May 1, 2016 – RI Future

May 1, 2016May 1, 2016

PA gas pipeline explosion predicted by whistleblowers

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Devastation similar to that wrought by a gas pipeline explosion Friday in Salem Township, Pennsylvania is a real possibility in Burrillville, Rhode Island, and discounting this danger would be irresponsible. For a view of the damage done, in which one person was “badly burned,” see this footage from Pittsburgh Action News 4. The photos here are taken from this video.

Ashlee Hardway at Action News 4, wrote, “The explosion happened around 8:30 a.m. and involved a 30-inch pipeline owned by Texas Eastern, a unit of Spectra Energy, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.”

The explosion means that Spectra Energy will not be able to deliver the gas it has been contracted for, and the company has declared force majeure, which temporarily voids a contract for reasons outside a company’s control. This might mean that a dual fuel power plant, like the one planned by Invenergy for Burrillville, will have to start burning diesel oil until the gas pipeline is repaired.

The cause of the explosion has not yet been determined, but it’s hard not to think about a conversation I had with two Spectra Energy inspectors in November who claimed that the company cut corners in building their pipelines.

The safety inspectors essentially predicted this disaster.

“Right now, what they’re hoping to do, is they’re hoping to slam all this through, and then at the end ask for forgiveness,” said one of the former inspectors. “Oops, sorry about that, I didn’t know, let me write you a check. Because once this thing’s turning meter, they’re going to be making millions of dollars a day. It doesn’t matter what your problems are…”

Perhaps suspecting their days are numbered, fossil fuel companies are rushing to build the infrastructure required to keep us dependent on methane or “natural” gas for the next 50 years or more, even as evidence mounts that methane is a major contributor to climate change. This gives lie to the claim that methane will serve as a bridge fuel, something to ease the transition from fossil fuels to green energy sources, as the infrastructure investments being made are long term and permanent. Companies are investing billions laying pipelines, building compressor stations, and constructing energy plants and other infrastructure ahead of industry-wide extinction.

In their rush to build, safety and environmental concerns are being brushed aside, suspect many experts. A recent “Pipeline Safety Trust analysis of federal data,” shows that, “new pipelines are failing at a rate on par with gas transmission lines installed before the 1940s.” Sarah Smith writes that Carl Weimer, director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, told attendees at a National Association of Pipeline Safety Representatives annual meeting in Tempe, AZ that, “The new pipelines are failing even worse than the oldest pipelines.”

Though some of the problems may be related to workers learning how to implement the latest technologies, Weimar says, “there’s also some suggestions that we’re trying to put so many new miles of pipeline in the ground so fast that people aren’t doing construction … the way they ought to.”

In the same piece Smith quotes Robert Hall, of the National Transportation Safety Board Office of Railroad, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Investigations, who agreed that, “the rapid construction of pipelines in the U.S. is likely a contributing factor to ‘people … out there possibly taking shortcuts or not being as diligent’ as they would be if the pace of construction were less fervent.”

According to the whistleblowers I talked to:

These pipes have to last underground for at least 50 years. If there’s the smallest mistake in their cathodic protection, that’s what’s going to corrode. All of a sudden you’ve got, even at 800-900 pounds of pressure, doesn’t sound like much, but when you’ve got a 42 inch pipe, traveling that distance and it goes ka-bang, you’re not talking about taking out a block, you’re talking about taking out a large area. You’re talking about a humongous ecological impact, you’re talking about displacing hundreds of families, you’re talking about leveling homes, killing people instantly, I mean, if one of those places were to go up, it’s going to be a bad day.”

In 2011 a cast-iron gas pipe cracked, causing an explosion that killed five people in Allentown, PA. Pipes like those are no longer used. But when work is rushed, construction is sloppy and disaster is possible.

“There’s a reason we do what we do,” said Inspector One, “Every bolt is torqued. I know when you torqued it, I know what torque wrench you used, what model number, when it was calibrated. That’s how serious every flange has to be. Because if one of these points blow up you’re talking about a humongous issue. These guys are making those kind of mistakes. They’re short-cutting things, they’re not inspecting things properly, they’re covering stuff up before an inspector’s had a chance to look at it.

“I have had inspectors that have come up to me in the field and have said to me that there is a pipe buried under ground that was not inspected appropriately. And the reason that it was not excavated and inspected is that it cost too much money.”

All pipeline welds are examined with x-rays to make sure they are up to code. After the weld is x-rayed the inspector waits for the film to come back from the lab. “How is it that you have a pipe already buried before you receive the film?” Inspector One asks, noting that he had a tech “receiving the film (on Tuesday) for a pipe buried last Wednesday.”

Spectra “has a checkered history of accidents and violations of federal safety rules in the U.S. and Canada dating back decades,” says Dan Christensen writing in the Miami Herald. “Since 2006, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration recorded 25 incidents that caused more than $12 million in property damage along Spectra’s main line — the 9,000-mile Texas Eastern Transmission that connects Texas and the Gulf Coast with big urban markets in the Northeast. The causes ranged from equipment failure and incorrect operations to pipe corrosion.”

SpectraBusters has a long list of links to stories about Spectra’s poor performance record.

Spectra, a multibillion dollar company, will likely cut a check to cover the damage in Pennsylvania. That check might amount to a day’s earnings for the company, maybe less. Meanwhile, what is the cost in human terms?

The victim “told us that he heard a loud noise and compared it to a tornado. All he saw was fire and started running up the roadway and a passerby picked him up,” [Forbes Road Fire Chief Bob] Rosatti said.

“The heat was so intense that it was burning him as he was running,” he said.

A quarter-mile evacuation zone was established. Rosatti said the explosion and fire “damaged all the trees, all the utilities going down the roadway — the phone, cable, electric. Burned all the telephone poles off. It kind of looks like a bomb went off.”

May 1, 2016May 6, 2016

Rest in peace Daniel Berrigan, priest, activist, Block Islander

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Daniel Berrigan, arrested in Rhode Island.

Father Daniel Berrigan, the legendary peace activist-priest who publicly burned draft cards in 1968 and subsequently eluded prison for the famous act of civil disobedience until his arrest on Block Island in 1970, died Saturday. He was 94 years old.

“We have chosen to be branded peace criminals by war criminals,” Berrigan famously said while a fugitive of justice, days before his arrest by FBI agents in a barn on Block Island.

Berrigan was a Jesuit priest who formed his own ministry in New York City. He was a committed peace activist who traveled to North Vietnam with Howard Zinn and returned with captured American pilots. He was a socialist and a committed activist who believed civil disobedience was necessary to call public attention to American imperialism.

He was also a part-time Rhode Islander, who spent many summers on Block Island years after being arrested there. The Spring Street house at which he was captured was left in a trust for him to use. “I get out there maybe a couple times a year,” Berrigan told Steven Stycos, writing for the Block Island Times, in 2001. Berrigan wrote a poetry book called “Block Island” and the house at which he was arrested in a fairly well-known tourist attraction.

His arrest there in 1970 is very well-known. Much of America surely first learned of Block Island through media reports of Berrigan’s arrest. It was covered in newspapers across the country and LIFE magazine ran a feature story detailing the incident.

“On an ominous morning in August, with a fierce nor’easter blowing up black clouds and spattering rain over the harbor, Daneil Berrigan lay asleep in a manger on Block Island, RI,” wrote Lee Lockwood in the May 21, 1971 edition of LIFE. “…Berrigan’s Block Island routine was to rise late and breakfast lightly on coffee and a piece of bread. Afterward, with books, paper and pen, and dressed ‘in some outlandish headgear,’ he would disappear below the crest of the Mohegan Bluffs until nightfall. Reappearing for then for drinks, dinner and conversation…”

On August 11, 1970, FBI agents, posing as bird watchers, descended on the Spring Street barn and arrested Berrigan.

Berrigan had first become a household name in 1968 for one of the most famous acts of civil disobedience during the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. “Nine Catholic activists, led by Daniel and Philip Berrigan, entered a Knights of Columbus building in Catonsville and went up to the second floor, where the local draft board had offices. In front of astonished clerks, they seized hundreds of draft records, carried them down to the parking lot and set them on fire with homemade napalm,” wrote the New York Times in Berrigan’s obituary.

They were arrested and dubbed the “Catonsville Nine” by the media.

In 1980, he was arrested for breaking into a nuclear missile site in Pennsylvania and pouring blood on files. This was the advent of the Plowshares Movement against nuclear weapons.

In 2002, at his 80th birthday party, Berrigan promised to keep up his disruptive form of protest until even after his death. “The day after I’m embalmed, that’s when I’ll give it up,” he said.

May 1, 2016May 5, 2016

Youths secure second win in Washington state climate lawsuit

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Seattle, WA, April 29, 2016— In a surprise ruling from the bench in the critical climate case brought by youths against the state of Washington’s Department of Ecology (“Ecology”), King County Superior Court Judge Hollis Hill ordered Ecology to promulgate an emissions reduction rule by the end of 2016 and make recommendations to the state legislature on science-based greenhouse gas reductions in the 2017 legislative session. Judge Hill also ordered Ecology to consult with the youth petitioners in advance of that recommendation. The youths were forced back to court after Ecology unexpectedly withdrew the very rule-making efforts to reduce carbon emissions the agency told the judge it had underway. This case is one of several similar state, federal, and international cases, all supported by Our Children’s Trust, seeking the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate.

In granting the youth a remedy, Judge Hill noted the extraordinary circumstances of the climate crisis, saying, “this is an urgent situation…these kids can’t wait.” The court discussed the catastrophic impacts of climate destabilization globally, including the impending loss of polar bears and low-lying countries like Bangladesh. The court explained that while it had no jurisdiction outside of Washington state, it did have jurisdiction over Ecology and would order the agency to comply with the law and do its part to address the crisis.

After a landmark November, 2015 decision, in which Judge Hill found that the state has a “mandatory duty” to “preserve, protect, and enhance the air quality for the current and future generations,” and found the state’s current standards to fail that standard dramatically, Ecology nonetheless unilaterally withdrew its proposed rule to reduce carbon emissions in the state in February, just months after Judge Hill specifically underscored the urgency of the climate crisis.

“It was absurd for Ecology to withdraw its proposed rule to reduce carbon emissions,” said petitioner Aji Piper, who is also a plaintiff on the federal constitutional climate lawsuit, supported by Our Children’s Trust. “Especially after Judge Hill declared last fall that our ‘very survival depends upon the will of [our] elders to act now…to stem the tide of global warming.’ I think Ecology should be ashamed by its reversal of potentially powerful action and today, Judge Hill issued a significant ruling that should go down in history books. Our government must act to protect our climate for benefit of us and future generations.”

“For the first time, a U.S. court not only recognized the extraordinary harms young people are facing due to climate change, but ordered an agency to do something about it,” said Andrea Rodgers, the Western Environmental Law Center attorney representing the youths. “Ecology is now court-ordered to issue a rule that fulfills its constitutional and public trust duty to ensure Washington does its part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the planet.”

“This case explains why youth around this country, and in several other countries, are forced to bring their governments to court to secure a healthy atmosphere and stable climate,” said Julia Olson, executive director and chief legal counsel at Our Children’s Trust. “Despite clear scientific evidence and judicial recognition of the urgency of the climate crisis, Washington and most governments across the U.S. and other countries are failing to take correspondingly urgent, science-based action. That failure unfairly consigns youth to a disproportionately bleak future against which they can only reasonably ask the courts to step in to address this most time sensitive issue of our time.”

“This is a massive victory,” said petitioner Gabe Mandell.

Related cases brought by youth to protect the atmosphere are pending before other U.S. courts in the federal district court in Oregon, and in the state courts of North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Massachusetts and Oregon.

This is a press release of:

Our Children’s Trust is a nonprofit organization, elevating the voice of youth, those with most to lose, to secure the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate on behalf of present and future generations. We lead a global human rights and environmental justice campaign to implement enforceable science-based Climate Recovery Plans that will return atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to levels below 350 ppm.
The Western Environmental Law Center (WELC) is a public interest nonprofit law firm. WELC combines legal skills with sound conservation biology and environmental science to address major environmental issues throughout the West. WELC does not charge clients and partners for services, but relies instead on charitable gifts from individuals, families, and foundations to accomplish its mission.

May 1, 2016

The case for Vice President Sanders

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It would seem at this juncture two things have happened that are worth contemplating following the victory of Bernie Sanders in the Rhode Island primary on April 26, 2016. Allow me to perhaps utilize a historical materialist perspective here and offer an objective summation of what I think has happened.

First, Sanders has mobilized a mass of people that have fundamentally been radicalized away from consensus neoliberal politics, even if they have a huge level of variety in their own political visions. It is worth remembering here also that, unlike notable sheep dog candidacies like Jackson, Kucinich, and Dean, we are dealing with an election that is not a referendum on a Republican presidency but a Democratic one. When Jackson ran it was against Reagan. Kucinich and Dean were against the W. Bush presidency. This election, despite the efforts of the mainstream media to say otherwise, is in reality a referendum on the failure of the Obama administration in a fashion similar to how 2008 was a repudiation of Bush. And considering that The Atlantic was recently floating the as a potential Vice President Governor Raimondo, it also seems an obvious rebuke to the Democrats as a whole.

The reason Sanders has done so well and lasted this long is to be attributed to a populist rejection of neoclassical economics, something also to be seen in the Trump constituency. For instance, both sides of the populist upsurge reject various manifestations of these economic doctrines, be it Common Core education policy, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, Monsanto and genetically modified food, the Pentagon eating up over half of the federal discretionary budget, the rigged nature of the primary system, the Federal Reserve, or any number of other elements of post-Cold War politics. Bob Plain was onto something recently when he asked if there is common ground between the two. I would in fact argue that, excepting the extremists in both constituencies that are absolutist in nature, something I referred to in a previous piece here, there is possibility for an anti-war/anti-austerity united front from below to be formed after this election between the Sanders and Trump supporters. Such a coalition could take on things in the community hated by both groups, such as the union-busting Wal-Mart that chases every small business out of a town.

That the Democrats have not cut Sanders off already is demonstrative of a false impression they have about being able to channel this into votes for Clinton, perhaps reinforced by the promise from Sanders he will support Clinton. I highly doubt these folks are that easily swayed, hence the development of a new term, “Bernie or Bust”, and a response that demonizes those who refuse to vote for the Queen of Chaos. I have already been brow-beaten by some who tell me that women’s rights are not important to me because I refuse to vote for Clinton. But then again, Clinton has shown women’s rights are not important to her with the support she has shown for those blessed souls in the Saudi monarchy. Sheikh, Sheikh, Sheikh señora, Sheikh your oil pipeline!

Second, despite the pleas of the Sanders supporters, he has absolutely zero chance of getting the nomination. When Obama beat Hillary, it was a public and frankly hilarious spat between two of the running dogs of capital. Those two personally hate each other but they both have the same masters at Goldman Sachs, hence why the Obama Justice Department has refused to prosecute Clinton over the e-mail scandal.

For those who are unclear still, Clinton committed a series of crimes by using this email server that were far more egregious and illegal than those she and Obama claimed were committed by Manning, Assange, Snowden, and so many other whistleblowers they have prosecuted and ruined over the past eight years. The highest crime in a moral universe was obviously in the text of the emails with their plans for Libya and Syria. But in the immoral universe we occupy, it was the lack of moral cause. Snowden and Manning blew whistles about illegal and immoral behavior by the United States government while Assange published materials as a press agency in the name of his Libertarian philosophy that informs his morality. Even if one disagrees with the motivation, it remains irrefutable that they did it for moral reasons.

By contrast, Clinton risked exposing intelligence to genuine security threats in the name of either petty convenience regarding a BlackBerry, something I find dubious as her official explanation, or perhaps, in my own view, so to avoid creating a paper trail akin to the Nixon tapes that would document her criminal behavior in Libya, Syria, and elsewhere. That is a very immoral cause in comparison to the aforementioned heroes of our generation. Obama is protecting her and she knows this very well, hence her relative level of self assurance in this campaign.

So what I want to suggest is something rather unorthodox but also the only way Sanders and Jill Stein would get into the White House. Sanders needs to drop out of the race after the super-delegate count is reached by Clinton and become Stein’s Vice Presidential candidate. The Greens have already made such overtures to Sanders, including a recent invitation for Sanders to collaborate with Stein on her presidential campaign webpage and another invitation from the Green Party to Sanders supporters emphasizing that there is a Green welcome mat waiting for them to join the campaign.

I admit this is going against almost every rule in the playbook involving the politics of both the Green Party and the Democratic Socialists. The Greens are in the midst of their own primary schedule in seventeen different states. The Democrats are in the midst of a similar situation in all fifty (for those of you who missed this point, there is no independent Democratic Socialist party in America, it is a progressive caucus of the Democratic Party). The only thing that can make Sanders reach the White House is getting out of this failing Democratic Party and embrace the future, a third party candidacy. Even The Donald agrees with me! This could be YUGE!

I say the future because it is quite obvious that, should the Sanders supporters not be placated properly, they could split the Democrats in two and create the prospect for a genuine third party. This dynamic is also at play with Trump, though the genuine third party option for the Right is far more fragmented and it is difficult to envision the Trump followers all joining the Libertarian Party as the Sanders people might join the Greens. Nevertheless, the failure of Sanders opens up the possibility of, after a century of state-enforced consolidation, the collapse of the duopoly system in America. That is something I am far more enthusiastic about and yearn for than Bernie Sanders hands down. If votes for the Green Party were to take progressive votes away from the Democrats, a common element of the Nader baiter agenda, the fact is that an elected Green would stand up for working class values more reliably than a Democrat that could be bought by the special interest lobby class in Washington.

So Sanders should seriously consider this option of becoming a Green vice president and therefore undermining the identity politics dynamic of Hillary Clinton’s neoliberal corporatized feminism. Whereas the Democrats would be as intransigent to a Sanders Democratic administration as the Republicans have been in the past eight years, the Greens have the infrastructure to get elected at the 2018 midterms to make the Sanders agenda a reality. When FDR got his Keynesian programs passed in the New Deal, it was because he had the Solid South in his coalition. And thirty years later, LBJ’s similar programs were scuttled precisely because that coalition had been fractured by the civil rights movement and the rise of Barry Goldwater. The Greens are the coalition Sanders needs to make his presidency not just a symbolic gesture wherein the Congress, who are bought and paid for by Wall Street, scuttles his efforts.

Think that is a bit utopian? Not as utopian as the idea that Sanders will be nominated at the convention!