EPA’s RCRA hazardous waste program was captured by industry

How the Once Tiny Waste Management Industry Captured EPA and Became VERY BIG



the president used that authority to sabotage regulations intended “to protect human health and the environment” in order to fight inflation. Clearly this action was an abuse of power and probably illegal. But this kind of abuse of presidential authority is so commonplace and widespread that it hardly gets noticed.

Whereas personnel in the Washington, DC program offices tend to associate with the industries they regulate, personnel in the regional offices tend to associate with the state governments and the business interests within their region. (In my experience, not too many EPA personnel associate with the people the agency is charged with protecting.)

In the case of the RCRA hazardous waste laws there are two categories of industries regulated, the industries that generate the wastes and the industries that dispose of them. Before the passage of the RCRA in 1976, and for a few years afterward, the philosophy of the Hazardous Waste Management Division, headed by John Lehman, was to write regulations in a way that encouraged industries, especially big industries, to handle their own wastes and not just turn them to someone else to dispose of them. At the time one would see factory designs by engineers showing the layout and flow of various parts of the plant with an arrow coming out labeled “To Waste.” One of our objects was to eliminate that arrow and make waste disposal part of the plant design. This concept was in keeping with the intent and spirit of the RCRA law to reduce the amount hazardous waste generated. The concept was generally accepted (if not completely understood) by our upper management.

There are several reasons why one would prefer hazardous wastes to be handled at the sites where they are produced, if practical, rather than by commercial waste haulers.

• Since a factory will produce only a limited number of different kinds of hazardous wastes, plant engineers can optimally design safe disposal techniques. On the other hand, commercial hazardous waste disposal facilities handle such a wide variety and ever changing kinds of wastes it is impossible to design an optimal facility to treat all the wastes. Indeed, commercial facilities have a dreadful reputation for breakdowns and blow ups.

• Commercial hazardous waste treatment and disposal facilities are run by private companies to make money. Their income is derived from the wastes they bring in. Their costs are derived from the treatment of those wastes. Any successful business works to maximize income and minimize costs. Therefore it is in their interest to prevent any reduction in the amount of hazardous wastes generated and to cut corners on the cost of treating those wastes. On the other hand, if factories treat their own wastes, on site, their incentive is to reduce the amount generated. Waste handling is not treated as a profit center, i.e. it is not run to make money for the company.

This policy (among many other things) was abandoned in the tumult that followed Thomas Jorling’s orders to redirect the drafting of hazardous waste regulations in order to carry out the President’s wishes.

The tumult arose because many Hazardous Waste Management Division staffers were upset by Jorling’s actions and a few of us went public with our concerns. After the resulting press coverage and Congressional oversight hearings, our activities were closely monitored by upper management. Jorling’s chief of staff, Gary Dietrich, replaced the director of the Office of Solid Waste Management, John Lehman’s immediate superior. Lehman kept his job for a while but he was no longer making the policy decisions, Dietrich was. I was transferred to a meaningless position.

The hazardous waste management industry, particularly Waste Management Inc. (WMI), took advantage of this opportunity to lobby even more strongly, especially with Gary Dietrich.

The waste management industry had been busy buying up landfills in anticipation of a windfall in new business and was not entirely happy with the direction the hazardous waste regulations had been going. They wanted strong regulations requiring generators of hazardous waste to use their services but weak regulations on how they could dispose of the wastes. The regulations, when eventually written, in July 1982, accommodated them. (Gary Dietrich left EPA in 1982 for a lucrative position as an expert consultant on hazardous waste.)

Before 1978 it had been EPA policy to discourage landfilling hazardous waste, but with the implementation of RCRA came the explosive growth of the landfill operators, with Waste Management Inc. (WMI) in the forefront.

Wayne Huizenga, WMI’s founder, was driving a garbage truck in Florida when he bought his own, in 1962. In 1968 He formed WMI. By 1969 his single truck had become a fleet. The company’s growth was marked with allegations of ties with organized crime; bribery; unfair competition practices; illegal political contributions; and disregard for the environment. Huizenga’s net worth in 2017 was estimated at $2.6 billion.

RCRA gives the Administrator of EPA no authority or responsibility for creating, promoting, or siting, hazardous waste disposal facilities. Under the law, the Administrator’s responsibility is limited to drafting and enforcing regulations for such facilities so as to “protect human health and the environment.” This limitation probably stemmed from the experience with the Atomic Energy Commission, which was abolished in 1974, but whose authority to both promote and regulate the nuclear power industry created an obvious conflict of interest.

Nevertheless, by 1980, as EPA executives started flocking to lucrative jobs in the hazardous waste disposal industry, EPA actively promoted hazardous waste landfills with ineffective controls and no insurance. It also did little to support alternatives to landfills. In fact, the EPA Administrator did not just promote facilities but, as it will be shown later, he actually required specific facilities to be built.

Under Gary Dietrich’s supervision, EPA finally published woefully weak regulations for the treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste on May 19, 1980, which also established the basic “cradle to grave” approach to hazardous waste management that exists today. On one hand EPA was promulgating regulations requiring industries with hazardous wastes to register and fill out manifests and use only licensed waste haulers to dispose of their hazardous waste. On the other hand there were very few safe places to dispose of them. Into this vacuum poured the waste management industry. Firms like WMI scrambled to buy up old sites and create new ones. As Michael Brown put it:

“Like an imported animal species let loose on virgin soil, the waste brokers have proliferated throughout the nation, settling into a lagoon complex in one place, a landfill in another, and focusing their attention on highly industrialized states—California, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Texas. Several of them—SCA Services, waste Management, Browning-Ferris Industries, Rollins Environmental Services—have reached the proportions of conglomerates, gobbling up independent landfill operations and spreading themselves on vast sites.”

Waste disposal became the growth industry of the 1980s and made lots of fortunes. Its practices were sloppy, their sites were often no better than the ones portrayed in The Killing Ground, and there were credible reports of connections with organized crime. Companies bullied, lied, and bribed their way into poor rural communities who were bamboozled by them[i]. Their money corrupted EPA. Top EPA executives, including five Chief Administrators , numerous Deputy and Assistant Administrators (political appointees) and civil servants were pigs to a trough, taking lucrative jobs in the waste industry.

In order to illustrate the regulatory capture of EPA’s hazardous waste program consider the chart below. On the left side are listed several policies pertaining to hazardous waste management. The first column asks whether the policy was in the public interest. The second column asks whether the policy benefited the landfill operators and the third column asks whether EPA supported the policy.

Table

Hazardous waste management policy	Was policy in the public interest?	Did policy benefit landfill operators?	Did EPA support policy 1979- 1986?
Cradle-to-grave management	yes	yes	yes
Discourage to use of landfills and encourage technological alternatives	yes	no	no
Educate the public on known risks of landfills and other hazardous waste facilities	yes	no	no
Strict oversight on monitoring and reporting	yes	no	no
Punishment for violations great enough to deter violations	yes	no	no
Require insurance and financial responsibility great enough to cover future problems	yes	no	no
Encourage industry to manage its own waste on site	yes	no	no
Encourage waste reduction	yes	no	no
Encourage recycling	yes	no	no

It is seen that except in the first case, the policy interests of the landfill operators were not in the public’s interest yet EPA always supported the landfill operator’s interest. And from what I hear, they still do.

Public opposition to EPA and the waste industry

The only force opposing the waste industry juggernaut and EPA was the NIMBYs. In this context the NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) were local grass root organizations opposed to existing or prospective commercial hazardous waste facilities, usually landfills, in their area. They were frightened at the prospect of an industrial hazardous waste dump the size of several football fields in their “backyards”. They felt they were being given a snow job by the landfill operators, the politicians, the EPA, and local businessmen, who, in many instances, had a financial stake.

Several organizations gave the NIMBYs technical and moral support, support in how to organize and fight. Organizations such as Greenpeace, the North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, The Southern Organizing Committee for Racial and Economic Justice, and the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW). The latter was founded by Lois Gibbs, the brilliant organizer from the Love Canal toxic waste dump site in upstate New York, who, after victory, moved to the Washington area to create CCHW in 1981. She travels around the country teaching NIMBYs how to organize and fight and she recruited me as an unpaid technical advisor. The NIMBY movement was very successful in thwarting and frustrating the efforts of the hazardous waste management industry and EPA. .

On July 26, 1982, also under Gary Dietrich’s supervision, EPA finally issued landfill standards required by RCRA in 1976. During that period scientific and technical evidence accumulated to show that beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no such thing as a secure hazardous waste landfill and that no one knew how to build one. The preamble to the regulations acknowledged as much. Nevertheless, EPA published regulations which would continue a practice which EPA knew would not work and which will ultimately cost the nation dearly both in terms of health and money.

A hazardous waste landfill is an underground dump which contains thousands of tons of poisonous industrial wastes, most of which remain poisonous forever, and which will dissolve in the rainwater which inevitably passes through it. Throughout the years many technologies have been tried to keep the wastes contained and none have succeeded. On the other hand, EPA has demonstrated many alternative technologies capable of safely recycling, destroying or detoxifying these wastes. Technologies which are readily available but underutilized.

Dumping is popular because it is cheap. It is cheap because unlike the competing alternatives, the real cost of dumping is not borne by the producer of the waste or by the disposer but by the people whose health and property values are destroyed when the wastes migrate onto their property and by the taxpayers who pay to clean it up, such as happened at Love Canal. It was in order to pander to this demand for cheap disposal that the politicians running EPA kept trying to find ways to continue the dumping of hazardous waste in landfills, despite the compelling evidence that it doesn’t work.

The July 26 regulations admit that landfills will leak and cannot be relied on to protect human health and the environment, as required by law. But Dietrich’s solution was that, rather than phasing them out, EPA would provide emergency relief and remedial action when a landfill fails. This is analogous to the Federal Aviation Administration issuing an airworthiness certificate to an airplane it knows to be unsafe but promising additional fire trucks and more hospital beds.

Passed as a response to public anxiety, The Superfund Law (the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA)) was, by 1984, in full force. The act created a fund, paid for by the chemical industry, to clean up past, and often abandoned, hazardous waste dump sites.

Within EPA the Superfund program was managed by the same office that managed RCRA. In other words, the Superfund program, started out captured by the waste management industry and turned out to be still another windfall for it. Pressured by the waste management industry to spend Superfund money as fast as it could, EPA was paying millions to move pollution from one leaking dump site to another. Thousands of tons of dangerous Superfund clean-up wastes were moved to sites that were themselves leaking hazardous waste into the environment. It was inevitable that some sites to which Superfund wastes have been taken would also become Superfund sites.

One case was the Stringfellow dump site near Riverside, California, which had been designated a Superfund site. A firm called BKK was hired by the Superfund program to haul millions of gallons of hazardous waste from the Stringfellow site to BKK’s own landfill in West Covina, California. However, the BKK facility was also reported to be leaking. Moreover, BKK was one of the parties named as responsible for dumping hazardous wastes into the Stringfellow site in the first place. Thus, BKK was paid to dump hazardous wastes in Stringfellow, where it leaked into the environment, and then paid again to haul the wastes from Stringfellow to the BKK facility where it was leaking again. Later the BKK facility also became a Superfund site.

Aided by such shenanigans, Superfund funds soon ran out and had to be replenished. The legal concept of “joint and several liability” was applied (though later reversed by the Supreme Court) to help pay for cleanup. This meant that any one of the many polluters of a dump site could be held responsible for the entire cleanup costs. (Whoever paid could then sue the other polluters for their share of the costs.) This caused a major change in the behavior of the giant corporations, who generated a great deal of the hazardous waste, since the costs of cleaning up these old sites was significant. The concept of big industry handling its own wastes, while at first promoted and later rejected by EPA, was now taking hold, to the consternation of the waste management industry.

Even more bad news for the waste management industry and its EPA allies came in the form of the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984 (HSWA). Drafted in response to EPA’s poor performance, HSWA directed EPA to phase out land disposal of hazardous wastes, expanded the public’s ability to sue EPA, and dictated that should EPA miss regulatory deadlines, statutory “hammers” would fall putting into effect strict legislated rules.

New developments in hazardous waste

The waste management industry tried to cope with these new Congressional constraints by promoting a new breed of “scientific” waste management facilities. But the NIMBYs were not fooled.

In 1985, a company called GSX applied for a permit to build a commercial liquid hazardous waste treatment plant in Scotland County, North Carolina, which had a largely poor population of blacks and Native Americans. This was the beginning of a new wave of hazardous waste facilities. Wastewater from the plant would be discharged into the Lumber River, upstream of the drinking water intake of the town of Lumberton. It turned out to be a long, involved case with many unexpected twists, too long to be included here, but there are two especially relevant features of this story.

The first concerns the EPA Administrator under the first President Bush. William Reilly was a professional environmentalist and president of the World Wildlife Fund at the time of his appointment. One of Reilly’s first acts, in April 1989, without any explanation or public discussion, was to reopen the proceedings to withdraw North Carolina’s authority to manage the RCRA hazardous waste program.

North Carolina had written a law in 1987, which prevented construction of the GSX facility, in order to protect public health and the environment. Then GSX and its allies petitioned EPA to withdraw the authority of the State of North Carolina to administer the federal hazardous waste program because, they claimed, the state law unreasonably imposed a law more stringent than the federal law. The regional EPA administrator, Jack Ravan, who later left EPA to become President of Rollins Environmental Services, the country’s second largest hazardous-waste company, supported and promoted GSX. EPA had never faced this kind of dilemma so the administrator, Lee Thomas, commissioned a study (which cost $1.2 million). It was completed in December 1988, when, shortly before leaving office, Thomas issued a policy memo, based on the study, which, among other things, conceded North Carolina’s right to act as it had. One would think that that was the end but it was only the end of round one.

The environmental community was confused, even outraged at Reilly’s decision to reopen the proceedings that his predecessor had closed. The Winston-Salem Journal wrote:

“The criticism of Reilly yesterday came from five of Reilly’s former colleagues — the presidents or executive directors of the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, the Audubon Society, the Environmental Policy Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Reilly had been the president of the Conservation Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund until February, when he became the first professional environmentalist to head the EPA.

Reilly said yesterday in Washington that he was surprised that Jay D. Hair, the president of the National Wildlife Federation, was among his critics.

“Jay Hair hosted the breakfast at which I was lobbied to do the very thing that we are doing,” Reilly said. He said that one of the people who spoke to Reilly at that breakfast was Dean Buntrock, the chairman of Waste Management Inc. of Oak Brook, Ill., the nation’s largest hazardous-waste management company.”

Buntrock was accompanied by two previous EPA executives who by then worked for Waste Management Inc.

So the motivation for Administrator Reilly’s strange behavior was doing some powerful friends a favor. An unnamed EPA official was once quoted as saying “Reilly’s always looked up to rich people, and he’s infatuated by money and prestige. He’s Jay Gatsby.” (from Bill Gifford, “The Life of Reilly,” (February 27, 1990), the Village Voice, New York, NY)

The other relevant feature were the hearings, called by Reilly, to disenfranchise North Carolina’s hazardous waste program, which took place before EPA Administrative Law Judge Spencer T. Nissen.

I sat in on one session of the proceedings. It was a sad spectacle. The lawyer from the EPA Office of General Counsel was accompanied only by lawyers for the waste management industry. Indeed, the industry lawyers answered most of the questions Judge Nissen addressed to EPA. Sitting on the other side, opposed to the industry and EPA, were not only the attorneys for North Carolina, but also two representatives of national environmental organizations, and a representative of a grass-roots citizens group. It was obvious to any observer that EPA was being led in these proceedings by the hazardous waste management industry.

On April 11, 1990, Judge Nissen dropped his bomb. He found for North Carolina and against EPA. His 122-page decision was a sweeping rejection of almost every EPA/hazardous waste management industry position. Some of his specific findings were:

• EPA gave to itself authority to essentially preempt state laws which are more stringent than EPA’s and which interfere with the expansion of the commercial hazardous waste management industry. Judge Nissen suggested that EPA was overreaching by ignoring the clear Congressional message of the Bumpers Amendment that allows states to adopt more stringent hazardous waste laws than the federal program, especially in regard to siting of facilities.

• EPA claimed that the proposed GSX facility, which it was promoting, was environmentally adequate and, therefore, the North Carolina law requiring more stringent environmental standards added nothing to the protection of human health and the environment. Judge Nissen disagreed and found ample justification for North Carolina’s more stringent standards. In order for EPA to reach the conclusion that the North Carolina law was unnecessary it had to ignore the advice of its own experts that the GSX site was, in fact, a threat to the drinking water supply of Lumberton, NC.

• EPA violated its own prohibitions against the use of dilution as a waste treatment technique. EPA had almost no standards for siting hazardous waste facilities but nevertheless tried to prevent North Carolina from establishing standards of its own. EPA claimed that North Carolina’s standard was “arbitrary”, but the finding was that EPA’s own standards were just as “arbitrary”.
• EPA claimed that the real intent of North Carolina’s statute was to block the construction of any commercial hazardous waste facility and that the state’s assertion of an environmental protection motive was a sham. The judge found was that EPA has no business looking beyond the stated purpose of the law, which was to protect the environment.
• Judge Nissen debunked the EPA/hazardous waste industry’s claim that commercial hazardous waste facilities were no different than non-commercial ones and should be treated no differently. Judge Nissen’s finding was that commercial hazardous waste facilities can be far more dangerous than non-commercial facilities and a more stringent standard for them is justified.

In conclusion, stopping GSX was important. It was not the end of the hazardous waste industry’s dominance of EPA’s hazardous waste management program but it put a brake on the expansion of the industry. By running EPA and cowing state governments, the industry was planning on having dozens of sites like GSX all over the country. After the defeat of GSX the industry’s ambitions were more modest and the battle for each site harder fought.

In April 1990 Browning-Ferris Industries, headed by former EPA Administrator Ruckelshaus, discontinued all hazardous waste business. Expansion of the commercial hazardous waste industry would have retarded the impetus of industry to design and operate its factories so as to eliminate or safely treat or dispose its waste on site and reduce or recycle wastes. That was the goal of EPA before it got taken over by the hazardous waste industry. That this goal has been somewhat achieved was due to Superfund, HSWA and Judge Nissen; not EPA. Unfortunately though the defeat of GSX did not change EPA.

William Reilly, Gary Dietrich, Thomas Jorling, Jack Ravan, and many others have violated many specific EPA ethics provisions. These rules state that: “Employees may not use their official positions for private gain or act in such a manner that creates the reasonable appearance of doing so. “Employees therefore must not …. take any action, whether specifically prohibited or not, which would result in or create the reasonable appearance of: (1) Using public office for private gain; (2) Giving preferential treatment to any organization or person; ….. (4) Losing independence or impartiality of action; (5) Making a Government decision outside official channels; or (6) adversely affecting public confidence in the integrity of the Government or EPA.”

Every one of these rules were violated in the cases discussed here but I know of no EPA executives who were punished for it. Indeed they have all prospered. On the other hand, EPA employees had their careers ruined for pointing out such violations.

Authors note: I consider this a prequel to an earlier paper I wrote for Independent Science News titled “Designed to Fail: Why Regulatory Agencies Don’t Work.” This paper tells the story of one instance of regulatory capture while Designed to Fail suggests ways to prevent regulatory capture.

* William Sanjour retired from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2001 after 30 years, most of it spent in regulations. He has written and published articles about why regulatory agencies don’t work and what can be done about it. He has have been invited to testify at numerous Congressional hearings and at state legislatures and citizens groups around the country as well.  He presently sits on the Board of Directors of the National Whistleblowers Center. This article and others can be found on the Web at http://sanjour.info.

Years Before Vietnam, TRUTH About Dioxins

Years Before Vietnam, the Chemical Industry Knew About Dioxins:

Dr Latham told us: “The papers clearly show that the authorities very often did not regulate the industry, but protected it instead.” Van Strum’s papers document, often for the first time, according to Latham, “that the dangers of highly toxic substances have been hushed up and played down for decades.”


https://www.poisonpapers.org/the-poison-papers/

Chemical Industry Knew About Dioxins

WOW, something got published in English!  

It will be hours or days before the American Machine chops it down so no one gets it!

Subject: Years Before Vietnam, the Chemical Industry Knew About Dioxins

Dear Friends and Colleagues

Published today, Tuesday, Nov 14th, in Independent Science News:

Years Before Vietnam, the Chemical Industry Knew About Dioxins
by Petra Sorge

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/years-before-vietnam-the-chemical-industry-knew-about-dioxins/ 

Synopsis: Decades before the herbicide 2,4,5-T was pulled from the US market for containing dioxins, the global chemical giants Dow, BASF, Monsanto, and others, had extensive discussions amongst themselves of whether to sell dioxin-contaminated chemicals. These discussions ranged from chemical analysis of each other's products to comments on their safety and whether to inform governments that their products contained contaminants of "extraordinary danger".
This article is a translation from the German. The internal discussions reported in it are now available to the public for the first time thanks to The Poison Papers Project (www.poisonpapers.org). Released in July 2017, by The Bioscience Resource Project and the Center for Media and Democracy, the Poison Papers represent 3.5 tons, over 20,000 documents, showing unprecedented concealment by industry and regulators of chemical hazards stretching back to the 1920s. Most of these documents were obtained and preserved by Carol Van Strum, an Oregon mother and activist.

Please share this information if you find it of value.

Yours sincerely
Jonathan

Jonathan Latham, PhD
Executive Director
The Bioscience Resource Project
Ithaca, NY 14850 USA

www.independentsciencenews.org 
and
www.bioscienceresource.org 
and
www.poisonpapers.org 

jrlatham@bioscienceresource.org
Skype: jonathanlatham2
Tel: 1-607-319-0279
Twitter and Facebook: @Biosrp

Journal2MyGOD Irma Scam => Do the Double Imp

Imprison them all!

9/1/05 = Irma cleaning house for Mother Nature
So I wrote about hurricanes and Africa

What?

I saw this coming and I knew it was coming. I also realized that the New Orleans thing is barely a warning. I spoke to Amir about it too. Said I heard it was 7 storms smashing things this year


8/05 = Knew i needed to tell you something.... lol...
8.18pm Wow, I Am reading and writing and reading some more and more... there is so much going on here that i've got no clue what to do about it all. I know that I have so many things going on at once and that I will get all the help i need at any time and space that You like...

This is really about you. This is Your Dream, Your Creation. What you are doing now is bringing so much focus and clarity to the issues around your life that nothing will be able to stop you.

I like That I Am ...

Just setting these words down before you at this very moment is more powerful and clear than you will ever understand. there is no more time. everything will begin happening now. What have you seen with the hurricanes... start in africa...

I guess i once saw how a hurricane stayed in Africa and the waters and winds were so strong that hundreds and thousands...

What was it?

Uhg, ok millions of people died!

1/25/05 = Rebuilding Park after Hurricane

Dear Neighbor; 
Our neighborhood has been impacted more by the results of the hurricane cleanup than the hurricanes themselves. Many of you helped complete a petition to the City of Tampa to change this, see attached.

Thank you all. Tampa has responded and agreed to create a new City Park for us. To start the City will layout a trail for us using the existing pile of mulch. We have already defined the trail location which will be about 100 feet inside the property line around this entire property. This will designate this area for this public purpose so in the future we can get tax dollars to upgrade and maintain it as a City Park.

Please mark up this map with trail changes or locations for possible new trees and return to me ASAP. We hope to have the area fenced off and signs posted with specific entrances within the coming year. 

Finally for future park dedications; what would you like most: 
Please circle numbers return THE MAP PAGE: 

1 = Not really 10 = would love here 
1. Mountain Bike Trails 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 
2. Dog Runs 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 
3. Jogging track 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 
4. Nature Trails 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 
5. Restore Wetlands 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 

Please provide me with any other ideas, recommendations, and feel free to visit me to sign the original petition to show your support. The best thing for all of us is that we all understand, and ALL AGREE. Only by working together can we get the support of the City to enhance our neighborhood. 

Thank you: Results

3/05 = get 4 hurricane hitting us here

The leading edge of this manifesting things very strongly like this. So we better get clear about it and stay strong since others will need to learn and follow.  It feels like we are alone with this at the times, while someone else is at times we are not... like there is ALWAYS one or two people at this level consciously at a time... and not much more than that, so there might be a hundred or a thousand capable, but only one or two there at a time....

Creating this vortex that went through the center of the earth and popped out the other side. I have seen and felt like there would be some massive hurricane to spin out of the point of the earth opposite from where I was sitting. Course then we get 4 hurricane hitting us here and tsunami's hitting the space opposite from here. I've also told Rima how the hurricanes won't really hit Tampa

National Hurricane Center

National Hurricane Center

Three coming, and half of two states is gone!

Time to do the Double IMP!
Come dance with me, Hurricane Party!

do the Double IMP!

do the Double IMP!

do the Double IMP!

The Engineering of Consent - the manipulated voter

The Engineering of Consent - Wikipedia





Bernays describes engineering consent as "use of an engineering approach—that is, action based only on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs." [1]




Bernays explained, "Professionally, [public relations] activities are planned and executed by trained practitioners in accordance with scientific principles, based on the findings of social scientists. Their dispassionate approach and methods may be likened to those of the engineering professions which stem from the physical sciences."[2]




The threat of engineered consent in democracy has been expressed in a textbook on American government:[3]




Under modern conditions of political advertising and manipulation, it has become possible to talk of the engineering of consent by an elite of experts and professional politicians. Consent that is thus engineered is difficult to distinguish in any fundamental way from the consent that supports modern totalitarian governments. Were the manipulated voter to become the normal voter, the government he supports could hardly be said to rest on his consent in any traditional sense of that word.




To some observers, consumer psychologists have already made the choice for people before they buy a certain product. Marketing is often based on themes and symbols that unconsciously influence consumer behavior.




The "Engineering Consent" chapter of Christopher Bryson's book The Fluoride Deception describes how Bernays helped the water fluoridation campaign in the USA.



The idea of “Engineering of Consent” was motivated by Freud’s idea that humans are irrational beings, and are motivated primarily by inner desires hidden in their unconscious. If one understood what those unconscious desires were, then one could use this to one’s advantage to sell products and increase sales.

1. Bernays, Edward (1969). The engineering of consent. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 9780806103280. 
2. Bernays 1955 page 4 
3. John C. Livingston & Robert G. Thompson (1966) The Consent of the Governed, 2nd edition, page 11, Collier Macmillan 
4. Bernays, Edward L. (March 1947). "The Engineering of Consent" (PDF). Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 250 (1): 113–120. ISSN 0002-7162. doi:10.1177/000271624725000116. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 13, 2012. Retrieved February 24, 2016.

How should people eat fish

... the energy that moves us forward - Yahoo Groups

How should people eat fish to get the most benefit with the least harm? Vary the types of fish you eat. Limit your intake of shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish to once a month to reduce your exposure to high levels of mercury.

Aim to eat fish high in omega-3 fatty acids at least once or twice per week. These include herring, mackerel, salmon, trout, tuna, shellfish and sardines.

If you eat canned tuna, choose chunk light over albacore or solid white. Flaky white fish, such as cod, are not high in omega-3s, so they offer very little benefit.

created by journalists for journalists

A note to users of DocumentCloud.org – Aron Pilhofer – Medium

DocumentCloud has been a runaway success beyond our wildest dreams. As of this writing, our repository hosts 3.6 million source documents, and has been used by more than 8,400 journalists in 1,619 organizations worldwide.

Documents in our collection have been viewed more than 824 million times by the public. DocumentCloud has been used by some of the largest news organizations in the world for high-profile stories such as Wikileaks, Panama Papers, and the Snowden documents.

"Poison Papers" Snapshot: EPA Collusion with Chemical Industry

"Poison Papers" Snapshot: Transcript Illustrates EPA Collusion with Chemical Industry | By Rebekah Wilce | Common Dreams

Scientists at the FDA were the first to spot the fraud and misconduct and blew the whistle on IBT in Senate hearings in the late 1970’s. Soon after, the EPA was forced to deal with the issue and estimated behind the scenes that some 80 percent of the data provided to them for chemical registration from IBT was nonexistent, fraudulent, or invalid.

The IBT scandal presented the EPA with a potentially immense crisis. Knowing that almost every IBT test it had looked at was seriously flawed and presumptively fraudulent, it could order retests and withdraw its approval from every IBT-tested chemical. This course of action would have been fully warranted, scientifically. But it would have had drastic effects on the chemical industry, on public confidence, and on the newly-formed EPA itself.

What the EPA did instead is revealed in a transcript of a meeting that took place at the Howard Johnson Inn in Arlington, Virginia on October 3rd, 1978. This secret meeting was between senior figures at EPA, Canada’s Health Protection Branch, and executives of the chemical industry, and was intended to solve the IBT “problem.”

This transcript is part of more than 20,000 documents, weighing over three tons, just released by the Bioscience Resource Project and the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), on the “Poison Papers.” website.

Microchips Employees Company-Wide-

Three Square Market Microchips Employees Company-Wide -- Three Square Market | PRLog



Three Square Market (32M) is offering implanted chip technology to all of their employees on August 1st, 2017. Employees will be implanted with a RFID chip allowing them to make purchases in their break room micro market, open doors, login to computers, use the copy machine, etc. This program, offered by 32M, is optional for all employees. The company is expecting over 50 staff members to be voluntarily chipped. 32M is partnering with BioHax International and Jowan Osterland, CEO, based out of Sweden




32M is envisioning this technology to help it grow its other self-checkout businesses. "We see this as another payment and identification option that not only can be used in our markets but our other self-checkout / self-service applications that we are now deploying which include convenience stores and fitness centers," added Mr. McMullan.




Employees will be chipped at the 32M inaugural "chip party" hosted at their headquarters in River Falls, WI on August 1, 2017.





32M based in River Falls, WI, is considered a leader in micro market technology. With its' patented technology and industry-leading smart phone application and inventory intelligence, 32M has grown to over 2,000 kiosks in operation in nearly 20 different countries plus it operates over 6,000 kiosks in its' corrections industry business, TurnKey Corrections. For more information on 32M visit http://www.32Market.com or http://www.BreakRoomRehab.com or follow them on Twitter, @32Market, on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn by typing in 32Market.




BioHax International is a company based in Sweden on the forefront of implanted chip technology. Osterland was recently a guest speaker on the TED Talks. Visit www.BioHaxSweden.com for additional information.

Theories That Became Facts

10 More Crazy Conspiracy Theories That Became Conspiracy Facts



Americans need to come to terms with the simple fact that they no longer live in a democratic society, and so taking action within a broken system in hopes that the next candidate will actually follow through with their promises, is futile and ultimately counter-productive. The dire need for this country, this planet, to wrestle away the driving force behind the current seat of power and set course for a viable and sustainable future can not be overstated, and is likely beginning to become starkly apparent to the average American.

A Shadowy Corporate Lobby Is Quietly Trying to Ban Protesting Across the U.S.

A Shadowy Corporate Lobby Is Quietly Trying to Ban Protesting Across the U.S.
Of the 26 bills examined, ten were authored or sponsored by at least one known ALEC-affiliated politician, often times more.

If ALEC is behind the recent wave of recent anti-protest bills, it wouldn’t be the first time the ‘non-profit’ organization has sponsored such legislation. In 2003, ALEC-crafted legislation for states that would have criminalized animal rights activists protesters as “eco-terrorists” — in conjunction with their push for the federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), which they had also drafted. AETA was passed in 2006.

“While there is no indication that anti-protest legislation is on ALEC’s current agenda, it is worth noting that the kinds of protests being targeted are all in conflict with ALEC’s anti-worker and anti-environmental platform,” Yoder wrote, referencing ALEC’s 2016 agenda.