EPA in the Ozone

I have been looking at this new EPA ozone level proposal where they even state that it is justified because courts have ruled cost is not to be considered . It looks to me that they are outlawing nature. What first raised the question was when I followed the link from news.google to the Salt Lake Tribune in neighboring Utah. Problems in Utah?! So I looked at the counties which would flunk the new levels. Many of them are desolately rural, with populations in the 10s of thousands with population densities of a handful per square mile. I looked at Michigan. The same thing is true. Some of the most isolated rural counties in the state, for instance Benzie county, across Lake Michigan from equally rural Door County Wisconsin, with a population of 15,000 in an area of 860 square miles, mostly water and the rest wooded, would fail.

Click the thumbnail for EPA’s somewhat ambiguous map of mean maximum summer ozone concentrations. It’s clear any correlation with population centers is weak if one exists at all.

Ozone, of course, is that fresh smell after thunderstorms. It is created by UV light, electric discharges and breakdown of hydrocarbons by sunlight. Tree resin is a hydrocarbon. So one might expect a lot of natural ozone in forests with resinous growth in hot sunny climates - like the California interior. Ozone was assumed to be the cause for the fresh smell of oceans, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone says that’s caused by dimethyl sulfide from plankton - also dangerous in high concentrations. But one has to wonder about the raised levels surrounding Lake Michigan, and perhaps the shores of all of the Great Lakes .

What a fantastic scam if you can tax and otherwise boss people around for something which is a natural phenomenon. As our measuring instruments get more precise, and we start talking parts per billion, as we are with ozone, we are bound to get down to the natural”noise” level on many of these molecules .

They claim ozone can contribute to asthma. I get asthma from dogs, cats , horses and hay (and the winter after 9/11). But ozone, in thunderstorm quantities, smells good to me, like a breath of very fresh air.

Michael Moore “Sicko” lives up to Lenin’s dictum

MTV’s excellent review ‘Sicko’: Heavily Doctored shows Michael follows Lenin’s timeless advice to socialists :

We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth. We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, scorn, and the like, towards those who disagree with us.

MTV links to a video Dead Meat “which shows the reality of health care under Canada’s socialized medical system: Canadians wait … and wait … and wait. … And sometimes they die while waiting for free government health care.”

I know these delays are so extreme that the Quebec Supreme Court ruled that the system, which criminalizes any private medical care or insurance, violates Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it actually causes people to die.

This is explained well by Sheldon Richman head of the Foundation for Economic Education in his To the Medical Socialists of All Parties “All resources are limited—otherwise they are not resources.” Elsewhere I have heard the succinct observation that resources will be rationed; the only issue is whether by prices determined a free market place, or by waiting lines or political preference or connection.

The FEE talk by Jane M. Orient, M.D, is also a good listen

Our Latest Dead-Tree Issue is Here

New York City’s long wait is over. The latest paper edition of Serf City has arrived from the printer. And if I do say so myself, it’s a great issue. Some of the highlights include Joseph Dobrian on the recent gay pride parade, Matthew Lysiak on the Atlantic Yards eminent domain scheme, Bob Armstrong on the pseudo-science behind the war on CO2, and yours truly on our municipal employees’ abuse of official parking placards. And much, much more.

You can read a pdf of the latest issue here, or you can find the paper version in our sleek black newsracks wherever finer free tabloids are given away throughout the city. We’ll also have a stack on hand at the Operation Politically Homeless booth at the Bleecker Street street fair tomorrow.

The Prisoner of Second Avenue (Below 86th Street)

Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing folly just keeps getting worse. Today the New York Times is reporting that not only will drivers be charged $8 to enter Manhattan below 86th Street, those of us who are already here will be charged $8 to leave!

Not only that, it’s going to cost you money to get in your car even if you never leave the congestion zone:

Drivers whose trips start in the zone and do not leave it would pay only a $4 fee, as in the case of an Upper East Side resident who drives to a job on Wall Street, or a TriBeCa resident who drives to an Upper West Side doctor’s appointment. But under the plan, if those same people drive north of 86th Street, or to New Jersey, Queens or Brooklyn, the $4 fee rises to $8. Drivers with E-ZPass would get credit for any bridge or tunnel tolls. Trucks would also be charged $21 to enter or leave the zone, or $5.50 to travel within it.

The city will use gazillions of Big Brother-brand surveillance cameras and an EZ Pass system to track cars as they move in, out and within the zone. So exactly how much driving does one have to do to trigger the $4 intra-zone charge? When I’m circling my neighborhood for an hour every night trying to find a space to comply with the alternate-side-parking rules, will I have to pay? In that case, maybe they should scrap the alternate-side fines altogether. After all, if they’re going to penalize us if we drive our cars — but charge us more if we fail to drive them — that’s hardly going to reduce traffic congestion.

Love is in the Air

We all know how reliable a news source News Corporation is. I mean, hell, the word “news” is in its name! However, it’s a bit alarming that our buddy Rupert Murdoch is wining and dining Chinese elitists, as he attempts to buy out Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal.

Joseph Kahn at the New York Times comments on Murdoch’s dealings with China:

“China has never been a make-or-break proposition for the News Corporation, since its operations here (Beijing) represent a small part of the company, which is valued at $68 billion. But Mr. Murdoch pushed for nearly 15 years to create a satellite television network that would cover every major market in the world, including China.

He coveted the $50 billion in ad spending that flows mainly to China’s state-owned news media whose products, even after years of improvements, still reflect propaganda directives as well as consumer demand.

The News Corporation’s competitors in television and film, the Walt Disney Company, Viacom and Time Warner, also had to accommodate Chinese demands as the price of admission to the local market.

But Mr. Murdoch gave more, his associates said.

‘The Chinese discovered that Rupert was a real emperor who controlled everything himself,’ said H. S. Liu, who oversaw government relations for the News Corporation in China. ‘His rivals had big, cautious bureaucracies that could not always deliver.’

China has long meant more than business to the Murdoch clan. Mr. Murdoch’s father, Keith, wrote about China as a war correspondent in the 1930s. As a newspaper proprietor in Australia, he collected Ming dynasty porcelain.”

Isn’t that darling? Well, at least someone is infatuated with the integrity of the Chinese media.

The Colbert Bump: Ron Paul Edition

This isn’t just another gratuitous Ron Paul post — it’s a gratuitous Ron Paul post with a New York angle. After Ron’s recent appearance on The Colbert Report, he experienced “the Colbert bump” with a little help from his fiercely dedicated NYC Meetup activists. Great job, guys and gals!

(Sorry I’m linking the video instead of embedding it in the post. I can only figure out how to embed YouTube videos on WordPress. Comedy Central’s coding doesn’t seem to work with the WordPress format.)

The Secret to Lots of Blog Comments

Just blog about Ron Paul and/or his supporters, as Karol at Alarming News discovered today. You’ll never be lonely again.

Cops Grudgingly Give Transgender Group “Permission” to Exercise 1st Amendement Rights

Just in time for Gay Pride Week, the NYPD has backed down and reached a settlement with the Audrey Lorde Project, a transgender group, onNYTurf is reporting. The cops had denied the group a parade permit for a second year in a row, so the trannies dragged the cops into court. (I just got a funny visual image of some transgender folks literally dragging some cops by their ears.) Anyway, they’ve apparently reached a settlement, and despite the NYPD’s better judgment, the transgender group will be allowed to peacefully assemble tomorrow.

The War on Sippy Cups

The lovely and talented Becky Akers, a frequent contributor to Serf City and all-around hardcore anarchocapitalist New Yawker, discusses the TSA’s latest outrages and abuses on Antiwar Radio. Becky is a prolific chronicler of the TSA for LewRockwell.com and is writing a book on the subject. The latest outrage that has Becky’s dander up is some TSA goon harrassing a mother and her toddler because the little punk had the temerity to try to bring his sippy cup through the DMZ. Becky’s article on the subject is here. Video of the terrorist tot and his water of mass destruction is here. (Amazingly, the goons at the TSA have such a twisted perspective that they apparently think the video exonerates rather than condemns their agents, as they posted it on their own “Mythbusters” website.)

Send Money or We’ll Kill the Baby

I love a good Internet scam for pure entertainment value, and this one is fiendishly clever. Some grifter is trying to raise $50,000 so he and his girlfriend can afford to keep their baby. If they fall short of their fundraising goal, it’s off to the abortion clinic. Why didn’t my wife and I think of this scam before we went and had three kids for free?