Questions to EPA on Gulf and Dispersants, from Expert at EPA

HUGH KAUFMAN - A noted expert at the Environmental Protection Agency, Kaufman today produced a list of questions for EPA Assistant Administrator for Research and Development Paul Anastas, whose testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee is currently on C-SPAN:

1) Do you believe EPA had enough technical and scientific information, in April, to make a correct decision as to whether or not to use dispersants in this situation?

2) Did EPA authorize the use of dispersants by BP when the oil spill began in April of this year? If EPA did not, who did?  Please give the name of the person who authorized this action. If you don't know who did, who does know?

3) In your press conference on Monday, you said that EPA has not found dispersants in the water except at the well head where the oil was escaping. NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] has documented plumes of dispersed oil throughout thousands of square miles of the Gulf of Mexico. Has EPA -- or anybody -- tested these plumes of dispersed oil for the ingredients in the dispersants? If so, who and what are the results?

4) At your press conference Monday, you said NOAA and FDA [Food and Drug Administration] found that the food chain in the Gulf was not affected by the oil and/or the dispersants. Have NOAA and the FDA done testing of food chain marine life for the presence of the ingredients of dispersants?

5) Has the air been tested for dispersant ingredients in the areas where workers, including personnel from the Coast Guard, are conducting cleanup of the oil and dispersant mixture on the surface of the water? If so, who tested it, what instruments were used? What were the results?

6) At your press conference Monday, you stated that the temperatures of the water used in doing your toxicity tests on living shrimp were not the same temperatures as those to which the oil/dispersant mixtures are being exposed in the Gulf. Why did you not do this testing at the actual temperatures that the oil/dispersant mixture is in, in the Gulf of Mexico?

7) Congressman Edward Markey provided documentation over the weekend that two to three times the amount of the dispersant Corexit was spread over the floating oil than was reported to have been spread by EPA and the Government. Do you agree or disagree with Congressman Markey's documented allegation? If you agree, what actions will you take to correct the record?

8) At your press conference Monday, you stated that biodegradation of the oil spilled in the Gulf was 50 percent faster when dispersants were used. This assertion is in direct conflict with evidence of a report describing the Amoco Cadiz oil spill in France in 1978, in which dispersed oil is still not biodegraded. What scientific basis do you have for your conflicting assertion?

9) Did EPA do any ambient air pollution testing for the ingredients of the dispersant Corexit in the communities adjacent to the Gulf? If the answer is yes, which ingredients were tested for and what were the results?

10) Did EPA use wet chemistry in analyzing the ambient air pollution in the communities adjacent to the Gulf?

11) Did EPA use gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers in analyzing the ambient air pollution in the communities adjacent to the Gulf?

12) Does anyone at EPA, to your knowledge, disagree with the use of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster? Who? Do you know why?

Background: Kaufman "led the investigation for the EPA's Ombudsman that uncovered Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration cover-up[s] of the environmental effects of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack at the behest of the Bush White House." http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hugh_Kaufman

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020

solidarity & peace

Rick Spisak
www.AveryVoice.com

RE WikiLeaks - We can't let them have it both ways

They can't say, no news here, move along, move along, and simultaneously: they're going to bring the whole wrath of the security state down on that brave soldier who dared to do his duty and show the video of the Emperor, the Mass Murderer, the Hegemonic Schemer, the Wall State Enabler, bloody new clothes.

We should not obey illegal orders, at the Nuremberg trials "WE" said, obeying orders is not a defense.

Murdering civilians, is not war, shooting up children, is not war. Torture, electrodes, hanging people by their thumbs and elbows, water boarding this is not war. This is the stuff of war crimes. This is what the bad guys do, this is not what the leaders of the FREE WORLD the DEFENDERS of the FUTURE do!

War by propaganda, purchasing time to spread lies in Afghanistan and America. That is not warfare. Threatening and killing journalists is not war. America needs to know about the combat conditions, the war crimes, exactly what kind of missions our soldiers are being ordered to undertake. The new top general, Marine General Mattis - "So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

America doesn't know and doesn't care. The leaks are important. These leaks are the tip of the WAR-CRIME Iceberg. Building tomorrow's jihadi's today.

These wars must stop. They are not helping Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan the world, the peace, the future - We are protecting nothing, we are making nothing safe. We are building a more dangerous world.
                 "It's fun to shoot some people..." Lt. General James Mattis

                                                   solidarity & peace

                                                        RW Spisak

Give em Credt

Eric,
   You don't give our fellow Americans, the party of REAGAN (Ketchup is a Vegetable) enough credit for their vision for America. TAX CUTS, for the richest among us, and greater tax burdens for those of us who (still) work to earn a living.

Tax Cuts for the RICH, Shipping Jobs Overseas, those (Patriotic Policies) and Deregulation have brought us the excellent state of America that we enjoy today. It seems to me, that if the REPUBLICAN policies of De-Regulation and Tax Cuts for the Rich were so good for us, we must be ready for more of that.

Wait, we are currently enjoying the benefit of DEREGULATION in the Gulf of Mexico. COOL - And getting the Government off the back of the Oil Companies that's great. Let's have more of that. I bet Louisiana wants more deregulation, don't you think?

Since the Wall Street Regulators backed off any oversight of the shenanigans of the people who created "products so complicated" that allowed them to spin massive bonuses from the Equity you used to have in your home - All I can say is SET THE MARKET FREE!

Maybe we should apologize to all those banker who stole from us, and then we bailed them out - please accept our apologies and another bundle of cash. And in your spare time JACK UP our credit card rates, PLEASE!

Since the massive Bush era TAX CUTS for the rich, allowed them to invest in new factories and jobs... oops overseas - oh, that one didn't work out any better.

So when the repos and the tea folks tell you they want government so small it can be drowned in a tub. That's the government that protects you from poisoned medicine, wild-eyed bankers, and funds the teachers and libraries, and the CDC and the FDA and the roads and bridges that we use.

And before you let someone bad mouth big government, remember - we the people are the government. Unless you don't vote. Then you can sit this one out!

Original Letters in Stuart News

Answering the Democratic Party Survey - by Rick Spisak

Since the Health Care reform was sold out many progressive placed support for Obama off the table.

Since the Obama administration turned its back on mortgage holder and bailed out the bankers, many more progressives lost hope in the Obama administration.

When the Obama administration prosecuted whistle-blowers and not the Bush Administration war criminals many more progressive lost much more faith in the Obama administration.

When the Obama administration continued the abuses of the Patriot Act a few of the last remaining progressives dropped their Obama administration support.

When the Obama Administration extended the abortion ban to the health care insurance public policy all but the last holdouts gave up.

Where was the defender of Health Care for all? Not at home in the White House?
Where was the protector of working people and mortgage holders. Was he out?
Where was the protector of Justice? too busy on the golf course with Goldman Sachs.
Where was the constitutional law professor who opposed the excesses of the Patriot Act, Abu Gharib and the Black sites?  Was he taking the waters at some gucci spa?
Where was the human rights activists when they rolled the christian rights antichoice agenda into the federal regs? Was he at prayer?

Unless the republicans run Palin or some other Neanderthals from the Ir-religious Right there will be no support for an administration that talked LEFT and GOVERNED RIGHT.

Q. What do the Democrats stand for?
Anything the lobbyists want!

Q. Why are you a democrat?
It's getting harder and harder to say

Once the democrats stood for working people
Once they heard other voices than the lobbyists.

If the president supported some progressive values we would be with him
but as long as he panders to the right - all he'll have is the lobbyists.

solidarity & peace

Rick Spisak
www.AveryVoice.com

They broke it - You bought it!

LET'S SEE - first they destroy the GULF WITH THEIR GUSHER - Now, our US  BP Coast Guard has become their ENFORCERS - hell, they already have the BLACKWATER!

from Science Blogs - Journalists who come too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission could find themselves facing a $40,000 fine and even one to five years in prison under a new rule instituted by the Coast Guard late last week.

It's a move that outraged observers have decried as an attack on First Amendment rights. 

And CNN's Anderson Cooper describes the new rules as making it "very easy to hide incompetence or failure."

Our? Coast Guard order states that "vessels must not come within 20 meters [65 feet] of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law."

But since "oil spill response operations" apparently covers much of the clean-up effort on the beaches, CNN's Anderson Cooper describes the rule as banning reporters from "anywhere we need to be."

So we now know BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT:
that the Coast Guard, now working as a branch of BEE PEE private security, and that the price of the death of the GULF OF MEXICO, And the death of all the sealife includes, YOUR First AMMENDMENT, and your right to know, what the POLLUTERS ARE UP TO, because their private security guards we might call them BLACKWATER... is now composed of what we used to call the US  BP Coast Guard. 


Cause they aren't guarding you, former swimmer and former fishermen and women. They're out there to protect OUR CORPORATE OVERLORD$!

Hands Across the THREATENED SHORE

A group assembled on the scorching sand of Stuart Beach Saturday representing a wide cross section of Martin County. The surf-riders group a responsible ecologically savvy group of surf enthusiasts invited their fellow Martin Countians to rendezvous in a show of support of the Ocean and it's sea life.

They were joined by fisherman and women, moms and dads, teenagers, and toddlers, babes in arms and babes in bikinis to show they would not stand idly by while despoilers casually destroyed their lives.

They came together professors and dropouts bikers and activists on this particular HOT STEAMY SATURDAY because of their concern for a seeming unstoppable ecological disaster that is performing it's slow motion march on everything precious about Florida.

No one moves to Florida for the schools, no one moved to Florida because of the high wage jobs.  No one moved to Florida because of the Universities. No one moves to Florida because of the state of the art mass transit system that allows people to live a small carbon footprint life.

They move to Florida despite these omissions. They come here despite the remarkable lack of southern civility which combined with the insipid insularity of a small Jersey hamlet and seasoned well with the greasy ignorance of backwoods Alabama, all of which together make Florida so special.

No they generally move to Florida so they could be near the beauty of the sea and the beach and the sky. Whether they actually go to the beach, and enjoyed the modest amenities that the state offers. It has been enough for most Floridians to know that they were near the beach, even if they only visited when the relatives came south.

BUT BIG OIL, Haliburton, TRANSOCEANIC and Bee Pee, conspired with "di$count-priced" legislator$ and Bargain-Ba$ement NON-REGULATOR$ TO STEAL IT ALL AWAY. Not just from the good people of the bayou, or the people huddled early in the mist in their shrimp boats, but also from the retiree in Marco Island. And equally from the Philly transplant and the hard-bitten cracker sitting silent in the marina in the keys

They plotted and schemed to take it away - to take it all away from every body, whether they actually went to the beach or eked out a living on the sand ridge along the concrete lined coast.

Today... the day of HANDS ACROSS THE SAND - The Three Hundred gathered here in the 100 degree heat to say - WE CARE, despite the heat, despite the ignorance, despite the cavalier nature of most Floridians. Three hundred came that day to say - BIG OIL stay off our shore - Big Oil, we're watching. We do love our beach. She has not been abandoned to be the play thing of cheaply purchased legislators and coke whore regulators and policy pragmatists - who decided long ago that business as usual was just fine, sign here.

BUT ON THAT DAY in politically inert Martin County, on Stuart Beach 300 came together to say NO to BIG OIL, and YES to Hot Sand, and YES to the breath-taking beauty of the sea. YES to our home, our mother the bosom and nurturer of all life.

YES they said. YES to life and no to drillers with all the penny-poor answers to the Million Dollar Questions.

for more information CLICK HERE

TIRED OF POLITICS - NEED A BREAK - 

Humorous Short Story Collection   Two Small Windows

No pictures, may be no spill right?

Maybe we're not authorized to view the NON-Damage, the NON-Spill has NOT-Spewed across the gulf coast.

Any sickness experienced by the few cleanup workers, the lonely few required when there isn't a presidential photo-op should just (excuse the expression "SUCK IT UP")

And when they turn away boats and planes the FAA and the Coast Guard aren't colluding in the cover up. After all there are no pictures of the NON cover up, so what's the problem.

And when after the Louisianans and the Mississippians and the Alabamans and the Floridians are assured that there is no damage to the fish and the wildlife because of course, we've seen none.

If they later die exotic deaths, we can rest assured that the Justice Department will file an Amicus brief as a friend of BP and the FAA will say we denied nobody access and the Coast Guard will point to the White House, who will point to the Coast Guard - so everything's all right.

And when the remaining coral reefs die, BP can just explain since there never was any leak, cause it was so little, they couldn't even measure it. It must've been that way, because its so tricky to measure fluid flow. Cause why would Oil Companies have an incentive to know how much oil comes out?

Don't swallow that BS about its "too complicated" to solve cause it's a mile down - we steer missiles in Afghanistan from Nevada, and Martian Rovers from Pasadena, so a robot 1 mile down is No Big Deal

solidarity & peace
Rick
www.AveryVoice.com