Riding the State Unemployment Fraud ‘Wave’:
When a reliable method of scamming money out of people, companies or governments becomes widely known, underground forums and chat networks tend to light up with activity as more fraudsters pile on to claim their share. And that’s exactly what appears to be going on right now as multiple U.S. states struggle to combat a tsunami of phony Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) claims. Meanwhile, a number of U.S. states are possibly making it easier for crooks by leaking their citizens’ personal data from the very websites the unemployment scammers are using to file bogus claims.
Last week, the U.S. Secret Service warned of “massive fraud” against state unemployment insurance programs, noting that false filings from a well-organized Nigerian crime ring could end up costing the states and federal government hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
Since then, various online crime forums and Telegram chat channels focused on financial fraud have been littered with posts from people selling tutorials on how to siphon unemployment insurance funds from different states.
[...] Although, at the rate people in these channels are “flexing” — bragging about their fraudulent earnings with screenshots of recent multiple unemployment insurance payment deposits being made daily — it appears some states aren’t doing a whole lot of fraud-flagging.
A federal fraud investigator who’s helping to trace the source of these crimes and who spoke with KrebsOnSecurity on condition of anonymity said many states have few controls in place to spot patterns in fraudulent filings, such as multiple payments going to the same bank accounts, or filings made for different people from the same Internet address.
In too many cases, he said, the deposits are going into accounts where the beneficiary name does not match the name on the bank account. Worse still, the source said, many states have dramatically pared back the amount of information required to successfully request an unemployment filing.
“The ones we’re seeing worst hit are the states that aren’t aren’t asking where you worked,” the investigator said. “It used to be they’d have a whole list of questions about your previous employer, and you had to show you were trying to find work. But now because of the pandemic, there’s no such requirement. They’ve eliminated any controls they had at all, and now they’re just shoveling money out the door based on Social Security number, name, and a few other details that aren’t hard to find.”
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Username on Sunday May 24 2020, @03:41AM (3 children)
Is how much we will give Israel in welfare.
https://www.rt.com/usa/489598-us-aid-israel-senate-vote/ [rt.com]
Probably the biggest fraud we'll see.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 24 2020, @04:44AM (2 children)
That's on the order of ten million dollars a day. And it's real fraud too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:26AM (1 child)
Stop your claim, then, you fraudster khallow! We know you never actually worked a day, judging by your posts on SN! Fraud!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 24 2020, @06:24AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:05AM
Let's see, hypothetical voter fraud across state lines, for what gain to the perps? Nothing. Certainly not money.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:07AM (1 child)
The administration wants to test nuclear weapons, and nuking Mecca would piss off Muslim-Democrat caucus, so why not nuke Nigeria? It would put an end to internet crime.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @07:20AM
Wakanda will not allow it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:16AM
Real Americans get denied over tiny errors, while scammers get paid hundreds of millions. Sounds like the competence I've come to expect from us.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:31AM (6 children)
Perhaps we need to rein in, and execute, corporations that abuse such programs? Death by a Thousand cuts, to their taxes? Or death by Zuzuzu? Or just by letting them get elected precedent, and having to suffer the ignonomy of having played Golf, as One Hundred Thousand of your fellow citizens died from a disease you had it in your power to contain. Tiny hands, tiny managerial ability, cannot pronounce basic words. The President is a Moron. Impeach again, now, before it is too late.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday May 24 2020, @06:20AM (5 children)
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday May 24 2020, @04:30PM (4 children)
Yes.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 24 2020, @04:40PM (3 children)
(Score: 4, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:45PM (2 children)
So corporations aren't people then? :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:45PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:55PM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @08:45AM (91 children)
So some people are defrauding the system, while ordinary people who are legally entitled to receive unemployment money have trouble getting it at all. I have several family members going through that; they've gone 7+ weeks without receiving a single penny. A few of them were required to answer questions whose sole purpose it was to trick people into surrendering their benefits. I bet this fraud is going to be used as an excuse to further delay payments.
This is exactly why we should've done a UBI, and why corporate democrats like Pelosi and Schumer are utterly worthless garbage. Sure, after Pelosi gave away all of their leverage by passing the 4.5 trillion corporate bailout she started talking about 'considering' a UBI (though she's yet to actually try to get it in any bills). We could've avoided needing a massive, expensive bureaucracy to decide who should and shouldn't receive money, and people would have received their money much faster. The $1,200 stimulus checks were actually means-tested, so that delayed those as well.
Means-testing is garbage in a situation like this, where people need money ASAP. This whole pandemic has proven yet again that the US's social safety nets are nearly nonexistent, and that the actual left has next to no representation in government.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 24 2020, @12:13PM
Meanwhile, the "Billionaire's social safety net" continues to function well. Remember: $2T in aid overall, only ~0.3T of that went to citizens. Meanwhile US Billionaires' net worth has increased by over 300B in the same timeframe.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @12:19PM (84 children)
Precisely how the hell do you blame Pelosi and Schumer for not wasting time with on UBI, no matter its merits, when it has precisely zero chance of ever reaching the Resolute desk let alone being signed on it, even if every Democrat alive supports it? Romneyca...err Obamacare barely saw daylight and you think UBI has a prayer? Which timeline are you living on? The one where monkeys fly out of your ass or is it the unicorns sideways one?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pav on Sunday May 24 2020, @12:59PM (81 children)
Because that's politics? You put something to the floor, then get dare the other side to vote against.... then you take it to the election bank and cash it. But the Democrats supported Trumps court picks, his economic agenda, all Trumps most hawkish moves... only actually going against Trump when he tries to de-escalate with anyone. They've supported his shreading of nuclear treaties with both Russian and Iran. They supported the 0.001% bailout most of all. And the dead horse of Russiagate has been used to distract and confuse the world while this happens... and it turns out that it was all lies right from the start (surprise surprise surprise).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @01:20PM
Whatever axes you have needing such obvious grinding, UBI is not happening in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @01:32PM
The Democrats are not spineless. They have an agenda and they're doing a great job pursuing it.
That agenda just has very little to do with their campaign speeches. They didn't vote overwhelmingly to support the 792 billion dollar military budget because they are too timid to oppose it, but because most of the powerful people in the party have friends, family, investment money, or all three tied to companies that benefit from military spending.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 24 2020, @03:36PM (78 children)
That plus oh, $7 or so gets you a coffee at Starbucks. If they thought that check was worth anything, they'd go through the exercise. I think it's telling that a Ukrainian phone call has more traction than UBI.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @02:53AM (77 children)
Ranting about a Ukrainian phone call does not threaten the status quo, so corporate supremacists like Pelosi are fine with that. A UBI or other significant progressive reforms potentially would, though, so they only occasionally pretend to be in favor of it. The reason democrats like Pelosi won't do a UBI isn't because it wouldn't help, but because they are corrupt corporatists who are just serving their masters while occasionally pretending to be progressive on some issues.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 25 2020, @07:35PM (76 children)
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday May 26 2020, @03:29AM (75 children)
66% of Democrats support a UBI.
49% of unaffiliated voters support a UBI (more than are against).
Young people overwhelmingly.
If they wanted to breathe some life into Joe Bidens deathrattle of a campaign this issue would be a place to go. He'd certainly have better tech support on his lame basement podcasts, and have plenty of volunteers to man his phones. Joe could pick any other progressive issue (eg. healthcare, minimum wage and on down Bernies agenda) that poll even better and have bipartisan voter majorities, but it seems BOTH parties and also the media are voter-hostile.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 26 2020, @04:11AM (74 children)
That's pretty weak support [gallup.com] for an idea that has yet to make contact with the enemy. I notice the actually polling figures were 48% and 65%, and the corresponding opposing figures were the complement. Further, if it was that useful a platform plank, then how come nobody [washingtonpost.com] who supported UBI in the 2020 Democrat primaries got anywhere? 2 delegates (as of today [wikipedia.org]) for yes to UBI, 21 for unclear/no response, 58 for open to it, and 2623 for no to UBI. Even if you take out Biden and Sanders, the no to UBI (50) got much more than yes to UBI (2).
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday May 26 2020, @07:31AM (73 children)
UBI is near 50-50 across the electorate - circumstances have adjusted voter perspectives [thehill.com] since February. Though of course you're right - Demcratic insiders (just like Republican insiders) would happily see voters starve if it suits their donors.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 26 2020, @06:03PM (72 children)
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:02AM (71 children)
Where are the votes? In 2020 Bernie was TRYING to lose. He backed out of his pro-UBI position (ceded to one-issue-candidate Yang), and kept saying "Joe is a friend of mine... and he can win against Trump". His 2020 half-heartedness depressed the youth and independant vote, though there was still enough of that energy left that it took every billionaire in media AND for Barak Obama to come back from his wine cave to whip all the mainstream candidates (including Bernie "allies") behind Joe and finally push Bernie out. THAT is where the votes are. Given the pandemic Bernie likely still had a chance if he raised so much as a pinky, but the word is he's afraid of being excommunicated like Nader (although supposedly Bernie isn't a Democrat... work that out).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:53AM (70 children)
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday May 27 2020, @11:59AM (69 children)
Weapons of mass destruction, the German army was stabbed in the back, big beautiful healthcare... the biggest liars win more often than not despite what voters want, and the progressive agenda in the US has been buried because the biggest liars want it to be so. I was just pointing out that progressive issues often have majority support... not that lies didn't win in the end. Legalised weed, parmaceutical development should be government funded and drugs subsidised, the minimum wage should be raised, the green new deal, paid sick leave etc... all those issues are winners. UBI is one of the least popular, and merely has ~50% voter support, but that's only trending up in the current circumstances... and it's a huge winner among the young volunteers who give election campaigns a heartbeat. But Biden and his collection of rehabilitated Bush retreads instead want to varnish your fictional meritocracy with a slightly different shade of corporatism and deep state apologetics. Progressives and their issues have been staked and buried deep in lies, and it looks to have worked.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 27 2020, @12:41PM (68 children)
And I was just pointing out that progressive issues often just aren't that important.
Can you show any one of those other on your list is even remotely as important as legalizing weed - which has imprisoned hundreds of thousands, enabled a wide spread of abuses of law, and would reverse some of the most disregard law in the US? Private pharmaceutical development spent around $165 billion [prescouter.com] in 2018 and growing at a rate of over 3% per year. Where's the US going to come up with that kind of money?
There's no compelling reason for a minimum wage. Living wage is lower than claimed and most areas have a much lower cost of living than the regions lobbying for higher minimum wage.
The Green New Deal in all its flavors is just a disaster. Better to just drop it in a dumpster and set the dumpster on fire. Nobody has a clue where the money to pay for it is going to come from, much less what it'll actually do, if implemented.
And we already have paid sick leave in the US. Not the first time, the progressive agenda has desired something which already existed.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday May 27 2020, @09:38PM (67 children)
UBI and universal healthcare aren't important in a pandemic? Whatever.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 27 2020, @09:58PM (66 children)
You don't need either to treat people ill with the infection, implement public health measures, or come up with vaccines - things that actually matter in a pandemic.
And funny how those goalposts moved. We originally talked about why UBI wasn't addressed in the stimulus spending. It's because there's no support for it as I amply showed. Now, it's UBI in a pandemic with short detours to nuclear treaties, Bernie/Biden conspiracies, and the German army? Whatever.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday May 28 2020, @12:13AM (65 children)
Australia implemented universal cash payments and an economic stimulus in 2008...
We won (#1 performing economy in OECD after the crisis), you lost.
In the current crisis we're implementing large payments to the recently unemployed... and even boosting payments to other welfare recipients , and our universal healhcare system has allowed us to respond systemically much more quickly and cohesively at both a state and national level... and this is under a CONSERVATIVE government. (They're opening up too early but that's another story).
We're winning, you're losing.
The US situation is a tragedy, but it's a small pleasure to watch you try to squirm out of learning the lessons the majority of your countrymen already have.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 28 2020, @01:01AM (64 children)
We elected Obama. There's more than one way to slow an economy.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday May 28 2020, @01:24AM (63 children)
In what meaningful way was Obamas response to 2008 different from what Mitt Romney would have done? Are you saying "hope and change" was NOT a platitude?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 28 2020, @02:48AM (62 children)
His war on fossil fuels and taking over the General Motors/Chrysler bankruptcies. And I doubt any flavor of Romneycare would have been as constitutionally violating as Obamacare.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday May 28 2020, @11:01AM (2 children)
Mitt Romney... the guy who made his fortune buying businesses on someone elses dime, then stripping all the assets and shipping all the jobs to China? That Mitt Romney?? And Romney boasted of creating the predecessor of Obamacare, so there's that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 29 2020, @06:25AM (1 child)
Sounds like you have a problem with that. But not seeing the problem. Keep in mind that has helped better a lot of Chinese.
States have more constitutionally granted powers. Still a dumb idea, but not as consitutionally violating.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday May 29 2020, @09:11AM
My country has done quite well trading with China. Perhaps the Mitt Romney style is a touch sub-optimal.
And it seems your states DO have more constitutionally granted powers. It has been amusing discovering how state Republicans have often punched themselves in the face politically attempting to repeal.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday May 28 2020, @09:40PM (58 children)
...and as for his "war on fossil fuels"... Obama was happy enough to open the arctic to drilling on TWO occasions, and let Standing Rock "play out" when his own EPA gave him legal grounds to halt the project. He only did his performance-art halt right before the Trump hand over so he could SAY he did something when it wouldn't make a difference (and also to get most of those angry veterans to leave because they were scaring the Tigerswan guys ... the guys who blew holes in protesters, and didn't kill any through sheer luck, with their "sub-lethal" munitions).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 29 2020, @05:23AM (57 children)
Good example. Acting as gatekeeper with the default set to "deny". Trump has instead proposed one such "occasion", but it would be permanent.
His own EPA didn't give him legal grounds to halt the project. To the contrary, there was substantial unfounded obstruction [soylentnews.org] of this lawful project.
You wrote on this:
8-9 months of delay is significant. And that's after the permits were approved. There's years of delay before that point.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday May 29 2020, @09:05AM (56 children)
Sounds like you'll get your quick soviet style environmental protections. Well done, and enjoy your pyrotechnic water.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 29 2020, @03:26PM (55 children)
Because? Interesting how the goalposts move yet again. It moved from
to "slowing an economy" and now to "soviet style" environmental protections just because someone doesn't try as hard to slow projects with arbitrary bureaucratic obstructions. You're just a font of bad talking points this week, aren't you?
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday May 29 2020, @09:23PM (54 children)
Projection much? I was just stomping on your own snarky non-answers. And now your country is turning into a literal dumpster fire because of the policies you champion. Enjoy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 29 2020, @09:41PM (53 children)
Which non-questions would those non-answers be to? I note repeatedly how your narrative didn't match reality - UBI supporters who can't get any votes, COVID response being independent of the presence of UBI or universal health care, Germany army red herring (among many other such red herrings), confounding factors to why the US wasn't so hot in the recovery from the 2008 real estate crisis (namely, Obama was in office, messing up the economy), and pointing out the dumbness of conflating willful obstruction of lawful business with Soviet-style environmental disaster.
If you're "stomping", where's the footprints?
They would need to get implemented first (for example, relatively free markets in health care/insurance, legalizing weed, or a UBI plan that's not long term destructive).
(Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday May 30 2020, @09:52PM (52 children)
Votes? I'll restate because you blocked it out - it's an issue that's trending up FAST... up 6 points in A SINGLE MONTH... as of mid-May 2020 it's a wash... A WASH... an issue that was fringe before the democratic primary... from FRINGE to ~50-50 as of mid-May... not just 47% of unaligned voters, but 47% of young republicans support a UBI (just checked)... more than are against. Those numbers are ONLY going up in this completely mismanaged pandemic. And it's a winner in the democratic base (ie. ~2/3rds), and completely overwhelming among young democrats. Joe can pull in huge numbers of fresh young volunteers to sniff... I mean... to sort out his tech issues.
Obama was Mitt Romney in blackface... I already pointed out why. Mitt would be getting just as many ski trips with billionaires and profitable speaking gigs should he have won. Do you deny he would have had the same wallstreet and big oil insiders writing his legislation?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:20AM (51 children)
And I already noted it washed out in votes among the people who supposedly favored it 2 to 1. There's a lot of talk with nothing to back that up.
And I already pointed out how that wasn't true.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday May 31 2020, @07:59AM (50 children)
At some point you just have to leave some people in their own piss and vomit denying the reality of their situation. Enjoy your libertarian narcotic while your country is becoming a warning to others. Yeah, we all flirted with that drug, but the world with still-functioning healthcare and keynsian stimulus (some actual UBI eg. Spain) is in the process of getting back to normal. "Normal" might still be a private-debt-timebomb, but it is becoming understood (mainly from observing the USA) that relying on the private citizen to be always employed as the bedrock of society just creates a society prone to failure. 50% of your own countrymen realise that already.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:18PM (49 children)
As a UBI proponent, you would say that. LOL.
The real problem is not "some people" in their own piss and vomit, but (in the case of the US) drowning 330 million people in those some peoples' piss and vomit. UBI turns personal problems into country-wide problems. It also creates a huge conflict of interest with people bribed to vote for corruption and to drain their country's future for present day swag.
You think the US is swilling even a little libertarian narcotic? You're missing the big picture. More on that.
Spain still has more reported covid cases per capita than the US does (610 per 100k versus 530 per 100k as of yesterday) and about double the covid deaths per capita (60 per 100k versus 30 per 100k). No matter how you spin it (higher chance of death in Spanish hospitals, greater infections in Spanish elderly population, or lower testing rate), the Spanish health care system did worse. The only saving grace is the extremely low Spanish infection rate (under 0.5% for more than a week). Their health care system and Keynesian spending has nothing to do with that.
And yet, no evidence to support your assertion. To the contrary, the US actually does really well compared to most developed world countries at things like job growth and recovering from recessions. For example, the above mentioned Spain's GDP has yet to recover [tradingeconomics.com] to its 2008 high 12 years later. The US did that in 2011. (In comparison, Australia never had a decline in the first place.) The US has a moderately better labor force participation rate (as of April 20) of 60%, Spain had a rate of 58% as of March 20.
But of course, why consider reality when you can spin silly conspiracy theories and explain away obvious voter preference instead?
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday June 01 2020, @04:33AM (48 children)
Re: Spain, having an actual healthcare system has seen them to roll back a raging pandemic after their leadership was way too slow shutting things down initially. The USA isn't willing or even capable of that, and has only had a slower initial spread because of its geographical area. Spain won't lose as much financial ground internal to itself either because of their UBI and other socialist measures... but they weren't in a great place as a nation because of the single currency + EU structure, but that's another discussion.
Re: drug use - a good indicator of pain in a failing society, nothing to do with UBI. I wonder whos drug use is ramping up (USA), vs whos is going down (Spain).
Ahh, so you brought up the EU thing ie. Spains financial decline since 2012. In a way the EU is like the perfect libertarian government - low taxes, no redistribution. That makes sense because it started out as a coal and steel trading cartel ie. the European Economic Community (EEC)... and was steeped in that kind of thinking. You wouldn't approve though because their environmental standards are high - even right wing libertarian europeans are environmentalists because everyone lives beside someone elses anus in Europe. The whole finacial libertarian free market mindset means the biggest economies get bigger (ie. Germany) and the rest either shrink or borrow in an attempt to keep up, then suffer as they inevitably overleverage until even Germany suffers because its customer base becomes impoverished. You should recognise this decline as the USA structures its economy using the same base philosophy. Brothers in failure!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 01 2020, @06:08AM (47 children)
The US has an actual healthcare system too. And the US saw half the covid deaths per capita despite only having modestly fewer reported cases per capita. What that tells me is that the US was doing something healthcare-related more right than Spain was. The narrative just isn't working for you.
So you claim. I'm not seeing it myself, particularly, the "ramping up" stuff that's supposed to be going on in the US. The increasing legalization of marijuana will defuse a lot of that particular problem.
In a way, the EU is like the perfect turnip. It distributes resources. But not in a way that is relevant to anyone. Much bizarre reasoning runs throughout this thread. Here, when you have to qualify the likeness of two concepts by "in a way", that means that they aren't alike significantly.
In other words, the shitty economies shrink. They could just not overleverage instead. Sounds like an argument against UBI hiding in that since we see a nice comparison here what happens when governments borrow just to shuffle money around - my take is that the US would borrow to cover any UBI it has, just like it borrows for present day entitlement spending and corporate welfare.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday June 01 2020, @08:19AM (46 children)
The Spanish live five years longer (#6 in the world) than people in the USA even though they smoke over twice as much... soooooooo... ... there's that. They are about as age skewed as Italy (#7 in the world). Australia is up there (#8 in the world). The USA (#46, between Estonia and Panama) and the UK (#29, between Slovenia and Reunion) are the only developed countries that have had life expectancy consistently going backwards over the last 10 years.
Lick up that US freedom... yum yum... It's perfectly healthy. Ignore the taste of failure. Enjoy the healthcare. Enjoy the environmental protections. Enjoy the food standards.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 01 2020, @01:33PM (45 children)
A red herring.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday June 01 2020, @05:30PM (44 children)
A squirming cowardly denial... LOVE it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 01 2020, @06:53PM (43 children)
You must. You did so much of it in this thread. Here's some of the things that you denied and then squirmed away:
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday June 01 2020, @10:42PM (42 children)
It's SOOO fun rubbing your face in it...
UBI's 50% support among the electorate (rising quickly), 66% support among democrats and 85% among young democrats (y'know... the demographic that gives a campaign the energy to spring out of bed in the morning) = "not a serious political issue". I predict you're going to have a UBI or UBI-like payment, or have civil unrest indefinitely.
Comparing lies that kill people... "The German army was stabbed in the back" vs "weapons of mass destruction" vs "big beautiful healthcare"... I guess you're only losing 5 years of life per person nationally... not ALL due to healthcare. Five years is f*** all really. Noone should complain... at least it's better than Estonia!
Suuuuure, I was talking about MJ and not potentially lethal opiates... but you're right... MJ might also help people medicate themselves through the failure of their society.
Covid response not improved by UBI or Keynesian spenting? Enjoy your riot-induced covid spike while UBI-implementing Spain doesn't. Much of the rest of the civilised world is behaving similarly... although I predict the countries that don't will have unrest similar to the USA sooner rather than later.
Romney and Obama were not alike ideologically (apart from healthcare)?!? I suppose that's why Romney and both Bushes have allied with the Obama/Clinton wing of the Democrats (even sharing lobbying and campaigning resources), and a whole lot of Bush retreads and Wallstreet types are lining up to be Biden advisors.
As for soviet-style economic output uber alles. That particular pipeline you wave away endangers the headwaters of quite a number of West Coast populations... headwaters that the pipeline could have avoided but for the sake of some soviet style economic efficiency. And it's part of the slackening of standards allowing oil and gas infrastructure into groundwater aquifers, the headwaters of the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico looking like Nigeria due to oil and agricultural runoff etc... Australia has seen a similar trend... we're currently poluting the largest underground aquifer in the world (ie. the Great Artesian Basin)... our left leaders and environmental activists were somehow put to sleep by Hillary Clintons worldwide fracking tour until it was too late. Our largest river system has been chronically overutilised (ie. the Murray/Darling basin). At least we haven't drilled the oilfields on the Great Barrier Reef... but with this government who knows.
The EU IS the perfect libertarian government. It's a cabal of the wealthiest masquerading as a government managing resource and labour exploitation - how can libertarianism lead to anything else? Granted, they are more environmentally aware and have stronger labour policies than the US, but they have self-interested libertarian reasons. Firstly, the wealthy can't live as far away from poluted industrial cespits. Secondly guilotines, revolutions and wars seem to come from too blatantly ignoring the working class in that part of the world.
You should really wash away that libertarian piss and vomit, and go sleep it off.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 02 2020, @01:37AM (41 children)
Here we go again,
And yet, that support doesn't translate to any gains in an election. I think it's instructive to consider the issue of immigration in the 2016 Republican primaries. Anti-immigration has relatively weak support (for example, 46% in this poll [cbsnews.com]), but the voters who cared about it, really cared about it. That was good enough for Trump to get the nomination that year.
It's pointless to speak of approval when importance to the voter is ignored.
You have made us all dumber for writing that.
My point is that there's a lot less failure of society when retarded bullshit, like jailing people or stealing their property merely for having a doobie, go away. Nobody here is of the school that moral will improve, if we flay everyone harder.
The non sequitur is strong with this one. Yes, covid response wasn't improved by UBI or Keynesian spending. Too bad you were being sarcastic rather than apologetic. Also, keep in mind that the US spent a lot on Keynesian spending, and got those riots anyway. Turns out that UBI and Keynesian spending don't keep police from killing unarmed people. Who knew?
Do you think with that brain? You haven't said anything there. Many lobbyists and campaign managers are hired guns. They don't care what you believe. And political allies implies nothing about shared ideology. It happens all the time that people with different ideologies have shared interests.
The stupidity continues. If you care to look at a map, you would notice that the pipeline in question will run through headwaters no matter what. That's the land. The rest of your post is ridiculous and has nothing to do with the actual environmental risk of pipelines. Once again, you moved the goalposts to aquifer depletion and contamination (both which long predate any involvement from Trump) which is completely irrelevant even to the pipeline/soviet environmentalism tangent.
Except, of course, it's not even remotely close to a libertarian, much less a "perfect" libertarian government. I'm not wasting my time, when you can't even be bothered to learn what libertarian is. I'll just note that if it were genuinely libertarian, there would a hell of a lot less regulation than there is.
Oh look, yet another reason the EU is not perfect libertarian. Who knew you had enough mental capacity to torpedo your own arguments one sentence later!
In other words, they have interests which aren't somehow unique to libertarian systems.
Are we going to hear a "UBI or revolution" threat? I find that happens sometimes when UBIers run out of talking points.
As to your firstly comment, wealthy have access to long distance phone service. They can live pretty far away from the damage. Second, who is blatantly ignoring the working class in Europe? I sense another of your fantasies coming on. But I suppose that is the point of the title of this thread, talking about UBI and related fantasies.
Next time, stay on the fucking subject, think before you write, don't waste your time gloating, and if you have nothing to say, then say nothing.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday June 02 2020, @12:03PM (40 children)
The boozer loser is back for another round of pissing and spewing... :)
One-issue unknown Yang took UBI from practically zero to 66% of Democrats and 50% of Americans... but apparently that's nothing. NOTHING according to mildly intoxicated khallow. Jesse Ventura likes UBI (as a rationale for getting rid of other programs and certain types of corporate welfare), and hes being encouraged into the 2020 presidential race so we may yet see how UBI flies. You're more than welcome to bet against if it comes to that.
And you wave away five years of life from your nation... 20 million lifetimes... rejecting my apocalyptic framing. Whatever man.
I enjoyed your twist away from facing opiates to (justly) criticising injustices around MJ. Fair enough... but "self medication" is pointing some places you don't seem to want to think about.
The Yellowstone River saw 50,000 gallons of oil, the river on fire, benzine in municipal water supplys on one of the projects preceeding DAPL. Engineer whistleblowers from the project said tar sands oil needs much higher pressures which makes it inherantly more dangerous to pump, not to mention the damaging abrasive particulates that aren't economical to completely filter out before getting to a refinery, so major leaks are unavoidable. UNAVOIDABLE. Smells like soviet economic efficiency over everything else to me. But ignore fracking, other kinds of aquifer destruction etc... completely irrelevant. Absolutely unrelated contextually. Each environmental decision is made in glorious unconnected universes (at least according to smelling-of-piss khallow).
How is the EU NOT an embodyment of endstage libertarian. Winners use their winnings to win more, and crush the rest of the economy eventually. That's just basic game theory. Even before game theory The Landlord Game and Monopoly demonstrated the concept more crudely. Explain to me how this DOESN'T happen? Game it out simply. Don't worry, I'll even let you sober up a bit before you try.
And explain how a wealthy elite in France, or Germany, or some other small country that takes a few hours to drive across would NOT want to force the rest of society to have environmental standards? You say they should live far far away? Riiiiight. But libertarianism is people doing whatever they want within their power (and within the law). They just have so much power that they can use a financial carrot and stick to make everyone accept their cartel as a layer of government above the state. Everyone is a negotiator in a free market (which apparently self corrects for monopolies and cartels according to The Libertarian Alliance) so it's perfectly libertarian!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 02 2020, @05:44PM (39 children)
One-issue unknown Yang also picked up zero delegates - meaning UBI is still practically zero and Yang is still unknown.
Because it's completely irrelevant, man. I'm quite aware that the US system is shitty in a number of ways. But your snake oil solution didn't fix covid. Spain's public health policies did. Public health != universal healthcare and UBI.
Because the latter has a bigger effect, though still not relevant to the thread. We're not talking about the opioid epidemic any more than we were talking about five more years of life expectancy in Spain, but you keep retreating to those safe spaces. Man up and hold your ground.
Cuyahoga River was the river on fire. It's in Ohio not Montana. There have been two oil spills [wikipedia.org] both insignificant amounts as above (62k and 50k gallon spills) - read what precautions had to be taken (such as a small town having to shut down its water supply for a week and they had to monitor the river for a time). Most, if not all of the oil in the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) comes from fracking not tar sands. And major leaks in a modern pipeline just aren't that significant, higher pressure or not. It's dishonest to compare the performance of a modern pipeline to a 50-60 year old pipeline [insideclimatenews.org] with faulty welds.
The big problem with your paragraph above is not that it's irrelevant, though that happened just like all the other red herrings you've introduced in this thread, but you got the facts so very wrong - wrong river, wrong oil, conflating the safety of a now 70 year old pipeline with one built in the last few years. What a waste.
By definition of libertarian [wordnik.com].
There are plenty of examples of how the EU fails that, such as not overturning hate speech laws and other impairments of freedom, additional layers of bureaucracy and regulation, and a growing budget. The EU never was libertarian ever.
Now let's examine the weaselly adjective "endstage". A few years back, it was claimed that the Large Hadron Collider could end the Earth [time.com] by creating mini-black holes. Suppose that had actually happened. Then the destiny of every political system on Earth would be a little black hole. It wouldn't matter if the EU were a libertarian paradise, a communist paradise, or a theocracy that worships Swedish voles - the endstage is the same.
And that's the problem - the endstage state destroys information and structure of the system that preceded it. We don't know how good or bad libertarian societies are, because we're looking (hypothetically) at the state after they collapse. It tells us nothing about how well they did. Nobody claims that there's a form of government which will last forever. So just looking at the endstage (especially a purely fictitious endstage!) is a terrible way to judge a system.
For example of this lost context, the US has lasted about 230 years. Yugoslavia lasted 47 years. A commonly expressed scenario for the end of the US is the same sort of civil war break up that Yugoslavia experienced in 1992. So is a political system that lasted 47 years before imploding under its own flaws just as good as a political system that takes over 230 years to do the same, and is much nicer too?
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday June 03 2020, @09:45AM (38 children)
You DON'T think part of this looting spree and not containing covid has to do with there not being a UBI or some kind of UBI-like keynesian bottom-up stimulus? A bottom-up stimulus will either happen, or things will get a lot worse.
Who's retreating to safe spaces? The USA, like Russia, doesn't have quite as many old people... and can do a little less for the same result because of the age skew in who covid kills. You're not dealing with that, and you're not dealing with the fact that the USA is currently incapable of stopping a disease most other developed nations are.
As for the river... noone said they were pumping bitumen. The diluted bitumen they ARE pumping still contains abrasives and that's a problem. Tiny eddys that wouldn't usually be a problem will be throwing abrasives against the same spots over and over and all bets are off. Most leaks don't make the news.... a pipeline can legally lose up to 1.25% pressure before they have to shut down, so there'll be little leaks all over the place for months or years just adding to the background of benzene and other nasties in the water supply and environment. Then they can wait for a convenient maintenace window, or else a big leak will happen that they (and khallow) just wave away as some fraction of an olympic swimming pool, claim the insurance, fix all the leaks that have built up over years, fake a cleanup (that's a whole other story) then get back to pumping and leaking.
Soooo... libertarianism is doing what khallow wants. OK then... acrue enough power, then make it such that its in everyones best interest to bow to your will (as it should be in a glorious free market). As you have failed to do that, then your opinion doesn't matter. Others have, so their opinion DOES.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 03 2020, @02:31PM (37 children)
That's right. You seem incredulous for some reason. Perhaps, especially since that would actually be on topic, we could talk about that instead?
Because? Keep in mind that the eventual funding for that stimulus will come from the bottom-up too.
I made it quite clear who.
So what? Problems happen all the time and we don't just stop everything. Even if they didn't have a bit of "bitumen", it still would have abrasives. This is just an excuse, not a show-stopper.
This is just another excuse. We don't actually care exactly because those are small amounts (they have to be really small amounts because any spill is reportable, and invariably contained by berms and such placed for that purpose). This is stupid - claiming we should block an otherwise worthy project just because it isn't absolutely perfect.
So I can quote the actual definition of libertarianism and still get this crap? The real answer is that libertarianism is the idea that our governments should default to allowing us to do what we want as long as it doesn't interference with someone else's rights and freedoms.
I find it bizarre how in response to reasoned disagreement, you demand that I should force everyone to "bow to my will" (much less claiming that a "glorious free market" is somehow a manifestation of that coercion, ignoring key properties of a free market!).
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday June 03 2020, @10:10PM (36 children)
Because? I'll state things (again) as clearly as possible. Surely you don't support the current bottom-up funded trickle-down wallstreet handouts... I'd say that's a given. Obviously you don't believe in taxes falling disproportionately on the wealthy, so as things stand in the USA I guess you're right that if there's a Keynesian stimulus it would need to be disproportionately bottom-up. Sooo... you're saying there's little place for the state. Basically a nation-wide prisoners dilemma for lockdown (if you think the state should stay out of that), a prisoners dilemma for economic activity (if you believe the state should stay out of that), etc... Granted, doing nothing would have been better than Wallstreet Bailout II, but that would have just slowed the transfer of wealth upwards. You still haven't told me how your nation doesn't stop devolving into a neo-feudal basketcase like low-tax Mexico and Brazil without curbing the economic power of the wealthy through major tax-and-transfer. If the born-rich are allowed to prosper above the born-poor this becomes exaggerated over generations until its routine for dumb rich to win over genius poor. That's a recipe for national stagnation. If you think there's another outcome game it out!
The reason bitumen is a problem is a) because of the extraction method it has way more abrasives in it, and b) because it's heavy it needs to be diluted to be pumped at all, so is under higher pressure. Don't try and be slippery about it with dishonest framing.
As for your "small" leaks, they're causing cancer hotspots in both fish and people [youtube.com], not to mention acute problems including death... eg. one of the projects that guy blew the whistle on was Battle Creek Michigan where 16 people died after that leak in one trailer park alone in a period of just under two months. I'm sure if THAT stayed too long in the news Obama would have been pretending to sip the water there too. Yeah, I grew up in an old mining town and noone worried about the mercury, cancer, black lung etc... my great grandfathers lungs stopped working at 50, and people just accepted that kind of thing and moved on... but even that part of the world is moving on to cleaner things [youtube.com]. And we're leaving our oil under the Great Barrier Reef.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 04 2020, @11:38AM (35 children)
I haven't checked the latest break down of Keynesian spending, but a month back it was $1 one-time UBI to $4 Wall Street handouts. My take is that any such social programs will merely be a bribe to go along with the status quo spending. I can't help but notice that is one of your selling points too. UBI to end the riots.
None of which is relevant to UBI or universal health care.
How about the obvious fact that it exists in the first place? The middle class came about before there was any major tax-and-transfer at the state or federal levels in the US. Since, which direction has the tax-and-transfer been in? You seem to complain a lot about Wall Street handouts which indicates to me that government intervention has been in the wrong direction all along. I believe we would have better transfer of wealth without that government intervention than with it.
A solution ignored here is to make everyone a born-rich. UBI is an attempt at that. I think economic and regulatory reforms would give you far more bang for the buck.
Nonsense. You have yet to explain why this is even something worth talking about. This is just an engineering problem which can be solved with an engineering approach. We already know the company making the pipeline can can do that.
So what? I don't see any reason to care about your YouTube videos. No facts to back up the first video and solar power projects in Australia are completely irrelevant to the topic. As to your great grandfather, environmental and workplace regulation changed between then and now. I see no reason to destroy much safer oil pipelines now because things were vastly worse a century ago. That's a third non sequitur.
What is the thing you're trying to say here? How about you say that instead?
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday June 04 2020, @04:10PM (34 children)
I LOVE how you retreat everything you can't face, and reframe your way down a hole like an angry badger into your "strongest" safe spaces. Pipeline leaks simply aren't a solved issue [reuters.com], and who knows if DAPL is already slowly leaking into water supplies [theintercept.com]. I don't care that much if you consent to being poisoned, so ignore pipeline whistleblowers and reject the whole idea of the EPA if you like. Hell... lose another five years!
Your safe space is ... ... that the middle class came before the high-taxing Bismarckian welfare state?! True!!! You do realise though that you're talking about eg. "please sir, can I have some more" Victorian England... on back through Kings William, Edward and George before that... with people fleeing the centres of capitalism to the furtherst most underdeveloped reaches of the earth (Australia, India, the North American colonies, New Zealand etc...) just to get out from under it. You do realise a whole genre of fiction was written around women and men of "good breeding" (ie. born rich) trying to hook up with eachother because Europes social structure was so frozen. Now it's the USA that has a way more frozen social structure with masses sinking into poverty, and its the Europeans that have quantifiably more freedom to better themselves (ie. social mobility). I wonder why... :)
I do agree there could be better answers than UBI... but I'm sure we'd disagree on those answers.
And when your government transfers wealth to the top youuu... blame the concept of government. What a disempowering idea. No wonder people like you are so easy to steal from.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 04 2020, @07:15PM (33 children)
When dealing with irrational and dishonest rhetoric, such as the above, one needs to reframe the debate. Here, I've had to repeated point out the red herrings and other non sequiturs that you introduce with every post (including I might add this new complaint about reframing). I suggest you practice your logic, reasoning, and rhetoric skills so that such reframing becomes unnecessary.
For a hypothetical example, a good response to a leading question is to point out the nature of the leading question, thereby reframing the rebuttal in terms of the dishonesty of the question rather than stupidly just answer the question - the answer will never be right.
When dealing with arguments based on fantasy, there are two approaches I use regularly. Reframing - pointing out how the fantasy fails to match the real world, and conditional reasoning - where I show how the fantasy has inherent contradictions.
Your links don't show what you claim they show. For example:
and:
It's too bad that the authors of these articles only pays lip service to the details. Automated systems are only intended to catch a small, but very dangerous category of leaks (fast leaks that cause a significant drop in pressure). There are many other ways to find those other leaks. And no matter how or when a leak is discovered, it becomes a reported leak.
And it's dishonest to claim as you do above that a perfect pipeline with zero leaks is the only possible solution. That's just a Luddite gimmick. Pipelines merely need to be better than the alternatives, such as transporting crude by rail or road. That's much easier to achieve. Last time I looked, they were about an order of magnitude (ratio volume of leaks to volume of oil transported) better for the volume of oil transported - that includes some 70+ year old pipelines (plus since a pipeline is a fixed in place structure, containment of leaks is far more likely). A new pipeline like DAPL should be much better than that.
Finally, on this subject let's do a little conditional reasoning. Let's suppose that any activity which has some drawback, no matter how mild, should be banned. So no driving because you can't eliminate traffic accidents and lethal vehicle breakdowns. No eating because you can't remove all traces of toxins from food (especially food that have naturally have toxins - for example, members of the nightshade family: potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants). No living anywhere because Earth is a naturally radioactive environment.
I could go on, but I think you see the point. Even to merely exist is to take on risk. What's important is not that something has risk, but how much risk it has for the value it has. For all the empty talk from detractors, the DAPL operators seem to have done a great deal to reduce the risks associated with their pipeline, making it a very attractive project given its value.
Once again, let us reframe this in a rational and honest way. The middle class actually started (well, restarted given it existed in ancient times too, such as the Roman and Han empires) in Medieval Europe [google.com].
This predates the "Bismarckian welfare state" by a little bit. In the US, the creation of the massive middle class was due to industrialization not government wealth distribution. All that automation greatly increased the productivity of human labor and hence, the demand for it. Greater demand meant greater prices (wages and benefits) for labor. For example, Henry Ford's famous five dollar day [thehenryford.org] came in 1914. In the US, the welfare state truly started in the mid-1930s when the budget of the federal government rose sharply.
Will the transfer be somehow less, if I pretend it's not the government doing the transferring? I don't see the point of ignoring the tools of theft. Nor do I see how we can mitigate their effect without reducing the power of those tools.
And how is it easier to steal from me than from someone who votes for the best promises without regard to costly add-ons like corporate welfare or crony payouts? My take is that programs like UBI encourage such ignorance.
While these subjects are way off topic, it's interesting how your ignorance, blinkered reasoning, and lack of attention to detail extend to so many different fields of knowledge.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday June 05 2020, @08:20AM (32 children)
Only fast leaks [nytimes.com] are a problem? Dilution is the solution to polution, eh? :) I like the "oil truck" talking point - people notice when an oil truck goes over... and its not left there for years. There's also an upper limit to how much can be spilled (if they leak at all) and that max is rarely approached because of baffles and bulkheads in the tanks. This makes cleanup much more predictable and managable. And on a road there are usually plenty of eyes making sure the cleanup is quick and thorough.
Why have local government environment protection officers? Why force vehicle repair shops to install expensive oil/water separators on their stormwater runoff? Why book cars with oil leaks or emission problems? Why get local governments monitoring water quality, and tracking different kinds of polutants (and even just sediment) back up creeks and drains and suing/fining people. Why go to all the effort modern cities do if you're just going to turn around and allow an inherantly leaky technology? Perhaps it might be possible to run pipelines if they were inspected constantly by government, and were sued/fined for not quickly repairing even very small leaks. After 30 years of cleanup the water quality and big fish have come back to the local river in the city where I live (Brisbane, the state capital). The river used to be just oil-sheen, mullet and catfish. Now the most prized species have come back ie. threadfin and mulloway (or jewfish if you speak the old politically incorrect tongue) [youtube.com]. Jeremy Wade of River Monsters caught a 250lb Queensland Grouper [youtube.com] at the mouth. Back home the bogans (rednecks) took YEARS to largely stop snarling about the strict policies, but you can't argue with results. Before I left the north my brother and I used to catch barramundi and tarpon outside a shopping centre on a small lakes in the middle of Townsville (a regional city). They HAVE had fish kills, but it always seemed to be natural reasons (ie. hot weather driving oxygen out of the shallow tidal lake), so they installed a fountain to save expensive environmental investigations.
I've got an extremely mixed heritage (English, Irish, Egyptian, Ukrainian, German, Greek, Russian). My fathers mothers family were wealthy peasants (Kulaks) in Crimea... so basically capitalists in a feudal society. Yes, I knew that was a thing. Relatively low taxes, and not much interferance by the state. Golden, yes? Backward and miserable for most... I guess revolutions (Russian, French, American etc...) have reasons. Even though my grandmothers family lost a lot to the revolution and saw their own holdings collectivised and mismanaged, they also saw how the desperately poor average citizen was lifted up (eg. my grandmother wasn't an exception learning a couple of languages, learning to fly a plane, qualifying for medical school.... aaaand then she was captured by the Nazis and sent to Poland as slave labour after Crimea fell).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 06 2020, @02:06AM (31 children)
Fortunately, I anticipated your dishonest leading question by making the observation:
I, of course, stated above that the category of fast leaks is small and hence, heavily implied that it is not the only possible problem with pipelines. I expect my readers to get that implication.
I'll note that the story which I was discussing at the time, dishonestly implies that automated leak detection should detect all leaks.
Oh look, the first non sequitur of a string of them. I'm not even going to bother.
Because the value of the pipeline is vastly greater than the extremely low harm of the extremely low volume of those inherent leaks. If you can't be bothered to care about scale and degree of harm, I can't be bothered to treat you like an adult. For example, in an earlier post you whined about a few hundred gallons of leakage over a year period over a several hundred mile long pipeline (it was the story you linked to back the claim that DAPL had leaks in its first year of operation, the biggest of the five leaks reported was 168 gallons). And the worst they can claim is that some minute part of it might have gotten into the ground water.
As the US does? Eh? Eh? The DAPL owners aren't reported those minuscule leaks for the hell of it.
This brings up realms of conjecture. Maybe you're adopted? Or dropped on the head a few times? Or maybe Grandma was the only smart one in the family and everyone else was dumb as rocks. There's all these possible scenarios and I can't pick a good one without hearing more of your completely irrelevant stories about your ancestors.
This has to be your worst post yet. The small amount that you wrote which was on topic is almost as ignorant as the great mass which was not. I take it to mean that you've run out of things to say, but haven't quite exhausted the urge to say things. I would give more respect, if you actually came up with solid arguments rather than great tangents such as how paranoid small governments supposedly are about waste oil dumping.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday June 07 2020, @07:07AM (30 children)
OK, the whistleblower lied... wrecked his life for nothing. Small leaks are taken seriously, and not left for months or years until a major leak comes. Gotcha.
Societies either work for a large majority of people, or they decline and/or burn. Good thing yours is neither declining or burning.
Nothing to see here, move along.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 07 2020, @09:32PM (29 children)
Words mean things. Here, "lied" means deliberately told falsehoods. I don't know whether this whistleblower did or not. But what I do know is that someone you or the whistleblower claimed that the pipeline should be halted because of "bitumen" - abrasives and higher pressure in the pipeline. That's not engineering. That's Ludditism. There are ways to fix every problem. Merely claiming there is a problem doesn't mean anything.
Pipelines are a great example of infrastructure that works for a large majority of people.
One of the few things you've gotten right. Too bad you were trying to be sarcastic.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday June 08 2020, @12:01AM (28 children)
Bitumen seems to be the industry term. Diluted bitument (dilbit) is what they're pumping. I can't find that engineer whistleblower, only the spill cleanup crew guy who blew the whistle on existing pipeline leaks being left for months or years, and a TigerSwan security whistleblower.
I did however find a paper from a khallow-assessed "Luddite" at the University of Nebraska on the TransCanada submission to the EPA. The Keystone XL pipeline is indeed improved technology (about half as likely to leak when pumping normal crude), but the paper points out that when pumping dilbit the pipeline is exposed to high particulates, pressure, high temperature, and high sulphur/acidity [unl.edu], which the statistics TransCanada bases its projections on don't take into account. Therefore TransCanadas submission underestimates the volume of a worst case leak by roughly half, and the average number of expected leaks by AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 08 2020, @03:56PM (27 children)
And the Enbridge Spill [wikipedia.org] happened in 2001 on a 1950s to 1970s era pipeline [wikipedia.org] (the spill itself apparently happened on Line 6B which was completed in 1969) that had last been upgraded in the 1990s. Meanwhile the first stretch of the Keystone was completed in 2010. Why are we to suppose that the Keystone XL pipeline will fare as badly with better technology, engineering, and knowledge of how that past system failed?
Another aspect is that the comparison is to a leak where automatic shutdown apparently failed. Why are we to assume that will be the case for Keystone?
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday June 09 2020, @02:35AM (26 children)
There's nothing a newer monitoring system can do about workers (twice) overriding a autoshutdown against regulations because they thought they were just clearing a bubble. If you can think of a system that can stop pipe-jockeys from ever cutting corners and/or suits putting pressure on them to I'm all ears.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:23AM (25 children)
But that's ok, because that's not the job of the newer monitoring system. Regulation, training, and of course, better monitoring of the system will do that.
Regulations and lawsuits. Suits in particular fear those lawyers.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday June 09 2020, @10:40AM (24 children)
Fantastic... you've solved human error.
And it seems you know better than TransCanada about how their own technology has improved. If only you had known... you could have helped them improve their "Pipeline Risk Assessment and Environmental Consequence Analysis" document. Doesn't do much about the roughly five-fold increase in leaks though.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2020, @02:07PM (23 children)
It's been solved for a long time.
Oh really? "Five-fold increase in leaks" sounds exactly like not taking account of technology improvement.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday June 09 2020, @03:14PM (22 children)
Poooor khallow....
Keystone XL leaks half as much because of improved technology, BUT... thats when pumping more usual product for such pipelines, and dilbit causes roughly an order of magnitude more leaks over normal oil (because it requires higher pressure, is more abrasive, acidic, requires higher temperatures etc). I didn't fire up a calculator, but that sounds like "merely" a five fold increase in leaks to me.
And lets God-of-the-gaps this, and assume TransCanada forgot to take into account their wizbang new fault monitoring systems in their submission to tell the EPA how great their new pipeline would be (and that's quite wishful thinking by the way). There's just no way it would make enough of a difference to stop this pipeline from being very significantly worse than existing pipelines pumping less "exotic" product.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2020, @03:44PM (21 children)
Now, if you only had evidence to back those assertions up. I find it interesting how you just accept as truth someone's ax-grinding. The EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers both had access to that information as well. And they decided differently. That's despite an administration extremely hostile to pipeline construction.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday June 10 2020, @11:31AM (20 children)
Assertions? I just looked at the references in that paper, and the paper itself.
Keystone has had TWO ~400,000 gallon leaks since 2017. OK, that's not massive... only ~35 of the largest tanker trucks all going over and leaking every drop at once, so it doesn't scratch leaks from ocean-bourne tankers, oil platforms etc... and provided it's not in YOUR catchment or aquifer who cares right? And that whistleblower talking about companies routinely ignoring slow leaks for months or years, and how they fake much of the cleanup of large leaks? He's just an attention seeker. The academic is a know-nothing activist. The imaginary khallow fluid-dynamics-mastery pipeline management system will prevent significant leaks happening in future, and the khallow manual of pipeline management will prevent pipeline-jockeys from doing anything destructively stupid ever again. These aren't the droids you're looking for... move along. Got it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 10 2020, @07:02PM (19 children)
Exactly.
Indeed.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday June 11 2020, @04:51AM (18 children)
I guess you enjoy decline... so why am I surprised you'd extend that to your environment and not just your economy and society? It seems pipeline failures per mile have at least doubled [hindawi.com] since the 90's, so that should please you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 11 2020, @12:58PM (17 children)
To the contrary, this sort of thing is progress. Think of how much more leaks there would be shipping this by rail and road.
Sounds like reporting thresholds declined.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday June 11 2020, @10:46PM (16 children)
That would be why Canada is moving away from pipelines in favour of rail (ie. refusing pipeline approval, thereby forcing oil companies onto their rail networks) even though it's less economically efficient. They're also trialing shipping bitumen in bricks, which would make rail transport safer again.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Friday June 12 2020, @01:27PM (15 children)
And more polluting and dangerous! The obstruction of progress requires some sacrifice (here [wikipedia.org] and here [apnews.com] for examples).
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday June 12 2020, @07:52PM (14 children)
Canadas Liberals(!) had implemented US-style deregulation of their rail industry, and a disaster due to the resulting lax safetly had been predicted [ctvnews.ca]. After the inevitable accidents Canadas rail regulation regime has been reinstated and tightened. Government safety inspections are again mandated, replacement of old tank cars by safer rolling stock has been mandated (which is probably why that "bitumen puck/brick" technology is being trialed) etc... Still... oil is a problematic dirty technology, and the sooner its largely superceded for transportation power the better.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 12 2020, @10:58PM (13 children)
I have no doubt that echoes the beliefs of the people who killed dozens of people by preventing more oil pipeline infrastructure from being built out of Alberta. Rail systems have inherent disadvantages compared to pipelines that don't go away just because the regulations change slightly.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday June 13 2020, @12:28PM (12 children)
If Canada can force the remaining Koch brother to fund rail infrastructure upgrades while US rail infrastructure degrades then good on them. The fact that it's less environmentally damaging is not an inconsequential consideration either I'm sure.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 13 2020, @02:50PM (11 children)
"IF".
I take it you missed the part where pipelines were less environmentally damaging? The pathology of your arguments sometimes are quite interesting.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:05PM (10 children)
Rail has consistently spilled less oil per ton mile than pipelines [fas.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 13 2020, @09:25PM (9 children)
in your linked report? That comes from the section comparing rail transport of oil, the subject of the report, with pipelines.
Even with these new goalposts, you're struggling!
(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday June 14 2020, @12:53AM (8 children)
If I'm Buba Koch it's cheaper and safer for my schedule, my wallet, my plant and my minions... It doesn't matter that its not safer for the rest of the population, their water supplies, salmon, canola, maple syrup, moose etc... Of course YOU don't care, but it's always a pleasure to drive home the fact that to others (in this case the Canadians) that seems to matter.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 14 2020, @03:18AM (7 children)
Are we to do nothing because there are Buba Kochs in the world? You need a better reason than that.
Not safer than what? We've already established with your own link that pipelines were safer than rails, for example, despite your insistence to the contrary.
And now the appeal to apathy. You must have the better argument because you decided I don't care!
I think if there's anything you, Pav should take from this thread, is that you have a lot of unexamined assumptions that shouldn't stay that way. Better luck next time.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday June 14 2020, @02:52PM (6 children)
If you measure safety by the number of incidents, sure, you can say pipelines win. If you measure it by the actual volume of oil spilled into the aquifers, river catchments etc... (ie. what most of society is actually worried about) then rail is safer. It's not hard to understand.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:54AM (5 children)
What I think is particularly dishonest about this whole thing is that both systems are pretty safe. You aren't speaking of much in the way of leakage or loss of life either way. At that point, the system with the better economics should win.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday June 18 2020, @09:41PM (4 children)
I showed you how even documents from big oil can't get past how pipelines leak a larger volume of oil (even though they spin them as "safer" because there are fewer actual incidents). Hardly anyone dies of catastrophic smoking accidents either (other than perhaps around something flammable), but plenty had their lives shortened through cancer. Some smokers think it's worth it, and obviously you think degraded water and environment is worth it. Good on you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 19 2020, @12:35AM (3 children)
Exactly because "there are fewer actual incidents". You are only looking at part of the problem. What you're completely missing is that rate of incidents times volume of incidents is still very small. This is typical Luddite thinking where one obsesses on the worst parameter possible and then argues from that flimsy basis that the thing shouldn't be done.
I would be right too. Not using pipelines also degrades water and environment (and not just through the direct effects - introducing inefficiencies into society does that too). There is nothing we could do, even killing all humans on Earth, that wouldn't degrade water and environment somewhere to some degree at some point in time. We have to get beyond the cherry picking of harm. For example, you've already accepted, by arguing for rail over pipelines that water and environment is not infinitely important.
It's time to consider these other things that are important too.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday June 19 2020, @04:23AM (2 children)
I'm a "luddite" for wanting to move away from always-leaking and higher-volume-during-major-incidents pipelines eh? You've probably wanted to throw THAT word off yourself to someone else for a while I'm sure. ;)
As for inefficiencies, at the moment spilling less oil into the environment costs more. You'd prefer to save the money. Luddite me not so much.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 19 2020, @12:24PM (1 child)
Absolutely yes! You looked for the bare minimum to disqualify pipelines and looked no further. Standard Luddite behavior.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday June 19 2020, @11:05PM
Even with tech improvements a)pipelines get worse because of having to pump caustic abrasive diluted dilbit, and b) rail is already better, but has further room to be safer /w eg. bitumen in brick form.
I guess those that pointed out low nicotine + cigarette filters just made people inhale more deeply, and caused even more 3rd party exposure to carcinogens "luddites" too.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Pav on Sunday May 24 2020, @01:05PM
...and Jimmy Dore is fantastic and burning the Democrats, and particularly the spineless progressives like Bernie for letting this happen. He was interviewed by the ironically named "Useful Idiots" at Rolling Stone yesterday, and breathed his righteous fire : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxIjbulIYDs [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @01:37PM
Because they had actual fucking leverage before they passed the 4.5 trillion dollar corporate bailouts. The Republicans wanted those bailouts so badly that they would likely have accepted a UBI in exchange for them. How do you think we ended up with $600/week on top of the existing unemployment benefits (well, assuming someone can get the money)? Because Republicans loved that idea? No, it was because they wanted corporate bailouts.
Also, when UBI was first suggested, both Schumer and Pelosi rejected it, saying that they favored means-testing. They're corporate sellouts, and their incompetence is malicious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @01:28PM (4 children)
The current Congress would never go for UBI, even the Democrats. Remember, the great majority of Democrats voted for the nearly 800 billion dollar military budget in December.
Even though Congress hates UBI, the only smart play was UBI for a few months while they get means-tested income systems set up. State unemployment services don't have the human or technical resources to handle 10% of the adults in a state filing unemployment in the same week, anyone who worked in the tech industry could have told Congress that basing the stimulus on unemployment was ludicrous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @01:45PM (3 children)
States should be moving to rapidly process claims, even if doing so means that some people who 'shouldn't' get the money do so anyway. Since we're obviously not getting a UBI, that's the next best thing.
Instead, many states are actively trying to deny benefits, even during a global pandemic. Just amazing.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 24 2020, @03:45PM (2 children)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @02:49AM (1 child)
People need money now. A scary number of people had next to no money saved up, so going weeks without unemployment benefits is potentially life-destroying. A somewhat higher chance of 'fraud' is a perfectly acceptable trade-off.
Just verify people's identities as quickly as possible, and then give people their money. Don't hold up people's benefits because they quit a job a year ago (which is actually happening to a lot of people), try to ask them trick questions to get them to surrender benefits, or other nonsense just meant to delay payments.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:24AM
Welcome to parasites 101. If it didn't hurt to remove them, then they wouldn't be a problem in the first place. Keep in mind that this issue would be a vastly simpler matter, if basic hygiene had been performed for the past 50 years and the US didn't have debt almost 120% of its GDP and rising rapidly.
Unfortunately, that ship sailed long ago. I think we can give people money now. But in ten or twenty years? That's going to be rather iffy unless the US uncharacteristically cleans up its act.