.)
Two refineries owned by oil giant BP account for 97 percent of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry by government safety inspectors over the past three years, a Center for Public Integrity analysis shows. Most of BP’s citations were classified as “egregious willful” by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and reflect alleged violations of a rule designed to prevent catastrophic events at refineries.
BP is battling a massive oil well spill in the Gulf of Mexico after an April 20 platform blast that killed 11 workers. But the firm has been under intense OSHA scrutiny since its refinery in Texas City, Texas, exploded in March 2005, killing 15 workers. While continuing its probe in Texas City, OSHA launched a nationwide refinery inspection program in June 2007 in response to a series of fires, explosions and chemical releases throughout the industry.
Refinery inspection data obtained by the Center under the Freedom of Information Act for OSHA’s nationwide program and for the parallel Texas City inspection show that BP received a total of 862 citations between June 2007 and February 2010 for alleged violations at its refineries in Texas City and Toledo, Ohio.
Of those, 760 were classified as “egregious willful” and 69 were classified as “willful.” Thirty of the BP citations were deemed “serious” and three were unclassified. Virtually all of the citations were for alleged violations of OSHA’s process safety management standard, a sweeping rule governing everything from storage of flammable liquids to emergency shutdown systems. BP accounted for 829 of the 851 willful violations among all refiners cited by OSHA during the period analyzed by the Center.
Top OSHA officials told the Center in an interview that BP was cited for more egregious willful violations than other refiners because it failed to correct the types of problems that led to the 2005 Texas City accident even after OSHA pointed them out. In Toledo, problems were corrected in one part of the refinery but went unaddressed in another. Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, said it was clear that BP “didn’t go nearly far enough” to correct deficiencies after the 2005 blast.
“The only thing you can conclude is that BP has a serious, systemic safety problem in their company,” Barab said.
The head of OSHA, David Michaels, said the safety problems aren’t limited to BP. “We are very concerned about the commitment of the refining industry to worker health and safety,” he said.
BP officials did not respond to requests for comment about the OSHA data.
According to the company’s website, “BP’s commitment to safety begins at the most senior levels of our organization—with robust systems to implement, audit, report on and improve our performance.
“Creating a safe and healthy working environment is essential for our success. Since 1999, injury rates and spills have reduced by approximately 75 percent,” the BP website says.
BP FACES $90 MILLION IN FINES
BP, which calls itself the country’s largest oil and gas producer, operates five U.S. refineries that collectively process about 1.5 million barrels of crude oil per day. Last October, OSHA proposed a record $87 million fine against the Texas City refinery. The agency proposed a fine of $3 million against the Toledo refinery in March. BP is contesting both penalties.
Separately, BP’s Cherry Point refinery in Blaine, Wash., was cited by state regulators for 13 serious violations earlier this month. Penalties totaling $69,200 have been proposed. These citations are not included in data analyzed by the Center.
No other oil company inspected by OSHA since June 2007 was even close to BP in the number of citations issued. Sunoco Inc. was cited for 127 alleged violations, eight of which were willful. ConocoPhillips Co. was cited for 119, four of which were willful, and Citgo Petroleum Corp. for 101, two of which were willful.
OSHA defines a willful violation as one “committed with plain indifference to or intentional disregard for employee safety and health.” An egregious willful violation is considered so severe that it can result in a penalty each time a violation occurs, rather than a single penalty for all violations of a regulation. A serious violation is described as one creating a “substantial probability” of death or serious injury. OSHA can refer cases involving worker deaths and wanton disregard for safety rules to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
Under the nationwide program, OSHA has finished inspecting, or is in the process of inspecting, 55 refineries under federal OSHA jurisdiction, with 12 left to inspect. Another 23 U.S. refineries are exempted because they participate in a voluntary program for employers that have agreed to adopt safety rules stricter than what OSHA requires. Some inspections were performed by regulators in states such as Washington and California, which have their own worker safety programs. There are 55 refineries in these states.
In a letter to refinery managers last year, OSHA’s enforcement director, Richard Fairfax, wrote that in the previous 15 years, the refining industry had recorded “more fatal or catastrophic incidents related to the release of highly hazardous chemicals … than any other industry sector covered by the [process safety management] standard.” OSHA inspectors, Fairfax wrote, were finding “many of the same problems repeatedly.”
A TROUBLED INDUSTRY
After the BP refinery in Texas City blew up on March 23, 2005, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency, concluded that the disaster was caused by “organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP Corporation. Warning signs of a possible disaster were present for several years, but company officials did not intervene effectively to prevent it.”
Several other major incidents – including a pipe failure that caused $30 million in damage – occurred at the same BP refinery just months after the explosion, the safety board found. An investigative panel chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker also documented management lapses and questionable cost-cutting at BP. But the Baker panel’s report added: “We are under no illusion that deficiencies in process safety culture, management, or corporate oversight are limited to BP.”
Indeed, on April 2 of this year, a fire at the Tesoro Corp. refinery in Anacortes, Washington, killed seven workers. The cause of that accident has not been determined.
But Bill Hoyle, former manager of investigations for the safety board and chief investigator of the 2005 BP disaster, said it provides further evidence that the industry is cutting corners.“The industry across the board has process safety problems. Fires and explosions and fatalities are continuing unabated. Texas City should have served as a wake-up call, but they didn’t wake up,” Hoyle told the Center.
Now a safety consultant for the United Steelworkers, which represents about 30,000 refinery employees, Hoyle said the OSHA inspection program is “a flash in the pan which looks at only a tiny percentage of each refinery – one or two process units.” He questioned its effectiveness, noting that the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes was cited in October 2008 for 17 serious process safety management violations, 14 of which were dropped after the company negotiated with the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries. A proposed penalty of $85,700 was reduced to $12,250.
Refineries are inherently dangerous places. In the course of turning crude oil into gasoline, diesel, propane and other products, workers come in close contact with extremely flammable and toxic materials. These materials are under high temperatures and pressures, creating fire and explosion hazards. OSHA’s process safety management standard requires refinery and chemical plant operators to have systems in place to identify and mitigate these hazards.
Kim Nibarger, a health and safety specialist with the Steelworkers, happened to be in Anacortes when the Tesoro refinery caught fire last month. Six of the seven workers killed belonged to the union. “I was almost sick to my stomach,” Nibarger said. “I thought, ‘When is it going to stop? What’s it going to take for this industry to wake up?’”
In his view, many of the problems in the industry can be traced to growing intervals between refinery “turnarounds,” when equipment is taken offline for cleaning, repair or replacement. Not long ago, Nibarger said, turnarounds were scheduled every two to three years. Now, as oil companies try to cut costs, it’s every three to five years.
Gregory Scott, executive vice president of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, defended the industry. “Safety is the highest priority at our member plants,” he told the Center.
Scott said the industry is developing uniform standards to improve process safety management at refineries. “Clearly, we’re taking the steps to implement process safety metrics,” he said. “Chastising the industry for not doing it earlier may or may not be accurate.”
But OSHA’s Barab said the refining industry group continues to treat calamities like those in Texas City and Anacortes as isolated incidents. Refiners also point misleadingly to their industry’s relatively low “recordable” illness and injury rates, which he says are not reliable predictors of catastrophic incidents. Federal law requires employers to record and report all occupational deaths, injuries, and illnesses.
“BP had a very low recordable injury and illness rate before they blew up the [Texas City] plant,” Barab said. If the industry persists in using such rates as a measure of overall safety, he said, “It’s hard to take their commitment seriously.”
The national organization Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood recently announced the winner of their annual Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young Children (TOADY) Award. The advocacy group monitors toys and children targeted media to identify harmful messages in this hyper-commercial world. What follows is part of a statement the organization released after the vote for this year’s most egregious toy.
“Nickelodeon’s decision to exploit its reputation as a family-friendly company by linking to the games directly from its popular websites for young children earned AddictingGames.com the award for worst of the worst. TOADY voters were aghast that Nick allows children such easy access to the horrific content on AddictingGames.com, including the Perry the Sneak series, where gamers take the role of a peeping Tom trying to catch revealing glimpses of naked women showering–and successful voyeurs are rewarded by getting in bed with their prey; Stick Dude Killing Arena, the object of which is to “Train to Kill Until You Die”; and Kitty Cannon, where players can “make Fluffy bloody” by shooting a kitten out of a cannon onto a row of metal spikes.
The fact that the games are free, making them accessible to any child with Internet access, was another reason voters frequently gave for why AddictingGames.com got their TOADY vote.
Since December, more than 4,000 parents have written to Nickelodeon to demand that the children’s media empire remove the links to AddictingGames.com from Nick.com, NickJr.com and Neopets.com. But Nickelodeon refuses to grant parents even this simple courtesy, suggesting that keeping children’s eyes glued to advertiser-supported screens by providing edgy content is much more important to Nick than honoring parents’ trust. (One advertiser for Perry the Sneak 2 is Lunchables, Kraft’s popular brand of packaged lunches for young children.) If you haven’t done so already, you can demand that Nickelodeon stop promoting AddictingGames.com on its websites for young children by clicking here.”
New Study looks at GR Press Religion Section
A group of Calvin College students, in conjunction with GRIID, decided on a project that would look the religion section of the Grand Rapids Press for the entire year of 2009.
The Press religion section only runs on Saturdays and the students decide this would be a valuable investigation. The students wanted to look at how the Grand Rapids Press discusses religion in the paper.
Here is a summary of their findings:
- Coverage was more prominent with establish movements vs. new religious movements
- The focus of much of the coverage was conflict driven
- There was also a fair amount of coverage of politics and its relationship to religion.
The study looked at a total of 438 articles from the Saturday religion section of the Press during 2009. They looked at article written by Press writers as well as wire service stories.
The students measured the stories based on the various religious traditions, themes and attitudes. Not surprisingly the majority of stories were based on the Christian tradition, with the bulk of those made up of the Catholic and Christian Reformed traditions.
The study also looked at sources (who was quoted in the articles), based on position in those religious traditions and their gender. Race was not included since it was difficult to determine the racial makeup of sources. When faith leaders were sourced in the stories it was overwhelmingly male, but when the stories source faith members the majority were women.
You can read the entire report by going to this link.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 