As you already know, I love the Chesapeake Bay. But since they lifted the building moratorium in the watershed about 15 years ago, it’s getting dirtier and dirtier – again. Here’s some encouraging news:

RICHMOND, Va. – A report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation concludes that storm water and sewage plant upgrades intended to help nurse the environmentally-battered bay back to health would create nearly 250,000 jobs.

The report released Tuesday is aimed at countering claims that the multi-state, multi-billion restoration directed by the Environmental Protection Agency will be harmful to the economy and result in job losses, the foundation’s president said.

“That is not borne out by the facts,” William C. Baker said in a statement. “Whether the target is EPA or the bay pollution limits, it is essential that the public understand that environmental regulations will create jobs to reduce pollution, and sustain jobs that depend on clean water.”

The report, called “Debunking the `Job Killer’ Myth,” relies on a variety of industry experts such as engineers, reports and other sources to assess the impact of water pollution projects within the six states and the District of Columbia that comprise the bay’s 64,000-square-mile watershed. It also reviews job-killing threats dating back to 1976 and Henry Ford II claimed that clean air and fuel efficiency standards would “shut down” Ford Motor Co. to illustrate historic claims that environmental efforts are bad for the economy.

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I remember waiting for the train and talking to some woman about politics. I told her that the Republican party and the pro-life movement eventually wanted to outlaw birth control, and she told me I was crazy.

I only wish I was.

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Go read Charlie Pierce. But here’s the money quote from Justice James Nelson:

Corporations are artificial creatures of law. As such, they should enjoy only those powers—not constitutional rights, but legislatively-conferred powers—that are concomitant with their legitimate function, that being limited liability investment vehicles for business. Corporations are not persons. Human beings are persons, and it is an affront to the inviolable dignity of our species that courts have created a legal fiction which forces people—human beings—to share fundamental natural rights with soulless creations of government. Worse still, while corporations and human beings share many of the same rights under the law, they clearly are not bound equally to the same codes of good conduct, decency, and morality, and they are not held equally accountable for their sins. Indeed, it is truly ironic that the death penalty and hell are reserved only to natural persons.“

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To Aretha Franklin, who just got engaged.

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Defends SCOTUS and their self-inflicted ethical wounds.

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So when I called to doublecheck the appointment tomorrow with the GI doctor (the one that was postponed from early December), I was told I had no appointment. And when I raised a little hell, I was given another appointment – for next Friday.

On the bright side, I’m meeting with a surgeon tomorrow afternoon. Light, end of tunnel, etc.

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Trashes her Dreamhouse! In miniature, of course.

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Highlights from 2011:

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Oh, what’s a few earth tremors when it comes to sucking gas out of the earth? These anti-fracking types just need to count their blessings:

CLEVELAND (AP) – A northeast Ohio well used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas drilling almost certainly caused a series of 11 minor quakes in the Youngstown area since last spring, a seismologist investigating the quakes said Monday.

Research is continuing on the now-shuttered injection well at Youngstown and seismic activity, but it might take a year for the wastewater-related rumblings in the earth to dissipate, said John Armbruster of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.

Brine wastewater dumped in wells comes from drilling operations, including the so-called fracking process to extract gas from underground shale that has been a source of concern among environmental groups and some property owners. Injection wells have also been suspected in quakes in Astabula in far northeast Ohio, and in Arkansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma, Armbruster said.

Thousands of gallons of brine were injected daily into the Youngstown well that opened in 2010 until its owner, Northstar Disposal Services LLC, agreed Friday to stop injecting the waste into the earth as a precaution while authorities assessed any potential links to the quakes.

After the latest and largest quake Saturday at 4.0 magnitude, state officials announced their beliefs that injecting wastewater near a fault line had created enough pressure to cause seismic activity. They said four inactive wells within a five-mile radius of the Youngstown well would remain closed. But they also stressed that injection wells are different from drilling wells that employ fracking.

Armbruster said Monday he expects more quakes will occur despite the shutdown of the Youngstown well.
“The earthquakes will trickle on as a kind of a cascading process once you’ve caused them to occur,” he said. “This one year of pumping is a pulse that has been pushed into the ground, and it’s going to be spreading out for at least a year.”

The quakes began last March with the most recent on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve each occurring within 100 meters of the injection well. The Saturday quake in McDonald, outside of Youngstown, caused no serious injuries or property damage.

Youngstown Democrat Rep. Robert Hagan on Monday renewed his call for a moratorium on fracking and well injection disposal to allow a review of safety issues.

“If it’s safe, I want to do it,” he said in a telephone interview. “If it’s not, I don’t want to be part and parcel to destruction of the environment and the fake promise of jobs.”

He said a moratorium “really is what we should be doing, mostly toward the injection wells, but we should be asking questions on drilling itself.”

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Remember when we floated banks all that money so they could lend to small businesses, and instead they used it to pay bonuses and shore up their profits? Ah, good times! Now Bank of America has decided to jack up small business owners by boosting their interest rates to payday-loan-type levels in order to build their “core” business:

Bank of America Corp., under pressure to raise capital and cut risks, is severing lines of credit to some small-business owners who have used them to stay afloat.

The Charlotte, N.C., bank is demanding that these customers pay off their credit line balances all at once instead of making monthly payments. If they can’t pay in full, they are being offered new repayment plans for as long as five years, but with far higher interest rates than their original credit lines had.

Business owners complain that BofA’s credit squeeze is abrupt and could strain their small companies and even put them out of business. The credit cutoff is coming at a time when the California economy can’t seem to catch a break, and bucks what the financial industry says is a new trend of easing standards on business loans.

One such customer, Babak Zahabizadeh, was told in a letter that the $96,000 debt carried by his Burbank messenger service must be repaid Jan. 25. A loan officer offered multiple alternatives over the phone that Zahabizadeh called unaffordable, including paying off the debt at 12% interest over two years. That’s about $4,500 a month, nearly 10 times his current interest-only payment.

Zahabizadeh, known as Bobby Zahabi to his customers, said he has cut the staff of his Messengers & Distribution Inc. to 80 from 200 to nurse his business through tough times.

“I was like, ‘Dude, you’re calling a guy who’s barely surviving!’ ” he said. “My final word was that I can double my payment — but not triple or quadruple it. I told them if they apply too much pressure they’re going to push me into bankruptcy.”

The capped credit lines stem from a corporate overhaul launched by Brian Moynihan, who became Bank of America’s chief executive in 2010. He promised to address losses caused by loose lending and rapid expansion by reining in risks and shedding investments deemed non-core.

BofA spokesman Jefferson George said a “very small percentage” of small-business customers have been affected by the changes. He would not provide exact numbers except to say it wasn’t in the hundreds of thousands. Some of the affected businesses had been customers of other banks that Bank of America acquired, but most were BofA customers from the start, George said.

“These changes were explained in letters to customers, and they were necessary for Bank of America to continue prudent lending to viable businesses across the U.S.,” he said.

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Mick et al:

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I can’t hear you!

These people are just plain crazy.

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If pharmacists don’t have to fill prescriptions for birth control because of religious convictions or whatever, can bank employees quit their jobs and collect unemployment because the bank they work for is a collection of assholes? I think it’s fair.

(Thanks, Mr. Dayen.)

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There’s nothing like running into a gaggle of Mummer wenches — young men in skirts and long-haired wigs and face paint, with beers and parasels — in broad daylight on a balmy winter day. More here.

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Dear Susie;

I live in a small town in Northern Wisconsin. Our hometown J.C. Penney’s is closing. This is a bad thing for a bunch of reasons, most of which you know.

So, the vultures are circling in for the sales. Daughter got a Penney’s gift card for her birthday. We wanted to use it quickly before everything was gone, so we went this afternoon. We parked across the street in the handicapped spot at the corner. When we came out, there was somebody pulled in tight behind me, partially in the handicapped spot, but mostly in the yellow zone, where the fire hydrant is.

I was stunned. I guess I grew up on another planet or something, where people weren’t assholes, so I don’t know how to deal with these things. We were walking slowly to my car (because that is how I walk these days) and I moved over to the edge of the sidewalk because the woman who came out of Penney’s behind me was in such a hurry, and she had her little girl by the hand, and the wind was bitter cold. She ran across the street and jumped into the car that was parked behind me. I stood there and stared at her, speechless.

Is it proper etiquette to tell a complete stranger that perhaps blocking a fire hydrant so you can go to a sale at Penney’s is remarkably self-centered, and maybe they should stop and consider that Oh, you know, fire trucks might need to get in there? Or that maybe next time somebody will call the cops on them? Is there some specific wording I should use? I didn’t want to unleash my customary I-used-to-work-in-a-factory language, mostly because she had her little girl with her. Is it effective to get the license plate number and call the police?

Thanks for your help.

Signed,

A Remarkably Gobsmacked Human

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