Canton Reclamation Project

 

Here's a thing: Smoky Mountain News reporter Cory Vaillancourt reported on Twitter late Tuesday afternoon that Spirtas Worldwide has signed an exclusive letter of intent to purchase the Pactiv Evergreen site in Canton, North Carolina, the much abused and lamented old paper mill that polluted the Pigeon River for decades but kept Canton alive.

Who or what is Spirtas Worldwide? From their website:

Spirtas is a nationally recognized and trusted partner for all types of commercial and industrial development projects involving the removal, redevelopment, remediation, recovery or renovation of a wide variety of man-made structures. Having completed more than 10,000 projects of all sizes and in most industries throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the U. S. Virgin Islands, we have earned a reputation for high quality work, outstanding safety record, project management expertise and environmental stewardship. We develop custom solutions to the challenges presented by most facilities and help owners prepare their properties for reuse, including successful transfer of complex environmental liabilities.

In the Spirtas statement that Vaillancourt quoted, they said, "We recognize the site's importance to the local community. We've already met with Town of Canton officials and look forward to a smooth transition as we invest to support the region's economic development goals."

So it looks like Spirtas Wordwide is also taking on the Pactiv corporation's several legal liabilities, right? Which are multitude. I haven't found criticism of or controversy surrounding Spirtas's work yet, but I do see that they are fairly litigious.

Don't Look Up

 

What a movie for Christmas Eve! Season of hope and renewal, coinciding (more or less) with the Winter Solstice, when the sun decides to return to us, and Adam McKay's "Don't Look Up" proposes the sun won't come back. Ever.

For an end-of-the-world movie, it actually delivers ... the end of the world. I sat there for the first two hours wondering if Adam McKay would actually do it. He did it. But the tone of the movie leading up to that "conclusion of the species" is so Adam-McKay-clever -- satiric thrusts and wicked jokes about how narcissism makes us dumb (this McKay World is ruled by a blond, trifling president, played pretty brilliantly by Meryl Streep, and by the Q Score of a varnished pair of TV anchors on a popular feature news show, "The Daily Rip" -- played by Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry, having way too much fun) -- that biting tone of poking the bear of self-absorption did not entirely prepare me for the last 30 minutes, when McKay admits that human potential deserves reverence even as it faces its own extinction.

I was actually moved by Timothee Chalamet's performance as Yule, a skateboard dogtown boy with a hat turned around backwards ("I'm FirePuma142 on Twitch. Do you game?"), who turns out is possessed of a sweet disposition and a talent for praying a sincere prayer over a last supper. The moment absolutely floored me. The only Black character in the whole film (Rob Morgan as head of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, a real thing) sits at the table and hears Yule's prayer. "You got some church game, man," he says. That scene could make you love the human race.

The ending of "Don't Look Up" moved me in unexpected ways. Leonardo DeCaprio nails the long arc of a serious academic astronomer of limited achievements who first discovers the trajectory of an Everest-sized meteor, who goes from the urgency of terror and a need to ride like Paul Revere to an unhorsed hanger-on seduced by his own celebrity (he officially achieves the status of an "A.I.L.F.," which you can translate for yourself; first word is "astronomer"). He redeems himself. His instinct at the end, when the end is inevitable because not one, not two, but three attempts to fly rockets to explode and divert the meteor have failed, he wants to go home to his estranged wife and his two teenaged boys, achingly good young men. At that last supper, he says to everyone, "We really did have everything, didn't we? I mean, when you think about it."

Chalamet in "Don't Look Up"

That's of course the message: gratitude for what we have could actually lead us to save what we have. More than just a ribbing about how stupid we are, "Don't Look Up" delivers a solution that still resides in our genes (alongside the gene for destruction), a capacity to love and to protect what we love.

FOOTNOTE

I could bend your ears a lot longer about other characters, other actors portraying them ... like Jonah Hill as the president's son, the little prick she's appointed nepotistically as her chief of staff, who gets the lion's share of funny lines. He's an idiot and doesn't know it. He talks like this when he wants to feign sympathy: "There's dope stuff, like material stuff, like sick apartments and watches, and cars, um, and clothes and shit that could all go away and I don't wanna see that stuff go away. So I'm gonna say a prayer for that stuff. Amen."

Or Jennifer Lawrence as the new-age doctoral student who first discovers the comet. She's got the big picture and does not get seduced by notoriety, but she's as buried in the petty details as everyone else. She discovers that an Army general has charged her for snacks meant to be free in the White House, and she will not let it go. It's as big an issue with her as the comet named for her.

Ariana Grande, hilariously cast as a self-absorbed pop star whose breakup with her boyfriend currently dominates social media and broadcast media too. One critic labeled Grande as "a good sport" for taking a role that could be seen as an unintentional self-parody, the young woman whose fame has throttled her maturity. This scene, where the Grande character, glitsy singer Riley Bina, sits in a TV greenroom with the two astronomers played by Jennifer Lawrence (as Kate Bibiasky) and DeCaprio, waiting to go on-air:

Riley Bina: You guys discovered a comet? That's so dope. I have a tattoo of a shooting star on my back.

Kate Dibiasky: Oh.

Dr. Randall Mindy: That's terrific. We heard about your breakup too, so we just wanna say... We're very sorry, right? We're real sorry. You seem like a... great person.

Riley Bina: Why don't you mind your own business, you old fuck?

 

RELUCTANT FOOTNOTE

I know that professional critics are divided on this movie. Some of the reviews have been unnecessarily savage, implying a smugness about McKay that I don't see and don't accept. If you can't hold a mirror up to current society without being accused of conceited motives, we've gone so brittle as a culture that we deserve to shatter.

Watauga County, Allegedly Negligent in Policing The Cottages

 

A complaint was filed in Watauga County Superior Court last week seeking a declaratory ruling that Watauga County is guilty of its own negligence in that it "has failed to prevent repeated illegal discharges of wastewater that directly compromise the lands and waters within its jurisdiction. These illegal discharges have resulted in over 70,000 gallons of untreated wastewater, and 2.3 million gallons of treated wastewater, to be spilled into local waterways, all released by the Cottages of Boone ... in 2021. As the Cottages repeatedly discharged wastewater in violation of State law, [Watauga County] repeatedly failed to act reactively or proactively to prevent future incidents." "The Cottages of Boone" is a high-density development off Poplar Grove Road with 894 bedrooms that cater to the college student population. 

Plaintiff Adam Zebzda alleges that the county attorney went easy on The Cottages. In October 2021 -- following not one, not two, but three illegal discharges of treated and untreated waste water, some of it raw human sewage -- the county attorney sent a letter to the management and owners of The Cottages notifying them that they had been declared a "public nuisance." The letter said the county was prepared to use its police power to insure that The Cottages clean up its act. The letter did not address any Federal environmental impacts caused by thousands of gallons of student feces flowing untreated into tributaries of the Watauga River. According to the complaint, "independent water quality testing conducted by local environmental organizations revealed e. Coli levels twice the legal limit ... downstream from the Cottages." That was in September 2021.

Instead of following up with civil or even criminal penalties assessed against The Cottages, the county granted a 90-day extension for correcting the "public nuisance." No fines, no civil penalties, "no formal enforcement action."

Deep in the complaint one finds this specific allegation:

There is no possibility that the Defendant [Watauga County] was not aware of the Cottages’ illegal wastewater discharges, due to the extensive local journalistic reporting of the incidents. Further, the Defendant was aware of the community’s significant concern from these incidents, as shown in email correspondence between the Plaintiff and County Manager (Exhibit “F”).

In fact, the Defendant was aware of such significant community concern that it chose to mislead the public. Rather than take actual action to address the Cottages’ environmental threats, the Defendant reported that it had partnered with AppHealthCare to “respond to complaints in support of protecting the health of the public,” as reported by the Watauga Democrat on November 16 of 2021 (Exhibit “G”).

Reporting claimed that “due to ongoing violations, Watauga County has issued civil penalties in the maximum amount allowed by law to the Cottages of Boone for noncompliance,” with the Ordinance. Per the email conversation between the Plaintiff and County Manager, this was proved false as the only penalty was the issuance of another meaningless notice of violation. The Defendant has not yet issued a public correction to its claims. Rather, it chooses to continue misleading the public in an apparent attempt to silence community concern.

Exhibit “F:” Email correspondence between the Plaintiff (zebzdaa@appstate.edu) and County Manager Deron Geouque (deron.geouque@watgov.org) in regard to the Cottages of Boone, dated November of 2021

Exhibit “G:” Staff Report. “AppHealthCare, Watauga County Release Statement on Cottages of Boone.” Watauga Democrat, 16 Nov. 2021,www.wataugademocrat.com/news/local/apphealthcare-watauga-county-release-statement-on-cottages-of-boone/article_64644d42-09c6-5746-b480-3d9d15b89978.html

How Joe Biden Will Begin To Reverse Trump Policies

We expect the newly inaugurated president to sign some 15 separate executive orders this afternoon, with more promised in the next weeks.  The collective effort was characterized by Biden's aides as “undoing” and “reversing” policies implemented by Trump that were “harmful” or “inhumane.” 

The Pandemic

Swiftly following his swearing in, President Biden plans to sign executive actions that will require masks on all federal grounds, and he will ask agencies to extend moratoriums on evictions and on federal student loan payments. He will urge Americans to don face coverings for 100 days while reviving a global health unit in the National Security Council — allowed to go dormant during the Trump administration — to oversee pandemic preparedness and response. He will also begin to reverse steps taken by President Trump to withdraw from the World Health Organization by dispatching Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease official, to speak at the international group’s executive board meeting tomorrow. He will create a White House Covid-19 response team that will coordinate across the federal government and with states on ramping up vaccinations, distributing more masks and gloves, expanding testing capacity, reopening schools and more. 

Immigration

The new president will sign an order repealing the ban on travel from several majority-Muslim nations. Another order will call on the Department of Homeland Security to continue an Obama-era initiative protecting “dreamers” from deportation and issuing them work permits as long as they qualified under the requirements laid out when the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, began in 2012. Biden will also end the national emergency over the border that Trump declared as a way to circumvent Congress when lawmakers would not grant him funding for his wall. He also promises to repeal the Trump administration’s interior immigration enforcement order that sought to withhold federal funds from cities that shielded undocumented immigrants. And he will halt construction on the border wall. 

The Census

The new president will nullify the Trump administration’s directive that attempted to exclude the counting of noncitizens from the U.S. census.

Climate

President Biden plans to sign an order revoking the permit, issued by the Trump administration, that allowed for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and he will sign an order to rejoin the Paris climate accord. The United States will officially be part of the 189-country climate agreement in 30 days.

Racial Equity

President Biden plans to rescind the “1776 Commission” established by the Trump administration to push a much more conservative (lily white) version of American history in public schools. That commission issued its report only this week to widespread scorn from historians because of its soft-soap on the history of American slavery. In other orders promised for coming days the president-elect has promised to root out systemic racism from our institutions, holding the federal government accountable for advancing equity for families across America.

Transgender Rights

The new president plans to revoke "in coming days" the ban on transgender people from serving in the military.

Abortion Rights

President Biden intends to reverse the so-called "global gag rule" (the "Mexico City policy") that blocks U.S. aid to organizations abroad that perform abortions or offer counseling on the procedure.

I'm Thinking of Becoming a Shallow Person

 

Because keeping up and caring about all this stuff is so exhausting.

I mean, I loved "The Apprentice," especially "Celebrity Apprentice," and I think having such an ingenious -- he came up with all those tasks every week -- and decisive president is what people I follow on Twitter say we need right now. Anyways, when is the election exactly?

I've heard of socialism. It's bad. I will avoid it like I avoid looking like a slouch when I go out of the house.

I don't even know what the state legislature does. Something about naming post offices, I think. No, I've never heard of Phil Berger or Tim Moore. Were they on "The Apprentice"?

I keep hearing about a big party in Georgia pretty soon after New Year's, and if there's live music I want to go sooo bad. The travel problems -- not just the weather in January, but have you ever been in traffic in Atlanta? Plus people look at you hard about those masks. This flu everybody's talking about -- I've had the flu before and it's no biggie. Besides, I had my flu shot. And how come the lines at the drive-throughs are miles long? Who's playing in Georgia, anyway? If I had a list of the performers, I could see if it's really worth the effort. Maybe I should try to get others to help drive and share the gas.

I don't know a thing about student debt, about why all those Black people are protesting, about "unemployment benefits and relief packages for the middle class," about Afghanistan and Iraq and the rest of "foreign policy" (yuk!), about some chick at the GSA (whatever that is?), about whether or not the climate is changing for the bad ... so don't even. Don't even ask me. I have heard about maybe North Carolina's legalizing marijuana, and I'm interested in that.

I keep hearing that The Donald is burning something in Washington, or "burning it down." That makes me a little nervous. Maybe it's the National Christmas Tree they're talking about, but we always waited until after New Year's to burn ours. That's why I'm a little nervous, not knowing what they're talking about.

Anyhow, I hear "The Crown" is terrific, and I mean to get to it as soon as I finish bingeing on all ten seasons of "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

"The Imperatives of Eternal Economic Growth ... How Dare You!"

Her whole 5-minute speech.

Another Roy Cooper Veto With Potential Teeth

Governor Cooper announced yesterday that he will veto the budget passed by the Republicans in the General Assembly, and for the first time, with Republican super-majorities destroyed by last fall's elections, his veto may be upheld.

The main sticking point has been the expansion of Medicaid coverage in the state. Senate boss Phil Berger is very comfortable denying health care to at least a half-million citizens who otherwise could have it -- with 90% of its funding coming from the Feds -- and until Phil Berger gets hit by a bus, either literally or figuratively, the Republican state Senate will never go along with helping poor people get health care. Period.

So it's up to Roy Cooper to stand strong. And it's up to Democratic troops in the General Assembly to back him up.

There's more in the Republican budget to hate: Governor Cooper proposed giving every teacher in the state at least a 5 percent pay raise, with some getting up to 14.8 percent. The Republican budget would give an average 2 percent raise for teachers the first year and less than 2 percent the second year. (Take that, Miss McGillicuddy!)

School construction: Facing an $8 billion tab for school infrastructure, Governor Cooper wants a statewide bond committing the appropriate billions to fix outdated and crumbling infrastructure. House Speaker Tim Moore actually agreed with that. But Phil Berger once again has the biggest dick in Raleigh, and the resulting budget relies on a “pay-as-you-go” approach, pledging to spend roughly half of what's needed for school buildings in the next decade.

"Ask a teacher whether they’re willing to trust lawmakers’ promise of future action, particularly given the ... years, not months, of neglect from state leaders" (Billy Ball).

With crises erupting weekly over contaminated and dangerous drinking water supplies, the Republican budget again sticks its thumb in the eye of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).  "DEQ had requested 37 new positions in the state environmental budget to address the crisis of perfluorinated compounds [PFAs] in drinking water supplies. The House tepidly responded with seven positions; the Senate, always financially brutal toward DEQ, eliminated the appropriation. The conference budget settled for just five additional full-time positions, but only two of them are devoted to PFAs sampling and analysis. The others are for permitting and administration" (Lisa Sorg).

You wanna talk pork in the budget? Try this: Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest, already running to unseat Governor Cooper, gets $1.5 million to fiddle around interviewing “leaders in aviation, telecommunications, education, health care, transportation, fuel technologies, emergency management, military, agriculture, planning, and venture capital to determine opportunities” for drones and for so-called "Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing aircraft." Say what? Why didn't Phil Berger just be honest and label it "Money for Dan Forest to Jack-Off in Public."

Don't Drink the Water

AP Newsbreak

AP headline, 11:35, Friday morning, September 21:

Coal ash may be flowing into Cape Fear River

Substitute "definitely is" for "may be" flowing, and this is the world we've got now, the landscape shaped by, permeated with the leavings of unregulated special interests. 

Add pigshit from overtopped shit lagoons infecting all the surface water, coating the kitchen walls of submerged houses, soaking into the dry wall. Tell me that some powerful interests aren't ruling the roost! And woe to everything that's downhill from them!

Duke Energy is trying to get out of paying damages for the Dan River spill. Duke owes, or could owe, even before Florence, $1 billion+ as a result of spills and other environmental problems at its coal-ash ponds. Duke is suing its insurance providers to pick up that bill, or some of it. Customers will probably pay for the rest. Headline from June 1: "Your utility bill could go up: Duke Energy Progress seeking 16.7% rate increase."

Duh.

You watch: Those well dressed guys in Raleigh, the Phil Berger/Tim Moore troops, will never make Duke or the pigshit industry own up to its abuses. They're the guys who don't do enforcement. Don't believe in it. Against their religion.

Rep. Jonathan Jordan and Sen. Deanna Ballard bunk with those boys. All of them need to go somewhere else.

It's Not Wise To Ignore Mother Nature

When science predicts bad stuff, ban science. Yeah, that's the plan. Or at least that was the plan back in 2012 for the NC General Assembly and for the whole problem of the sea.

What set the General Assembly off in 2012 was a report two years earlier by a panel of scientists gathered together by the state Coastal Resources Commission. Those guys, from several different state universities, used computer modeling based on increased warming due to carbon dioxide and melting ice caps -- and its cumulative effects -- those scientists  issued a dire warning in March 2010, estimating that the sea levels along the state’s coast would rise 39 inches over the next century.

Jeez Louise. Real estate developers and their allies didn't like the sound of that. I mean, just the sound of that science caused The Vapors, caused new foundations to melt. And hadn't real estate interests taken enough grief in the under-water tsunami of the Great Recession? Enough of doom and gloom! There were new profits to be made, and so special interests got busy, leaned on the all too willing new Republican majority in the General Assembly, and got a law in 2012 that literally barred policymakers and developers from using up-to-date climate science to regulate coastal development.

Pat McElrath

That put a stop to effing science. And development of coastal lowlands roared ahead, unrestrained by any predictions of disaster. Coastal population has increased by almost half in the last 20 years.

The Republican who wrote that 2012 law, NC House member Pat McElraft (Emerald Isle), is still in the House, representing District 13. McElraft's top campaign contributors in 2012 were the North Carolina Association of Realtors and the North Carolina Home Builders’ Association.

McElrath's up for reelection in 2018 with no Democratic opponent. The man who filed to run withdrew, and district Democrats didn't recruit another candidate. An unaffiliated candidate, Penelope Ann diMaio, is on the ballot and supported by the Carteret County Democrats. "Pene" diMaio has a website and presumably some sort of a campaign going. But signs are not encouraging that she's fighting for it. First line in her statement about environmental issues: "I believe in science." Curiously, she doesn't even mention her opponent's role in outlawing science.


All that science-banning fiasco in 2012 got the hilarious attention of Stephen Colbert. Ain't no laughing matter this week.

Jennifer Lewis, Another US House Candidate to Watch in Virginia

The 6th Congressional District of Virginia looks about as hopelessly Republican as they come. The incumbent Republican congressman, Bob Goodlatte, is retiring, so the seat's open, but the Democratic track record there doesn't suggest a lot of hope. Democrats didn't even field a candidate against Goodlatte in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006. In 2008, a Democrat was on the ballot, got 36.6% of the vote, the most any Democrat has ever polled against Goodlatte in his 26 years in Congress.

But the seat's open. The new Republican who won the primary, Ben Cline, has served eight terms in the Virginia House of Delegates and is among the most conservative. He's also young, 46. He earns a living as a lawyer in private practice, which must be a pretty good living because he has offices in Lexington, Harrisonburg, and Amherst, Va. He was co-chair of the Virginia chapter of Americans for Prosperity, which speaks volumes in this high volume age.

Ben Cline should be a shoo-in. Easy peasy.

The Democratic Insurgency of Jennifer Lewis

Because the 6th CD seat was open, several Democrats wanted the nomination, but a "bold progressive activist" Jennifer Lewis won it, and she's attracting attention. She's 36, a mental health professional and prominent opponent of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, supports Medicare for all, a $15 per hour minimum wage, legal marijuana, tougher bank regulations, and an end to corporate “personhood.”

She comes by her populist impulse honestly: "I grew up with that feeling that things aren’t fair in our society. Financially speaking, we were not well off at all. I grew up getting free lunches at school. I grew up with the sense of always seeing the rich getting richer and the poor staying stagnant or getting worse .... We’re speaking about equality for all, health care for all, good education for all, rural broadband for all. We are this very inclusive campaign that resonates with a lot of people who are ready for bold, progressive change in their lives and in their district .... Being a farmer’s daughter is obviously helpful in breaking down some of those walls of farmers thinking they can’t talk about some of those issues" (HuffPost).

Does she talk about Trump? Yes, like this:

I understand why people voted for Donald Trump. I really do. People were sick of the establishment candidates, sick of the establishment politics, and they unfortunately believed Donald Trump that he was gonna drain the swamp, that he was an independent candidate who wasn’t attached to special interests. Unfortunately, that hasn’t panned out.

She says she will not support Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House, if and when there's a change and assuming Jennifer Lewis can be a part of it.

She's on the board of the Headwaters Soil and Water Conservation district of Augusta County, an elected position, and she earned press coverage for her opposition to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which put her at odds with the Democratic Governor Ralph Northam. She's against the pipeline because of the use of eminent domain to benefit private industry, because of the environmental threat to water resources, and because of "the political corruption of it all," says Lewis. "You see Dominion [Energy Virginia] writing these checks to Republicans and Democrats, and then they get friendly legislation. The running joke is Dominion owns Virginia. It’s not a funny joke. It’s very sick and it’s very wrong. It’s not how democracy is supposed to work."






Jennifer Lewis will give Ben Cline a race to remember. She'll do it with an army of willing and enthusiastic volunteers. Her ground game for the Democratic primary was intense, and there's reason to believe she'll amp it up this fall. She's intent on registering non-voters -- of which there are a lot in the 6th district -- and she knows the importance of door-knocking. She's an organizer of volunteers from way back, and an inspirer of volunteers.

Republican Malpractice in the NC General Assembly

Rob Schofield decries the rush of new laws in this current session of the North Carolina General Assembly -- laws written in secret and sometimes quickly, with scant understanding of or respect for unintended consequences (let alone the nasty intended ones): "Time and again last week, in fealty to an artificial and never fully disclosed deadline, legislative leaders summoned new and hugely controversial proposed laws out of thin air, conducted rapid-fire kangaroo committee meetings to bless them, and then waved the detritus briefly in front of glassy-eyed rank and file members for quick, often dazed approval."

That's democracy malpractice, and the practitioners must be called to account. Here's two of them:

Republican Rep. Jonathan Jordan and Republican Sen. Deanna Ballard

A handful of the most powerful of the Republicans in Raleigh wrote their budget in secret and rushed it through by preventing any amendments. The new budget "starves schools, the environment and countless other essential state services in order to give tax cuts to millionaires" (Rob Schofield). Jonathan Jordan and Deanna Ballard voted yes to it and to everything else.

Out of Thin Air

Other pieces of shit coming out of the General Assembly in rapid order:

"A transparently partisan bit of legal scalpel wielding that would alter early voting laws in order to target and discourage participation by minority voters." Their monkeying with early voting now sits on Governor Roy Cooper's desk. It's clearly meant to discourage the whole infrastructure of early voting, as it mandates that all satellite sites must be open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every weekday, 12-hour shifts. That provision defies local knowledge of local populations and their druthers and will strap the budget of county boards of elections. Some -- probably many -- satellite sites will have to be closed in Watauga and other counties. Plus ending the last Saturday of early voting aims at black people, who have historically favored that day.

A brand-new "farm bill" -- "what ought to have been labeled The Polluting Corporate Industrial Hog Factory Relief Act.” It's a real piece of shit that we wrote about here recently.

An 18-page compilation of giveaways to favored special interests bearing the laugh-out-loud title “Regulatory Relief Act of 2018.” We'll slowly become aware of the political bribes this bill delivered on.

A bill to gerrymander the judicial districts of roughly a third of the state’s population, because General Assembly Republicans haven't liked the judges.

Speaking of the damned judicial system, a superior court judge recently ruled in favor of a tenant, and the General Assembly promptly passed a special giveaway to landlords. In Raleigh it pays to be upset by a court ruling, especially when you have expensive lobbyists and compliant Republican troops.

And the icing on the cake: Last Friday, a rushed new backroom deal to "put teeth" into penalties on crazy behavior by crazy prison inmates, because harshly punishing craziness always makes it stop.

It's a Raleigh power-trip on acid and with the pedal down. But be informed, you clowns of the apocalypse-- Judgment Day is coming, and the people remember.

There's a Special Place in Hell for a General Assembly that Encourages Giant Pork Corporations Spraying Pig Shit on Their Neighbors

Indebted to Jeffrey C. Billman for bringing us up to date on a new North Carolina Farm Bill, now moving through the Republican Senate in Raleigh:

...among other things, [it] carves out even more special protections for multibillion-dollar pork producers. Following a law passed last year that restricted the amount of money neighbors of hog farms can recoup in nuisance lawsuits — industry advocates tried but failed to make it retroactive, which would have negated more than two dozen pending cases against Smithfield Foods — this year's Farm Bill redefines the word nuisance itself.

If it becomes law, agricultural operations can't be sued for causing nuisances if they follow practices, methods, or procedures "generally accepted and routinely utilized by other agricultural and forestry operations in [the] region."

Translation: If everyone does it, it must be okay. (It's also okay with Republicans because it's mainly poor blacks who are suffering.

Wanna know what an environmental nuisance is? It was summed up by the headline in The Guardian: "A Million Tons of Feces and an Unbearable Stench: Life Near Industrial Pig Farms."

Wanna know what another environmental nuisance catastrophe is? Take a look at the power-mad and corrupt boy's club in Raleigh (President: Phil Berger; Vice-President in Charge of Sitting by the Door: Tim Moore) and what they've done -- or tried to do until stopped by judges -- since 2013.

Waterkeeper Alliance

Two Deaths From Landslide in Watauga County

Heavenly Mtn development, May 30, 2018
Photo Boone Police Dept.

Thing is, Watauga County was mapped for landslide hazards in 2007, and the area highlighted at that time as most landslide prone was in the Stony Fork precinct which takes in the Heavenly Mountain development. That area experienced devastating landslides in 1940 -- literally, hundreds of them -- and geologic science forecasts that a slope which experienced "debris flow" in the past will experience it again.

The Watauga County landslide hazard maps were presented to the Watauga County Planning Board in January of 2008. The mapping was prompted by the 2004 Hurricane Ivan event which killed five people in Macon County by landslide and devastated the White Laurel development in Boone's ETJ. Because of that, the state legislature said that all 19 mountain counties along the Blue Ridge escarpment needed to know the hazards, so it funded the research. Watauga County was the second county surveyed, and it was very nearly the last. As soon as the Republicans took control in 2011, they cut the funding.

Not that knowing the hazards necessarily saves lives. There's knowing, and then there's really knowing, and the land development community in vacationland never really wanted that information made public. It might have a negative impact on land values.

Those hazard maps are available, incidentally, via the Watauga County Planning and Inspections website.

One More Reason We Need New Members of the NC General Assembly

November can't get here fast enough!

If you're not paying attention to the clown car in Raleigh, you may not know that the Republican overlords called another "special session" last week -- the seventh (?) or eighth (?) in a series since November 2016, when Republican Senate boss Phil Berger began knee-capping newly elected Governor Roy Cooper even before he was sworn in. Each special session costs taxpayers a minimum of $42,000, just for starts, and untold millions in tatters to North Carolina's progressive reputation.

The most recent special session on January 10 caused an uproar because the word got out that the Republicans were going to reorganize the judiciary to make it more congenial for them and their unconstitutional power-grabs. The session was called for a three-day legislating marathon which was also supposed to address the contamination of the Cape Fear River (see below), but lasted exactly one day when the best laid plans of Phil Berger crumbled under public pressure.

Phil Berger dismissed his senate in a snit without taking up the Cape Fear River pollution, but Tim Moore over on the House side decided that maybe they should do something -- some little thing -- about the Chemours plant (previously operating as Dupont). Chemours had been dumping GenX, an ingredient in Teflon coverings for cookware, into the Cape Fear River (until the state Department of Environmental Quality revoked their permit in November), along with other noxious chemicals. The Cape Fear supplies municipal drinking water for towns and cities from Fayetteville to Wilmington.

Chemours is possibly the worst corporate entity operating in North Carolina (and the competition for "worst" is pretty stiff). They had kept secret a lot of their dumping and had failed to report a spill on Oct. 6 that “caused a nearly 100-fold increase in the concentration of GenX” in the river.

Tim Moore and his House of Representatives passed a by-partisan bill that mandated several studies and provided $2.3 million to the DEQ for extra staff and equipment to research potentially dangerous chemicals. According to Colin Campbell, "The key problem with GenX and related chemicals is how little scientists know about them — they might give you cancer, but we don’t yet know for sure."

Safely back in Rockingham County, Berger felt empowered to throw stones at what the House did, without offering to do anything useful himself, and since you know that it takes action by both House and Senate to pass legislation, the Cape Fear River continues to be polluted, the state's judiciary remains unchanged (so far), and if it's not about power-grabbing and dismantling any claim North Carolina once had to being the most progressive state in the South, then Phil Berger wants nothing to do with it.

Those Masters of "Branding"

That stain on the South Dakota landscape is the Keystone Pipeline
spill of over 200,000 gallons of oil

Thank you, Secretary Mnuchin, for your service, and
Mrs Mnuchin, for your duck face 

Our all-time favorite self-branding moment
from the first year of The End of Decency

"Suffer little children to come unto me"

Trump Is Going to Texas, But Will He Learn Anything?

1. Scientists have been warning that climate change will produce more "rain bombs," catastrophic amounts of rainfall in short time-spans. Storms will get more severe. More rain will fall, and faster.

2. Ocean temperatures are warmer. Warmer oceans make for stronger hurricanes.

3. Warmer water also increases in volume. Warmer oceans are rising, without even factoring in the melting of glaciers and the disintegration of the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Coastal flooding in some areas is already a constant fact of life, even without hurricanes.

4. It's damn near impossible to get flood insurance for homes from private insurers. The US government stepped up, creating the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to provide insurance to homeowners in areas prone to flooding. From 1978 to 2004, NFIP generally took in more in payments than it paid out in losses. But in 2005, Katrina hit. The NFIP was on the hook for $18 billion — an amount equal to all of the premiums paid into the program from 1991 through 2005. Then, in 2012, Sandy hit. Losses neared $10 billion.

5. Shoring up NFIP became a big political fight in Congress after Hurricane Sandy. Some 67 Republicans in Congress, including Speaker Paul Ryan and 5th District Madam Virginia Foxx, voted against a NFIP funding bill in January 2013. Screw those Northeastern Democrats!

6. The NFIP is currently $24.6 billion in debt.

7. The NFIP is underwater because it doesn't charge enough in flood insurance premiums to cover the costs of recovery. Rich people with expensive ocean-front properties don't want to pay more, and they have considerably more political influence over Congress. Funding for NFIP is basically a political football.

8. Then comes Hurricane Harvey, followed by a rubber-necking Trump who understands little, cares even less, and seems perfectly immune from deep knowledge. We know where he stands on science.

Congrats, America! You Withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords, and Here's Your Reward

Unprecedented droughts. Worse and worser heat waves. Rain "bombs" and fiercer storms slashing the landscape. The average temperature in the United States "has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years," according to a comprehensive climate report paid for, researched, and written by the U.S. government -- "Climate Science Special Report."

That report was just leaked to the NYTimes because some of the scientists involved in its writing are fearful that the current administration with suppress it. Or "edit" it for content to please the Koch Bros.

With no interest in science at the highest levels of our leadership, and with no chance of changing that head-in-the-sand status quo for the foreseeable future, we are so thoroughly f***ed. To paraphrase the coroner in "The Wizard of Oz," we're not only merely f***ed. We're really most sincerely f***ed.

Unicorns Making a Comeback: The Environmental Wisdom of DJT

WASHINGTON -- It's official. Climate change denial is now national policy. 

The United States of America affirmed today that global warming is a hoax, placing climate change on its list of debunked “theories” alongside evolution, gravity, magnetism, prime numbers, light waves, bacteria, atoms, and menstruation. 

No word yet on the administration's position on the flatness of the earth, the use of leeches as a cure for palsy, or the stoning of virgins to increase crop yield. However, the White House has confirmed that the sun is, in fact, a flaming chariot pulled by three Carpathian boars, and that tornadoes are caused by the wrath of the barley god Kubabanush. 

In other news, the U.S. Naval Observatory has re-set the national clock to the year 1017.

But seriously, folks:

(1) It's not economy-versus-environment; that's a false dichotomy, because alternative energy is providing more new jobs than traditional energy; 

(2) The Paris Accords were not a business "deal"; they were a general, evolving agreement; 

(3) The Accords were incredibly loose and open-ended; there was absolutely no practical gain in pulling out; 

(4) The Accords were flawed, but they were a start; pulling out just hurts the momentum and makes a terrible symbolic statement; 

(5) This action is a big blow to the U.S. as leading world power; it quickly makes us a marginalized outlier and opens a vacuum for others (including China) to fill; 

(6) The pullout won't be final until 2020 anyway (hint hint).

(Hattip: My friend JK)

Our Idiot Will Make the U.S. a Rogue Nation

Exxon Mobil’s chief executive, Darren W. Woods, is strong in his defense of this nation's remaining a part of the Paris climate agreement. Woods is part of a "nearly united corporate front" that's been urging Trump not to withdraw from the agreement. “By expanding markets for innovative clean technologies, the agreement generates jobs and economic growth. U.S. companies are well positioned to lead in these markets,” a host of corporate giants, including Woods, wrote in full-page advertisements that ran recently in The New York Times, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

But Steve Bannon is evidently back in the driver's seat in the Oval Office, and CBS News is reporting just now -- or confirming -- that Trump will indeed announce that he is withdrawing us from the Paris agreement.

According to Michael Shear and Diane Cardwell,

Environmentally oriented groups like Ceres, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions have brought together big companies like Apple, Ingersoll Rand, Mars, National Grid and Schneider Electric to appeal to the president to stay in. Many of them operate globally and worry that if the United States abandons the deal, it would be harder to operate in existing markets and break into new ones.

But, never mind. Trump means to pander to the ignorance of his greedy, short-distance sprinters (Donald much prefers a golf cart to walking anyway), and he will make the United States the newest pariah on the planet.

How far above sea level is Mar-a-Lago?

Sorry. The Future Has Been Canceled

Scott Pruitt

“The future ain’t what it used to be at the E.P.A.”

--Scott Pruitt, Trump's administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference

Scott Pruitt would know. He's the lawyer that used to put out oil and gas industry propaganda under his own name as attorney general of Oklahoma, where defending the fossil fuel industry comes before church.

He's now in charge of protecting the environment of the United States, which means that pirates are now at the helm of the ship of state.

Pruitt just changed his testimony at his confirmation hearing -- "I never said I thought climate change was a hoax" -- to "carbon-dioxide has nothing to do with the warming of the planet." Such an attitude not only flies in the face of widespread scientific consensus that carbon-dioxide does indeed trap more heat at the earth's surface, but it also denies reality. Anyone heard lately about the Rhode-Island-size chunk of the Antarctic ice shelf that's about to drop into the ocean because of softening ice?

Pruitt is not only spouting his crap against the evidence of science and freaking reality. He's preparing to defy the very law itself. Under provisions of the Clean Air Act (passed under the last liberal president, Richard Nixon), the EPA which Mr. Pruitt now heads must regulate pollutants that harm human health. In 2009 carbon dioxide was judged to be an "endangerment" and therefore must be regulated by the EPA. That finding has been unheld in federal court, and the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the lower court.

So what's a Trump/Pruitt to do? Why, issue an executive order, naturally! According to the reporting of Coral Davenport, "Mr. Trump is expected to announce an executive order next week directing Mr. Pruitt to begin the legal process of unwinding the climate change regulations on [carbon dioxide] emissions from power plants."

The wrecking crew owns this joint now.