Alas, BP PR guys, one can know simply by looking
BP has said repeatedly that there is no reliable way to measure the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by looking at the oil gushing out of the pipe. But scientists say there are actually many proven techniques for doing just that.
Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry.
A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day -- much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.
The method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent.NPR
The over-looked, uncounted, long-term unemployed
Rampell's story focuses on Cynthia Norton, 52, an administrative assistant in Jacksonville who's been unable to find work for the past two years because companies have been shedding clerical workers during the recession and then finding that they can get along fine without them even when the economy improves. So Norton is working as a Wal-Mart cashier and she's not happy about it:The rich prosper until they prosper too well
Because of the Wal-Mart job, she has been ineligible for unemployment benefits, and she says she made too much money to qualify for food stamps or Medicaid last year.
“If you’re not a minority, or not handicapped, or not a young parent, or not a veteran, or not in some other certain category, your hope of finding help and any hope of finding work out there is basically nil,” Ms. Norton says. “I know. I’ve looked.”
I'm not quite sure what conclusions to draw from this, but the recession's extreme effect on a small class of long-term unemployed seems like it deserves more attention than it usually gets. What's more, if that class is mostly 50-something workers, not 20-somethings, that's significant too. Politically, it might explain why tea party activism — which skews older — has taken off so strongly, and economically it might explain....what?Mother Jones
It is rich to hear demands for sacrifices and lectures about “the people” living beyond their means, particularly from the likes of …[NY Times columnist Thomas] Friedman … who is paid $50,000 per speaking engagement, is married to the heir of a multi-billion dollar real estate fortune. According to the Washingtonian magazine,the couple owns “a palatial 11,400-square-foot house” in suburban Washington, DC, valued in 2006 at $9.3 million.
In these circles it is taken for granted that massive cuts must be imposed on the living standards of the working class, but not a word is said about the hundreds of billions that are funneled into the personal fortunes of the financial aristocracy and the subordination of the entire economy to increasing their piles of wealth.
The events of the last several years have revealed to the world that the greatest burden on society is not ordinary working people but the anti-social activities of an unproductive and parasitic financial elite. The grotesque consumption and appropriation of social wealth by this oligarchy is not a minor factor in the crisis of the global capitalist system itself.
The bankrupting of whole countries—chiefly through the transferring of the bad debts of the financial speculators onto the books of various governments—is being used to demand austerity from workers and ever-greater riches for the elite.
[…]
The unbridled greed of America’s ruling elite—and the complete subservience of the political establishment, from Obama on down, to its needs—can only be compared to the ancien régime in France. The parasitism and extravagance of the aristocracy became a major factor in the country’s breakdown, and ultimately the eruption of the French Revolution in 1789.
Workers must reject the demand for austerity. The working class did not create this crisis and must not pay for it. Instead, the ill-gotten gains of the ruling elite must be confiscated and used to meet the interests of society as a whole, instead of gutting social programs and destroying jobs.
This must include a multi-trillion dollar program of public works to put the unemployed to work—at decent wages and full medical care—to rebuild the cities and suburbs, repair the nation’s infrastructure and provide high quality housing, medical care and education for all.
In the midst of the Great Depression, the founder of the Fourth International, Leon Trotsky, argued in the Transitional Program that it is “impossible to take a single serious step in the struggle against monopolistic despotism and capitalistic anarchy—which supplement one another in their work of destruction—if the commanding posts of the banks are left in the hands of predatory capitalists. In order to create a unified system of investment and credits, along a rational plan corresponding to the interests of the entire people, it is necessary to merge all the banks into a single national institution. Only the expropriation of the private banks and the concentration of the entire credit system in the hands of the state will provide the latter with the necessary actual, i.e., material, resources—and not merely paper and bureaucratic resources—for economic planning.”
The nationalization of the banks, however, will produce positive results, Trotsky explained, “only if the state power itself passes completely from the hands of the exploiters into the hands of the toilers.”WSWS
Also
Population explosion: just don’t mention itNation’s 10 top crooks also its 10 least punished
Lizards that survived the dinosaurs disappearing fast
posted by Tom Nadeau at 8:11 AM
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