WELCOME TO OPINIONS BASED ON FACTS (OBOF)
&
THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)
YEAR THREE
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Name
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Published
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OVERVIEW
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OBOF & TYMHM
PART 14
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Dec
18, 2012
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OBOF & TYMHM
PART 15
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Jan. 02, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM
PART 16
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Jan. 08, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART
16 EXTRA
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Jan. 11, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM
PART 17
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Jan. 15, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM
PART 18
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Jan. 22, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM
PART 19
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Jan. 29, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM
PART 20
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Feb. 05, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM
PART 21
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Feb. 14, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM
PART 22
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Feb. 20, 2013
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IN THIS
ISSUE
1. Opening comments.
2. How would you describe Congress.
3. Crisis, Crisis, Crisis.
4. Ayn Rand: Have you heard of her?
This one is
real important.
5. Important matter that Rand
teaching is affecting.
6. Bill Moyer - - Democracy for Dollars.
7. Climate movement & tar sands pipe
line.
Don't miss
this one. In fact, most in this
posting is real important for you.
OPENING
COMMENTS
Not yet perfect, but I'm improving on the time of my posting. Last week I was two days late and this week
just one day late. Maybe next week, I
can get it to you on time, which is suppose to be on Tuesday. Personal note, which probably is of no
interest to you, but my Son got a knee replacement last week. He is doing real good, for which I am very
thankful.
Folks, the content of this posting is really important. You need to really read all of it. In fact, part of it is possibly the most
important news that I have ever brought to your attention.
~~~
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE
CONGRESS?
By
Floyd Bowman
Publisher
"Opinions Based on Facts"
Published
February 19, 2013
Did you ever stop to think that you really don't know anything? You don't even know your own name. Somebody told you that was your name and you
just believed them.
Did you ever stop to think that there actually is no such thing as
weather seasons? You see, there is no
winter, because it is just a lack of summer and there is no summer, because it
is just a lack of winter. There is no
autumn or spring, because they are made up of a combination of summer and
winter and since there is no summer or winter there can't be an autumn or
spring.
Now, none of that makes any sense at all, does it? Well I think that is a good description of
Congress. They don't know anything and
it shows everyday.
~~~
CRISIS
CRISIS CRISIS
Yes, crisis and crisis, one right after another. That is what we, as a Government, have been
facing for the past four years and into the fifth. If you go back and check facts, unbiased
facts, you will see that, without exception, the crisis has been caused due to
the refusal of the Republican Party to compromise, even a little bit. The United States
Anyone, even Republicans, if they will honestly look at facts, will know
that the Legislators of the Republican Party definitely care more about trying
everything they can to make President Obama look bad and fail, than they care
about the good of our country. I think I know why and what is behind this "Govern by
Crisis" policy of the Republican Party.
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH
AYN RAND
OR
HAVE YOU EVEN HEARD OF HER?
First, and I hate
to say it, but many believe as I do, that they just can't accept a black man as
President, so, they try everything they can to be able to say that a black man
just can't handle this job.
However, I think there is something more
profound behind the scene. More importantly,
Allen W. Smith Ph.D. thinks, Ayn Rand's philosophy and teaching is the basis
for what is happening to the Republican Party and our country.
So, what is Ayn Rand's
philosophy and who is she? Dr. Smith
recently wrote me a basic introduction to Ayn Rand and it is enough to excite
and create a tremendous curiosity in me.
I first heard a little bit about her back in September or October 2012,
when she was mentioned relating to Vice-President candidate Paul Ryan and his
thoughts.
I am providing Dr,
Smith's short introduction to you now and I am going to pursue more detail
information in this regard. I am going
to get the book "The Virtue of
Selfishness" and as I learn more about her scary thoughts, I will be
passing them on to you in the future. Better
yet, you might want to think about getting the book yourself. This could be the
basis for overthrowing Democracy.
Following
from Dr. Smith:
I have
recently discovered a new avenue to research that helps explain the thinking of
the crazy extreme conservatives? Do you know who Ayn Rand was?
She was born and raised in Russia
before coming to the United
States
I will
paste below some of my other writing about her.
The
greatest threat to Social Security is the fact that there is a strong,
well-organized movement to get rid of Social Security. These Social Security haters are determined to
destroy Social Security, just as they would kill a poisonous snake. Most of them are disciples, of Ayn Rand,
whose novels Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, along with her
nonfiction book, The Virtue of Selfishness, have garnered a very large
following, including Paul Ryan, who almost came within a heartbeat of becoming
President of the United States.
Alan Greenspan, who was an associate of Ayn Rand for 20
years, first brought the movement to Washington when a fellow Rand associate,
Martin Anderson, recommended Greenspan to Nixon for the position of Economic
Advisor to the President. Given their
closeness, it is not surprising that Greenspan had Ayn Rand standing beside him
during his swearing in ceremony at the White House.
Greenspan later chaired The National Commission on Social Security Reform where he
helped lay the foundation for the great Social Security theft. Still later, Greenspan served as Chairman of
the Federal Reserve System for more than 18 years. Among other mistakes, during his tenure at
the Fed, Greenspan is widely blamed for contributing to the Financial Meltdown
of 2008 by keeping interest rates too low for too long and allowing the housing
bubble to grow.
During his years with Ayn Rand, Greenspan wrote articles
for her periodical, The Objectivist.
He wrote the following words in an article in July 1966:
The
welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate
the wealth of productive members of society to support a wide variety of
welfare schemes.
Other prominent people who have expressed admiration for
Ayan Rand and her ideas include: Ronald Reagan, John Boehner, Senator Ron
Johnson, Ron Paul, Senator Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Newt
Gingrich, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, and many others.
Ayn Rand died in 1982, but the movement based on her
philosophy is even stronger today than when she was still alive, and it is
picking up steam. Ayn Rand’s 1964 book
entitled, The Virtue of Selfishness, sold 400,000 copies during
the first four months after publication.
Half a century later, in 2013, it is still selling at a hefty pace. In 2011, Atlas Shrugged sold 445,000
copies, the second strongest sales year in the novel’s 54-year history.
Floyd,
the above examples should give you an idea of the philosophy currently being
expounded by right-wing conservatives. I recently read a new biography
about Ayn Rand, and I am currently reading Rand 's
book, The Virtue of Selfishness. Her
ideas are shocking. Even more shocking is the fact that people like Alan
Greenspan, Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Justice Clarence Thomas
and many others follow her ideas.
Friend
Allen
~~~
ANY
IMPORTANT MATTER
THAT IS
HAPPENING RIGHT NOW
THAT FALLS
IN LINE WITH AYN RAND
TEACHING?
In just nine (9) days,
the sequester will go into effect, if Congress does nothing to stop it. President Obama has given them a good plan to
save all the terrible problems that are going to occur, if they don't move. He has said "I will talk with anyone
that wants to, but time is running out."
What will happen if
they don't act? First, it devastates the
middle class, which is right down the line of Rand
teaching. President Obama laid it out
plain today as to what the results will be.
He said "These cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they
will hurt our economy. They will add
hundreds of thousands to the unemployment role.
People will lose their jobs.
Emergency responders, like the ones that are here today, their ability
to communities to respond to and recover from disasters, will be degraded. Border Patrol agents will see their hours
reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases
and let criminals go. Airport Controllers
and airport security will see cut backs, which means more delays at airports
across the country."
In addition, we are
talking about thousands of teachers laid off across America
The President
continued, "We have a few days. Congress can do the right thing. We can avert just one more Washington Washington
Republicans in
Congress continue to make artificial deadlines and refuse to meet them.
~~~
Bill Moyers Essay:
Democracy
for Dollars
February
15, 2013
Welcome. At the State of the Union speech, there’s
always more than meets the eye. Just out
of sight is the reality of how we are governed. The House of Representatives,
where Congress gathers to hear the President, used to be known as “The People’s
House.” But money power owns the lease
now and runs the joint from hidden back rooms.
You're
looking at the most expensive Congress money can buy. The House races last fall
cost over one billion dollars. It took
more than $700 million to elect just a third of the Senate. The two presidential candidates raised more
than a billion a piece. The website Politico added it all up to find that the
total number of dollars spent on the 2012 election exceeded the number of
people on this planet -- some seven billion.
Most of
it didn’t come from the average Joe and Jane. Sixty percent of all super PAC donations came
from just 159 people. And the top 32 super PAC donors gave an average of 9.9
million dollars. Think how many teachers
that much money could hire.
We’ll
never actually know where all of the money comes from. One third of the billion
dollars from outside groups was “dark money,” secret funds anonymously funneled
through fictional “social welfare” organizations. Those are front groups, created to launder the
money inside the deep pockets.
And don't
let anyone ever tell you the money didn't make a difference. More than 80 percent of House candidates and
two-thirds of Senate candidates who outspent their general election opponents
won, and were present and counted as the new Congress prepared to hear the
President. Remember, money doesn't
necessarily corrupt legislators, but it certainly tilts them.
HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN
BOEHNER at the State of the Union: Members
of Congress, I have the high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you,
the President of the United
States
BILL MOYERS: So let's share some snapshots from the State of the Union . That’s
Speaker of the House John Boehner, of course. He's led his party to protect Wall Street from
oversight and accountability. The
finance, insurance, and real estate industries gave him more than three million
dollars last year.
Eric
Cantor is the Republican majority leader in the House. Among his biggest
donors--Goldman Sachs, masterminds of the mortgage-backed securities that
almost sank the world economy. Cantor’s
also the third largest recipient of money from the National Rifle Association
in the House, which is one reason he's such a "big gun" there.
Senator
Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, may be in hot water. He's currently under investigation for
allegations that he improperly intervened with government agencies on behalf of
a big donor.
And
there's Fred Upton, Republican from Michigan
Senator
Kirsten Gillibrand and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrats of New York, have Wall
Street as a constituent and patron. Her
biggest contributors include JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and
law firms that have advised them. His
top donors include securities and investment firms, lawyers and legal firms,
and lobbyists.
And there
are fleeting glances of some familiar faces here tonight seen recently on our
broadcast. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader in the
Senate, Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah, and Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana
As for
our president--by attending a fundraiser on the average of every 60 hours
during his bid for a second term, he once again broke the record for bringing
home the bacon. Although the money power
that controls Congress could thwart everything Obama proposed in his State of
the Union address, there was not a single word in his speech about taming the
power of private money over public policy.
And, so
it goes: The golden rule of politics. He
who has the gold, rules.
~~~
Climate Movement Overlooks
People Who Live Near Tar Sands Refineries
Ngoc Nguyen
New America Media / Interview
Published: Tuesday 19 February 2013
Editor's Note: As many as 40,000 protesters from 30
states participated in rallies Sunday in Washington, D.C., urging President
Obama to curb pollution from fossil fuels, including tar sands; nix the
proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would bring more tar sands crude from Canada
to refineries in Texas; and take bold action to address the climate crisis.
By some estimates,
it was the biggest protest march for climate change action in the nation's
history. NAM’s Ngoc Nguyen spoke with
Denny Larson, the executive director of Global Community Monitor, who was at
the rallies in D.C. with members of a tar sands refinery coalition whose
members live near oil refineries. Larson
says tar sands crude is already being refined in the U.S.
Why
did you and other members of the Tar Sands Refinery Collaborative participate
in the climate rallies on Sunday?
We want to make sure that people who are part of movement
for fixing the climate problem understand that number one, tar sands are
already in the U.S. and affecting millions of people even without the Keystone
[XL] and most people within the climate movement still don’t understand that. So, we want to get everyone in the climate movement
educated and on board to support the tar sands refining community.
It’s not just about stopping the Keystone [XL]
pipeline…which we all support. We need the climate movement to start paying
attention to people of color communities on the fenceline of tar sands
refineries, because we need a lot of action out of the EPA enforcement division
and Department of Justice, because we believe a lot of the pollution impacting
the neighborhoods is illegal and perhaps criminal and deserves bold action on
the part of the community.
Where
is tar sands crude currently being refined in the U.S.
The Midwest right now is the hub of where most of the
stuff is processed and then with the reversal of some of the lines in
Texas…places like Port Arthur and Houston are beginning to receive significant
amounts of tar sands, but they are waiting for the southern leg of the Keystone
[XL] to be completed so that they can bring more in.
What
about in the San Francisco
Bay
[Forest Ethics] identified that Chevron [in Richmond ] and Tesoro [in Martinez
Why
now? What opportunity exists now in
terms of pushing Pres. Obama to address climate change?
He has four years now where he doesn’t have to worry
about election politics…obviously that was a big problem that hindered a lot of
environmental initiatives including a number by [U.S.
What
actions should he take?
We want to define his broad statement about doing
something about the climate. We want
that to say 1) no Keystone [XL]; 2) crack down on tar sands oil refineries processing
the stuff right now; and look very seriously at expansion permits for doing tar
sands. And consider the types of
environmental requirements put upon them to truly make them safe and clean… The
third thing is, we need to reverse the flow, it’s flowing in today on rail and
ship and pipeline and we need to set a course to send it back and we’re not
going to take it anymore…we’ll get it from somewhere else because we’re going
to bring our consumption of oil dramatically down and increase our clean energy
to replace it.
I’ve
heard it argued that even if the U.S. rejects tar sands, it will be bought and
processed elsewhere in the world, such as Asia, so we wouldn’t reduce carbon
pollution overall, and we’d miss the opportunity to cash in on the boom.
We’re going to miss out on an opportunity to poison
millions of people and I think that’s an opportunity we should pass on. I don’t think it’s an opportunity at all. It’s an opportunity for destruction. We shouldn’t be cashing in on stuff like that
that pollutes and tears apart communities. Like in Detroit ,
that expansion [of the Marathon refinery]
there has literally torn apart the community. It got so bad [Marathon ]
started to have to buy up neighborhoods from the solutions in the refinery, but
then they are drawing a line in the community. [They say] these two blocks, we’ll move you
out and these two blocks you have to stay. It created an incredible amount of social
problems in southwest Detroit
You
want the president to take specific actions, but what about broader climate
change legislation such as the cap and trade proposals that failed in 2010?
What they need in those refinery communities is, for
example, they need EPA to really come in and investigate and crack down on
what’s happening there in the way of toxic releases, the fires, explosions,
flaring, wastewater discharges traveling underneath the neighborhood burping up
benzene in the sewers. There are very
real, immediate emergency room stuff that needs to be done immediately so
that’s the primary importance to people in their day to day life. The climate change legislation is great and
I’m sure we will support it but it’s always the stuff at the fenceline that
kind of gets forgotten, particularly when the big movement starts and people
think about the big picture, the long term…but they tend to leave the fenceline
stuff behind and forget about it….these are the people most at risk from tar
sands.
There
are many people who live around industrial polluters, so who are the “fenceline”
communities? How many people are affected?
Back in the late 1990s, the U.S. EPA looked at all the …
polluting types of industries…paper mills, power plants, everything, and they
ranked them on objective criteria…based on the toxic release inventory, toxicity
of releases, proximity of people and permit violations and by far and away, oil
refineries outranked all other industries as being the worst.
Here’s the names of some cities that have a lot of
refineries…Houston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area,
Philadelphia, a whole bank down the East Coast…there’s a lot of people near
refineries.
How
does processing tar sands crude increase pollution that harms health?
When you bring in tar sands, you bring in additional
pollution, additional accidents, additional flaring, additional dumping of
toxins into the wastewater, additional solid waste pollution because tar sands
contains more contaminants than other crude oil, so you have to pull out and
dump them on somebody so it’s dirty in, dirty out.
What
impact does this have on the people who live there?
[You see] more asthma attacks, respiratory problems,
heart attacks, strokes, because of extra particulate pollution, cancers,
childhood cancers…adult onset asthma. A whole variety of health problems. Also, it is reaching further, reaching
neighborhoods that weren’t impacted before. It’s getting out and creating more
problems for more people, because you’ve got more impact.
The
president has said he wants to tap our domestic sources of oil and gas. Should we be moving toward cleaner-burning
natural gas?
That investment is going in the wrong direction…it’s
going into fossil fuels, it shouldn’t be going into gas production, it’s not
really a clean energy source, because if you go into the production areas,
you’ll see how contaminated they are. The
contamination from the production of gas, it’s just as dangerous and now with
fracking…I’d argue more than oil production, so if you add in the life cycle of
gas, it’s a dirty fossil fuel like the rest of them. We shouldn’t be investing in that. We should be investing solar, wind and truly
renewable clean energy.
2 comments on
"Climate Movement Overlooks People Who Live Near Tar Sands
Refineries"
February 19, 2013 9:45pm
ooh, ooh that smell, can"t you smell that smell, when
i grew up in Holyoke Massachusetts
CASnyder
February 19, 2013 12:22pm
February 19, 2013 12:22pm
The indigenous nations of North
America have some of the poorest people in the world, who are
hungry for income. They are also located
in prime concentrations of these energy "reserves" or in the prime
pathways for moving the energy to market via pipelines. If the tar sands and
fracking industries were even as clean as they claim, you can bet those nations
would be allowing those industries in so they could lift people out of poverty.
But those industries are accidents
waiting to happen, and indigenous nations value clean air, clean water, and
clean soils more, for once you've lost those, you have nothing. All money is
transient, the earth is eternal, and we must preserve it in a habitable state
for future generations. Clean burning
gas isn't clean when it poisons aquifers where it is mined.
~~~
If the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, I'll talk with you
again next Tuesday February 26, 2013.
God Bless you all
&
God Bless the United States of America
Floyd
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