Readers may recall that the EPA disappeared photos of the Gold King mine disaster from their web page. Perhaps they got just a bit burnt from the public backlash to that.
From YouTube, (h/t to Ryan Maue) EPA releases Gold King Mine blowout footage.
Gotta love the comments from the audio such as:
‘Get outta here?!… What do we do now?’
On September 2, 2015 EPA posted the following edited footage filmed by EPA contractors of the Gold King Mine blowout of August 5, 2015.
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Idiots! Drive the cat so the blade blocks the opening and use the track hoe to fill the opening in front of the blade. Will we loose the cat? Probably. Contractor more concerned about their equipment than stopping th damage they have done.
I very much doubt the cat could have done anything at that point.
At the beginning it wasn’t wasn’t very high volume. I think they could have collapsed the opening if they tried.
I think the pressure would have broken through the heap of soil regardless.
35 Years in construction…nope…once this sucker started flowing it was all over. What a pathetic display of incompetence!
They definitely could have stopped it if they shoveled dirt back into the opening right away.
It was only after the hole was eroded by the rapidity of the flow that it got large enough to allow that torrent to pass out of the mine.
This is like if an earthen dam is overtopped by water…at first it could be stopped by sandbags, but once it gets going, the water makes the opening bigger which allows more water and the snowball effect takes over.
“Will we loose the cat? Probably.”
Unfortunately loosing the Cat means loosing the Cat operator(s) too, and I don’t blame them for watching at that point. The contractors are told to do the work, whomever gave the orders to do that work are responsible.
But to create running water over loose material? Not sure what the goal was in the first place?
Please; lose not loose, in this usage.
Loose and lose are distinct words, the former an adjective, the latter a verb.
Did they lose the Cat? Did someone have a screw loose? Did the home team lose? Are the Cat’s pajamas loose? What about loose ends? Who let loose the dirty torrent?
http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/Loosegloss.htm
also: Whoever gave the orders to do that work is responsible.
Exactly. Very confusing what was the goal. What did they expect it would happen others than what has happened?
Not that I’m a specialist in such activity, but that seemed to me the only result that it would came out…
Steve, thanks for the grammar lesson(s). It was a quick post while debugging.
The problem is caused partly by spell-checkers, partly by the education system, and partly by the way the English language develops. If they maid spelling and grammar moor important in schools then their mite knot bee sew many errors, but is it really worth trying to fix? IMHO it is more important to get thinking into schools.
I would say it is more important to get government thinking, OUT of schools.
Common core is simply a government data mining virus, designed to catalog the next generations of mindless kids, to do the government’s bidding.
It has very little to do with teaching any branch of mathematics.
g
If you have kids in the public schools, you should find a way to get them out of there while they still have a thinking brain.
Eggzackly Mike!
“The problem is caused …partly by the education system…”
I was in the first wave to be bused for racial integration. Makes for a poor foundation, but I’m sure they had good intentions…
Steve P
September 11, 2015 at 12:09 pm
err … wrong way around. Loose is correct:
Loose and lose are distinct words, the latter an adjective, the former a verb
Yes, you are an idiot if you think they could have stopped it.
The time to have solved this problem was by foreseeing what might have happened and worked to prevent it. Once the EPA plugged one mine and busted open the Gold King, it was too late.
It was a trickle at first.
The question is, at what point did they realize they it was going to get out of hand?
At the opening of the video, one shovelful f dirt would have stopped the flow.
I do not think there was a low of head built up at the opening…it was likely a long straight shaft filled with a large volume of water, and it was the flow that eroded the floor of the opening that let the flow increase.
If there was pressure built up behind that opening, you would not see a hole with only the bottom fifth of it flowing. Ditto if the water back there was higher than the opening…dirt would have never contained it to begin with.
Take any earthen dam in the world, and dig a narrow trench along the top, just deep enough to let a trickle pass through. Then stand back…the entire dam will fail from such a thing. This looks to be what happened there.
Basic hydrology.
Sorry, “…a lot of head…”.
I’m not sure what’s happening here. It looks to me like they were digging into the side of the hill, into an old shaft they filled with liquid mine waste…? I don’t get it? Anyone know the big picture here?
Let me know if know. .
This vid is priceless …
The EPA should be made to mine and pan for any gold nuggets loosened by this blow-out to pay for their own environmental damage.
Impeach McCarthy.
http://junkscience.com/2015/09/11/house-considers-impeachment-of-the-lying-epa-administrator-gina-mccarthy/
http://spectator.org/blog/64026/house-mulling-impeachment-epa-administrator
I say scrap the entire EPA. And start over.
Let States handle it.
Same with OSHA and most of the rest of the alphabetic monstrosities.
I say scrap the entire EPA and don’t start over.
Leave it to the states; some will fail spectacularly, some won’t. If people won’t vote the worthless, corrupt state b@st@rds out, they can vote with their feet.
The feds have NO responsibility unless/until there’s a problem across state lines.
Seriously, one accident and “scrap the EPA” is the first thing you want to do? Kindly sod off…
Had these mines been properly regulated and held to proper standards and practices relating to safety and storage of mining waste & wastewater, this probably wouldn’t have happened. We need a stronger EPA not a “no EPA” or a “leave it to the States to fuck up their own environments like at the turn of the century…”
Michael Gmirkin,
These mines were shut down over a century ago, They were not leaking then. Even recently, the leak was from other mines, not from Gold King. The EPA decided that they should plug these other mines. Only the brilliant people at the EPA would think that plugging a leak will cause the water to disappear. Well, it did not vanish, instead it built head in those other mines until the water filled up Gold King. When the water found its way out, it was still a relatively small leak. The EPA should have drilled a small test hole to evaluate the situation, but they did not. Instead, they dug out the area where the leak was. If you look at the video, you can see that this was a large excavation. When the EPA broke through the small leak became a large leak, and then a torrent.
The management in charge of the operation was the EPA. If this had been a private company that caused this disaster, the project manager and project engineer would be in jail now. So who from the EPA is cooling their heels in jail? No One! Instead, the EPA is getting cover from people who want to hold people accountable who died 50 years ago.
Sorry Micheal you are so wrong…the EPA is out of control and is only a political tool at this point. They haven’t done anything right for several decades….remember they are the ones that declared CO2 a pollutant….if that isn’t enough for you you are obviously beyond hope
Nope. Obviously we need a Federal agency to regulate the EPA, as they obviously cannot self-regulate.
Nope. A weaker EPA wouldn’t have had the power to destroy the environment in multiple states through such reckless negligence that there are legitimate arguments about it being an act of malice. This is why we need a Federal agency to regulate the EPA.
As you can see, appeals to more bureaucracy quickly become absurd. Especially when the bureaucracy is at fault. The proper answer, in every single case, is to remember the Nuremberg trial answer that “Following orders is not an excuse.” Then start with the boiled rope at the top. Either you run out of rope before you get down to all the peons or you don’t.
State function. Period.
Great sentiment. The Republicans won’t do it though because …
At least some of them notice.
Holy crap!
They are just helpless without the “blame it on asthma” routine and other form-fit over reach science templates.
“Do not run! We are your friends!”
Was the event unforeseeable?
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/8/13/is-there-a-backstory-to-the-epa-pollution-incident.html
kaboom. I found a link to a better easier to read version. Many thanks for the lead.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/08/letter-to-editor-predicted-colorado-epa-spill-one-week-before-catastrophe-so-epa-could-secure-superfund-cash/
More proof of MMGW. /sarc
I don’t understand what they were doing in the first place. Why were they digging?
They were there and digging to create a spill that could be blamed on the Gold King mine owners. The spill was far more than they seemed to expect to the extent they were suddenly operating in the full glare of undeniable publicity. Their initial attempts to follow the preplanned script had to be abandoned. Now they don’t know where to go so are trying to talk down the spill in a way that is directly contrary to the way they would be doing had the spill been due to the mine owners.
I have worked for years for EPA and other agencies. We waited and waited to respond to the BP spill. Nothing. A drop of oil in water and no approval from DC….until it started to hit shore. At that point, the states took over along with the collection of 3x the cost of remediation and cleanup. That is when DC decided to do something, long after the spread of the oil sheen. It was more important to scare their lofos into thinking the world was ending.
All my childhood we went fishing/camping on the Animas River in Colorado. The water was crystal clear and you could see the fish quite easily. I am horrified at the destruction of that habitat by the EPA.
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
I look forward to someone relevant being brought to account.
They will go after the kayakers before they do anything against a fellow union employee.
It’s Bush’s fault.
This is what I call the 1000 Strawmen fallacy.
Please don’t hold your breath while you wait.
There should be an inquiry into just what the devil the EPA thought they were doing, who was in charge, who gave the order to dig and for what purpose. If the intent was to create a mini disaster for propaganda purposes, taxpayers need to know. This sort of smells like another “Fast and Furious” style fiasco. By the way, has anyone ever been held to account for that?
Does the EPA not employ any Engineers, or hydrologists? Do they not understand the concept of Hydro-static Head?
I blame this on management for not providing the proper expertise to plan this out.
If this was a private company there would be people in jail for this, Which EPA manager is going to jail?
“Does the EPA not employ any Engineers, or hydrologists? Do they not understand the concept of Hydro-static Head?”
Computers do that stuff nowadays, and no one really knows how to do it anymore without clicking on a screen.
“Does the EPA not employ any Engineers, or hydrologists?”
I imagine they had to lay a few off to hire the inevitable New Age positions, such as Chief Tree Hugger, Executive Bunny Counter and Vice-President of Equity Hiring.
Tom you don’t have to be a Engineer, or a hydrologist to understand what would happen. I could have told them, what the result of blocking the mine would be, before I finished high school. The EPA just created an underground dam and any idiot knows that you don’t empty a dam by starting at the bottom. Like the man who wrote the letter to the editor a week before the disaster I can only conclude that this was planned in advance to create a crisis so the EPA could grab some more control. The EPA should be in court for this and many heads should roll.
I’ve worked opposite their people. They employ people with the title of “engineer”, but most don’t deserve it. The ones that aren’t in it for power are in it for eco-power and genuinely believe their hype. They isolate themselves from reality so well that even other departments get tired with them (there’s a story were a Fish and Wildlife rep actually lost his temper told them to shut up during a CO2 permit meeting).
Anyone decent at their job and right in the head inevitably goes to the private sector for twice the pay.
I have worked in positions where my title included the word “engineer”. I have come to the conclusion that – as is already true in much of Europe – to be called an engineer, you should be a Registered Professional Engineer, just as to be called a medical doctor you must hold the appropriate license. A quack engineer can kill more people and do more damage than a quack doctor.
I suspect, as said above, that they already had a whipping boy lined up who would be told “You DID build that,” blamed for the spill, and fined a billion dollars. But the EPA corruption level has gone beyond that point and the result reflects their deliberate malfeasance.
I believe that you will find that the EPA hires mostly attorneys, not engineers or scientists. It was that way when I lived in the DC area and I doubt that it has changed.
Bet they stiff the cat operator though instead.
The EPA has always done more damage to America than good. This video is proof of one instance of the EPA being involved in a crime that would send a private individual to prison for life. The government (the state) is a criminal gang writ large. (H/T Rothbard)
Yeah, ‘much better to go back to smoggy cities, trashy streets, and burning rivers.
Steve P – What a straw man.
Drains need to be clean to stop them smelling, so they are cleaned perhaps disinfected. Insistence that drains need to be sterile, prevents them being used as drains. This is the way EPA is killing industry using false linear projections. Telling them to return to just clean drains will not cause smells and disease.
The EPA has outlived it’s usefulness and should be replaced by a conference of State environmental representatives
Which were the result of govt in the first place.
It was the govt that eliminated riparian rights so that wealthy contributors could pollute without having to worry about being sued.
Sorry Ian, you’re the one trying to peddle strawmen here.
I wasn’t talking about smelly drains; I was talking about real environmental problems like smog, litterbugs, and burning rivers. These and related issues were recognized as big problems in past decades, but you really had to be there, I suppose, to see the many improvements in our environment over the years that younger people take for granted today.
Did you live in LA, or Orange Co. in the 40s, 50s, 60s or 70s when the smog was really bad in Southern California, (and elsewhere)?
I did.
Back in the 70s, I rode my Honda CB350G through the orange smog in LA and Orange Co. while working and going to school. At times the smog was so nasty I’d arrive home via the 22 and 5 with tears streaming down my face. (Eventually, I gave up trying to explain to my girlfriend that my tears had nothing to do with our relationship, but she was extraordinarily creative in countering my explanations with her own self-centered rationalizations. That was my gorgeous ex-fiancé.)
Older folks know that America has cleaned-up its act. Foreign visitors commonly remark about how clean it is in the USA. Like it or not, at least some of the credit for our cleaner environment must go to the EPA.
Like all bureaucracies, the EPA has probably become bloated with paper shufflers, seat warmers, family friends, ideologues, functionairies, apparatchiks, beneficiaries of affirmative action, and other such incompetent hacks, who swell its ranks, but diminish its effectiveness. Upper management positions in bureaucracies are commonly as much political rewards, as they are positions of achievement and excellence.
It’s a big problem, but unfortunately, that’s the way our system works since we humans have “domesticated ourselves.”
Our system also promotes cozy arrangements between government bureaucracies, and big business. These days that set-up is often termed Crony Capitalism…
The growth of corrupt bureaucracies is recorded in the Chinese Dynastic Cycles, where their appearance is usually prelude to growing dissatisfaction among the peasantry and other disenfranchised classes, which leads to revolution, and the establishment of a new dynasty, which institutes reforms, but which also eventually repeats the cycle.
Bottom lines: Give credit where credit is due, and don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.
(I lost connection while this was ‘posting’; apologies if this 2nd attempt turns out to be a duplicate)
Steve P,
You make a good point: almost all of the pollution has been cleaned up. Scrubbers on coal plants have eliminated more than 99% of all emissions. Now the only thing coming from their stacks is harmless CO2 and H2O. Industry no longer dumps waste into rivers. In fact, the biosphere is expanding due to the added CO2. The environment is far cleaner than it ever was before.
So while the early EPA may have done some good, like every bureaucracy it has put its own self-interest above that of the country and the environment. Ms. McCarthy should not have a job in the EPA after this latest disaster. But as we see, she’s entrenched.
The entire EPA should be put on unemployment, along with the Dep’t of Energy, the Education Department, Homeland Security, and most all the bureaucracies that are not named here. They are Lamprey eels, permanently attached to the taxpayer host. They suck the country dry, and the only reason the U.S. hasn’t been bankrupted by them is because almost every other country is even worse off.
• The Enerrgy Department has yet to produce one barrel of oil.
• The EPA destroys the environment, as we see here. When it isn’t wrecking the countryside, it is harassing citizens.
• Homeland Security’s job is fit for the military, the police, and the National Guard in every State. As it is, they steal travelers blind and grope to their heart’s content.
• And of course the Education Department has dumbed-down a couple of generations in their .edu factories; test scores keep declining, even though costs have skyrocketed.
The country should revert to President FDR’s requirement that all government jobs must be non-union. That would be a start. But with half the population on the dole, and a big fraction of those remaining employed as government bureaucrats, it looks like we’ve passed the point of no return. Now I’d be happy if the EPA was simply required to have a cost/benefit analysis done by a private company for any proposed actions, rules, or requirements. But that’s probably a hopeless dream, too.
Steve, you are correct. In the past EPA achieved a lot. I worked for an organization that was a contractor to EPA from the EPA’s inception. The early ’70’s were enjoyable. The EPA had a big job to do and not many people to do it. The engineers in those days were smart and competent. Gradually though, as pollution was cleaned up and goals began to be met, things changed. In the mid-’80’s, politics became as important as engineering. By the mid-’90’s politics was more important than engineering. The EPA had become a mature government agency. Now preservation of organization is the main objective..
It takes the uninformed to believe that only government can clean up pollution. In East Tennessee there is one main area of pollution and that is the government run facilitates in Oak Ridge, Tn. If you want to see chemical and nuclear pollution then head over to … oh wait … getting real information there is a bit of a problem … national security and all that. Oh well. On the other hand, we are all happy to talk about the ecological disasters that occurred under the old Communist States in Europe. You might still be able to get some information on those little disasters.
If any citizen could go to a fair court to get compensation from any polluter that had damaged him or his property then we would be far cleaner than having the State enforce its rules to the benefit of its favorites and the detriment of the little, mundane people. But in the USA, the main polluters are immune from me bringing lawsuit against them — that privilege is reserved for the criminal gang we call “government”.
Steve P
September 11, 2015 at 4:29 pm
You appear to have misunderstood the analogy that I gave you.
The EPA in the cases you quote had ‘disinfected the drains’. The smogs have been cleared the water is clean and industry uses scrubbers on smokestacks – and yes I know what air pollution is like I lived in London when it was known as ‘the smoke’ and London smogs were yellow – a clean air act resulted in the London smogs stopping by the 1960’s.
However, what EPA is doing now in analogy is insisting on the drains not just being clean but sterile, thus preventing their use as drains. This is either make work to justify the EPA existence – but more likely is a politically driven process.
^^This!^^
Steve P,
The EPA was not the solution.
John
If the EPA was not the solution, what was?
I think Von Mises has indulged in a flight of logic here, with a kind of equivocation. Man’s moral weakness may make a fool piss in the fountain…and the rest of us should just stand by, and let him do it? No, I submit it takes moral strength to promulgate laws and ordinances to protect the common man from the fool, the thief, the drunk driver, the murderer.
In this world, there are competent people, and there are incompetent people*. It is the responsibility of the former to protect us from the latter. When important positions are filled with competent and honest people, we have a much better chance of a successful outcome. irrespective of the field of endeavor.
It may be an imperfect system, but it’s all we have, beyond vigilantism, or chaos.
*“Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere”
–G.K. Chesterton
If the EPA was not the solution, what was?
Where in the Constitution does it say anything about the environment?
It says plenty about who does what:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. [10th Amendment]
The States should be the entities that protect their environments, and the feds should butt out.
Out of fifty States, some will find better answers than others. Their example will be followed. That is a much better solution than having a one-size-fits-all, overbearing, arrogant, overtly political and incompetent federal department.
Look at what the EPA has morphed into. Explain why that is a better solution than what the Constitution mandates.
I think it’s in here somewhere:
–We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
In my view, promoting the general welfare would certainly include protecting the environment, especially with a view to securing the blessings of liberty to our posterity.
And obviously, you’ll get no argument from me that, as you note, the EPA has morphed into a corrupt political entity, witness the ruling on CO₂ = pollutant.
Still, rather than succumb entirely to cynicism, I retain enough idealism on good days to envision a kind of meritocracy, where the truly honest and competent would run things. To get there, we’d have to eliminate the classic vices, or at least corporate campaign contributions.
Steve P,
My god man, did you ever take a civics class? You’ve just demonstrated you know absolutely nothing about the supreme law of our country. Are you a US citizen? God, I hope not. You’re reading the preamble which carries absolutely ZERO authority to do anything.
The areas of regulation/law making are quite clearly spelled out in Article I, Section 8. These are LIMITED. You can count them (there are 18). Show me where the US government has the authority you claim. SHOW ME! The constitution clearly spells out the limits by specifically enumerating the powers and then HAMMERS IT HOME by stating very clearly in the Bill of Rights (Amendment X), “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
SHOW ME WHERE ARTICLE I, SECTION 8 GIVES THE US GOVERNMENT THE AUTHORITY TO HAVE THE EPA.
THIS IS A POWER RESERVED BY THE STATES!
So how about union campaign contributions. Are you willing to get rid of those as well, or are you of the belief that those are pure and it’s only the big bad corporations that are somehow corrupt?
Boulder Skeptic
September 11, 2015 at 9:26 pm
“Are you a US citizen? God, I hope not.”
As a USAF veteran who served 1964-1971, I find your remark disgusting, lamentable, and pathetic. I have only pity for you.
I find your knowledge of our Constitution “disgusting, lamentable, and pathetic”. I’m a USAF veteran as well (1986-1992, Desert Storm). So there.
And just as expected, no response to the issue at hand, but rather some misdirection.
I’ll try again: show me where the US government has the authority you claim.
1. I strongly suggest you actually read and learn the meaning and contents of the Constitution.
2. If you want our country to stay great, you should only vote for people who truly understand and adhere to the Constitution (because that document is largely responsible for this nation’s greatness in the first place).
3. If you are unwilling to do steps 1 and 2, stop voting, please.
As a veteran, like myself, you took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, even with your life, that most citizens don’t take. You really should know what the hell it says and means. Otherwise, think about it, what good is the oath?
Limited government, states rights and individual rights/liberty are the essence of the Constitution.
A link that I find very helpful…
http://tenthamendmentcenter.com
Cheers
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
Tell me, to whom does the last word apply?
dbstealey
September 11, 2015 at 8:14 pm
“Where in the Constitution does it say anything about the environment?”
There’s nothing in the Constitution about the environment for the same reason there’s nothing in there about outer space. (Cue Theremin) The authors simply could not peer into the future, and foresee developments 150-200 years down the line.
Where in the Constitution does the US Gov’t. get the authority for NASA? Because outer space is not specifically mentioned in any way, shape, or form in the Constitution, does it follow we should disband NASA, and let the states try to have their own space agencies?
For those issues that were beyond the ken of the authors of the US Constitution, I suggest we can look at the Preamble to gauge their intentions; that is, at the spirit, rather than the letter of the law, where this latter does not exist, because the Founder Fathers had no knowledge of these specific issues, and obviously no way to make provision for them in the Constitution.
Although the preamble is not a source of power for any department of the Federal Government, the Supreme Court has often referred to it as evidence of the origin, scope, and purpose of the Constitution
http://constitution.findlaw.com/preamble.html
…and that interpretation allows any and every authority to be a federal mandate from unelected Fed government employees. And so we have the basis of our nation (freedom from group power) destroyed by overreaching national government, our economy crippled by debt and hog tied by federal regulations, and a rapidly failing middle class.
The Constitution gives no authority to the federal government for the establishment of NASA or the expense borne by us taxpayers. None. It is not a legal expansion of federal government power/authority. AND I WORK IN THE AEROSPACE INDUSTRY (don’t get me started on how dysfunctional and wasteful NASA is presently).
If people in this country want NASA, then let’s have that national conversation, and CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION SO IT IS LEGAL to do so. There is a method for doing this defined within the Constitution specifically for the purpose of dealing with issues that the founding fathers couldn’t have foreseen. Look at Article V. They anticipated that changes would be needed but wanted these changes done in a measured way. There have been 27 amendments to date (about one per decade on average). This process allows a real discussion about expanding the reach of the federal government when needed and if followed would have put the brakes on what has now become a $3.5 Trillion annual enterprise, that has taken so much liberty from the citizens and so much of our wealth diverted to uses that are wasteful, inefficient and downright obscene (ofttimes handing money to the wealthy and well-connected; Solyndra anyone?).
The EPA should have been a collection of state offices that work together to preserve the environment collectively. I believe local/state solutions are always better than federal government solutions (except in the 18 areas spelled out in the Constitution).
Steve P on September 11, 2015 at 7:27 pm
If the EPA was not the solution, what was?
I think Von Mises has indulged in a flight of logic here, with a kind of equivocation. Man’s moral weakness may make a fool piss in the fountain…and the rest of us should just stand by, and let him do it? No, I submit it takes moral strength to promulgate laws and ordinances to protect the common man from the fool, the thief, the drunk driver, the murderer.
In this world, there are competent people, and there are incompetent people*. It is the responsibility of the former to protect us from the latter. When important positions are filled with competent and honest people, we have a much better chance of a successful outcome. irrespective of the field of endeavor.
It may be an imperfect system, but it’s all we have, beyond vigilantism, or chaos.
*“Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere”
–G.K. Chesterton
Steve P,
Ludwig Von Mises touched the fundamental point. The government did not initiate or create or achieve what was already within the free culture, therefore it wasn’t the solution. That applies to the historical record of EPA self serving mythology that it saved us.
In that regard here is another appropriate Ludwig Von Mises quote,
When a mistake is made in free society then free society self corrects. The intervention of non-freedom coercive instruments (such as the EPA) is restrictive to free society solutions.
John
Steve P.
Corporations cannot make campaign contributions, you blew your credibility with that comment.
Catcracking
September 12, 2015 at 4:26 pm
Steve P.
Corporations cannot make campaign contributions, you blew your credibility with that comment.
What was blown – and whose it was – Is not what you assert,
“The landmark 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, opened the floodgates for unlimited campaign contributions by corporations. Those corporations often funnel the money through intermediaries, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, or other groups many experts say are formed explicitly to hide the source of the donations…”
Corporate campaign contribution issue falls off SEC regulatory agenda
Requirement that companies disclose political spending had outpouring of support but will likely not be considered
December 6, 2013 5:36PM ET
by Naureen Khan
Super PACs can raise unlimited funds from individual and corporate donors
“Two months later, a unanimous nine-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided SpeechNow, which relied on Citizens United to hold that Congress could not limit donations to organizations that only made independent expenditures, that is, expenditures that were “uncoordinated” with a candidate’s campaign. These decisions led to the rise of “independent-expenditure only” PACs, commonly known as “Super PACs.” Super PACs, under Citizens United and SpeechNow, can raise unlimited funds from individual and corporate donors and use those funds for electioneering advertisements, provided that the Super PAC does not coordinate with a candidate.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United_States
Green, Mark (2002). Selling Out, How Big Corporate Money Buys Elections, Rams Through Legislation, and Betrays Our Democracy. Regan Books (Harper Collins). ISBN 0-06-052392-1.
Whatever the case with the letter of the law, the rich and powerful can always find ways to skirt that law, in the first place, or to get it changed to their benefit, in the second. Beyond that, the large corporations and their wealthy cronies are commonly surrounded with ranks of lawyers, and “legal teams” who will attempt to torture the letter of the law, or pervert its purpose, with various legal maneuvers, procedural arguments, and gymnastics, which virtually always guarantee success for the big guy, and business as usual in the USA. And nice work for the lawyers.
The common man, not so much.
Curiously, with the concept of “Corporate Personhood,” corporations may now claim to be a common man too, so there you are. Those corporate person thingies can also set up shop in foreign lands, where the tax rates may be more conducive to good business.
What better way to get big government off your back, than to bank your dough out of Uncle Sam’s reach!?
Did Gina ever drink the river water like the Gov.?
How many EPA employees and contractors does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: Run!
“We’re with the government, and we’re here to help you.”
Lots more old mines in them there hills!
I wonder what the next plan will be?
Here is a link to the letter by Dave Taylor from the Silverton Standard about the EPA:
http://www.silvertonstandard.com/news.php?id=847
I think there is a bit of over-reaction here.
These things happen, and sometimes the guy on the ground at the time is just not up to the job that he had no idea that he would have to do in the first place.
For example, who could have forseen that, luckily over a weekend, the water would have broken into Longannet coal pit and flooded it so badly that it was closed down for ever? It happened and DG no-one was killed.
In other words, s**t happens, deal with it the best you can and go forward from there.
But if those who are tasked with dealing with it don’t do their best, that is a horse of a different colour.
Well, no one has ever dug into the side of a polluted lake before, so there was absolutely no way to know what might happen….
These things don’t happen from time to time unless some idiot makes them happen
There’s a very straightforward way to do this and it involves drilling, at an angle, a 4 or 6 inch pipe can be inserted and you can obtain information about volume, content, pressure. Only then can you create a reasonable plan to remedy the site.
This was a case of an EPA employee, with no knowledge, grabbing a couple local dirt-movers to “open the thing up.” They were either grossly negligent or expecting a problem that would justify some sort of power grab.
Precisely and with such a pipe you can pump out the water at a controlled rate and pass it to a treatment plant before discharge. What happened in this case is what is categorized in the UK as a mine water outbreak. These are considered high risk events.
A good example here was the Force Crag lead mine in Cumbria where the site owners (National Trust) carried out a non intrusive survey using seismic techniques to quantify the hazard.
They were alerted to the hazard by the fact that the low rate leakage from the mine had ceased. They were right to be concerned. A head of 20 metres of mine water had built up behind a collapsed adit in the lowest level of the workings that prompted fears of a sudden slope collapse which could release large amounts of polluted water.
The remedial work consisted of initially drilling a bore hole into the top of the flooded section and pumping out water to reduce the head. A concrete plug was then put in place which had drain holes that release water at a controlled rate to a small water treatment plant. The total cost of this operation was around £200,000 and was carried out by a company called Soil Engineering who are specialists in this field.
Agreed MarkfthM,
When something like this is so important for so many various reasons,
‘You don’t send wrapped mummies with knives to a fight against iron mammoths with guns and bullets.
I would agree, but they were enacting a plan that was critically flawed at best, and there were numerous documented rebukes from several people that it would end in disaster.
The EPA has two things to determine fault, but the most important are “could it have been prevented with better design” and “could it have been prevented with better execution”. At least the first is certainly “Yes”.
By their own criteria, they are guilty.
Yes, and they clearly did not perform a PHA per their own guidelines. A PHA is something you do before you take an action that might be hazardous – like busting open an old mine that had a small leak.
That particular horse is RED.
The EPA was totally clueless about what they were dealing with. Shortly after the release I saw an interview with the owner of the Gold King mine. He indicated that when his mine was closed it was relatively dry, but then the EPA sealed up nearby mines with water problems and the backed up flow filled his mine. When the EPA was moving toward opening the mine they were warned by many of the potential disaster, including a column in a local newspaper that predicted almost exactly what would and did occur. Of course, like good Obamacrats the EPA knew much more than the rest of the world and so they proceeded to destroy a beautiful river.
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-the-nine-most-terrifying-words-in-the-english-language-are-i-m-from-the-government-and-i-m-here-ronald-reagan-286152.jpg
“George F. Will
U.S. journalist, 1941-
The American condition can be summed up in three sentences we’re hearing these days:
“Your check is in the mail.”
“I will respect you as much in the morning.”
“I am from the government and I am here to help you.”
Quoted in Frederick (Md.) News, 19 July 1976
6 May 1976, Arcadia Tribune, pg. D4, col. 4:
Rep. John Rousselot calls the following the three greatest fabrications of all time:
— My check is in the mail.
— I gave at the office.
— I’m from the federal government. I’m here to help you.”
http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/im_from_the_government_and_im_here_to_help_you
BARRY POPIK is a contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary, Dictionary of American Regional English, Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Yale Book of Quotations and Dictionary of Modern Proverbs.
–ibid
There were many variations on this gag riddle during the 70s- What are the three biggest lies? I remember some of the saucier versions.
I wonder what was said during those long *bleeps*.
I think those long bleeps are something akin to the missing parts on Nixon’s tapes. Don’t think it was bleeps because of foul language.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I wondered. I guess it could even have been mentioning names or who said to do this or that? (No doubt the ‘original’ has long since been ‘lost’)
I suspect those bleeps included dialog which would suggest that the contractors had successfully completed their contract.
If this work was being done by a company independent of the government, an environmental impact study would would have been required. I have heard nothing about whether one was done for/by the EPA. Had one been completed, the result would have been foreseen.
The EPA does the environmental studies, so yes they did, and the result went according to their plan.
Really, they did one? Do you have a reference?
Also needed a spill plan. The EPA is big on oil companies having SPCC plans for such eventualities. Here, they violated every precept of spill prevention and containment. This is one of the finest examples of governmental incompetence ever. Big government ensures that there are no little blunders.
The next round of lies and excuses should start any day now. George W. Bush will be blamed. And capitalism. And the founding fathers. Everybody but you-know-whom.
Hi! We’re here from the government, and are here to help.
Oopsie!
“Dave Taylor, the retired geologist who predicted the EPA project that caused the 3 million gallon toxic spill into the Animas River in Colorado would fail, tells Breitbart News, “I didn’t really know they were going to fool with the Gold King mine in addition to the Red and Bonita mine.”
Note that Taylor says he really didn’t predict the disaster.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/13/exclusive-geologist-who-predicted-epa-spill-they-just-didnt-think/
Steve that’s not how I read it. The way I read it he said correctly that there would be a disaster but he he had the wrong mine in mind. 🙂
Steve, He did not predict that particular particular outcome. Most likely because he underestimated the amount of stupidity that the EPA could deploy.
Agreed. I really want to see the entire paper trail, including all the blacked-out parts of what’s been released so far.
We desperately need accountability and justice in these United States of America.