From WizBang: Dr. Ann Maest is a managing scientist at Straus Consulting, and she’s the go to expert on all things groundwater. In the press release announcing her reappointment to the National Academy of Sciences, they mention that she is focused on the environmental effects of mining and petroleum extraction and production, and, more recently, on the effects of climate change on water quality.
Maest is in high demand as an expert for those looking to stop oil and mineral exploration. She’s also heavily used by the federal government, even though new details about her past work are coming to light as a result of a lawsuit. From The New York Times:
An environmental consulting firm named as a defendant in a racketeering suit filed by Chevron Corp. over a landmark pollution lawsuit in Ecuador is continuing to work on another blockbuster case: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill investigation.
Boulder, Colo.-based Stratus Consulting, a long-term contractor with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal agencies, is gathering and analyzing data concerning the Gulf of Mexico spill.
Chevron is suing those behind the Ecuadorian case including: the lead attorney Steven Donziger; Stratus Consulting; and Maest. As part of their lawsuit, Chevron obtained through discovery, outtakes from a documentary film called “Crude” that show Donziger and Maest colluding to ignore their own scientific findings and make up some new unsubstantiated claims.
China will impose retaliatory duties on US car imports in the latest sign of trade friction between the world’s two largest economies.
In a statement, China’s commerce ministry said on Wednesday that it was taking action in response to damage to its car industry from US “dumping and subsidies”. The move will affect several larger vehicles popular in China, including sport utility vehicles made by Germany’s BMW and Mercedes-Benz brands at their US plants. Shares of BMW and Daimler, which owns Mercedes, fell 5 per cent and 3 per cent respectively on Wednesday.
China overtook the US in 2009 as the world’s largest vehicle market, and sales there account for a substantial chunk of profits for BMW and Mercedes, who build the SUVs they sell globally in North America.
So as a result, what are “foreign” manufacturers doing? They’re building factories in China for their vehicles. GM, the largest seller of “foreign” cars in China, builds almost all of its vehicles on Chinese soil. Employing Chinese workers in the plants. Employing Chinese to build the factories themselves.
I say: quid pro quo. China wants to break into the US market with its vehicles. I recommend a good 20% tariff on their conveyances as well. It’s no secret that Chinese automobile showrooms will be opening up within another year or so on US soil.
Quid pro quo: if the Chinese want to sell cars here, they build their factories here using American contractors, materials, designers, plumbers, electricians. Then they staff those factories with American workers. Because, after all, just what is it that the Chinese haven’t stolen or hacked or reverse-engineered from the US?
The former Soviet carrier known as the Varyag (keel laid as the Riga) now carries a Chinese flag after having been purchased for $20 million dollars at auction by a civilian front for the Chinese navy, then towed to China. News indicated its bulk was meant to be “only a casino.”
At 1,000 feet and 68,000 tons, the carrier — likely named Shi Lang — will be the first major extension of Chinese sea power.
As was said in the 60s: “ass, gas or grass; nobody rides for free.”
Another axiom immured in stone: you can count on the Chinese to lie.
WASHINGTON – It’s the law in D.C. – recycle or face a fine from the Department of Public Works. But is enforcement of the law going too far?
Dupont Circle resident Patricia White says she has been fined eight times for throwing homemade cat litter in her trash. The fines total $2,000. White says she shreds old newspaper and junk mail to use as cat litter. She believes she is helping the environment by reusing the paper and avoiding cat litter you will find in stores.
After being fined several times, White says she called the Department of Public Works inspector who issued the tickets. According to White, the inspector admitted to digging through trash looking for violations. White even appealed the violations in D.C. court. Judge Audrey Jenkins agreed with the inspector after White explained the situation. FOX 5 tried to reach Judge Jenkins, but her office has declined to comment.
Again, amongst a host of other things, government intruding — now — into your trash piles.
As if it weren’t already sufficiently intrusive.
Keep living in Big Cities, Americans. Be crushed like herring and fined and taxed.
Me? I’ll keep my pine trees and mountains, thank you.
Everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma, they end up taking up a hospital bed, it costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early and they got some treatment, and a breathalyzer, or inhalator, not a breathalyzer. I haven’t had much sleep in the last 48 hours.” –Barack Obama, 9 October 2008
Wonderful news from the environmental do-gooders in Washington: the Obama administration is poised to ban over-the-counter breathalyzers, I mean inhalators, I mean inhalers in order to save the ozone layer.
Further:
Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer:
Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government’s latest attempt to protect the Earth’s atmosphere.
The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.
The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.
But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.
Ladies and gentlemen, how wonderful is that?
Because, clearly, men, women and children need to be sacrificed on the Altar of ObakaKare in order to bring the point across.
Let the hoarding of inhalers commence!
I swoon at their intuition, insight and intelligence!
Severely edited videos permeated the MSM and internet for weeks regarding this incident involving OWS people at the UCD campus in Davis, Fornicalia. Please watch the entire video first:
Fornicalia Penal Code section 409 states:
Every person remaining present at the place of any riot, rout, or unlawful assembly, after the same has been lawfully warned to disperse, except public officers and persons assisting them in attempting to disperse the same, is guilty of a misdemeanor.
All Fornicalia officers also know that prior to enacting this penal code section, training indicates you provide at least two verbal warnings — some agencies provide more.
PC section 404.6:
(a) Every person who with the intent to cause a riot does an act or engages in conduct that urges a riot, or urges others to commit acts of force or violence, or the burning or destroying of property, and at a time and place and under circumstances that produce a clear and present and immediate danger of acts of force or violence or the burning or destroying of property, is guilty of incitement to riot. (b) Incitement to riot is punishable by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by both that fine and imprisonment.
405a PC:
The taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer is a lynching.
405b PC:
Every person who participates in any lynching is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three or four years.
Meaning that section 405a PC is a felony, as opposed to a misdemeanor.
Then there is section 410 PC, which should answer the question: “why were the police there at all?”
If a magistrate or officer, having notice of an unlawful or riotous assembly, mentioned in this Chapter, neglects to proceed to the place of assembly, or as near thereto as he can with safety, and to exercise the authority with which he is invested for suppressing the same and arresting the offenders, he is guilty of a misdemeanor.
Section 416 PC:
(a) If two or more persons assemble for the purpose of disturbing the public peace, or committing any unlawful act, and do not disperse on being desired or commanded so to do by a public officer, the persons so offending are severally guilty of a misdemeanor. (b) Any person who, as a result of violating subdivision (a), personally causes damage to real or personal property, which is either publicly or privately owned, shall make restitution for the damage he or she caused, including, but not limited to, the costs of cleaning up, repairing, replacing, or restoring the property. Any restitution required to be paid pursuant to this subdivision shall be paid directly to the victim. If the court determines that the defendant is unable to pay restitution, the court shall order the defendant to perform community service, as the court deems appropriate, in lieu of the direct restitution payment.
404 PC:
(a) Any use of force or violence, disturbing the public peace, or any threat to use force or violence, if accompanied by immediate power of execution, by two or more persons acting together, and without authority of law, is a riot.
404.6 PC:
a) Every person who with the intent to cause a riot does an act or engages in conduct that urges a riot, or urges others to commit acts of force or violence, or the burning or destroying of property, and at a time and place and under circumstances that produce a clear and present and immediate danger of acts of force or violence or the burning or destroying of property, is guilty of incitement to riot.
407 PC:
Whenever two or more persons assemble together to do an unlawful act, or do a lawful act in a violent, boisterous, or tumultuous manner, such assembly is an unlawful assembly.
408 PC:
Every person who participates in any rout or unlawful assembly is guilty of a misdemeanor.
Armed with those penal code sections, and having watched the video, now yourself being one of the officers present, what might you conclude?
Yet, did you see this story or these penal code sections or reasons portrayed, examined or even remotely referred-to in any of the DEM/MSM?
Of course not.
Please weigh in.
BZ
P.S. I hope you noted that the same officer who sprayed the protesters is the same officer who, at 7:50, went down the line and explained to them — again — what would occur if they didn’t get up and leave. Also note: this isn’t just a line level officer; this is a lieutenant — who took on the ultimate responsibility and action himself.
Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly opine:
And now I opine: Megyn Kelly is correct. OC, otherwise known as Oleoresin Capsicum, is derived from a plant that occurs in nature: pepper.
Further, any law enforcement officer knows that a crowd can easily go sideways in a matter of moments, from allegedly peaceful to violent. Had that been myself in charge, I would not have forced my officers to physically pick up and move protesters. I would have had my officers either utilize the riot-sized OC spray (which the lieutenant possessed) and/or place pain/compliance holds on the protesters depending on officers’ level of familiarization with same. My job, as supervisor in this situation, is not to get my officers hurt whilst still enforcing the law.
I’ve personally been Maced and OC’d before, numerous times. Purposely, in the academy’s Gas House, and inadvertently by any multiple utilizations of Mace or OC by my fellow officers. I lived. So did all the students.
