An American Problem

Many Amerians, up to 50%, think government is either not helpful for them, or totally evil. many do not even know exactly what it does. An example can shed light on the two parties and their voters reacting to a familiar situation.

A man is working a minimum wage job, he has some skills in some area now, but only a high school diploma. He loses his job. He has a wife and two kids, one is two weeks old. He applies for a night/early morning shift at Target to load shelves or unload the truck three times weekly. The Target survey asks him all kinds of team work oriented questions, usually in an on-line survey. They flag him as a conspiracy nut.

The Democrats want to help. Need funds for counselors, therapy, rehab. Get this man back to a minimum wage job. They want to help! They need funds and professionals.

The Republicans want to help too. He should not be singled out. Everybody is paranoid now, the government is left wing CONSPIRACY! The man is right. Give him more guns, have him talk to the Christian pastor and give him the Constitution and Bible to read. No cost to government. No unemployment benefits past 8 weeks. He can get some job doing work outdoors! All those guys are the same and hate government, he will be in good company!

And since no counselors are needed, cut that university funding too, leave a few shrinks for the liberal elite for private use.

It may sound exaggerated, but this is exactly how things go here. The working poor rely on friends, neighbors and relatives for a safety net. One book claims this is the main reason working class people are reluctant to move. They would have to pay for services at the new location, whereas they can each pitch in and help out in their spare time and also barter for skilled jobs such as minor home repairs. Many can replace their own roof with a few friends. In contrast, people with college degrees have national networks of friends, so they have help getting those out of town jobs. And they can afford to pay for daycare and other services.

The Trump voters in the working class may be racists, but they see the help going to refugees and other immigrants as unfair. Those people get help from the government for a short term, helping them settle. The working poor have to figure these things out without that help.

It is of course understandable that people who do not care for the government do not want any of their services coming from the government. Yet they still want things like healthcare. Both Obamacare and Medicare are a compromise. The service is coming from private hospitals and doctors. Only the insurance is regulated by the government. With private insurance, it still adds a chunk to the healthcare bill, since there are two sets of people fighting to give or deny the care to the patient holding the policy. This is totally unproductive work. Only malpractice should be left to courts and lawyers.

The country is divided. The educated elite benefit from the government. Some even work for the government. Yet all those agencies have failed to explain to uninterested citizens why it is needed. The benefits of the EPA or FDA can't be seen till you remove them for a while.

Donald Trump

No president has been as divisive as Trump in the time I have lived in the US. I watched Watergate hearings when I came home from high school, as there was nothing else to watch. The president was a crook. Not a very good one. I did not need to vote for one till after Jimmy Carter. It was confusing to see some of the “hippie” ideas coming main stream. But that did not last long, we had young Republicans. We had Reagan who planted the seed of “government is bad.”

Trump or his staff capitalized on the evil government and “foreigners” and other plans that really have failed to materialize. He finally is pushing something that seems to go with his billionaire status, tax cuts. Most rich people are not really like us. And Trump is not, despite the bucket of chicken and Diet Cokes. Trump is now supporting a tax bill, a holy item for Republicans. They ultimately only want two things: smaller government and less tax. Yet they have to support a big military and Jesus. Otherwise they would not be elected at all. Jesus is sometimes disguised as “family values” and really aims to appoint judges that remove abortion.

Trump does not really fit into this very well other than the taxes. As a narcissist, he only needs people around him that praise and applaud him. The wealthy class is willing to tolerate him as long as taxes are cut. But the praise will disappear and Trump will be looking more and more to the racists that voted for him to support and like his tweets. He really has almost no clear agenda. His plan was merely to erase Obama. Obama was an embarrassment to Trump at a White House correspondents dinner years ago. Trump only responds to either insult or praise. He likes to count wins. Winning apparently gets him status and praise. Well, the wins amount to very little. Starting at the latest in 2020 most of Trump changes will be erased.

I had some thoughts about Trump being possibly a weak president from the start. But as it turned out he forged ahead as if his election was some kind mandate from the masses, even though he lost by 3 million votes. He was not going to be held back by that. I realized that on inauguration day. He was going to be Trump no matter what, and be a one term president if that is how it came out. However, as he wants to be adored by crowds, he has to act as if he were running for re-election. He may even do that if he is up to it. The Republicans will lose with him, but they will lose even worse with anyone else.

Conspiracy Theories and American Politics

When people talk politics, and define the groups in the opposition, they often bring up conspiracy theories. The point of the argument is to label the opposition as flakes who support these theories that have never been proven. You could make an argument against liberals or conservatives. I am not going to argue against liberals, but you can easily find theories made up by liberals that seem ridiculous. You can google for them. Alex Jones is an entertaining conspiracy theory spinner as well. And of course Trump himself, making the claim that the entire media group outside of Fox news is a vast conspiracy.

On the right, there are several groups that like to come up with theories, though they never are proven. That is the point of conspiracy theories. The opposite is so clever with the hiding of facts that only hints of this conspiracy can be found. The thousands of climate scientists that support global warming as an explanation to many climate events are allegedly part of a “vast left-wing conspiracy” against fossil fuel producers. That is an endless debate and actually requires some science to explain, beyond the scope of this blog.

Currently we have the Roy Moore election ongoing, so we have to address that here. To those outside the US, it is difficult to explain the forces pushing this unpopular person to the Senate. There are two tools that religious right-wingers always bring up. One is the gay agenda

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_agenda

The other is abortion. Alabama is in the Bible Belt, so these two are always going to be in the back of the mind of voters there. Up to 50% of Alabama voters agree with all the moral views stated by Moore. He is the one who had a stone Ten Commandments monument installed in front of the Alabama Supreme Court. The monument was removed, and so was Moore from office. But in the Trump era, he has returned to fight for the religious right. His views are racist as well, but the abortion fight is up front. He states: "Now we have blacks and whites fighting, reds and yellows fighting, Democrats and Republicans fighting, men and women fighting. What’s going to unite us? What’s going to bring us back together? A president? A Congress? No. It's going to be God." 

The attack against abortion seems to be about driving Planned Parenthood out of as many states as possible and defunding it on the national level. Where is the leftist conspiracy? It is apparently everywhere, but mostly in the liberal agenda that runs our education system. Except that all the school boards throughout the Bible Belt are in the hands of Republicans. It must be in college, then, where the liberals brainwash our children to treat fetuses as fetuses. The court system is apparently stacked against Christians as well. In polls, nearly 50% of adult voters in Alabama share the evangelical views of Roy Moore. Homeschooling of children is common among evangelicals, though religious schools (Catholic, Christian) are available as well. The current secretary of education Betsy DeVoss promotes charter schools. This is where you take public funds and run a school with the parents of the students deciding the curriculum. No more atheist science! It is not necessary to prove any conspiracy. Once you bring up the liberal agenda, white Christians have at least felt they are some kind of victims of the system.

Outside of religion, it is the libertarians that come up with conspiracies blamed on the left. Many involve “taking away guns” and all ideas expanding government are labeled socialist. Even healthcare has now become a dangerous socialist idea with its "death panels." And schools again are involved, as well as a drive to get the federal government out of states.  Federal lands should be privatized. The feds are there to spy on you too, so agencies are involved.  Endless books are written by Ann Coulter, G. Gordon Liddy and other right-wing radio hosts and pundits. According to Liddy, the left-wing conspiracy has taken over media, entertainment, academia, courts and administrations of all the blue states. Taxes and entertainment are his favorite leftist ideas to attack.

The 2016 election seemed to be about Hillary’s emails, Hillary’s liberal ideas and Trump announcing his plan to attack foreigners, foreign countries and the liberal elite, who run the country through their culture wars (approving gays, taking religion out of public life etc.). Some voters were convinced of actual conspiracies. Others had some doubts about the extent of the conspiracy (After all, any doubt one way or another is a goal of the people putting forward the theories! The doubt merely brings this agenda into the election), but Trump would be the man to root out all this liberal agenda and bring in patriotism as well. There was no doubt in their mind when they voted. Culture wars were up there in the top five issues, and the so called pro-business stance was important as well. These were after all Republicans who oppose tax. If the tax is used to push leftist agenda in schools, colleges and other institutions, there was no loss in cutting that funding. And abortions!

The US House and Senate

Nothing terribly exciting or new this time. I am just reviewing the recent past with the US Congress. Out here in the prairies nothing much changed in 2010 other than the few Democrat congressmen lost in the middle of the country and further West. In 2008 in some of those states the odd Democrat got in on the tails of Obama.

Nationwide by 2008 George Bush was unpopular and had a bit of a wild presidency as first terrorism and then wars in Afghanistan and Iraq happened. Going into the 2008 election, Obama was wildly popular. When this happens, a lot of people show up to vote and the winning party gains seats. For two years, lots of things happened. This included a bailout and the healthcare act. For whatever reason, he was unpopular in just the right areas (much like Trump was popular in 3 or 4 crucial states) that the Republicans gained 63 seats in the house. Obama was left an ineffective president, as Congress blocked most of his acts. They even blocked his Supreme Court nominations. This was the House from 2010 elections onward.

The seats were 242/193 after the 63 seat change. The Tea Party was active in this period. The independent voters were somehow impressed by them. Some voters, on the other hand, were voting purely for racist reasons. They showed up again to vote for Trump, because not voting for Hillary was continued punishment for Obama’s party. Some also resented having to buy health insurance.

The Senate (100 senators) only changed by 6 seats in the 2010 elections. The nature of the Senate is just that, as only a third of the Senators are up for election every two years. It does not change as fast as the House, where the congresspersons all must run every two years. The Senators are also able to act more freely, as two terms is quite significant, 12 years, and perhaps they do not run for a third term. Or usually a fourth. They can vote on their principles the last term. Of if the state is always red or blue they can freely hold extreme views. They do not care about election funds at that point. It also is very hard to get senators to change their views at times, and many votes end up close, within two points, with the vice president casting the deciding vote.

The Senators represent the whole state. Congress districts vary wildly, for instance near St Louis Missouri, you have the urban areas which include areas like Ferguson. You end up with representatives at the extremes, such as the Freedom Caucus. Senators are more likely to be moderates, whichever party they are from. However, very Republican states may send Senators that have extreme views on things such as abortion. It is in fact the principle on which the pedophile Roy Moore is currently running.

Back to the 2010 election and the map: Will this type of swing happen in 2018? That may not take place, as the people voting for Trump are stubborn and may want to see Trump achieve more of “small government.” But these days people are not as patient as 20 years ago. Somewhere between 2018 and 2020 there will be some events that will quickly turn against Trump. A tipping point, some event or even a single politician can do this. It could be the Wisconsin Democrat running against Paul Ryan, it could be anyone. It will definitely be lack of coal mining jobs etc. that were promised.

But much of the GOP future depends on Trump. If Trump ends up in a situation where a normal politician would resign, the 2018 election will go badly for the GOP Congress. They may keep the Senate to 2020.

The Invisible Enemies of Common People

No, it’s not the Illuminati, but there are giant forces that pretty much run how life goes on, as far as our material needs and even entertainment goes.

But let’s get back to the election and analyze some of the thinking of voters. They seem to see these invisible powers controlling their lives, but their reaction varies. If you voted for Trump, you probably won’t read this blog. I know you use the Internet, but I see that you prefer sites where you can trash the government or discuss moral issues at length. Or fun places. The Internet is big. I use this blog as a signature, but only in liberal forums. On those, my ideas might be of use in facing a Trump voter friend or family member.

What I will describe is a general phenomenon, where you start believing the view of the world from people you meet in person and interact with. On any issue, there is an invisible enemy out there which some people believe is a conspiracy. You see its effects, but you do not see who is pulling the strings. People make quick conclusions about these things even after one discussion with one person.

Big Pharma. Big Government. These have very visible effects, but they are nevertheless above our reach to understand or control. We never meet them face to face and we do not influence them in any way, except pharma as consumers. There are consumer protection agencies, but they are often used only after the damage is done.

Let’s include the healthcare providers. You go to the doctor and he gives you some pills. You met the doctor and he billed you 120 dollars for the visit and the writing of the Rx and sending it to the pharmacy. The pills may cost you 20-100 dollars. You feel Big Pharma is ripping you off, but the doctor is only billing a fair amount as he must file claim forms and employ a staff for this.  He is on your side, so you do not mind paying him more. You even feel some sympathy for him working the terrible healthcare system. Insurance is there for only one thing: to deny your claim and deny the doctor his fair share.

Big pharma is invisible. Sometimes CEO’s are in the news for their bonuses of tens of millions a year. Johnson & Johnson employs 126 000 people, Glaxo and Pfizer both employ about 100 000. What do they all do? You conclude that some of them must be there to fight regulations and file papers to Big Government! In fact, they do invent most of the drugs they sell, and they pay for the hospital studies carried out by an army of healthcare workers. But that is another story. Maybe another column.

What you see is only the actual bill for the drugs. With Humira it adds up to over $4000 a year for arthritis and other ailments. You can look up the current maker or distributor, which is Abbot in this case. Sometimes it is a foreign company, sometimes a giant that sells product in the USA and in Europe for most of its profit. They work the system in each country, but of course do not sell at a loss. There is a manufacture cost, as well as all the cost of development. Drugs make money during some of the patent period, often less than the patent life. The testing and development takes years.

But you do not know the details of any of this for any drug, the maker remains faceless, hiding behind seemingly friendly TV ads. You are just watching the show and see the ad. “Look, she can ride a bike on Humira. I wish I could do that. More ibuprofen for me.”

But you are curious and look up Humira in Wikipedia. It is something called Adamilumab. That is the generic name, under which it is sold by generic drug makers eventually. The side bar says it is a monoclonal antibody. What is that? Well, it is a biological drug, so its manufacture involves living cells or something like that, rather than large tanks and chemical processes that are used to make traditional drugs such as ibuprofen. Like vaccines, it’s manufacture is still tightly controlled, and the maker must prove that it is the same product from lot to lot. It can be characterized as a molecule,
C₆₄₂₈H₉₉₁₂N₁₆₉₄O₁₉₈₇S_46.   Proteins that are natural in the body also have large weights and big formulas like that. For most people all that is fuzzy concept. The only clear thing is that you must take this drug as an injection. You deal with your doctor and trust that he or she has read the scientific papers that list its benefits and risks. He should be able to explain some of those. He or she may have personal experience with other patients and will have some feel for how it will affect you. You leave it at that. He is on your side! You pay the 4000 to big Pharma or premiums to your insurance. In any year, Big Pharma and even insurance makes a profit This comes out of the pocket of other people insured under the same insurance company or Obamacare subsidies. Or your employer, who may choose to be so called “self-insured”.

Government and big business are a similar pair, but you are a bit more on your own there, as a consumer. There is no doctor to act as your helper. Possibly lawyer can help if these two get too much to handle.

The evils of government are very plain to see in that news covers most of the bigger things they do. You are left merely to fill out forms and pay tax. Businesses on the other hand just put out products and services. You get to choose, but most times it is just between the similar products of two giants. Or you can choose not to buy. Is it that simple?

It is not. Those businesses actually control that Big Government using their army of lobbyists at the federal and state level. The lobbyists even write many of the laws involving their particular industry. Some areas control your choices completely. Internet, cable TV, cell phones. These businesses have a small number of players, which are the survivors after numerous mergers. They control the product and through lobbyists also the FCC. The agency involved in communications.

Agriculture and the food industry are similarly controlled by a small number of players. They even tell the farmer what seeds and crops to plant through contacts and pricing. Bigger farms run the prices of the crops down. Family farms sell out and are merged into corporate farms.

Wealth is collecting in a small number of individuals. The recent concept of the 1% is very much real. The rest of us are just workers. The state in communism and the 1% of capitalism are starting to look quite similar. (I'm not saying they are the same. Clearly they are not. Just the material aspects of life look similar.)

We essentially have two functioning parties. The GOP is controlled by business interests. They want to make a profit, whether it is Big Pharma or the coal and oil industry. These businesses are not persons, so they do not care about morals. That leaves senators and congresspersons to preach those issues to voters in hopes of connecting probusiness with various social issues.

The Democratic party also has business lobbyists, but from somewhat different industries as well as various nonprofit groups focused on a cause (the environment, a rare disease etc.). Wall Street has agencies, banks have oversight, there are consumer protection groups and so on. Trump is undoing a number of these things now.

It’s complicated. Who knew politics could be so complicated? The illusion that the Trump campaign gave is that they will take down big government and give you more freedom. This is not happening as the lobbying groups never go away. They are even more strongly present in the GOP controlled era.

 Big Business will get away with most things in the Trump era. On top of that, Trump has succeeded in convincing those who voted for him that there is someone outside, a vague “foreigners” that is responsible for all the ills of modern America. This may work in the short run, but major changes in energy, industry, even transportation and food sources are needed to feed a growing population. Trump is investing in outdated technology. The industries that lobbied so hard for Trump will go out of business as new technology replaces them. Their large structures will become worthless.

Tar Sands Oil

Tar sands is a petroleum product that is collected off sands in Alberta and other places up North.

The fields are described here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Canadian_Sedimentary_Basin#Oil_sands

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Lake_oil_sands

It resembles the bitumen that is used to make asphalt, a very low-quality petroleum product. Extraction is complicated process that uses at least five times as much energy as conventional oil. It is made to flow in early part of production with steam or a solvent. It tends to solidify in equipment, or at least becomes so thick that it does not flow. To transport it in tank cars, a solvent such as pentane is added. The mixture is then very flammable. A train derailed and six cars burned up in one incident. The disaster left 42 people dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaster

The desired transport of these low-quality oils is a pipe line, simply because it does not make much money. Some years the price is almost the cost of getting it and transporting it to the refinery. It does make a very low-grade diesel fuel eventually, only used in very large diesel engines. The companies want to transport it by pipe because this is the cheapest way.

The business of heavy crude and its costs is explained here. The Nebraska pipe line was not approved across the Ogallala aquifer. It is to go through the Eastern part of Nebraska.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Keystone-XL-Is-Far-From-Certain.html

Why make such bad oil product? Well, it just fills in the bottom end of oil supply, and more oil is available for making diesel to run trucks (from normal sources of crude oil). And technically, the tar sands oil can be refined. You can "pull" hydrogen from other sources of fossil fuel (natural gas etc.) and add that to tar sands oil. That is not cheap, and you are wasting hydrogen from the natural gas. The website Narwhal explains:

Also from their website: "In the US, 59 of the 134 refineries are equipped with coker units. Approximately 30% of the US's bitumen refining capacity is in the nine Gulf of Mexico refineries TransCanada seeks to supply through its controversial Keystone XL pipeline. "

The pipes are some 18-42 inches in diameter and made by welding the pieces together. There is also a seam along the length when the pipe itself was manufactured. The pipe is unlike the 6 inch pipe used to transport conventional oil that flows much more easily. The most famous disaster is a rip in the 30 inch pipe that went near Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Political deals made the pipe exempt from a tax that is normally collected to take care of possible spills. If the product is diluted with an organic solvent, that quickly evaporates and the heavy bitumen sinks, usually polluting the water table underneath. Details of the spill are found here.

http://priceofoil.org/content/uploads/2012/05/Irrational-exemption_FINAL_14May12.pdf

Why is an 18 inch or 36 inch pipe more likely to break? The pipes are relatively thin metal compared to their diameter:

Pumping stations pose some risk, but as they are manned, a leak there would be quickly shut down. A Youtube video describes a pump station. Link below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HQIK_OUDzY

We are getting into chemical engineering here, and I do not have access to the journals, but bits of science are found on the Internet free. The summary is that there are two spills so far, Arkansas and Kalamazoo, about 4 times the incidence of conventional oil spill, per mile of piping. The tar sands bitumen contains dilute sulfuric acid (corrosive). This and the higher temperature and pressure in the pipes contributes to corrosion.  Some studies dispute the corrosion at anywhere below 100C (boiling point of water), but companies have nevertheless added epoxy coatings to prevent corrosion.

Whatever the cause of spills, they continue in these pipes. Fourteen more minor incidents are catlogues in this document.

http://blog.nwf.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/11/files/2011/06/320115006H_CAO_06032011.pdf

My guess on the study of future ruptures is that the higher pressure used will be the main culprit. The risks and each pipeline plan needs community input. Do you need the jobs that badly that you want the pipeline? States, the US government and Canadian companies should not overrule the local interests. After a spill, your land is worthless.

Libertarians, Dystopia, Young Men and Big Corporations

What do these have in common? The young men part is easy. They are dependent on their family till working age or at least teens. They value the family, personal effort, rewards from work. Then they get a job and they have to pay tax. They have no idea what the government does, other than at the city and county level where the results are plain to see, roads and police and fire protection. But in general, government is just restrictions on life and supporting people who are not able to make a living.

Then they go to college or perhaps just pick up a book, Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. Rand was a Russian émigré who knew all the evils of socialism. She painted a dystopian future of a strictly controlled planet. From this pretty much all modern dystopian fiction comes out. The comic book or Hollywood version, or even the lyrics to the album 2112 by the band Rush. Paul Ryan read the book as a college student. He still acts based on it, as pretty much all government is evil. He is on a mission to destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as these are all part of the unnecessary and evil things that the libertarian teachings of Rand introduced.

I have to pause here to explain how they would like to run things. You pay a small tax, say 5%, or maybe even 10% if you need snow plows. This takes care of government at all levels. You stash away money that you will later use in place of Medicare or Social Security, which they have done away with. Works fine if you have a boring life and nothing happens to you before you turn 60.

Corporations figure into the thing in a sort of convoluted way. They cannot completely dismiss government, as they depend on it to make near monopolies in any one field. The lobbying efforts have led to many industries having only three or four players. Food is grown by many farmers, but the processing and bringing to market is in the hands of a few giants. Even seed production for the farming is in the hands of a corporate giant.

So we are essentially at the point where any kind of welfare or government control of any production is disappearing. The corporations use the state to their ends. By supporting “capitalism” we are essentially doing the opposite of what we intended, we make ourselves slaves to consumer products instead of the socialist state the Rand feared.

The industries dictate the bills that control their industry. The Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 made sure that only the biggest farms and ranches made money for mass produced foods. Smaller farmers then started things that have different labeling, such as organic foods. These require more manpower and cannot always be grown with big machines.

Much of the farm end of things is explained in the book What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004) by Thomas Frank.

Politics have entered what he calls Culture Wars. We don’t understand material benefits anymore so we concentrate on other politics, and people in the middle of the country have become Republicans simply because of values, religion etc.

As we move toward monopolies, the dystopian nature of corporations is becoming clear. Just recently, the move away from Net Neutrality allows the service providers to push some information and even block pages it does not want you to see. But they probably only want to control our consumer behavior.