Tokyo Electric Power Company began dumping more than 11,000 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Monday, mostly to make room in storage containers for increasing amounts of far more contaminated runoff. The water, most of it to be released over two days, contains about 100 times the legal limit of radiation, Tokyo Electric said. The more contaminated water has about 10,000 times the legal limit.
[...]
But the pumping effort is not expected to halt, or even alter, the gushing leak from a large crack in a six-foot-deep pit next to the seawater intake pipes near Reactor No. 2. The leak, discovered Saturday, has been spewing an estimated seven tons of highly radioactive water an hour directly into the ocean; attempts to plug it have so far failed.

Funny thing about those attempts to plug the leak: it’s been scrubbed from the Times page (where I read it this morning), but the Atlantic caught it: they’ve been trying to stop the leak with “sawdust, shredded newspaper and an absorbent powder”. That sounds an awful lot like BP’s “let’s plug our exploded oil well with garbage” strategery, which worked… but only to inspire comedy sketches like this one:

So now we’re on to stage two in humanity’s most recent assault on the oceans: we started by killing the Gulf, and now the executives at TEPCO are making sure the Pacific’s polluted too. Hey, who gives a fuck, right? Fish really isn’t all that good for you anyway, and swimming in the ocean is highly overrated (as is singing in the rain: remember where clouds start, friends, and consider getting a lead-lined slicker.)

As I have discussed in previous emails and calls to your office, your decision to support the president’s extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans was a bad idea. I did not know that it actually endangered Pennsylvania residents however: why did you, a senator whose state is plagued with crumbling highways, roads, railways and bridges near collapse, vote in favor of a bill that ended the Build America Bonds program?

Build America Bonds (BABs), a variety of municipal bonds that receive favorable tax treatment, were created in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Unlike traditional tax-exempt municipal bonds, BABs are taxable and attractive to investors like pension funds that do not benefit from tax-exempt bonds. States, counties and cities issue the bonds for infrastructure projects, and the federal government pays 35 percent of the interest. The federal subsidy greatly reduces the borrowing costs for state and local governments.

Even before the recession, the American Society of Civil Engineers calculated that the U.S. needed to spend $2.2 trillion over five years not only for new freight and passenger infrastructure but also for maintenance and repair of crumbling bridges, highways, railroads, inland waterways and ports. Infrastructure spending, which would be necessary in any event, is all the more urgent during a near-depression like the Great Recession.”

You voted to end that program. Why are you deliberately putting Pennsylvanians in physical danger? Here is the American Society of Civil Engineers 2010 Report card for Pennsylvania’s infrastructure:

Items of note, Senator:

“Of Pennsylvania’s 22,280 bridges, 27% are considered structurally deficient and 17% are deemed functionally obsolete.” They get a C.

“About 39% (302) of the state’s “high hazard” dams—dams whose failure would cause probable loss of human life and substantial property damage — are considered deficient.” They get a C-.

“Pennsylvania faces a required investment of $15.5 billion over the next 20 years to replace aging facilities and comply with safe drinking water regulations.” D+

“The average Corps of Engineers’ rating for Pennsylvania’s locks is 2.35, or a D+, and there is no long-term replacement strategy for aging waterways infrastructure.” Another D+.

“International Roughness Index statistics show that 38% of Pennsylvania’s roads are rated fair or poor. Pennsylvania’s highway network (40,000 state and 76,000 local miles) ranks as 5th largest in the nation for the number of state-owned highways… Truck traffic on Pennsylvania’s 1,754 miles of interstate roads is more than double the national average, and many of the state’s roads are at or exceed their design capacity.” That got a D-.

In addition, transit, storm water, and waste water all scored in the D range.

Senator, could you explain why you voted against Pennsylvanians’ interests and in favor of the wealthiest Americans? Just asking.

Brendan Skwire

UPDATED: Matt at Casey’s office, who is a great arguer and understand the concept of “making a case” says that the BAB was set to expire anyway, and that its exclusion from the tax cut capitulation isn’t a negative. I am not so sure. It sounds to me like someone wanted the BAB renewal in there quite a lot:

A dispute between Democrats and Republicans over the continuation of the Build America Bond program and a sharp drop in Treasury prices slammed the U.S. municipal bond market on Tuesday.

Much of the downward pull was because of weaker Treasuries prices, according to Chris Mauro, a muni market strategist at RBC Capital Markets, but the battle over extending BABs legislation was an underlying negative as well.
[...]
Congressional Republicans will block any inclusion of Build America Bonds, a taxable bond program popular with states, cities and other muni issuers, in the tax deal they clinched with President Barack Obama, a Republican aide said on Tuesday.

The dispute underscores the tension between Democrats, who feel they were left out of the deal extending Bush-era tax cuts that Obama spelled out Monday night, and Republicans.

Sounds to me like no one fought for it. Senator Casey has apparently written a letter urging its inclusion in the bill, which coupled with the language about “a dispute” kind of makes that whole “it was going to expire anyway” line ring false.

Imagine that, a politician’s office lying to constituents.

more here. Is Jimmy McMillan crazy? Probably, but he’s a much nicer form of crazy than those awful teabagger people, who want kids to starve, people to get sick and die, and the elderly to go hungry and homeless.

Via.

You’re going to be sick.

Via Susie:

What BP is claiming is that if fishermen choose not to talk part in the oil spill cleanup, BP will consider that as potential income declined and deduct it from their claims.

In other words, if you didn’t want to risk your health and expose yourself to their toxic waste, you’re going to suffer financially as a result.

I read Susie Madrak’s blog EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Why? Because she’s almost always right, ahead of the curve, and has insights most other bloggers don’t have.

Around the 6:33 mark, the narrator/filmer, John Wathen, comes to a pod of 36 dolphins stranded in oil, “struggling just to breathe”. Another 18 are discovered later, and then A GODDMAN FUCKING SPERM WHALE TRAPPED IN OIL UP TO ITS GODDAMN BLOWHOLE. “Across his back we could see red patches of crude as if he’d been basted for boiling,” says the narrator, before cutting to ANOTHER pod of dead and dying dolphins.

It’s one of the saddest things I have ever seen, and makes me wonder why, if God exists, He hasn’t struck down humanity yet. Or as my buddy Tim put it, “we’re the new dinosaurs, this is our greed-driven asteroid.”

Fuck you BP. fuck you Tony Hayward. Fuck You Carl-Henric Svanberg. I hope all of you die slow, miserable deaths. I hope the good people of the Gulf have the capacity to kidnap one of you, stuff you into a burlap sack and keelhaul you through the muck before exercising their new SCOTUS-decided individual rights to bear arms.

And for that matter, FUCK YOU US GOVERNMENT for letting BP take the lead in this, for allowing them to harass and chase of journalists, for allowing them to continue to lie and cover-up, and for believing them in the first place when they have 760 fucking safety violations.

Fuck all ya’ll. YOU FUCKING SUCK SHIT YOU ASSHOLE FUCKING SHITBAGS.

I never get tired of these re-dubbed Hitler videos.

I was invited the following week to go behind “enemy lines.” They gave me, of all people, security clearance to go into the base of operations meetings in Venice, Louisiana eight days in. Open door invitation to sit like a fly on the wall. Can you believe it? It’s really going on. They also gave me security clearance to go up to the Homer Incident Command Post which is over the entire region of Louisiana. I’ve been in Coast Guard planes all the way out to the site itself. Helicopters. Boat rides. I have been everywhere that anybody could ever want to go to get an inside look at what’s really going on. …

about a week and half in, I learned what “ponies and balloons” meant. “Ponies and balloons” means that every time an official is headed anywhere near here, they get a heads up.. All assets are deployed into the hardest hit areas. The official comes in, flies over, “good job, fellas” (waves), pats ‘em on the back. When that official disappears out of the hardest hit area, so does 75%-80% of the response.

It’s happening. It’s happening every day. I’m watching it. I’ve seen it. I don’t agree with it. Anyone in this room’s not gonna agree with it. Anyone in our great nation’s not gonna agree with it.

We are expendable to these people. We do not matter.

Watch the whole thing:

I look over the Gulf and I notice that there’s big swarms of birds. That’s not unusual. I figured they was diving on bait. But what where they diving into oil sheen? Because birds don’t know any better. We’re driving out towards the birds. I wanted to see what they were diving into. I wanted to know. As we get out to the birds, I don’t know if you’ve been out on the water much, if you’ve seen a big school of fish. They have like a boil on the water. It looks like a pot boiling. The fish boil the water with their moves. As we drove into it, there was big Bull Reds (Bull Mouths?) with their mouths on top of the water , laying sideways , swimming upside down in a circle. Again, hundreds of thousands of them, school after school after school. They were dying. They were so disoriented that they were running into the side of my boat.

There’s something evil going on in the Gulf, something larger than BP.

[I]f this stuff does not stop guys, this is gonna go global. It will destroy 1/3 of the world’s water. Bank on it. They do not stop this, ever ocean is connected.

I’m gonna post as many as I can: my friend is receiving about 10 per day, and my inbox is filling up almost as fast as the Gulf.

Here’s some classic CYA. It’s a photo release for pictures of rehabilitated and released wildlife. Of course, if BP and Deepwater had been following safety regulations, the wildlife wouldn’t have needed to be rehabilitated to begin with…

I’m going to eschew blockquotes for this series: they may html text hard to read, and until i can figure out how to change the color, I want it to be easy for my readers to visit any links.
******

From: Deepwater Horizon Response External Affairs
Reply-To: Deepwater Horizon Response External Affairs
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2010 11:11:08 -0700 (PDT)
To: [redacted]
Subject: PHOTO RELEASE: Rescued Wildlife Rehabilitated and Released

PHOTO RELEASE: Rescued Wildlife Rehabilitated and Released
Key contact numbers

* Report oiled shoreline or request volunteer information: (866) 448-5816
* Submit alternative response technology, services or products: (281) 366-5511
* Submit your vessel for the Vessel of Opportunity Program: (281) 366-5511
* Submit a claim for damages: (800) 440-0858
* Report oiled wildlife: (866) 557-1401
* Medical support hotline: (888) 623-0287

Deepwater Horizon Incident
Joint Information Center Phone: (985) 902-5231
(985) 902-5240
Robert Love of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and Dr. Sharon Taylor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, prepare to release a cattle egret at the Sherburne Wildlife Management Area in Ramah, La., June 3, 2010. The bird was found oiled on the coast of Louisiana then cleaned and cared for at a rehabilitation center in Fort Jackson, La., before being released back into the wild. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Luke Pinneo.

RAMAH, La. – Dr. Rowan Gould, Acting Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, releases a cattle egret at the Sherburne Wildlife Management Area in Ramah, La., as Robert Love of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and Dr. Sharon Taylor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service look on, June 3, 2010. The bird was found oiled on the coast of Louisiana then cleaned and cared for at a rehabilitation center in Fort Jackson, La., before being released back into the wild. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Luke Pinneo.

AMAH, La. – A cattle egret wades in the marshes of the Sherburne Wildlife Management Area in Ramah, La., after being freed here by wildlife officials. The bird was found oiled on the coast of Louisiana, then cleaned and cared for at a rehabilitation center in Fort Jackson, La., before being released back into the wild. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Luke Pinneo.

I realize the linked text is difficult to read, but at the moment I don’t have the time to download and upload every singe photo. But do, if you can, follow the links, as they are just so touching. All of these cleaned up birds, and the smiling people setting them free, it just warms your heart.

Until you realize this is all part of a PR scheme by BP, and they’re hiding the real extent of the damage and people’s lives are ruined forever and the Gulf is never coming back despite all the shiny happy people holding hands, and then you want to throttle someone.

As you can see, most of southern England is destroyed, including the English Channel. Belgium’s coastline is also ruined, and the Netherlands are threatened as well. Meanwhile, northeast France is just a disaster area. And if you zoom out farther, you can see that if you rotated the slop counterclockwise, it would be almost the exact size and shape as Portugal.

Perhaps Tony would be a little less flippant about the “very modest”, “relatively tiny” when compared to “the very big ocean” mess if it was in his backyard, but I doubt it.

Tony Hayward should have to spend the rest of his life cleaning up our beaches with a goddamn toothbrush, and even that’s too good for him.