Hasta La Gadget!

Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog

For the first time, DeSmogBlog has published dozens of documents obtained from the North Dakota government revealing routes and chemical composition data for oil-by-rail trains in the state carrying oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the Bakken Shale.

 Photo Credit: Kyle Potter | Forum of Fargo-Moorhead

The information was initially submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) under the legal dictates of a May 7 Emergency Order, which both the federal government and the rail industry initially argued should only be released to those with a “need-to-know” and not the public at-large.

North Dakota’s Department of Emergency Services, working in consultation with the North Dakota Office of the Attorney General, made the documents public a couple weeks after DeSmogBlog filed a June 13 North Dakota Public Records Statute request.

“There is no legal basis to protect what they have provided us at this point,” North Dakota assistant attorney general Mary Kae Kelsch said during the June 25 Department of Emergency Service’s quarterly meeting, which DeSmogBlog attended via phone. “It doesn’t meet any criteria for our state law to protect this.” 

Initially, oil-by-rail giant Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) and other rail companies sent boilerplate letters — one copy of which has been obtained by DeSmogBlog from the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security through the state’s Public Records Act — to several State Emergency Response Commissions (SERCs), arguing train routes should be kept confidential.

BNSF also sent several SERCs a boilerplate contract proposal, requesting that they exempt the information rail companies were compelled to submit to the SERCs under the DOT Emergency Order from release under Freedom of Information Act. A snippet of the proposed contract can be seen below: 

Dan Wilz, homeland security division director and state security advisor of the Department of Emergency Services, said the claims did not hold legal water. 

“Joe can stand on a street corner and figure that out within a week’s period,” Wilz said at the quarterly meeting. “They watch the trains go through their community each and every day.”

BNSF, Canadian Pacific Railway (CP Rail) and Northern Plains Railroad all submitted information to the Department of Emergency Services.

CP Rail: 7 Trains/Week, “Highly Flammable”

In its submission to the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services, CP Rail revealed it sent seven oil-by-rail trains through 13 counties in North Dakota the week of June 9-15. CP Rail also estimated it generally sends 2-5 trains through those same counties during an average week.

Some oil-by-rail trains, dubbed “bomb trains” by some due to their propensity to explode, carry over 2,677,500 gallons of fracked oil. The trains are often over a mile in length and contain over 100 cars. 

The company also released information on the chemical composition of the Bakken oil it sends on its rail cars, conceding that Bakken oil is “highly flammable” and “easily ignited by heat, sparks or flames.”

Further, CP Rail admitted that Bakken oil has “a very low flash point” and that “water spray when fighting [its] fire may be inefficient.”

BNSF: Bakken Oil-By-Rail King 

BNSF, owned by Warren Buffett — a major campaign contributor to President Barack Obama both in 2008 and 2012 and one of the richest men on the planet — is widely considered the king of oil-by-rail in the U.S. The documents BNSF released to the Department of Emergency Services back up the notion.

One document shows BNSF sent 31 oil-by-rail trains through Cass County, North Dakota during the week of May 29 – June 4, also saying it sends between 30-45 trains per week on average through the County. That same week, 30 BNSF trains zoomed through Barnes County, North Dakota.

A document filed the next week, covering June 5 – June 11, shows 45 trains passed through Cass County that week. Another 37 passed through Ward County, North Dakota and another 33 through McHenry, Pierce and Mountrail counties.

Northern Plains: Chemical Composition Revealed

In its DOT submission, Northern Plains included an expansive Bakken crude oil sample chemical composition test submitted by Musket Corporation, which has a terminal and transload site in North Dakota.

Northern Plains also submitted a Bakken Crude Safety Data Sheet, created by Musket, as well. The Sheet echos CP Rail in stating that Bakken oil is a “highly flammable liquid and vapor.”

Further, the Sheet explains that Bakken oil contains Benzene, a carcinogen.

A record amount of Bakken oil spilled into waterways that are a drinking source for many as a result explosions of oil-by-rail trains in 2013. Most recently, the exploding oil-by-rail train in Lynchburg, Virginia spilled into the James River.

Photo Credit: Erin Ferrell – ABC 13 News | Twitter

Compared to CP Rail and BNSF, Northern Plains is a minor player in terms of the amount of oil it carries by rail in North Dakota. It submitted that it carries 12 trains per year and all within Walsh County, North Dakota, also including a map of its route.

“Right to Know” vs. “Need to Know”

Despite the fact dozens of oil-by-rail trains pass through North Dakota counties on a daily basis, carrying a substance that contains a known carcinogen and is “highly flammable,” Big Rail and Big Oil used its legal might to claim only a select few “need to know” where these cars travel. 

“For some reason this entire rail oil industry, they just fill these rail cars and send them without really knowing what’s in them,” Scott Smith, chief scientist for Water Defense said in an article appearing in the summer edition of the Earth Island Journal. “And it’s the only industry I’m aware of that gets away with that.”

But this time around, due to the North Dakota Public Records Statute, Big Rail and Big Oil didn’t get away with it. 

From Project Syndicate

A few years ago, a substantial majority of Brazilians supported holding the World Cup in their country. By last May, the share had declined to half – astoundingly low for some of the world’s most enthusiastic soccer fans – with small but strident protests persisting across the country. Rousseff’s opponents want the protests to disrupt the games, damaging Brazil’s international image; some are even hoping for Brazil’s team to lose.

Such an outcome would not be good for the country. Whatever frustration lower-middle-class Brazilians are feeling, a successful World Cup is their best option. Likewise, contrary to the perceptions of Uribe’s supporters, Santos’s reelection and continued pursuit of peace is exactly what Colombia needs right now. The more citizens understand and support this effort, the better its chances of success.

Read more here.

The Roberts court is a shining example of the Koch-esque Libertarian interpretation of the Constitution, and unintended consequences that the conservative cohort unleash with their Pandoraish pandering to that deconstructionist slice of right-wing politics.

Installed with much GOP fanfare to allegedly end “judicial activism” the conservative members of the Supreme Court of the United States have been exceedingly activist and partisan and, unlike all other federal justices, have no ethics other than their own good judgment, or lack thereof, binding them.

Ethics

In an article in 2011, I noted that, amazingly, the Supremes are not subject to the same ethical canons which govern the ethics of other Federal justices. Canon 4C reads:

A judge may attend fund-raising events of law-related and other organizations although the judge may not be a speaker, a guest of honor, or featured on the program of such an event.

In particular, Justices Scalia and Thomas have been the subject of numerous complaints in their exercise of ethics. The devious duo exercised the bad judgment of attending a Federalist Society dinner advertised in their honor that was hosted by the law firm that had just argued against the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) before the SCOTUS days before.

Thomas trounced 4C again in 2013 for the Federalist Society, prompting Common Cause, amongst others, to petition Roberts to put the Justices under federal ethics canons as they were not clearly living up to ethical self-policing.

Scalia and Thomas also attended at least one of the Koch Brothers secret retreats of the richest people in the world, so hush-hush that even the hotel isn’t allowed access to the guest list. Outed by an attendee who broke ranks, their foray into extreme Libertarianism would have gone otherwise unreported.

What are two U.S. Supreme Court Justices doing at a meeting of the people who control the Tea Party and hundreds of think tanks, astroturf groups and Super PACs that are highly partisan and may have interests that come before the court?

Both justices, based on their outside forays into activist politics, should have recused themselves on a wide variety of cases inside the court, including the decisions on the ACA and Citizens United.

Judicial Activism Inside the SCOTUS

What they do outside of the Supreme Court, though, pales by comparison to their activism inside the court, and the unintended consequences of their rulings.

The Citizens United decision to give corporations “personhood” in the realm of political speech unleashed a tidal wave of unlimited money, largely from a handful of John Birchesque-Libertarian right billionaires like the Kochs, the Coors, the DeVos, Mellon-Scaifes, Friess and their junior league of multi-millionaires and a TV personality, the Club for Growth.

What did it buy?

• Tea Party routs of so-called RINO (Republican in Name Only) moderates in low-voter turnout mid-term GOP primaries;
• Extremism and gridlock, where compromise is considered capitulation, not good governance as it has throughout U.S. history;
• Damage to the U.S. credit rating, the Fed being a target of Libertarian wrath;
• The wasteful government shut down, a $24B political stunt;
• Hundreds of bills restricting women’s reproductive choice or craftily legislating clinics out of business
• 92 bills restricting voting rights for alleged “voter fraud” whose reality is so small it isn’t even a statistical percentage point, to help the Tea Party limit minority turnout.

All began at the door of the Roberts Court. The ripples continue though…

Other Intended/Unintended Consequences

• It used to be the mob’s province, but now Monsanto and other corporates have used their “personhood” to plead the Fifth Amendment to prevent the government from protecting the American public from potentially harmful substances in our food supply.
• Scientists tell us, to avert a global catastrophe, that 80 percent of the remaining world’s oil supply needs to stay in the ground. Corporate personhood gives Big Oil the ability to spend and lobby at epic levels to suppress alternative energy.
• Political lobbying has soared on both sides of the aisle protecting corporate and large organized interests, often at the expense or personal peril for health and welfare reasons, of the average American.
• The number of independent voters, often cut out of primaries, has soared to 46 percent as Americans have become disaffected with all politics, allowing the 1 percent to dominate the 24 percent of Americans still registered as Republicans.
• Foreign corporations can spend millions buying influence on Capitol Hill for financial and trade policy now, but presumably for any other purpose down road as well, without restriction.

Many of the Roberts SCOTUS other decisions are equally troubling.

Unintended Precedents

Take yesterday’s unanimous decision in McCullen v Coakley, in which the court struck down a Massachusetts law that put safe zones around health clinics that provide abortion services to keep their doors clear of protestors.

Roberts, wrote for the majority:

Petitioners wish to converse with their fellow citizens about an important subject on the public streets and sidewalks — sites that have hosted discussions about the issues of the day throughout history.

Justice Scalia sided with the majority, but mocked the decision as “this Court’s practice of giving abortion-rights advocates a pass when it comes to suppressing the free-speech rights of their opponents.”

“Is it harassment, one wonders,” he wrote in his comment on the decision, “for Eleanor McCullen to ask a woman, quietly and politely, two times, whether she will take literature or whether she has any questions? Three times? Four times? It seems to me far from certain that First Amendment rights can be imperiled by threatening jail time (only at “reproductive health care facilit[ies],” of course) for so vague an offense as “follow[ing] and har­ass[ing].”

Those quiet and polite “conversations,” according to the National Abortion Federation have included:

• 33839 arrests for clinic blockades;
• 6849 violent acts including:

  • 8 murders
  • 17 attempted murders
  • 428 death threats
  • 100 cases of acid thrown on workers or those entering clinics
  • 42 bombings
  • 181 arson incidents
  • 1495 acts of vandalism
  • 663 anthrax/bioterrorism threats
  • 4 kidnappings
  • 399 invasions of buildings
  • 495 acts of trespassing.

In its narrow view of “limited interpretation” the Libertarian-leaning Court put free speech over public safety, which, historically, has been why the court has seen fit to restrict protestors of all stripes to designated areas of a public space.

Why is a health clinic unique in its restrictions on such First Amendment “conversation?” An unintended casualty of the ruling may be challenges to the safe space in front of courthouses and government buildings across America, national political conventions, protests of groups like the Westboro Baptist Church encroaching on soldiers’ funerals, no fly zones around the rebuilt World Trade Center, and even at the Supreme Court itself.

The Value of the Far Right of the Bench

The physical makeup of the country is changing, and the 1 percent white male minority that has ruled this country for much of its history is fighting that change tooth-and-nail.

Bush I & II appointments have been very critical to the success of the 1 percent because they are gutting large sections of social justice and social safety net law without having to answer to a voter.

If voters turn back the Tea Party over the next few elections, the lifetime appointments of the SCOTUS still are a powerful tool to derail or dismantle everything from immigration reform to a living wage.

A Different SCOTUS

In its prior incarnations, the Supreme Court has taken its weeks and months to deliberate on the issues brought before it to consider the broad ramifications of its rulings. The court has leaned to the right and the left at times.

What the SCOTUS historically has not engaged in since the days of the Robber Barons, though, seems to be pattern and practice of the Roberts SCOTUS: Libertarian pro-corporate, anti-government, anti-citizen rulings that serve the most narrow and wealthy of interests.

Those with the check books, secret conclaves, and frequent fundraisers are securing the white male ‘little “c” christian power that these self-same billionaires’ fathers and grandfathers used to rule America from the dawn of the Industrial Age until their self-inflicted demise after the Great Depression and the New Deal.

My shiny two.

“HEDDA, I think it’s time you just shut the f**k up!”

That was Elizabeth Taylor at the premiere of The Sandpiper, back in 1965. Hedda was sitting a few seats behind Elizabeth and Richard Burton. Hopper, a rabid “red-baiter” and supporter of Sen. Joe McCarthy, was complaining loudly that formerly blacklisted Dalton Trumbo was the screenwriter of the latest Liz n’ Dick epic.

Miss Taylor, who had by then survived two major scandals and was no longer bound to a studio, spoke to the columnist in typical salty language. Miss Hopper shut up.

A year later, Hopper — still vital and bitchy and beautiful — suddenly died. La Liz did not wear black.

•SPEAKING OF gossip columnists, I love the news that the weirdly great Tilda Swinton will portray a Hedda/Louella type gossip columnist in a 1950s-era film titled, The Fixer.

It’s about a studio honcho (George Clooney) who “fixes” and covers for misbehaving stars. (Probably based on real-life smarties like Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling.)

Channing Tatum is also set to play a “Gene Kelly” type of character. One assumes this character’s personal life needs “fixing.” (Those of us old enough to recall, heard plenty about various aspects of the wonderfully talented Gene’s life that needed “fixing.” Yeah, but we hear this about almost everyone in the business!)

These days, such people are referred to as “crisis managers.” Now, with almost all celebrities posting carelessly on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, there’s a crisis every few minutes to deal with and/or apologize for.

•BRAD PITT famously and funnily killed Nazis in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. You’d think that would have been enough. But now he is attached to another film about World War II with Shia LaBeouf. It’s titled Fury and Pitt is a soldier in a tank on a mission behind enemy lines.

I wish he and Dame Angelina would just hurry up with the Mr. and Mrs. Smith sequel. (I know we’re not supposed to call her “Dame.” But I want to!)

•THE “King-maker” is a Queen!

It was Diane Sawyer’s idea to groom the charming and energetic David Muir to replace her at ABC World News. These three — David Muir, George Stasinopoulos and Diane — add up to a powerful threesome at ABC News.

Time cannot diminish Diane’s sex-appeal and intellect plus there is the “hard work” factor she has put into her life and career. Long may she wave.

•I’VE HAD many inquiries about our friend Elaine Stritch since she “retired” to her home town of Birmingham, Michigan. Her longtime pal, Julie Keyes, is out there with the great actress now.

Since an operation for stomach cancer, doctors say she has every chance for recovery, but I haven’t been able to get Elaine on to come to the phone.

Word now is she recovered from the operation, but has problems with diabetes and not wanting to eat.

Elaine — please. Eat! Eat! Eat! You fans might want to send a card to 280 Harmon Street, # 172, Birmingham, Mich. 48009. We send our love to this unique and great star.

And thanks to Julie, her # 1 fan, for going out there to be with Elaine and her Michigan relatives.

• WE TOLD you a while back about the Showtime series Penny Dreadful and how it has grown on us. This weekend the spooky goings on end for the season. But it has been re-newed for a second season — with two more episodes added. Unfortunately, it won’t be eligible for Emmy contention (I don’t know why exactly.)

This is a pity, because Eva Green as the tormented, possessed Vanessa is giving an epic performance. But everybody in the cast is terrific, including Timothy Dalton, Reeve Carney Josh Hartnett (a revelation!) and Harry Treadaway, who plays Dr. Victor Frankenstein. He is an adorable, sexy monster-maker. Harry is not to be confused with his twin brother, Luke Treadaway, who is also an actor and model.

•WE GET Mail! “Dear Liz, when I read about your wonderful photo of Garland and Monroe embracing, the first thing that popped into my head was the famously over-medicated Oscar Levant’s quote about being hugged by Judy for the first time. It was, he said:

‘The greatest moment in pharmaceutical history.’

“Go to YouTube and see Judy on the ‘Tonight’ show not long before her death, singing a song called ‘It’s All for You,’ written by her friend Johnny Meyer. She could still amaze with her voice, personality, delivery and the way she gave herself to an audience.

“The same is true of the very last movie scene Marilyn ever filmed, with Dean Martin and Wally Cox, in “Something’s Got to Give.” Marilyn plays with such assurance, skill and charm, you fall in love with her all over again.

“We can kid ourselves, but we shall not see their like again. Best! Constant Reader David Cuthbert.”

•P.S. I have indeed seen Judy’s final Tonight Show appearance — she actually performed two songs, the other being Home for the Holidays. Both kept Garland well within her by-then limited range, but her voice was still warm, resonant, instantly recognizable. And that night at least, she was in total control.

As for Something’s Got to Give, I pride myself on nudging Barry Diller, then the head of 20th Century Fox to look for all the hours of footage of MM’s unfinished movie. (I had been told repeatedly she filmed much more than was rumored.) When I finally saw the scenes, it was like discovering the Holy Grail. I wrote of it, and in a short time, the legend of Marilyn being “un-filmable” and performing poorly were forever vanquished.

Unfortunately, it didn’t do much for director George Cukor’s reputation. His demands for retake after retake, when Monroe had been perfect, looked more like sabotage than directing. (Every time he said, “One more!” she did it slightly different, trying to give him wanted he wanted. And she never lost her temper.)

But my friend George Cukor taught me a valuable lesson. He said: “When writing about me, Liz, don’t call me ‘venerable’ — that’s just another way to say I’m old!”

If you’re anything like us, you spend too many nights dreaming of a chance to see Neil Patrick Harris all dolled up in daisy dukes and stiletto heels, belting out “Sugar Daddy” on the big stage.

Well, Groupon is actually offering a chance to see Broadway’s hot item and recent Tony-winning musical, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” — in the form of a sweepstakes. The coupon (read: entry into a contest) includes a trip to New York, a spot at his packed show and a drink with NPH himself, all for the basement price of $10.

Yup, $10. That has to be the best bargain on the internet.

All proceeds from the sweepstakes go toward Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, which supports people across America living with HIV/AIDS. “I can’t think of greater motivation for giving my best performance than knowing that tickets to ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ are contributing to the cause,” Harris commented. “And that we get to share a stiff cocktail after the show.”

We always knew we liked him.

The endeavor runs until July 3 (the winner will be drawn on Thursday, July 10). Make a donation here and, come August 8, you may find yourself singing along to the cult rock opera with your new BFF Neil. At the very least, you’ll have supported a worthy cause. See the many perks of the prize here and get your hopes up with Harris’ epic Tony performance below.