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It is odd that, in light of the fact that oil and gas companies are able to get away with poisoning us, that all other companies in the U.S. must post MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets) at all company locations that use hazardous chemicals and other materials in order to inform the workers what they may be exposed to. Canada has it's WHMIS (Workplace Hazardous Information System) that was passed unde the Hazardous Products Act and Controlled Products Regulations. "Both the MSDS and WHMIS requirements are also enforced by provicial Ministries or Departments of Labour"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_safety_data_sheet
So, how is it that these gas and oil companies can get away with avoiding these laws under the banner of "proprietary"?
I wonder if Zyklon B was "proprietary"? Of course it was. Nazis are Nazis whether decades ago in Germany or in the U.S. today. And now, instead of a genocide it is more of a classicide. And Zyklon B has been replaced with a variety of carcinogenic substances. They don't even need to erect gas chambers. And the maladies that result can only be adequately tended to by giving the lower classes a choice of expensive medical attention that they can't afford, or starvation...one of the other but not both. And many people cannot afford either. But you lose either way in many instances. Frogs in a boiling pot of water. Hey man can't you turn up the heat in that jacuzzi another notch? That is fine for those frogs that have the ability to jump out before boiling but most frogs are stuck in a broken and corrupt system. And there are no real choices for them. They will eventually find that they are boiling to death.
And it is starting to look like, were you unable to pay through the nose for healthcare insurance and you try to pay cash for a doctor, they will take your money but avoid effectively responding with necessary tests or prescriptions. They will just keep telling you to set up yet another appointment a month or so later...ad infinitum. They'll milk you for all the cash you have left...and not provide you the healthcare you paid for.
In fact, you may even have expensive healthcare and you may still be getting the run-around from these doctors. And there is even the big chance that the healthScare insurance company will try to say that your malady was caused by a pre-existing condition. You paid all those expensive monthy premiums and then when you finally strike it big and you need an expensive operation you think "Thank Zod I have healthcare insurance"! But then you get the whopping bill that the insurance company won't pay for because their bean counters dug back into your history and found some insignificant gotcha that they can use to refuse covering the costs of your present expensive operation. It's a racket! Both the medical and the insurance companies are rackets!
If these companies can get away with poisoning us then all the other companies that make everything from toothpaste to, well...everything else...can hide the fact that they are using carcinogens in their products and exposing people to risks of causing cancer or other illnesses?
Maybe it would come down to, as with Material Safety Data Sheets warning workers of the dangers of exposure to carcinogens that are known to cause cancer, you can always quit the job and find a job that doesn't use carcinogens. Yeah, right! We either work and risk getting cancer or we don't eat and starve.
And what pressure does our government put on these companies to actually protect people by forcing them to not expose people to dangerous chemicals and materials?
Aside from requiring companies to put up safety posters like the MSDS posters that tell you, the employee, that the chemicals are listed somewhere in an MSDS book that the supervisors have at their desks....what do they really do, anymore, to protect people from the greedy capitalist pigs who are more than willing to sacrifice the workers (or the consumers and public) so that they can maximize their profits?
So why to the Republican support treaties like WTO and NAFTA, but NOT treaties that support disabled people? The answer is pretty obious. Disabled people don't have as much money to donate as multi-national corporates do.
The Republicon are just a bunch of old hoodlums that have lost their ability to apply critical thinking skills. This is an excellent example of just how STUPID THEY ARE!!! Can we publish all the names of the so-called Senators that voted against this? All of them.... I will personally call there home office!
It figures. Once again, the United States shows its colors as a rogue nation of Ayn Rand dirtbags. Three cheers for American exceptionalism: American stupidity, American stinginess and American bullies. Be very proud! (Not.) - Aliceinwonderland
The "global government" that Obama is letting take over the U.S. is not a "nameless, faceless global government". They are Kenyan Muslims!
Obama hates the U.S.! Obama hates the U.S. Constitution!
What is going here has nothing to do with the treaty...This no brainer was selected as an example
of Tea Party's power to disrupt the will of both parties. Translation: Watch out for the cliffffffffffffff.
Global, I reject your interpretation of reality. And I too am done with this thread. - Aliceinwonderland
War is the biggest threat to any nations sovereignty and the U.S. is big on violating other country's sovereignty for selfish reasons...especially the weak ones..the ones that can't really fight back on an even playing field...the one's without the latest high tech weapons and nukes. The U.S. can dish it out but can't take it...this nation's right-wing, chicken-hawk leaders are big tantrum-throwing, War-Criminal, Bawl-Babies and bullies. Watch out Canada...we invaded once and could do it again...unless you mind yourselves and don't make too much of a fuss against the ruling elite in the U.S.
For me the news is a mix of hocus pocus magic alakazam here we are at the edge of a cliff. One is to suppose misery grief and stress to unbearable lengths of evil will occur in our lives if we somehow go over the economic cliff. The day of reckoning is upon you if one fools around with the job creators. Mess with the job creators and America will be invaded by the evil empire, smashing into Americas tall buildings smothering the 911 telephone system, or thwart and stump our stock exchange. Oh, they already did that, sheesh they are good at thinking something new. Just wait.
Here the Wahhabi Bin Laden Arab family secretly sabre rattling in Persia saying go ahead jump, jump, and jump, relishing in the idea to wipe the infidels out of existence without bombs or weapons of mass destruction. Just use America’s dumb fricken media. “Ah La” Fox and hate radio.
“Al La” is great, Houston pop ups whereas a major in the military shoots American’s right on our soil. Young men who look muslin yet could be Christian with loud radio’s or pants hanging of their butt will get extra reasoning, if not to the woodshed perhaps shot for the same idiotic reason. They made some ones day. The ‘dirty Hairy” moment glorified by the Eastwood empty chair pantomime. The master of sedition in the silver screen what more appropriate way to be snookered to sedition. The news and politics mind melded into angry moments. Just a click, enough to trip someone off and loose that sense of direction. All while Colbert and Mathews laugh it off saying pretty funny ha.
The electromagnetic - journalist news theater is total dungeons and dragons. Economic demons, wizards, soothsayers, economic oracles, money mystics, and just everyone sits and listens, making an effort to hear something of truth, yet say here is what the message is understandable or of no reason. But for some unknown, parse words and meaning to incredible circles of dog by the tail logic swirling in a mobus sweat of chilling economic destruction is upon the American people plus now add the world to it. Seems they are all begging to watching America go insane. Got to do something to get that pepper spray off the shelf, it has a short life
I just heard that on Nov 6th 61% of Puerto Ricans voted to become a state. I checked Google, and that appears to be true.
Big foot-stomping, desk-pounding bawl-babies aren't those Rethuglicans? I can't wait till 2014 when we, the majority, are going to completely trash them at the polls....unless Obama and the Democrats do something stupid...like give in and compromise with the Rethuglicans....and hurt our social programs.
Kids are smarter than their parents in the Sunflower State.
As a native Texan, I find talk about Texas secession stupid. First of all, any petition submitted to the White House is NOT an official application to secede. Second, MOST Texans consider themselves good Americans - some put the USA ahead of their Texan status, some put their Texan status ahead of the USA. But there will be no vote to pass the Texas legislature and be signed by the Governor to secede. We have NO intention of seceding. Typical for libertarians, one of your commentors completely ignored the rights of OTHERS in Texas who don't want to secede. He claimed that they should just be "free" to secede. My feeling is that any of these idiots wanting to secede should simply be deported to the country of their choosing. They cannot have the power to take the rest of us and our land out of the USA without our sayso.
Also, rest assured that if Texas did leave the Union it would very quickly become a 3rd world country.
Finally, yes, I do believe that any Texas legislator who voted to take Texas out of the Union should be tried for treason and the penalty would be deportation. But the current wording of treason in the Constitution would make it difficult to sustain such a case. Unfortunately, we'd just have to continue to put up with those idiots. But keep in mind we're putting up with a bunch of crazy tea partiers right now. BTW, keep an eye on Tea Party Ted Cruz who just got elected US Senator from Texas (sic). He was big on defending Texas sovereignty. It will be interesting to see how he can be a US Senator. He's worse than a total zero!
No fraud, you are welcome anytime, we will just have to pick it up again on a more current thread, like this week.
Okay...I do enjoy the discussion and banter but I don't want to wear out my welcome.
I do agree that on a neighborhood/community level it is possable/easier to organize help; I just donated 13 bags of clothing and 10 bags of canned/dry food goods - that I collected from friends and family - to a local church that runs a soup kitchen and pantry for those in dire straights. However, on the issue of Healthcare, the high cost of medical treatment is more offten beyond the reach of ones neighborhood. Not that people don't try to help out with their dollars and time, but I don't consider a Universal Healthcare system to be "stealing of others property", I see it as good for all.
Again I have enjoyed the discussion and look forward to yours, Alice's, and others responses.
Instability. Unlike your guest I think our interest as a country is to maintain some stability. What would happen to our credit rating? What would happen to our influence in the world? Of course we should care. Republicans continue to see in black and white with no shades of grey. Simplistic, with no understanding of consequences. Easy, just secede.
Very nice diagrams! I remember I used to structure information in a similar manner when I was in college. I appreciate the crystal clear connection between logical elements but the price is too high - history, war and peace are very subjective, and it all comes down to the details that are being overlooked here. Now that's a way of making interior design portfolio
I know this thread is getting a little long in the tooth, more to come another day but, I have no disdane for anyone that needs help, my objection is that too many people look to the almighty federal government to administer that help. As you said around your house your friends help out when help is needed, that is the spirit that we as a nation need to foster not the invisible hand of big government handing out checks from property they confiscated from others. The culture and psychological degradation of our people is what concerns me most for this country and my kids in the future. One more time for Alice-- You can ignore reality but you can not ignore the consequences for ignoring reality. And the reality is that the welfare state is becoming a generational phenomenon. More on Rocky Anderson later.
The only way worker movements will get any tread at all is apealing to the solidarity of all American Workers, past, current and future!
I believe the very propaganda the Fascists have inflicted upon America and the world will be their undoing, as it proved that you can MAKE THE POPULATION BELIEVE LIES. These Corporate CRIMINALS are going to choke on what happens when people have the TRUTH to stand together on!
Good for those senators, we do not need the UN dictating through treaties what we can and cannot do as a sovereign country. Treaties are a very dangerous way to do just that. The UN is a threat to any nations sovereignty. Defund the UN and put the money against our national debt.
What will help everybody is if Obama enacts a comprehensive Ban on all money in politics! And to that end if he has to call in the army for help so be it! He should.
Bloomberg news ran this article today: Frack Secrets by Thousands Keep U.S. Clueless on Wells | By Ben Elgin, Benjamin Haas & Phil Kuntz – Nov 30, 2012
Briefly, the article states drilling companies are to disclose the chemicals used in fracking, yet drilling companies did not disclose 1/5th of the chemicals. Why? Drilling companies claim these “non-disclosed” chemicals are trade secrets, proprietary and therefore exempt from disclosure.
more---> http://blog.shaleshockmedia.org/2012/11/30/fracunfocused/
FIrst HalFonts - let's define our terms. Fracking as understood by the general public is everything from the time a drill pad is built through the process of the gas spewing through the pipes. Unfortunately, the drilling industry prefers a narrower definition. The industry defines fracking as the moment of explosion - that's the "frack". Nothing before or after that is fracking.
Secondly - age old technique with negligible or no environmental contamination? Vertical-low volume-low pressure fracking has been done for a number of years, and yes there have have been cases of environmental contamination from it. However, what is being practiced now it HIGH-VOLUME SLICK-WATER HORIZONTAL FRACKING. This is a process developed in the past 10 years - not ages ago. A typical "frack" in Pennsylvania requires 5-7 MILLION gallons of water, and approx 0.9% chemicals - using the lower figure of 5 million gallons of water this works out to about 48,000 gallons of chemicals. Most of the chemicals are not being disclosed due to "trade secret" - so we don't know all that we are being exposed to through our water/air.
There were "rules" which would have provided some oversight of the process, however BUSH-CHENEY's Energy committee exempted the natural gas industry from most of them. The only one which still applies is banning the use of diesel fuel in fracking - but it's still being used in many places.
Setting and enforcing the regulations/standards? Michael Krancer, Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) thinks his job is to keep the EPA out of Pennsylvania. At his appointment ceremony, he said "at the end of the day, my job is get the gas done". In Pennsylvania we refer to the DEP as the Department of Energy Protection.
Do your research - don't give me industry soundbites. I have, extensively for the past 3 years.