Category Archives: Current Events

Judge Approves Rocky Flats Settlement

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U.S. District Judge John L. Kane has given preliminary approval to the $375 million settlement between nearby residents of the Rocky Flats Plant and the plant operators, Rockwell International Corp. and the Dow Chemical Company. “The allocation for the $375 million settlement, according to the Kane’s order, is 81.5 percent for residential properties, 15.3 percent for vacant land and 3.2 percent for commercial properties. Up to 40 percent of the total — or $150 million — could be awarded as fees to the attorneys in the case.”

There are 13,000 to 15,000 households that may be eligible for payments. There is a website where people can check to see whether their property is in the area involved and make them eligible for payments. There is a map showing the area involved. The property has to have been owned by the claimant or their family members on June 7, 1989, the day the FBI raided the plant “…to look for environmental crimes.”

I’m not going to celebrate this, because I believe it to be a miscarriage of justice. A previous ruling by a three judge panel found that no actual damage had occurred. This ruling is apparently based on a “nuisance law.” The total amount of $375million for the plant creating a “nuisance” seems to me to be extremely excessive considering the huge economic boost the plant gave to the area over decades of operation, which of course involves the area of the settlement.

More Problems for College Graduates

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The problem of student loan debt has been extensively reported, but there is an additional problem. There are more graduates in several fields than there are jobs available. I doubt that most young people entering college consider the marketability of the degree they are pursuing, but it would be wise to think about whether there will be a job available when you graduate. You will spend many tens of thousands of dollars to get your education, and one goal should be to be rewarded with a job that pays well.

The Colorado Office of Economic Development reports that there are more than enough graduates in the state to replace everyone currently employed in the fields of advertising, marketing and public relations. There are fifteen times as many students with a degree in physical science than there are open positions and thirteen more in life sciences. There are shortages of graduates to fill logistics and teaching jobs. There are too many graduates with management degrees while there are shortages of people trained in office and administrative support positions that don’t require four years of college. There are also sufficient positions for engineering and health care graduates.

We need to be encouraging high school graduates to think about going to trade schools instead of college. They would miss out on the college parties but would begin life with decent jobs and no college debt.

GMO Labeling

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There is a new bill establishing national requirements for labeling foods with GMO content that is expected to be signed by President Obama. A Denver Post editorial supports the bill, but the anti-GMO advocates aren’t happy. Perhaps all that would have made them happy would have been a complete ban on GMOs. That ban would have taken almost all of the corn, soybean, canola, and sugar beet products off the market. Those ardently opposed to GMOs would probably respond that reducing the amount of available food is preferable to allowing what they call “Franken foods” to be grown and sold. I assure you I would eagerly eat Franken foods if the choice was not eating.

The new law would allow companies to label their GMO products with an actual label or a QR code. The small QR codes that smart phones can read will tell consumers the GMO content of the food. There is a realistic alternative for small companies who can still be able to comply by providing a web address or phone number.

Many food producers and processors continue to resent the fact that labeling is going to be mandated. They point out that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that GMO foods are safe, which means there is no scientific basis for the need of labels. However, they will probably be mollified by the knowledge that a federal law, regardless of whether it provides any actual improvement to food safety, will stop individual states from passing laws such as the one approved by Vermont voters.

Decline or Rise of a New Prosperity?

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Manufacturing is dying in America, and the middle class that was built on post-WWII GI bill education and manufacturing is going with it. Jobs move overseas to cheap labor markets thanks to trade deals that favor a powerful elite. Millions around the world are rising from extreme poverty at the price of the Western World’s middle class – which might look like a good tradeoff to aliens watching from space, but isn’t so good if you happen to be losing. We should all be sad and angry.

I’ve heard that a lot and I guess I believe it. Just look at the tags in my tee shirts – all manufactured overseas.

I also tend to think of the Christian Science Monitor as a reputable news source, so I read their recent article carefully.

The surprising truth about American manufacturing

“United States manufacturing output is at an all-time high, worth $2.2 trillion in 2015, up from $1.7 trillion in 2009. And while total employment has fallen by nearly a third since 1970, the jobs that remain are increasingly skilled.

“Across the country, factory owners are now grappling with a new challenge: Instead of having too many workers, as they did during the Great Recession, they may end up with too few…

“In western Michigan… unemployment here is low (around 3 percent)… For factory owners, it all adds up to stiff competition for workers – and upward pressure on wages.” CSM

The situation isn’t all rosy: “Employment in manufacturing has fallen from 17 million in 1970 to 12 million in 2015. The steepest declines came after 2001, when China gained entry to the World Trade Organization and ramped up exports… In areas exposed to foreign trade [like my tee shirts], every additional $1,000 of imports per worker meant a $550 annual drop in household income per working-age adult.” CSM

Despite job openings, lots of young workers don’t want to work in manufacturing. They watched their parents shoulder large amounts of overtime only to get laid off in the Great Recession, see the overall downward trend, and are being pushed into college instead of trades by parents, schools, and the government.

I checked Wikipedia, which seems like a decent place to get an overview.

“In 1990, services surpassed manufacturing as the largest contributor to overall private industry production, and then the finance, insurance and real estate sector surpassed manufacturing in 1991. Since the beginning of the current economic downturn in 2007, only computer and electronic products, aerospace, and transportation have seen increasing production levels…

“A total of 3.2 million – one in six U.S. factory jobs – have disappeared since the start of 2000. The manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy has experienced substantial job losses over the past several years.” Wikipedia

Continue reading →

Climate Change Profits

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We’ve discussed climate change/global warming quit a bit on this blog and I’m still learning about the topic. I ran into an interesting element on Straight Dope that complicates the issue for many people: who profits? As Cecil says, the distinction between profiting and profiteering is eroding.

In the spirit of Old Testament-style judgment, I thought I’d arrange various ways one might cash in on climate change from least to most evil.

He goes on to list ways to profit, from Renewable Energy, an industry in the right place at the right time, to Arctic Drilling, which gets an evil nod because of the ” circularity at work here: by burning enough fossil fuels to warm the earth sufficiently to melt the polar ice caps, we’ve now gained access to yet more fossil fuels buried under those ice caps.”

You might want to invest in companies that sell storm surge gates to coastal cities or snowmaking machines to Alpine ski resorts.

Cecil doesn’t mention the possibility that evil scientists profit by faking studies to extract more grant money – a terribly serious charge that shouldn’t be thrown around without proof (of which I’ve never seen any.) I can be cynical myself, and that goes too far for me. But I’d like to know how every person who testifies before Congress makes their living.

Whether the topic is health, housing, gun safety, education… or anything – there will always be someone whose job depends on the status quo or on change. There will be winners and losers for every action taken by government, the marketplace, or individuals.

I take my philosophical stand from Star Trek.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few – or the one.
Sometimes the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.

In Star Trek’s universe, you can base a movie on both lines. It depends. No really important choices fit on a bumper sticker. I’m still convinced by the (vast) scientific agreement that human activity is the main force behind our current rise in average global temperature, and that rise will yield more losers than winners. It’s already baked into the cake, if you’ll forgive the heat-related pun. But we can change course, and good people can make good decisions despite the current insanely partisan politics. I’m not ready to believe everyone around me is evil.

FBI Ruling on Hillary Clinton

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The determination that no charges will be brought against Hillary Clinton for using a private email server that could have (and probably did) result in compromising highly classified material bothers me on several levels. I and others at the Rocky Flats Plant were required to carefully protect classified information. It was made abundantly clear that carelessness with classified reports could have dire consequences, to include loss of your clearance (and therefore your job) and possible criminal charges. I’ve never believed Ms Clinton’s assertion that she had never sent classified information on her private server and that nothing ever sent was marked classified. We were briefed on what would be classified, and we treated incomplete reports as classified from the moment we began drafting a report. It was deemed “born classified.” I’m confident Ms. Clinton didn’t need a secret or top secret stamp on much of the information to know it was classified and should be treated as such.

On another level, it is easy compare this situation to the FBI raid on Rocky Flats that found nothing alleged in the search warrant. The Justice Department persisted in continuing the investigation with a Grand Jury in a desperate search for why they conducted the raid. They refused to give up and admit they were wrong. They eventually forced Rockwell to plead guilty to crimes that would not have been crimes anywhere else. Almost all of the items in the plea bargain referred to environmental issues that had been reported in detail by the plant well before the raid and, in the words of the plea bargain, had no negative offsite effects. All the raid accomplished was frightening local citizens, but the Justice Department persisted in forcing a guilty plea that helped save their reputations. Apparently Clinton’s reputation was judged to be more important than the reputation of the FBI.

Why did the FBI not find a “Martha Stewart” type of violation in Hillary’s case? Stewart had been accused of insider trading, no evidence was found to support the claim, but she was convicted of lying to federal investigators (or at least giving them conflicting information). Why was Hillary given a pass despite the fact she repeatedly lied? The only logical answer is that Hillary was treated differently because of her political position.

This makes me very sad for the country. The laws are apparently really only for the “Little People.” To paraphrase Orwell’s Animal Farm, we “Little People” have naively believed all people are equal. We now know that some people are more equal than others.