Amy Goodman, host of the New York City-based leftist news programme Democracy Now! was charged with criminal trespass by the North Dakota state's attorney (prosecutor). The charge was changed to riot, then was dismissed due to lack of evidence when Goodman appeared in court on Monday. The charges stemmed from her presence at a protest in September against construction of the Dakota Access (Bakken) oil pipeline, after the protest was reported on her show.
Coverage:
- Ars Technica
- Democracy Now!
- Democracy Now! (with video and transcript)
- New York Times
- Salon
- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette op-ed
- The Nation (prior to dismissal)
- Fortune
Related Stories
AlterNet reports
A federal judge ruled [June 14] that the Trump administration must conduct additional environmental review of the Dakota Access Pipeline, handing a limited victory to Native American tribes fighting the administration's decision to move forward with the project.
In an extensive opinion,[PDF][1] Washington, DC District Court Judge James Boasberg sided with the tribes by agreeing the Army Corps of Engineers "did not consider the impacts of an oil spill on fishing rights, human rights, or environmental justice."
[...] Boasberg did not order a shutdown of operations on the pipeline, which began pumping oil early this month. The tribes and pipeline owner Energy Transfer Partners are ordered to appear in court next week to decide next legal steps, and the tribes are expected to argue for a full shutdown of pipeline operations.
[1] Link in article redirects.
Previous coverage:
Dakota Access Pipeline Suffers Oil Leak Even Before Becoming Operational
Recent News Dispatches From Standing Rock (DAPL)
Army Corp of Engineers Now Accepting Public Comment on the Dakota Access Pipeline
Army Corps of Engineers Blocks the Dakota Access Pipeline
Standing Rock Protester May Lose Her Arm Because of Police Grenades
Water Cannons Used in Sub-Freezing Temperatures at Dakota Access Oil Pipeline Protest
Standing Rock Protestors Gassed and Attacked; Bundy Gang Acquitted [Updated]
Journalist Charged in North Dakota with Rioting; Case is Dismissed
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Wednesday October 19 2016, @01:24PM
Just a few days back TechCrunch reported that they were looking for other reasons to charge her and are looking to charge Deia Schlosberg as well.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161017/17134435823/judge-rejects-rioting-charge-against-journalist-reporting-protestors-prosecutor-still-looking-new-charges.shtml [techdirt.com]
The detail seems pretty light, have they dropped the trespassing charges but still trying to find new charges against her or not?
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @01:53PM
Next they throw at her all and every law book and see what sticks.
From terrrist conspiration, to her dead dog pooping on the street and cleaning with a pirate non-approved dog poop bag that didn't paid the dog poop taxes. They can file any charges, the real thing is that the judges allows that bad behaviour and let these abusive prosecutors go scott free.
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. - Cardinal Richelieu
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:48PM
This time don't blame the judge. He can't punish the prosecution for filing charges that aren't frivolous. These appear to have been harassment, but not frivolous. And he promptly dismissed them for lack of evidence. (Would he have done that without the new spotlight? Good question, no answer.)
But *THIS* time the only people to blame are the prosecution and it's managers, supervisors, etc., all the way up to the governor.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 19 2016, @01:53PM
http://publicsearch.ndcourts.gov/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=3592026 [ndcourts.gov]
(not a rickroll... if I was gonna rickroll you you'd never see it coming)
Moderately interesting she was had an arrest warrant for some weeks. Seems a bit harsh for mere trespassing. Sounds about right for political retribution against media. Isn't it fun living in a banana republic of a nation?
still trying to find new charges against her or not?
Thats a question only the prosecutor can answer, I guess.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday October 19 2016, @04:22PM
Me, I'd stop looking for more charges against her and start looking for bribes to the prosecutor and other people that are trying to charge her for questioning the corporate overlords. I'm betting evidence of bribery or some other sort of corruption wouldn't be very hard to find.
But that's just me, apparently.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:54PM
First they charged her with tresspass. After she traveled back to ND to answer the charges, they dropped them and then charged her with inciting a riot to start the process over. Now they have dropped that too.
As tghey say, you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride. It's a clear abuse of the judicial system using the court and it's power to compel her appearance as a crude bludgeon. If the prosecutor actually believed either of those charges held a drop of water, they'd have happily gone to trial or at least attempted a plea bargain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:16PM
Before her court appearance, she set up shop across from the courthouse and made her morning broadcast.
This stuff is only giving North Dakota and Morton County persecutor^W District Attorney Ladd Erickson black eyes.
...and, as for "Leftist" in TFS, I have never heard Amy advocate for anti-Capitalism.
Now, she -is- anti-Authoritarian (a separate axis on the political palate).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday October 20 2016, @04:55AM
This pipeline project is a manifestation of capitalism, is it not? She covered the protests against it in a way that was sympathetic to the protesters.
In 1998 she co-produced Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drilling_and_Killing:_Chevron_and_Nigeria's_Oil_Dictatorship [wikipedia.org]
From the transcript:
Oil was discovered in Nigeria at almost the same time the country gained independence from the British in 1960. Since then there have been several coups and assassinations. But one thing has remained a constant—the role of multinational oil companies in propping up the country’s military dictatorships.
Chima Ubani[:] "they are simply continuing what theTransAtlantic slave trade and British colonialism did to us in the past."
Chima Ubani is a member of Nigeria’s oldest human rights group, the civil liberties organization and has been imprisoned several times, resisting successive military regimes.
Chima Ubani: "and the struggles of our people today to rid ourselves of these agencies is merely an extension of our struggle for national independence. And our independence is not yet won until we send these exploitative forces packing from our soil."
--http://www.democracynow.org/2003/7/11/transcript_of_drilling_and_killing_documentary [democracynow.org]
Last year she interviewed the author of Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy, who said
Ninety [percent] of all the earnings of the biggest companies in America in the last five years have gone for stock buybacks and dividends. It’s not being invested. It’s not building new factories. It’s not employing more people.
So, the real problem is that we’re in a nonrecovery in America, and Europe is in an absolute class war of austerity. That’s what the eurozone is, an austerity zone.
--http://www.democracynow.org/2015/8/25/casino_capitalism_economist_michael_hudson_on [democracynow.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @10:12AM
Amy is against the sloppy way some Capitalists conduct their business.
That's different from being anti-Capitalist.
She doesn't seem to be opposed to concentrated wealth nor a lack of Democracy in the Workplace.
Hey, if you look real hard, you can occasionally find a Capitalist who isn't a complete asshole.
Aaron Feuerstein: The Mensch of Malden Mills [cbsnews.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:59PM
Interestingly, the first time I clicked that link, it took me to the home page rather than thge case. So I clicked back and copied the case number from the URL to try again. Now it just gives me an application error.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 20 2016, @01:52PM
It's basic police harassment. Now, try to prove _that_ in court.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @01:47PM
North Dakota folks like to think they are libertarian, take-care-of-our-own, bunch, but apparently they are also fascists.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 19 2016, @02:04PM
Well, duh. The Spice must flow.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @02:54PM
> North Dakota folks like to think they are libertarian, take-care-of-our-own, bunch, but apparently they are also fascists.
Remember that old joke that democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch?
That's how libertarianism ends up working in the real world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @03:32PM
oh yeah, the old stale propaganda of the slaves, "if it weren't for government telling us what to do we'd all kill each other". so scared of freedom, the ultimate terror. you're the cancer.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @04:14PM
Yeah. bring back company towns, 80 hour work weeks, child labor, pinkertons and cuyahoga fires. Freedom!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @04:48PM
If history has shown us anything its that humans need some degree of regulation. Without the EPA the US would be a polluted hell hole (more so) with shit like Flint's water crisis being a minor event. We'd have a huge hole in the ozone layer right now instead of a shrinking one, and skin cancer would be through the roof.
But keep clinging the the idea of total freedom, any vigilante justice would be smacked down by those with money and power.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:28PM
Without the EPA the US would be a polluted hell hole (more so) with shit like Flint's water crisis being a minor event.
And currently the US is adding regulation faster than a human can read it with the EPA being a significant contributor to that regulatory growth.
We'd have a huge hole in the ozone layer right now instead of a shrinking one, and skin cancer would be through the roof.
The shrinking hole might grow again. We don't exactly have a long term record of the ozone layer over the Antarctica and the hole might be naturally growing and shrinking without any help from us.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:38PM
Sorry, I'm not particularly interested in regulating your ass. I have better things to do with my time. Maybe you could keep yourself out of trouble instead?
That's cool. I'm going to move in next door and open a foul smelling waste processing plant. Why didn't you keep yourself out of that trouble I just created for you?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:08PM
Its a free market, he can pack all his stuff and move somewhere else, taking the loss on the property values as a libertarian badge of courage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:25PM
No one is asking you to regulate anything, we want competent people that understand environmental impacts.
EPA regulations are generally good, but I'm not averse to a review process.
Geebus corporate shilling Christ. I hope you're getting paid for this level of bullshit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @07:05PM
EPA regulations are generally good, but I'm not averse to a review process.
As of mid 2015 [cnsnews.com], the new EPA regulations added since the beginning of the Obama administration was almost 30,000 pages. So no, EPA regulations aren't generally good. I think a prudent "review process" here would be a reduction of the amount of EPA regulation from its beginning by a factor of ten.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @07:39PM
Gee, callow thinks complexity means failure. Which is why the linux kernel is only 500,000 lines of code.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @08:19PM
Gee, callow thinks complexity means failure.
Yes, I do. You should too. The cost of complying with regulation is superlinear due to interaction between regulation. The more you add, the worse it gets.
Which is why the linux kernel is only 500,000 lines of code.
I don't think it's a good idea to brag that the Linux kernel has 20 million lines of code.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:41PM
Honduras Is Sold as a Libertarian Paradise; I Went--and Discovered a Capitalist Nightmare [alternet.org]
Now, when the profit-before-all-else Capitalists stop poisoning us in order to make $0.01 more, -then- we can stop with the regulations.
...and, just to show us how honorable their intentions are, they can put up a $1 trillion surety bond. EACH.
.
...and the day that Windoze supports the number of devices Linux does, -then- we can start talking honestly about code bloat.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @10:18PM
Now at this point, you might be surprised. Have you ever heard any libertarian claiming that Honduras is a paradise, or an experiment in the philosophy? I sure haven’t.
For example, the Fraser Institute’s most recent Freedom index [freetheworld.com] ranks Honduras as the 55th freest country in the world (as of 2012), right behind Botswana and just ahead of Uganda. To be fair, there are other notable countries like Israel and France right next to Honduras in the rankings, so I’m not claiming that it’s a socialist nightmare. But 55th in the world is hardly a libertarian experiment, and most progressives don’t point to France as a Ron Paul ideal.
To get more specific numbers, we can consult the Heritage Foundation’s ranking. In its 2015 Index [heritage.org], Heritage puts Honduras as 116th in the world in terms of economic freedom. It shows that Honduras has government expenditures of 27% of domestic output, and government debt of 40% of GDP. The overall tax burden is 16% of domestic income. The consumer price inflation rate is 5.2%. It’s not North Korea, granted, but it’s hardly the stuff of Atlas Shrugged either.
And the high point:
For example, the very next sentences say: “In Honduras, the police ride around in pickup trucks with machine guns, but they aren’t there to protect most people. They are scary to locals and travelers alike.” So if the government has been disbanded with no taxes and expenditures, and full privatization, then how can there be government police riding around?
What’s happening here is that the author is conflating “libertarians don’t like government doing anything” with “a government doing things badly.” So for example, if (say) North Korean soldiers lined up a bunch of students who were caught plotting against the regime and executed them, our Salon writer would think, “This is applied libertarianism, because Murray Rothbard didn’t like government schools.” But let’s go back to the piece, to the single most absurd paragraph:
The greatest examples of libertarianism in action are the hundreds of men, women and children standing alongside the roads all over Honduras. The government won’t fix the roads, so these desperate entrepreneurs fill in potholes with shovels of dirt or debris. They then stand next to the filled-in pothole soliciting tips from grateful motorists. That is the wet dream of libertarian private sector innovation.
The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. The guy types out that the government “won’t fix the roads,” that private entrepreneurs do the best they can to fix the government’s mess, and then ask for voluntary donations, rather than shaking people down. And this is taken as an indictment of capitalism, rather than the State. Let me ask the author: What would the world need to look like, for the author to think the State had failed in its duties?
OriginalOwner, you keep that flame burning. Maybe some day we can all escape to the libertarian paradise of Honduras!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @10:25PM
It is interesting how you claim to not use the karma bonus, yet every single post you make has one upmod... statistically the least likely event to ever occur, unless you have multiple shill accounts. Better write a script that logs in your other accounts to post all the time so we can't analyze post history to find out which accounts are likely tied together.
You're an idealistically naive person BTW.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @10:58PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:25PM
SN shares the default karma values from the green site. Posts by ACs default to zero, registered users (with at least zero or positive account karma) default to one, and registered users with high (30+?) karma have the option to set their default post karma to two. khallow's post you replied to has (at time of this writing) no moderation applied to it at all. The score of "1" is the default for a registered user with non-negative karma.
So I guess this all makes you an ignorant person...?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @10:24PM
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:36PM
Ozone denial? REALLY? Enjoy the yummy moon dust!
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday October 20 2016, @05:36AM
Khallow worked for Du Pont.
/comments.pl?sid=15661&cid=407668#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 20 2016, @05:55PM
However, my views on the ozone hole are more recent. For a while in climate research I've seen a lot of cases of a particular form of observation bias. It's where someone looks at a climate or related system in detail for the first time, finds some problem, and then blames it on global warming without even thinking to ask if the problem has happened before they started measurement. Later I read a typical Slashdot argument when someone used the faulty logic that since we got the Montreal Protocol right implied that we got the Kyoto Treaty right as well. I realized that even the priors could be wrong. We didn't really know that we had gotten the science of the former treaty right, particularly the alarming ozone hole. It was merely assumed so.
It's kind of an enormous knowledge gap to simply not known whether the ozone hole is a new thing that sprung up in the 70s and 80s when we first started measuring the ozone layer in Antarctica. Or whether it's an ongoing thing that's been around off and on for say 2 million years during which we weren't measuring the ozone over Antarctica.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday October 21 2016, @04:40AM
[...] simply not known whether the ozone hole is a new thing that sprung up in the 70s and 80s when we first started measuring the ozone layer in Antarctica.
Rubbish.
In 1956, the British Antarctic Survey set up the Halley Bay Observatory on Antarctica in preparation for the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957. In that year, ozone measurements using a Dobson Spectrophotometer began.
[graph omitted]
Instruments on the ground (at Halley) and high above Antarctica (the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer [TOMS] and Ozone Monitoring Instrument [OMI]) measured an acute drop in total atmospheric ozone during October in the early and middle 1980s. (Halley data supplied by J. D. Shanklin, British Antarctic Survey).
-- http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/facts/history_SH.html [nasa.gov]
In 1957, the International Geophysical Year, a network of 85 Dobson stations was established to measure global ozone. This network has provided long-term data showing significant ozone loss on a global scale over the past 25 years
-- https://www.ucar.edu/communications/gcip/m1sod/m1pdfc1.pdf [ucar.edu]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 21 2016, @01:29PM
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday October 21 2016, @04:35PM
The Rowland–Molina hypothesis can explain the secular trend. Have you an alternate hypothesis?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 21 2016, @07:04PM
The hypothesis that CFCs destroy stratospheric ozone is not a bad hypothesis and it is far from ruled out by what we know. But you're falling for one of the classic scientific blunders: assuming that a phenomenon that you've seen for the first time has happened for the first time.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday October 22 2016, @07:22AM
> So can the hypothesis that ozone holes happen on a regular basis for the past two million years.
I'll accept that that statement amounts to a hypothesis. We have observations of an 11-year solar cycle and a 1-year seasonal cycle. Those changes in solar flux would be expected to result in changes to the ozone. Your hypothesis "explains" the Dobson unit measurements by supposing there are longer-term oscillations; it doesn't explain what would cause oscillations on a longer time scale.
> But you're falling for one of the classic scientific blunders: assuming that a phenomenon that you've seen for the first time has happened for the first time.
The sources I quoted say there's not only an ozone hole but a global decrease in ozone. If that's been happening repeatedly on a time scale that's much longer than the Dobson unit observations (which at one station in Switzerland go back to 1932), we should expect that the current ozone levels are neither the highest nor the lowest that have occurred. Extreme ozone depletion in the past could be observed indirectly through its effects on organisms. People have looked into that (emphasis added):
We analyzed bulk UV absorbance of methanolic extracts and levels of five UV-absorbing compounds (hydroxycinnamic acid derivatives) in 135 herbarium samples of the liverwort Jungermannia exsertifolia subsp. cordifolia from northern Europe. Samples had been collected in 1850–2006 (96% in June–August). Both UV absorbance and compound levels were correlated positively with collection year. p-Coumaroylmalic acid (C1) was the only compound showing a significant (and negative) correlation with stratospheric ozone and UV irradiance in the period that real data of these variables existed. Stratospheric ozone reconstruction (1850–2006) based on C1 showed higher values in June than in July and August, which coincides with the normal monthly variation of ozone. Combining all the data, there was no long-term temporal trend from 1850 to 2006. Reconstructed UV showed higher values in June–July than in August, but again no temporal trend was detected in 1918–2006 using the joint data. This agrees with previous UV reconstructions.
--http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Publication/40887145/retrospective-bioindication-of-stratospheric-ozone-and-ultraviolet-radiation-using-hydroxycinnamic [microsoft.com]
Just going by the abstract, those researchers saw what they call "monthly" variation, which I would call a yearly cycle. They didn't see long-term variations. Of course, their idea of what's "long-term" is nothing like two million years. It is, however, multi-decadal.
Another author wrote (emphasis added):
The stratospheric ozone layer, which protects the biosphere from biologically active (mostly harmful) ultraviolet-B (UV-B) solar radiation, thinned during the latter half of the 20th century. In this paper some of the effects of UV-B radiation on cryptogams (cyanobacteria, algae, lichens, mosses, liverworts, pteridophytes and fungi) are reviewed. Effects vary among species, and therefore changes in UV-B radiation may affect species frequencies. Effects also depend on other factors, such as water conditions.
--http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Publication/40330816/stratospheric-ozone-ultraviolet-radiation-and-cryptogams [microsoft.com]
> You need data that distinguishes between hypotheses rather than merely assume that your favorite hypothesis is true.
It's all right to have just one hypothesis; the alternative of acknowledging our ignorance is always available.
> The hypothesis that CFCs destroy stratospheric ozone is not a bad hypothesis and it is far from ruled out by what we know.
Destruction of ozone by chlorine species was observed in the laboratory, and there was the global "experiment" with CFCs. Data from those--apart, perhaps, from the liverwort paper I quoted above--seem adequately consistent with the hypothesis, although ozone depletion happened more quickly than was predicted. It doesn't look to me as though acknowledging our ignorance is preferable. Supposing that the ozone oscillates naturally for unknown reasons isn't much different than that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 22 2016, @02:40PM
Your hypothesis "explains" the Dobson unit measurements by supposing there are longer-term oscillations; it doesn't explain what would cause oscillations on a longer time scale.
We do know there are such variations in both climate and solar output and both are relevant (though climate related effects matter significantly more) to ozone production over the Antarctic. In particular, we know that the ozone hole is due in large part [wikipedia.org] to isolation of the upper atmosphere due to polar vortex and high altitude cloud formation prior to the beginning of the Southern hemisphere spring (and return of sunlight to the Antarctic).
It's all right to have just one hypothesis; the alternative of acknowledging our ignorance is always available.
Sure, it is when the consequences of the hypothesis being more or less correct can be ignored. A key problem here is that global policy on refrigerants has been decided on the basis of a certain chemistry model of the stratosphere. But if natural variation is being ignored, then it indicates that the model's estimates of, for example ozone generation and depletion as well as the life span and effects of chlorine in the stratosphere can be very wrong, resulting in policy affected billions of people being based on bad models and data.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:14PM
Awesome! Forget Yucca Mountain, now we can back the trucks up to khallow's fence line and pour the waste. Any takers on how fast he'd cry, "why, there oughta be a law!!!"?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 19 2016, @02:08PM
Have they ever laid eyes on Amy Goodman [wikipedia.org]? Charging her with incitement to riot is like charging Urkel [wikipedia.org] with terrorism.
How much more of a mockery can the authorities make of the law before the whole thing falls apart?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @03:18PM
I always get these Goodman's confused --
Different family includes columnist Ellen Goodman (née Holtz; born April 11, 1941) and her daughter, Katie Goodman musical satirist and comedian. If you haven't seen “I Didn’t F*ck It Up”, take five... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLI8pSzwfTY [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @04:51PM
Well, to be fair, the law has always been crooked like this where they could get away with it. The camera in every pocket, loaded to the net in minutes, has really changed things up. No need to find a newspaper willing to publish, just throw that video or post on social media.
Which of course is why we need decentralized media platforms.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 19 2016, @10:02PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @02:30PM
From the Wikipedia link in TFS:
40 jobs? Is that a misprint?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @02:35PM
Nope. Its a pipeline, once its built you've just got a couple of people working at each of the handful of pump-stations along the route.
All the talk about pipeline jobs is bullshit, there are a lot of temporary jobs during construction, but after that it doesn't do shit for the local economy.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Thursday October 20 2016, @03:32PM
Amen.
I got so tired of reading similar stories about nonsensical numbers of created jobs for various projects, usually with little risk to the company concerned as they'd get a huge subsidy from central government, that I just don't read that crap any more. You'd see a headline trumpeting 600 new jobs, then you read the small print and this is while they build whatever it is, with the actual number of permanent, ongoing jobs being an order of magnitude fewer.
Ultimately what it's all about is, to quote Frankie Boyle, more money for bastards.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:23PM
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:28PM
Woah, my first upmod of a Khallow post (I think).
Who the hell downmodded this? Just cause it calls out Obama? I'll fight back! This isn't just an Obama thing, every administration does this stuff, but Obama got to preside over a major recession which makes jobs a very important public policy point.
This isn't partisan Khallow, but it is still bullshit stats to try and improve public opinion in general, or for specific projects.
40 jobs... gimme a break, screw this pipeline and spend it on solar installations.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:40PM
So your saying that Obama shouldn't mention "a very important public policy point?"
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:11PM
I should clarify, a very important public policy point from a PR perspective. In this case for such a huge project we only get 40 extra jobs, that makes it a very ridiculous thing to tag on and is transparently a move to gather support from the locals. My opinion is that such PR moves are meant to hoodwink the public into thinking things are getting much better, when in reality they are not. Our unemployment stats are very controversial...
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:29PM
It's more than an opinion, it's a fact backed up by decades of hard data that says the real income of the American middle class has been on an uninterrupted 40 yr slide. Also, we had an article on the site a few days ago that talked about the massive numbers of people that have fallen out of the labor force. You could also argue that Trump's popularity proves that at least half the country doesn't buy the bullshit anymore (you could argue that the other half doesn't buy the bullshit anymore, either, but are more afraid of Trump than Hillary).
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:42PM
Who the hell downmodded this?
Don't worry about it. I would have to post an incredibly long run of crap in many different stories in order to get significantly downmodded.
I don't know who wanted the permanent jobs info. It might be a cheap attempt at gaining favor or publicity by the would-be pipeline owner or it might be requested information from whoever approves such projects and dutifully parroted by a journalist looking to fill page.
My point is that the pipeline would move, cheaper and safer than rail, a massive amount of oil from North Dakota much closer to the Southeast refineries (Wikipedia says it's still missing a final leg from Illinois). That's the value not 40 jobs.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:28PM
And the rest of us would like that oil to stay in the ground, job value or not.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @07:06PM
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:17PM
Turn that question back around, it goes both ways. It is generally pretty easy to tell who "the bad guys" are, they are the ones that don't allow discussion, ram their projects through regardless of objections, and in this story have their minions attack peaceful protesters with dogs and tear gas. Some people want civilization to continue on this big ball of dirt, others only want to get their short term profits so they can live out their greedy little lives in luxury.
While I understand the desire for the pipeline, and the short term need and benefit, my preference is to do away with the need by investing in renewable energy and fusion / thorium / fission. I already know we differ on this topic, but go ahead and respond anyway if you want.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @11:29PM
But I do know this. We don't want only our bad guys to be the ones allowed to build pipelines and other such stuff. A society where peaceful protestors are allowed to shut down large infrastructure projects, unless some bad guy beat them up first, is not a healthy direction.
For example, a fair number of people here complain about "psychopath CEO" behavior. Here's an example of how you can encourage it. The protestors are aiming for destruction of this project. We're dangerously close to the only sort of person who can carry out this project legally or otherwise being a psychopath. That's typical of the terrible incentives we see in this society today.
While I understand the desire for the pipeline, and the short term need and benefit, my preference is to do away with the need by investing in renewable energy and fusion / thorium / fission.
That's fine. My view is that hydrocarbons whether from the ground or some renewable process remain a very efficient way to store energy for driving. And pipelines remain a great way to transport that fuel. And of course, there are trillions of dollars in infrastructure that directly uses hydrocarbon fuel for transportation. I think it would be foolish to throw that away.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:02PM
There is no downmod. It looks like khallow chose not to use a karma bonus.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @08:24PM
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:20PM
Many of your comments will remain unseen by those who filter out score 0 comments, plus you have to tick a box every time (unless it is also a default you can set?).
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:56PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:58PM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:00PM
> value of such a pipeline is not the jobs created, but the oil moved to the refineries of the Southeast.
What good is moving oil around if people don't have a reason to use it?
Your analysis that jobs are unimportant and that spending is unimportant because its not "wealth" is high-school freshman reductive. A billion dollars that sits unused is indistinguishable from 0 dollars. Economies flourish when people are working at creating value, but to do that people need to be working and that means both jobs doing that work and the ability to spend money buying the results of that work.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:49PM
What good is moving oil around if people don't have a reason to use it?
It wouldn't be. But we figured that problem out a century ago and there's now a vast number of people in the US and elsewhere who have considerable uses for that oil.
Your analysis that jobs are unimportant and that spending is unimportant because its not "wealth" is high-school freshman reductive. A billion dollars that sits unused is indistinguishable from 0 dollars. Economies flourish when people are working at creating value, but to do that people need to be working and that means both jobs doing that work and the ability to spend money buying the results of that work.
So are you claiming instead that 40 pipeline jobs is more important than moving that huge amount of oil around? I just don't see the point of your argument here. I guess we could talk about the uses, the jobs, and spending that much oil could provide to the US and elsewhere. I don't have a good feeling for it, but I figure thousands to tens of thousands of jobs is probably the right ballpark.
And spending a billion dollars? I guess we're talking about my link to the SNAP program [slashdot.org] (a US food for the poor program). There I note:
Note that $5 in spending produces $9 in spending not wealth. So right there we don't have a 2:1 return. As I see it, we take $5 of someone's money and use it to generate far less than $5 of value - feeding someone who can feed themselves. That's negative return on investment right there.
The program had a billion dollars in spending a year. So it sounds like that's what you're referring to. The obvious rebuttal to your post then becomes the observation that the billion dollars depresses spending and investment elsewhere whether it be appropriated by taxes, borrowed, or helicopter money. It's not a billion dollars that was sitting unused. It's a billion dollars that was going to employ people, buy things, build businesses, etc, but instead got used to feed people who could feed themselves for the most part (in hindsight, I grant that some part of the program might be necessary for people who simply can't work and even positive value in those cases, but I don't buy that the program at the current scale is so).
Note this was in response to someone who blandly claims that food assistance creates twice the wealth for the money spent. It turns out it doesn't. They aren't even trying to measure wealth and instead measure the far different and weaker metric of economic activity or "spending".
Anyway, here's my summary:
It's a destructive economic gimmick to conflate spending or economic activity with wealth creation. They aren't equivalent or even correlated. For example, a disaster creates a lot of spending and economic activity (from reconstruction efforts), but it results in a net loss of wealth.
This is the macroeconomics version of the broken window fallacy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @07:46PM
> So are you claiming instead that 40 pipeline jobs is more important than moving that huge amount of oil around? I just don't see the point of your argument here.
There are a million unexamined assumptions behind your claim.
For example, that the money spent on the pipeline couldn't be put to more productive use elsewhere.
That the externalities of all the people using the oil shipped by the pipeline don't drown out the benefits.
That the pipeline is really the most efficient method to get oil to the market rather than some other source more local or cheaper.
You are the king of assuming the worst for positions you disagree with and the best for positions you agree with.
In reality all you do is construct elaborate strawmen to rationalize your bias. Complexity, nuance, scope, differing interpretations, etc all of that is for ignorant dummies as far as you are concerned which is ironic as fuck.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @08:10PM
For example, that the money spent on the pipeline couldn't be put to more productive use elsewhere.
I don't see you in a position to make that evaluation nor anyone else for that matter. In a distributed system, we don't need to be. There are key information from the economy, such as a good estimate of risk free rate of return and the price of crude in various markets, present and past that adequately informs a pipeline builder of the relative productivity of their would-be investment. They can then decide whether that's good enough or not.
That the externalities of all the people using the oil shipped by the pipeline don't drown out the benefits.
That's a pretty flimsy concern since cheap energy has considerable positive externality.
That the pipeline is really the most efficient method to get oil to the market rather than some other source more local or cheaper.
That actually a pretty easy one to figure out. It's already pretty local and pipelines are well known for being extremely cheap for the volume compared to other transportation methods.
You are the king of assuming the worst for positions you disagree with and the best for positions you agree with.
Compared to what you just wrote? There is an awful lot of projection on the internet.
In reality all you do is construct elaborate strawmen to rationalize your bias. Complexity, nuance, scope, differing interpretations, etc all of that is for ignorant dummies as far as you are concerned which is ironic as fuck.
Show it's relevant. Don't just complain.
(Score: 2) by VanessaE on Thursday October 20 2016, @12:03AM
(mentally swap "manure" for "fertilizer" if you prefer a modern version)
Those guys who talk about the "velocity of money" don't sound so far-fetched, now that I think about it.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday October 20 2016, @08:21AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:54PM
If they're only planning on 40 permanent jobs, that says to me that they're planning on skimping on maintenance.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @07:19PM
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:23PM
You nailed it. It is not about jobs. It's about the refineries and private profits for corporations. If all the states between point A and point B should suffer the costs of a clean up, should the pipeline leak, well that's tough cookies.
Wait, dammit, i thought the key to parsing khallow was that anything the US or khallow does is just fine, but now we have to concatenate another exception "unless obama?" No wonder this code keeps returning the wrong answer--it's impossible to debug.
Sigh. Anyway, you're right about it being bullshit.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:56PM
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 20 2016, @11:33AM
Yeah that's the other point. There are a lot of other pipelines that cross the country. They keep a lot of trucks and train cars off the road that would otherwise transport that product, which saves CO2 itself. Adding another doesn't seem to matter that much.
In this case I think it was the environmental lobby trying to find another issue to fundraise on. They haven't gotten much love from the Obama administration, and their coffers must be getting low at this point. Their lawyers and lobbyists have expensive homes and lifestyles in DC they have to maintain, you know. The thing is they've been throwing stuff against the wall for the last eight years, hoping that something would stick that they could farm for dollars. They tried the Pacific trash gyre. They tried banning microbeads, the tiny plastic bits put in soaps and toothpaste as abrasives. They tried to attack another pipeline that already crosses the great lakes underwater. They also tried to push tiny homes and entomophagy, but that didn't catch on because what country do they think this is? The Keystone Pipeline was the only one they got any traction with, but god knows why.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @03:10PM
Amy Goodman: I'm a journalist covering a story!
Police: You are part of the Rebel alliance and a traitor. Take her away!
Amy Goodman: I recognized your foul stench when I was brought to the courthouse
Prosecutor: You don't know how hard I found it, signing the order to charge you with Trespass.
Amy Goodman: I'm surprised you had the courage to take the responsibility yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:01PM
Amy Goodman: I now claim martyrdom and have achieved reporter "cred", and I'm going to ride this horse long long after it is dead and beaten.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:23PM
Amy Goodman: I now claim martyrdom and have achieved reporter "cred", and I'm going to ride this horse long long after it is dead and beaten.
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:24PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:55PM
Gee, a reporter covering government and private corporation abuses, explain how this is a bad thing? She sure looks like the type that wants "cred".... Pull your head out of your ass.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:13PM
I didn't write the summary properly. What I meant to write at the end was that the initial charge was filed several days after the protest, after Goodman had broadcast a report about it. She wasn't arrested during the protest. I assume that she went back to the New York City area, where the show is produced, then made an additional trip to North Dakota to appear in court.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 19 2016, @05:41PM
Don't know about now, think things have loosened up, but 2 decades ago, all the stores closed on Sunday. As I've heard it put, they roll up the sidewalks on Sunday.
This is so obviously an attempt at censorship and intimidation. That the charges keep shifting-- first it was "criminal trespass" now it's "inciting a riot", is one of many clear signs that authorities are more interested in suppressing than protecting and serving the public. I mean, what's next, a catchall "disturbing the peace" or "disorderly conduct"? The Committee to Protect Journalists nailed it when they said ND authorities should stop embarrassing themselves. They're sure scoring some Streisand effect here. Idiots.
And, this is just one more little piece to add to the huge steaming pile of evidence that conservatives aren't too bright. Way to go, Party of Stupid (PoS).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Wednesday October 19 2016, @07:01PM
While you're correct in "this is just one more little piece to add to the huge steaming pile of evidence that conservatives aren't too bright", don't forget all the evidence available that the same applies to the left (of whatever persuasion). Don't assume that just because I'm likely to vote Green this year I'm not aware that Stein's explicit platform wouldn't be a disaster. The minor parties are always lead by someone who would be a disaster because they don't have a measurable chance of winning. But she's headed in the right direction. Sanders would have been a MUCH better choice.
As it is, if I were in a swing state I'd probably grit my teeth and vote for Hillary. I feel she's less worse than Trump. And she *does* have a few good points.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @08:52PM
As it is, if I were in a swing state I'd probably grit my teeth and vote for Hillary.
I live in a swing state, and I'm voting third party. In fact, if you live in a swing state, you should definitely be voting third party; we need to terrify the dominant parties into becoming better, and we can't do that easily if we don't have at least a small-but-not-insignificant percentage of voters voting third party so as to create the perception of a spoiler effect. What incentive do the dominant parties have to change if people just suck it up and vote for evil? You may delude yourself into believing you're preventing Armageddon, but in reality you're only prolonging our disastrous two-party system. Our two-party system is the real "disastrous possible", not the 'greater evil' candidate whose power to inflict harm is limited and typically short-lived in comparison to the harm inflicted upon us over several decades by our corrupt political system.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @10:29PM
Don't assume that just because I'm likely to vote Green this year I'm not aware that Stein's explicit platform wouldn't be a disaster.
Jill's platform contains no provisions which are anti-Capitalist nor which emphasize Democracy in the Workplace.
Jill's positions are NOT "Left".
They are still on the Right side of the political palate.
She still believes that things can be straightened out within the framework of Liberal Democracy (a path to austerity and perpetual war). [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wsws.org]
Jill is NOT a Socialist.
(None of the Socialist parties in the USA are on the ballot in enough states to garner 270 electoral votes.
Additionally, their efforts are splintered into a number of parties--some of which, despite their names, are actually pseudo-Left.)
N.B. Those online quizzes that ask questions to try to place you on the political palate NEVER ask "Do you reject the concentrations of wealth that characterize Capitalism and the skewed, anti-democratic power distribution with which that imbues a society?"
As such, they classify folks as "Left" who clearly are not.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday October 21 2016, @06:10PM
Never used PoliticalCompass.org? If you want a fairly accurate political quiz thing, rather than just a social media game, that's the one to use. Check the questions on page two, they don't hit that exact phrasing but they've got a number of questions getting at that same idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2016, @06:44PM
That's 1 of the 2 of which I am thinking.
It manages to position Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, and Jill Stein as "Left".
None of those folks has pressed for Democracy in the Workplace.
The gold standard for gov't action to enable Socialism (since 1985 and to this date) is Italy's Maracora Law.[1] [google.com]
None of those high-profile Progressive candidates has had anything like that as a platform plank.
All of those folks are trying only to get USA back to FDR's New Deal (Capitalist-centric) notions.
FDR was NOT a Socialist.
FDR's thing was to "save Capitalism from itself".
[1] The region of Emilia-Romagna in the north of Italy is an example of how effective that plan is.
There are over 8100 worker-owned cooperatives which generate about a third of the region's output.
Again: If you don't absolutely reject the concentrations of wealth and anti-democratic power inherent with Capitalism, you aren't "Left".
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 19 2016, @10:12PM
Next, maybe, but eventually you will be charged with -1 Disagree.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Wednesday October 19 2016, @06:59PM
So this bitch was a ringleader in an act of vandalism carried out explicitly so she could 'report' it... while of course pretending to be a journalist and not the eco-terrorist she actually is. Not only is the consensus here that what she did was praiseworthy, attempts to hold her and her co-conspirators responsible for the damage they caused is an abuse of government power, absolute proof that law enforcement is bought and paid for by the 'big corporations.'
You guys were jubilant when Julian Assange was dumping Bushitler's secrets, declaring him a Hero. Don't hear the outrage as Obama and Kerry are using the U.S. Government to act as plumbers for HRC. Hmm. Me? I'm still with HIllary on this one, he should have been droned (or whatever) years ago, just enjoying some schadenfreude as he has turned on you guys and watching you two faced sons of bitches instantly reverse your position.
And of course you talk a good 'journalism holding the powerful accountable' while sitting silent as James O'Keefe drops videos clearly documenting, in their own words, high ranking Democrats committing election fraud and organizing violence against their enemies. The legacy media declares it 'not a story' and you guys cheer as they attempt to drag the most obviously corrupt politician in American history across the finish line... before she collapses from whatever horrible brain disease they are also covering up.
Meanwhile we are told we MUST be made to care about unsubstantiated allegations about Trump dating back to the Age of Disco.... which even if true would merely be a routine Clinton (either of them) behavior. And none of which would violate the One Grope Rule promulgated by the National Organization of Women to retcon Bill Clinton's abhorrent behavior as 'not a problem.'
Yet when I assert that Progressives oppose the Rule of Law as a matter of doctrine I'm told I'm crazy and not to believe my lying eyes. The whole idea of the Rule of Law vs the Rule of Men is that nobody is above the law, nobody is "too big to jail." But it is obvious that the only reason Hillary Clinton is not wearing orange is that she is "too big to jail", that she and her followers have so corrupted every part of the criminal justice system that she is untouchable. The Department of Justice, the FBI, FEC, all of it.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday October 19 2016, @07:21PM
So this bitch was a ringleader in an act of vandalism carried out explicitly so she could 'report' it... while of course pretending to be a journalist and not the eco-terrorist she actually is.
Pretty major fault: that allegation is against a different reporter at another location.
As for the rest, just because I consider Trump to be about the worst choice we've had in many years, it doesn't mean I consider Clinton good enough to vote for. I'd sooner write in Ficus than vote for either of them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @07:51PM
> So where is my logic at fault here....
Your logic failed when you decided that anyone would give a shit about another self-congratulatory post from you.
Its like you feel so weak and ineffective that you constantly seek validation by posting reactionary screeds, if someone takes you seriously affirmation! And if someone flames the ever living shit out of you, well Jesus said "that if the world hates you, keep it mind that it hated me first" so its just more proof your righteousness!
(Score: 3, Touché) by NotSanguine on Wednesday October 19 2016, @08:09PM
So this bitch was a ringleader in an act of vandalism carried out explicitly so she could 'report' it... while of course pretending to be a journalist and not the eco-terrorist she actually is. Not only is the consensus here that what she did was praiseworthy, attempts to hold her and her co-conspirators responsible for the damage they caused is an abuse of government power, absolute proof that law enforcement is bought and paid for by the 'big corporations.'
Upon what did you base this ridiculous screed? Please do share with us, as we could all use a laugh at your expense.
Please tell us which acts of eco-terrorism have ever been perpetrated by Amy Goodman [wikipedia.org]?
Granted, she doesn't suffer fools like you gladly, but that's really a public service, not terrorism, eco or otherwise.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday October 20 2016, @08:24AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @09:08PM
Rioting journalists. We could use a bunch of those these days, I suppose.