Cars and Chemistry!

I see today that VP Lutz of GM is saying okay to the car czar. Tacit approval to have an overseer. How bizarre has this story become? We piss away money at banks and insurance companies, they continue to get bonuses for failing and auto makers have to walk over hot coals on their knees to get a loan. And southern states are pissed (Thanks, Senator Shelby of Alabama) because their non-union auto workers for foreign companies must be protected. In the 60s and 70s the mandate (no Jeffrey Gannon jokes, honest) to buy American was a conservative dictum. Nowadays, not so much. I think we have proven that fiscal conservatism really is not about free market economy, but free money for the upper class. The bailout has proved that. A real free marketer would say let the banks and economy go down! But get a chance to bust the unions and the chops of the car companies, just to show you can't push around money men and power brokers, and they will grind down those industries. Makes no sense. Except if you look at it as a power play. and it avoids the real issue of health care adding to the expense of every car. It will be resolved when a real President takes over. Will everyone like the resolution? Probably not, but at least some Adult will make a decision! The elephant in the room is health care costs borne by every employer, but no one wants to say it yet. The auto industry is asking for a LOAN for pity's sake. and are willing to accept strings. But that is not obsequeious enough for right-wingers who want to bust the UAW. Or for Democrats who feel the industry must be punished for piss-poor vision. Time to get over our petty squabbles and realize we need the industrial base.

On another subject completely--

The fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta/San Francisco estuary are disappearing. So much so that salmon fishing had to be stopped this year in hopes of possibly repopulating the salmon run, which dropped from hundreds of thousand salmon to less than 40,000 fish.

Surprise, surprise. Pollution is a cause, as is the continual diversion of water to Southern CA, where it used for drinking water and crop irrigation (take away the water and America goes hungry, period). Heck, the canals are larger than any river in CO and WY, except the Colorado River. In the long run, the water is getting so salty, eventually it will kill the land in the long run (my dire prediction, no references and this is based on salinity results I see at water and wastewater plants extrapolated over 100 years). Of note in an article in today's Sacramento Bee:

"If the fish living in this water are not healthy and are passing contaminants to their young, what is happening to the people who use the water, are exposed to the same chemicals or eat the fish," Ostrach said in a news release Monday.

These contaminants are PCBs, which have been outlawed for 30+ years and are still influencing the food chain, pesticides (which are continually being aerial sprayed over fields in CA--can't imagine aerial sprayers ever missing the crops and getting it in the water, not from flooded rice fields next to the rivers, or that pilots may overspray just to charge more. I am sure they are major environmentalists who just make their living spraying poison.) and fire retardants! Yes, those chemicals we use to keep babies clothes and furniture from burning are now in the food chain. and in such large numbers that it is showing up in breast milk routinely in SF. Better living through chemistry, eh!

The complete article is very interestig and can be found here.

rojo