Government run "anything"......

Babagounj

Strength through joy
@Baba goung, What happened was a real catastrophe, but why are you blaming the government? Did they leave the waste behind?
The mine was capped , not correctly since 100 gpm was leaking out .
The EPA's private contractor never checked to see just how much was stored behind the cap .
A few simple drill holes from above would have confirmed that a different approach would be needed . But since they didn't bother to do the job properly the flow rate jumped up to 500 gpm releasing all the contents of the mine into the river .

Reminds me of a local problem ;
The state was going to build a beach bath house inside a parking lot that they controlled . Seems they didn't have any idea where the town's main water pipe was located . The local town administrator , a former state engineer , gave they an approximation of where he thought the pipe lay hoping that they would do a proper job by doing exploratory drill holes . But they didn't . The second pile driver hole hit the main water supply . Instead of taking the blame they attempted to blame the local administrator by saying he gave them the wrong plans .

Sound like the same thing in Colo. blame the other guy because you failed to properly do your job .
 

Sportello

Well-Known Member
@Baba gounj, why should the mine owner not be held responsible?

It's good to see that you are a civil engineer, in addition to being a valuable UPS employee.

It's not as simple as you seem to think.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/10/colorado-spill-animas-river-durango-toxic-orange

With other potential impacts of this leak still unknown, some point to a potentially bigger problem highlighted by this event: the Silverton area lays claim to as many as 30 more abandoned mines that could experience a similar event. “There will be a next time because we haven’t figured out how to deal with these problems,” said Olson.


Despite the prevalence of potentially toxic legacy mines in the region, some experts suggest that the town of Silverton and surrounding San Juan County have resisted Superfund status and are still actively seeking out additional mining opportunities. “EPA has talked on and off about making San Juan County a Superfund site since the 80s,” says Peter Butler, Animas Watershed co-coordinator of the Animas River Stakeholders Group.


“In the 90s we did prioritized all the different sites and identified about 30 that we thought would need remediation,” Butler continues. “We also came up with water quality standards that were adopted by the state of Colorado. But Superfund status has been in limbo for years and the local community [in Silverton] is wary of this, but EPA has been pushing for it. Silverton is a community that would still like to have mining and they are concerned they won’t have any investors for future mining if they receive Superfund status.”


At the same time, several of these mines have been leaking into the Animas River for a decade at the rate of as much as 600 to 800 gallons a minute, according to Butler. Because it is an ongoing problem punctuated by a major, river-altering event, some are now calling for a faster answer.


“In terms of all the work done to date in mine waste remediation, it has been insufficient to protect our communities from the harm left behind from a legacy of mining,” says Olson. “What we really need now is to rethink our approach. At the end of the day, our communities aren’t protected, so obviously what we’ve done has been insufficient.”


Here is another informative article on the subject:
http://www.popsci.com/secret-history-epas-animas-river-spill

From a local standpoint:
https://www.hcn.org/articles/when-our-river-turned-orange-animas-river-spill
 

Babagounj

Strength through joy
Rancher fights $16 million EPA fine for building pond

“But EPA regulators have decided they know better than the law,” Wood continued. “By trying to seize control of Andy Johnson’s land – and threatening him with financial ruin – they are imposing their will where they have no authority. Ironically, EPA is attempting to destroy a scenic environmental asset that provides habitat for fish and wildlife, and cleans water that passes through it, all in the name of enforcing the Clean Water Act.”

The pond was created in 2013 by building a dam across an intermittent stream. It provides a more reliable water source for Johnson’s horses, cattle and other livestock.

The legal team, which is seeking a court’s declaration that the pond is exempt from EPA oversight and a cancellation of the compliance order along with an injunction preventing future arguments, said that Johnson had obtained from Ray and Susan Kagel, experts in stream and wetland restoration and mitigation, reports that the dam actually improves the habitat in the area.

Their reports explained there were “numerous” environmental benefits from the creation of wetlands and riparian vegetation areas as well as habitat for migratory birds, fish and wildlife.

Even the water draining off the property was cleaner than the water entering, they said.

“In addition to providing water for his livestock, the pond has been an environmental boon,” said Ray Kagel, a former Army Corps of Engineers enforcement officer and environmental consultant.

Among the beneficiaries have been moose and bald eagles.

“According to tests by an independent lab, the water flowing out of Andy’s pond is three times cleaner than the water entering his pond,” Kagel noted. “And the suspended solids in the nearest navigable waterway – the Green River – are 41 times greater than in Andy’s pond, which means that Andy’s pond is significantly cleaner than the downstream river that’s allegedly affected.”

The Clean Water Act specifically exempts “construction or maintenance of farm or stock ponds.”
 

moreluck

golden ticket member
XPb5e3r.jpg
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
What a juxtaposition in the above two posts.

Thus continuing

Declassified Pentagon Report Proves US Helped Create ISIS

At what point are we willing to consider that the State is not a public good but rather in opposition too and has been so historically?

Think of Bolivia in comparison to the United States gov't as a kind of small community and then what begins to occur once that community is granted its own autonomy from the centralized imperial state so to speak?

Using Baba's example of the rancher, do we dare ask or consider that environmental degradation (which I agree is occurring) is doing so not for lack of state control but as a result of state control? Over the last half century, environmental rules and regulations have exploded and yet we are told that the environment is in such peril today that mass extinction on some level is imminent. Based on performance I'd suggest a doubling of current rules and regulations would only speed up the extinction process. But then I don't buy the apocalyptic prophets to begin with and see the cries like the prophetic preachers on Sunday who know such sermons fill the offering plate and empower said preacher with better job security.

Do we dare consider that environmental control being a result of regulatory capture from day one used to circumvent local interests and autonomy who might dare stand in the way of the centralized corporatist economy? Do centralized environmental controls work as much to control economic competition and instead work to assure success of a centralized economic policy written mostly by certain privileged corp. interests? (not unlike ObamaCare I might add)

Do we dare consider that actual local community and individual actions in contrast to the central state (often in opposition) might actual create benefits for both man and nature? Do local folk (who form communities)have a vested interest in environmental quality of life? I've yet to meet any thinking person on either political side (and I've met a lot) who advocates we "friend Up" the environment for the sake of doing so.

At what point do we begin to see this technocracy experiment for the failure that it really is and begin to ponder the questions of going in a whole other direction? A direction determined by the very people and the place in which they live and a respect for their autonomy to choose the manner which best suits them? What might happen if 1000's of communities across America followed Bolivia's lead with the DEA in regards to our own drug problem and took control on how to address the problem themselves? What if local folk dared to challenge the authority of the central state and for example plant prohibited species as a means to both soil and water remediation? What if people got the bright idea of taking on climate change themselves locally and found multiple answers in a single solution yet it violated Central Command and its well connected economic interests?

At what point do we dare take an honest look and step back and ponder that most difficult of questions, have we been wrong all along? The better question might be, have we misplaced our loyalties (well intended maybe) or tricked into doing so in the wrong direction for solutions when the best solutions are found in the very people that live, work and play all around us every day?

Instead of "gov't run everything" we began to have "community run things" where 1000's of ideas and methods are tried and tested for the 1000's of problems that will always exist and effect us?

What if that in itself was the real "Free Market"? ;)
 

moreluck

golden ticket member
A new report shows that the federal government is so big, it no longer has an accurate count of the number of federal agencies. President Obama said he is "deeply concerned" and has vowed to create a new agency to count them.
~Fred Thompson~
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
"One such public choice theorist, Mancur Olson, argued in The Rise and Decline of Nations (1982) that economic stagnation and even decline set in when powerful special-interest lobbies—crony capitalists if you will—capture a country's regulatory system and use it to block competitors, making the economy ever less efficient. The growing burden of regulation could some day turn economic growth negative, but in a note Dawson and Seater suggest that in the long run that will "not be tolerated by society." Let's hope that they are right."

When it comes to gov't regulation, most people think this is a result of do-gooder types who want to nanny state everyone with sunshine and lolly pops while letting the so-called poor and lazy milks us for all we are worth. The truth about regulation is most often the real force behind the regulations are capitalist forces using the state regulatory arm to crush potential competition while also milking the taxpayers purse and externalizing their costs. I find it interesting that in the past 6 decades that while the income of average folk have taken the hit, the number of multi-millionaires and billionaires have exploded. Oh nothing but hard work you say? Yep but who is doing the hard work? Something to ponder but what if the trillions of dollars eaten by gov't regulation had stayed in the middle/working class economy? Would the working poor be as poor and how hard would we even be working to begin with? If the working class was working less, what would this productivity loss do to Corp. profits and to gov't revenue? Now are you starting to understand the need to follow the money rather than chasing the scapegoats?

Trickle down turned out to be trickle up and everything went right through Washington regardless of democrat or republican. Wake up or keep getting screwed while blaming the scapegoats they but in front of us.

Federal Regulations Have Made You 75 Percent Poorer
 

Babagounj

Strength through joy
Homeland Security Can’t Track Its Own Warehouses

Department of Homeland Security officials are wasting taxpayers’ money by failing to keep track of how many warehouses their agencies have.

“Because the warehouse inventories are inaccurate, DHS cannot manage warehouses or… limit the size of real property inventories and reduce costs,” the DHS inspector general said in a report made public Tuesday.

“We found buildings that should not have been on the department’s warehouse inventory. Conversely, we found buildings that should have been classified as warehouses, but were not,” the IG said.

The buildings vary in size – including everything from a 45 square-foot shed to a 500,000 square-foot warehouse – and store various items, such as disaster relief supplies, computers, and seized weapons and drugs.

DHS spent an estimated $60 million on around 1,628 warehouses, in 2013, “consisting of nearly 6.3 million square feet, which is about the size of 110 football fields,” the IG said. Of the 210 buildings the IG reviewed, nearly one-quarter were not warehouses.
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
Come on, you know liberty is over rated. It takes work. Responsibility, You're lazy, you work hard. Let someone else do the heavy lifting when it comes to thinking. Great men of power are groomed, educated, trained to run things for us. I mean it takes all of that in order to have men with the skills too create institutions that so friend#ck up our lives and have us groveling at their feet begging for more!

12015132_978060488924058_471580076341982838_o.png
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
On Sept. 10th 2001' Donald Rumsfeld announced at the Pentagon that $2.3 trillion was unaccounted for and was launching an investigation to uncover the cause of the irregularity. We all know what happened the next day, compounded by the fact that where the jet hit the Pentagon was the location of the office charged with leading this investigation, obviously setting back its efforts.

But instead of finishing the job and doing a service to taxpayers and fiscal responsibility, we end up with this instead.

Report Reveals $8.5 Trillion Missing From Pentagon Budget
 

Babagounj

Strength through joy
DC Says Streetcar Will Be ready Soon … For The Seventh Time
Workers in the District of Columbia broke ground on the Streetcar project in 2004, and since then the city spent more than $200 million on faulty streetcars and mislaid tracks, yet not a single passenger has ridden in one of the cars.
During that time period, local government officials have said the Streetcar would be ‘operational soon’ at least seven different times, a new promise coming with each passed deadline. The most recent promise came from District Department of Transportation Director Leif Dormsjo, who told The Washington Post the Streetcar system should be running by January 2016.
 

Babagounj

Strength through joy
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ns-cell-phones-lost-or-stolen-since-2012.html

Inventory reports, obtained by the news site Complete Colorado and shared with FoxNews.com, show that over 1,300 badges, 165 firearms and 589 cell phones were lost or stolen over the span of 31 months between 2012 and 2015.

The majority of the credentials belonged to employees of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), while others belonged to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) employees.

The lost or stolen guns also mostly belonged to CBP employees, though others were cited as belonging to TSA and ICE workers. The agencies all fall under DHS.
 
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