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Who is fighting all of these regulations?
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2012 9:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

mat-ty wrote:
You buy a shirt at Kohls for twenty bucks...


Twenty bucks? For a SHIRT? What are you buyin', guy ... shirts with BUTTONS on them? Or COLLARS? What'arya ... RICH? Man, there's Occutards EATING buttons to survive while yer livin' high on the hog. Have you no conscience? Spread some of that wealth around, or else some of those spoiled ratbags might have to actually get a JOB for a few days.

Mike $m$
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boggsman1



Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9110
Location: at a computer

PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2012 10:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think ISO's use of the internet is a little counterproductive.
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jp5



Joined: 19 May 1998
Posts: 3394
Location: OnUr6

PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2012 10:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

boggsman1 wrote:
I think ISO's use of the internet is a little counterproductive.


Time spent reading ISO's posts is counterproductive.
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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180

PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2012 10:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Talking of people who don't create jobs, I have to hand it to you Silicon Valley types. Mark Zuckerberg gets married at the weekend and loses a billion a day in the first three days of wedded bliss! Now that's living!! I wonder if his wife is checking the 72 hour return, no questions asked policy?
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boggsman1



Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9110
Location: at a computer

PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2012 10:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

jpbassking wrote:
boggsman1 wrote:
I think ISO's use of the internet is a little counterproductive.


Time spent reading ISO's posts is counterproductive.

I know, maybe I should plunk him Evil or Very Mad
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pueno



Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807

PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2012 12:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mat-ty wrote:
Thats right, those Mitt Romneys, like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Immelt, and anyone else who wants to make a profit.

You guys either knowingly or unknowingly exploit a bit of illogic that goes like this:

"All churches are white. Therefore, all white buildings are churches."

Study up on your set theory and Venn diagrams.


isobars wrote:
Spread some of that wealth around, or else some of those spoiled ratbags might have to actually get a JOB for a few days.

That's right... spread it into DISABILITY payments for you-know-who, because he certainly needs and is entitled to them.


boggsman1 wrote:
I know, maybe I should plunk him Evil or Very Mad

I think he prefers to be plonked. Plunking, plinking, and plenking are discouraged, and you never want to plank him.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 4:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think it is time to revisit this subject with Chevron in the news on a daily basis, first for having an un-inspected pipe burst and set a substantial part of the Richmond refinery ablaze, second for getting fined nearly $200,000 for having a flaring pipe that by-passed their required monitoring, and third, now under investigation for possible criminal sanctions.

This all involves Chevron's Richmond refinery, a facility that is about a hundred years old. The unifying issue under all of these problems is the approach of big oil in America to maintain these facilities and limit their requirements to be upgraded and meet contemporary emission and safety standards. As those paying attention might recall, Cheney invited the executives of the oil industry into his office, and then developed a national energy policy that allowed them to keep rather than upgrade some sub-standard equipment.

This issue played out in the proposal to expand and modernize this facility, where Chevron lost a lawsuit when the court found their EIR inadequate. Here is a news report of the original complaint:

Quote:
RICHMOND, California, September 8, 2008 (ENS) - Environmental justice groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the Richmond City Council's approval of Chevron's refinery expansion project. At issue is an environmental review that the groups claim concealed the fact that the expanded refinery would process heavier, dirtier oil, resulting in higher levels of air pollution and increased risks of accidents and oil spills.

"The City Council failed its legal and moral obligation to protect our health," said Richmond resident Torm Nompraseurt of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, one of the plaintiff groups. "Those dangerous chemicals are going to endanger me, my family, and my neighbors but the city didn't even look at what Chevron is really going to be doing."

Communities in Richmond, particularly low-income and communities of color, are overburdened with health problems related to exposure to industrial pollution, including high rates of asthma and cancer. The Chevron refinery, located on San Francisco Bay, is the largest industrial polluter in the area.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday in Contra Costa County Superior Court on behalf of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Communities for a Better Environment, and the West County Toxics Coalition.

The Richmond Refinery is one of the largest and oldest refineries on the West Coast. It covers 2,900 acres, has 5,000 miles of pipelines, and hundreds of large tanks that can hold up to 15 million barrels of crude oil, gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, lube oil, wax, and other chemicals produced by the refinery.

The expansion would allow heavier and dirtier crude oil to be processed at the refinery, which would increase releases of mercury, selenium, toxic sulfur compounds, and greenhouse gases, the groups point out.

"Chevron's project would lock in a fundamental switch to dirtier oil refining that increases toxic and climate-poisoning pollution drastically when avoiding these impacts is feasible," said Greg Karras, a senior scientist with Communities for a Better Environment. "The city violated the community's right to know about and act on this information."

Hundreds of residents jammed the City Council hearings in July demanding the City Council limit the refinery from processing dirtier crude oils and re-do the environmental impact report to consider what Chevron actually plans to build.

Instead, the groups complain, Chevron made a multi-million dollar offer of funding for local projects in exchange for the city's approval of the refinery expansion with weakened environmental protections and less public review of future refinery projects. Chevron valued its offer at about $61 million.

City and Chevron officials negotiated a proposed contract to execute the deal without public input, and presented it at the City Council's hearing on the project without the public notice required by state open government laws, the groups claim in their lawsuit.

"Chevron must stop its toxic assault on poor people of color in Richmond," said Henry Clark, executive director of the West County Toxics Coalition. "The City Council is selling out our community, but our health is not for sale. We will fight this until we achieve environmental justice."

"The California Environmental Quality Act requires government agencies to look before they leap by analyzing and mitigating all significant environmental impacts" said Will Rostov, an attorney for Earthjustice, who represents the environmental justice groups in court. "The city's environmental review fails in its most basic purpose."

A poll conducted by David Binder Research indicated that 73 percent of Richmond voters opposed the approval of the Chevron expansion until the environmental and health impacts of refining heavier crude oil were fully reviewed in a revised Environmental Impact Statement.

In addition, 75 percent of voters polled said it was very important or extremely important that any projects or funding between Chevron and the City Council be determined in an open public process.

A 56 percent majority of respondents have heard "nothing at all" about the negotiation between the City Council and Chevron to provide funding for local projects, while the City Council was voting on the refinery expansion project.


Source: Eco-Justice Groups Sue Over Chevron Refinery Expansion | NBC 7 San Diego


Mrgybe, of course, claimed that enviros have stopped every expansion in the Country, that the Richmond project would have providing jobs, and there was nothing wrong with the underlying analysis.

Now it turns out that the pipe that failed in Richmond had not been inspected, had been corroded by about 50%, and was not a grade of steel that would be most resistant to corrosion by sulfur. Follow the dots for a moment, because this was exactly the subject of the lawsuit. Local citizens were concerned that Chevron's refinery modifications would allow the old plant (much of it upgraded, but as we can see, not all the critical parts) to refine higher-sulfur crude. They were concerned both about the higher emissions of such sour crude, and the greater potential for corrosion and leakage. They won the lawsuit because the EIR was ambiguous as to whether or not higher sulfur crude could be refined, and did not include sufficient analysis of the environmental impacts.

Chastened by the lawsuit, did Chevron correct the problems identified by the court? Not bloody likely--instead they sought--for over two years--to be exempte from the law.

So I will repeat my statement. Chevron, like other big oil companies funding the littany of complaints about over-regulation, seeks to cling to the lower emission requirements on their existing facilities, rather than upgrading them to meet current health standards. Some, who claim to know all and hate regulation, regulators, and apparently those that must breathe, will flack for them on this forum. A project that upgraded the facility and met current standards would have been approved.

It is interesting that the rather beligerrent management team at the top in Richmond has been, at least partially, replaced by more reasonable people.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2013 12:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Updating the news on Chevron, and why the GOP and their stooges continue to fight regulations. Worker safety in California is regulated by Cal/OSHA, and air quality is regulated by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Chevron, and all of big oil, have tried to prevent either organization from having the resources to really regulate them. CAL/OSHA has issued 25 citations against Chevron, most of them fairly serious. It has taken more than 1/5 of CAL/OSHA's budget to do so, and Chevron is fighting a war of attrition against them. Chevron appeals everything, in virtually every venue, counting on their lawyers to find a flaw or at least string out the financial penalties. The substantive issue here is that Chevron engineers determined, a substantial time ago, that the Richmond refinery's lines were threatened by corrosion from high sulfur crude oil. But refinery managers did not replace all of the pipes in question, including the one that failed.

The GOP's ongoing attack on government regulation, as stooges for the oil companies, has meant that CAL/OSHA has an inspector for every 115,000 workers, and has been able to spend only 50 hours over the past decade trying to assure worker safety. It is good luck, not good safety practices, that no workers were killed when the pipe failed.

Of course, the apologists for the oil companies insist that opposition from environmentalists have prevented expansion of refineries, and cite Richmond as an example. One of the key issues in the litigation over expansion of the Richmond refinery was whether the expansion would accommodate even more high sulfur crude oil, and what the air quality impacts and risks might be. Big oil's flacks will always return to talking points and claim that their critics are uninformed--without responding on substance.

It is the pizza in the box, not the design of the box, that concerns most Americans about the GOP brand.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 11:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

More ranting from Bard about regulations and how they are killing entrepreneurship. Without specifics, in an era where it looks to me like there is more initiative in cutting edge than ever. But just contemplate what might happen without regulation--taking drug safety as an example. The FDA never approved thalidomide for sale in America. It was brought onto the market in Europe in the nineteen fifties. Thousands of birth defects before it was withdrawn in 1961.

I for one am glad that the FDA was on its job. I for one am glad that the regulations limiting gambling by banks, the Volcker rule, were finally adopted despite all of the attempts by the GOP, and especially the Tea Party, to prevent it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/regulators-release-final-volcker-rule-limits-on-bank-trading/2013/12/10/f0d471ce-619f-11e3-8beb-3f9a9942850f_story.html

I am happy that regulations were adopted limiting use of antibiotics in animal feed because of concerns that this practice is creating antibiotic resistance among many pathogens. I will note that, despite the poorly informed claims that the Obama administration is incompetent and relentlessly left, the regulations struck a careful balance and were supported by most stakeholders. In real governance, as opposed to Tea Party fantasy, competence in understanding the viewpoint of all stakeholders is essential to governance.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/11/us-fda-antibiotic-idUSBRE9BA0RJ20131211

Tell me about the rabbits again?
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jp5



Joined: 19 May 1998
Posts: 3394
Location: OnUr6

PostPosted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 12:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mac wrote:
....
I for one am glad that the FDA was on its job. I for one am glad that the regulations limiting gambling by banks, the Volcker rule, were finally adopted despite all of the attempts by the GOP, and especially the Tea Party, to prevent it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/regulators-release-final-volcker-rule-limits-on-bank-trading/2013/12/10/f0d471ce-619f-11e3-8beb-3f9a9942850f_story.html


Me too.
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