Picture via Greenpeace/The Price of Oil.
I think one thing it would be helpful to keep in mind is… to get to you, they come through us first. Whether it is laws building up to something like the Patriot Act, or undermining the holy grail of abortion rights, there are usually many steps taken that initially primarily affect poorer people and people of color, but which are eventually felt in some way by the overall population.–Nanette, in the comments to this thread.
This doesn’t just apply to discrimination and Draconian legislation. It also applies to human-influenced natural disasters and climate change. The poorest of the population are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. They are already paying the price. They feel the effects first, then we will.
The science may not be sound, but it’s quite glamorous.
Scientists say that the administration tried to pressure them into downplaying climate change. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given the history of this administration. However, it’s obvious that this is like, totally not the case, since everyone knows that climate change is controversial and very disputed. I mean, it’s only the actual climatologists in every major scientific organization in the world that buys into it.
Thankfully, the good rational intellectuals over at the Heartland Institute has a real problem with this, and is skeptical. By “skeptical” I mean, “unwilling to acknowledge reality at all.” They claim that “experts” question the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says that yes, climate change is real and OMG IT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW HOLY CRAP PEOPLE. We all know that there is no such thing as global warming, but even if there is, there could be benefits. At least so says the economist who wrote the thing. And he’s qualified to debunk experts in the field because he saw something about it on PBS one day. Or something.
But fear not! We have the solution! My fellow Americans, we can create giant space mirrors to block out the sun!
Voting for the rest of us, thanks to Diebold — all you need is a flash drive, a screwdriver, a USB gender changer ($2.99) and a USB-to-serial converter in your pocket when you head into the voting booth if a Diebold is in use at your polling place.
You start laughing, and then you want to cry.
Video by Marty Kaplan at HuffPost.
Think it’s BS? Try looking at this series of shots of the interior of the same machine at Open Voting Foundation, the source of the shots in the video.
Open Voting Foundation is releasing 22 high-resolution close up pictures of the system. This picture, in particular, shows a “BOOT AREA CONFIGURATION” chart painted on the system board.
The most serious issue is the ability to choose between “EPROM” and “FLASH” boot configurations. Both of these memory sources are present. All of the switches in question (JP2, JP3, JP8, SW2 and SW4) are physically present on the board. It is clear that this system can ship with live boot profiles in two locations, and switching back and forth could change literally everything regarding how the machine works and counts votes. This could be done before or after the so-called “Logic And Accuracy Tests”.
A third possible profile could be field-added in minutes and selected in the “external flash” memory location, the interface for which is present on the motherboard.
Oh hell, why worry about messing with the damn thing on election day anyway, when the software can be set up in advance for the “right outcome.” From VerifiedVotingFoundation’s David Dill:
Typically, modern voting machines are delivered several days before an election and stored in people’s homes or in insecure polling stations. A wide variety of poll workers, shippers, technicians, and others who have access to these voting machines could rig the software. Such software alterations could be difficult to impossible to detect.
Diebold spokesman David Bear admitted to the New York Times that the back door was inserted intentionally so that election officials would be able to update their systems easily. Bear justified Diebold’s actions by saying, “For there to be a problem here, you’re basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software… I don’t believe these evil elections people exist.”
Has he not heard of Ken Blackwell? Bear said the above comments in May. Elections are already under way and these touch-screen electronic voting systems are still in use. With enough organization, time and access to do the hanky-panky, your vote is toast.
I’ve been reading quite a few pieces on how gas isn’t really that high (you see, you have to put things in context, which is why you use price inflation as a marker of how much prices have increased without comparing it to median income figures, which would actually tell you how much a price change impacts people), and I eventually ran into this chart via this site. (There’s a newer version out, but this works for our purposes.)
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not comforted by the fact that prices aren’t as high as they were at their highest point being the answer to “gas prices are really high”. For instance, average household income has been rising since 1980, the peak point for gas prices. However, income inequality has been rising alongside it. As much as I’d love it if the magical wonderland of inflation increased income and costs equally, it doesn’t. A lot of America has been getting proportionally poorer since the magic of Reaganomics made it clear that everyone’s getting richer so long as you think they are. Add that to the fact that the inflation-adjusted peak of $2.94 is not that far from the in-my-lifetime peak of $2.71 (at least in my area), and I’m going to kindly reject this new bout of head-patting, thank you very much.
But wait! That’s not all!
Few people realize that the U.S. is also a major oil-producing country. After Saudi Arabia, producing 10.4 million barrels a day, then Russia with 9.4 million barrels, the U.S. with 8.7 million barrels a day is the third-largest producer of oil. But we could produce more. Why aren’t we? Producers have a variety of techniques to win monopoly power and higher profits that come with that power. What’s a way for OPEC to gain more power? I have a hypothesis, for which I have no evidence, but it ought to be tested. If I were an OPEC big cheese, I’d easily conclude that I could restrict output and charge higher oil prices if somehow U.S. oil drilling were restricted. I’d see U.S. environmental groups as allies, and I would make “charitable” contributions to assist their efforts to reduce U.S. output. Again, I have no evidence, but it’s a hypothesis worth examination.
Yes, you heard that irresponsible speculation correctly - environment groups pushing for non-petroleum sources of energy are in the pockets of the Saudis. It would seem to me that given the current bent of the debate over energy in America, the Saudis wouldn’t be relying on the “stop drilling” folks, but instead the “we’ll have oil forever if we just drill a limited reserve” people. I mean, propogating a myth that drives high consumption is a far smarter strategy than funneling money into a movement that wants to see your economic backbone destroyed.
But, then again, what do I know? I’m just a terror-symp enviro-liberal. Up with prices! Down with gas! Sideways into the future!
