THE WEALTHY AND THE "LAME DUCK" SESSION

People seem surprised at the compromise between the Republicans and the Democrats on the tax policy for the next two years, but it really isn't such a mystery. The Republican party is all about the wealthy, and they will agree to most anything to keep the taxes low on the wealthy. During the George W. Bush administration, they wanted to lower the highest tax rate from 39.6% to 35%. When they saw this would not fly, they included tax breaks for the middle class and the poor. So in 2010, we saw the Republicans retain the 35% top income tax rate for the wealthy but agreed to many compromises on keeping the existing tax rate for all plus some other benefits like lowering the Social Security payroll tax by 2% and extending the unemployment insurance for 13 months.

It seems clear that the Republican party will agree to almost anything to preserve low tax rates on the wealthy. The Republican Party is all about preserving and increasing the fortunes of the wealthy. Their philosophy is called "trickle-down economics" in which the rich have the money, and they spend it with some money trickling down to the middle and poor classes. The fallacy in this, aside from the wealthy not being elected by the lower classes, is that all the money doesn't trickle down. The wealthy buy bonds, both Treasury and foreign government bonds as well as corporate bonds. Some of the corporate bonds may be productive, but, if they are to pay down debt to lower interest rates, they aren't. They also buy things like chalets in Switzerland, islands in the Bahamas, and Canadian bombardier personal jets which may trickle down in the global economy but not in ours.

The wealthy know there aren't anywhere enough of them to win elections so they have to get allies. The most important of these are the religious right which has the energy generated by righteous indignation and the Southern Strategy. Something that I have never understood, however, is the number of non-union laborers who vote Republican. I can understand that they might be upset by the Democratic party emphasizing the rights of disadvantaged groups like minorities, women, and more recently homosexuals, but they don't get anything from voting Republican. If fact their wages are decreasing and being outsourced by the party they vote for.

But the compromise bore fruit that let the wealthy keep their low taxes (the increase was going to be only from 35% to 39.6%) and reinstate the inheritance tax at 35% for the next two years on estates above $5 million even though the compromise will increase the deficit by nearly a trillion dollars. The result was one of the most productive "lame duck" sessions that I can recall. They passed the new Start Treaty which surprisingly the Republican Senatorial leadership opposed for reasons unknown as the administration acceded to a number of their demands, they eliminated the Don't Ask, Don't Tell provision for being in the armed forces (which itself was a compromise during the Clinton Administration),** and the health plan for the first responders in the 2011 Trade Center disaster. The one important bill that was overturned was the "Dream Act"* which would have given Conditional Permanent Residency to children of illegal immigrants who grew up in the country if they went to college for two years or joined the military forces for two years. They would get permanent residency if they got a degree or finished two years of college in good standing or served two years in the military and received an honorable discharge. I can see no reason not to give Conditional Permanent Residency for six years to anyone who joins our military forces for two years or Permanent Residency if the served two years and received an honorable discharge as they are risking their lives to get it (Heck, I would give them citizenship.), but perhaps the objection was the provision about going to college. This was not the first time this act appeared before congress as it was introduced to the Senate in 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act

Once gain the come Back Kid has come back.

* The DREAM Act is an Acronym for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act.

** See In The End Liberalism Wins: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-end-liberalism-wins.html

THE COMB

(A story composed in five minutes on the topic of Dollar Store at the North Carolina Writer’s Network Meeting, April 25th, 2009. Normally, my writing for these rapid fire exercises aren’t worth saving, but I thought this one was worthwhile.)

I had never been in a Dollar Store before. Oh, my, they had so many wonderful things and only a dollar each. I saw a comb that intrigued me – fluorescent yellow and long. Oh, I wanted that comb. I kind of have to have that comb so I pulled my money out of my pocket and counted it - change and change. There was a quarter, a dime, a nickel, and two pennies. I wasn’t good at counting change, but I knew this did not add up to a dollar. I looked around, but no one was paying attention to me. I could grab that comb, and I was sure my pocket was deep enough to conceal it. My mother told me that people that steal, burn in hell. I certainly didn’t want to burn in hell, but I really wanted that comb. I wanted it bad. So I looked around again and quickly put the comb in my pocket.

A voice behind me said, “Trying out that comb young fellow before you buy it?” I turned, and here was this old man standing, leaning against a rack. Where in the world did he come from?

“Yes,” I said, “but it doesn’t fit so well in my pocket so I will put it back.”

YOU DON’T KNOW UNTIL YOU BRING IT IN

The NPRA or National Petroleum Reserve (see figure) was established in 1923 for exploitation for oil and gas in a national emergency (for the relative position of the NPRA see figure. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) contracted exploration drilling of the area, searching for another super giant oil field like the domed reservoirs (structural trap) found in Prudhoe Bay (estimated total production of 13 billion barrels of oil), the largest oil field in North America but 9th largest worldwide. None was found. In the late 1990s with the discovery of the giant Alpine field (estimated to be 800+ million barrels of oil) in a pinch out of reservoir rocks (stratigraphic trap) near the border of the NPRA, but in Prudhoe Bay, exploration in the NPRA was renewed. An appraisal by the USGS in 2002 estimated very large possibilities for oil production along with very significant quantities of natural gas. (http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs045-02/) of 6.7 to15 billion barrels of recoverable oil (BBO) and a mean value of 59.7 trillion cubic feet (TCFG) of natural gas, pending a gas pipeline being built to the area. This year (2010), however, the estimates have been greatly reduced to 896 (MMBO) and 52.8 TCFG of natural gas as a result of further exploration drilling. The current estimate for recoverable oil is now about one-tenth the estimate in 2002. What the real production is likely to be is anybody’s guess (http://energy.usgs.gov/flash/slidesNPRAWEBver2010.pdf). You don’t know until you bring it in.

The Bakken Shale of North Dakota and Montana in the U.S. has received considerable misleading press. You probably have seen comments that it contains more oil than Saudi Arabia. The amount of estimated recoverable oil of 3.65 BBO (http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3021/pdf/FS08-3021_508.pdf), though huge, is much, much less, even much less than the Prudhoe Oil Field estimated recoverable oil of 13 BBO and a fraction of the estimates of others as high a 300 BBO as recently as 2006 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation). There certainly is a lot of activity on the Bakken shale, but we won’t know the ultimate reality of production until the oil is brought in.

The Alaskan Natural Wildlife Reserve or ANWR (see figure) has received very large estimates of oil potential (http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1359/OF2005-1359.pdf) of 10.4 BBO with oil prices above $50/bbl; however ANWR is yet to be drilled. The target under consideration is area 1002, a very small part of ANWR (see figure). The 95% probability is 4.25 BBO at high oil prices such as exist today http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1217/pdf/2005-1217.pdf. but the favored drilling area has already been moved from the eastern part of ANWR to the western part. Production will again be from stratigraphic traps such as for NPRA. Even though the current assessment is said to be the best ever made, I would suggest that in view of previous attempts to estimate oil production in the NPRA and for the Bakken Shale, that we be a bit careful about accepting such large numbers until the oil is brought in. I believe that the area needs to be drilled just to find out what is really there. The environmental damage could be minimized by drilling in the winter on ice beds instead of gravel, with vehicles using ice-bed roads and perhaps from just a central platform with drilling done in many directions and extending for miles underground.

HURRICANE WARNING (Biographical)

In examining stone buildings, monuments, and memorials for the National Park Service in the 1980s,* they wanted to know if the dome of the Jefferson Memorial was made of limestone or concrete as the contractor was given his choice on this. I told them that was easy. It must be concrete because he could make the ceiling with just a few molds and repeat the casts for the ceiling, but, to do it from limestone, each block would have to be machined which would be very expensive. Well, they wanted to know the answer anyway, but I wasn’t to knock off a piece of material from the ceiling with my rock hammer, even a little piece, and wasn’t to drop acid on it. All I could use was a flashlight and a hand lens (a little powerful magnifying glass or loop). I told them that there was a good chance I couldn’t tell the difference between limestone and concrete, but they said I should make my best effort.

So they had the scaffolding put up , I don’t know but maybe 20 feet, to a ledge just under the ceiling. They wouldn’t permit drilling of anchors into the memorial for scaffolding, of course, so it was a free standing scaffolding which swayed back and forth quite a bit. I was to climb the scaffolding, wait until it swayed near the ledge, and step off onto the ledge. All this was made a little more exciting because there was a hurricane warning. Well, I did this, nervously, because I wasn’t sure the scaffolding wouldn’t fall over. Even with the flashlight, the lighting wasn’t good, and I couldn’t tell whether the ceiling was made of concrete or limestone. To be honest, I probably couldn’t have told the difference even with good lighting. Workmen below kept calling me to hurry up because a hurricane was coming. I waited for the scaffolding to sway back to the ledge, stepped onto it and climbed down. As soon as I got off, the scaffolding was taken down. It turned out that the NPS had spent $25,000 to put up and take down the scaffolding only to hear from me that “I don’t know.” Incidentally, the hurricane never appeared.

*See http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2010/12/muammar-qaddafi-and-me-biographical.html for more details on the acid rain program.

MUAMMAR QADDAFI AND ME (Biographical)

A concern of the 1980s was acid rain. A program was formed called the National Acid Precipitation Program or NAPAP for short. The National Park Service (NPS) was in charge of acid rain damage to materials, including building stone. In 1983, they requested someone from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to help set up stone test sites. I was Assistant Chief Geologist of the Eastern Region at the time and had plenty to do; however, none of the scientists who knew something about building stone or acid rain dissolving carbonate minerals would volunteer for the duty. The Assistant Chief Geologist for Program said in a meeting that it would be a pity if the U.S.G. S. couldn’t respond to the request. Though I knew nothing about building stone and little about climate, I volunteered. I thought I would learn something about climate in the job. It turned out that I didn’t, but my previous experience helping set up the Lunar Sample Program in NASA proved invaluable. I also had a certain knack for conflict resolution that became important as progress was made setting up the stone detection sites. The NPS also wanted me to examine memorials, monuments, and other stone buildings for pollution damage. I begged off saying that I knew nothing about this subject, but they asked me just to do my best effort. The first monument to be examined was the Jefferson Memorial, which was completed during WW II because President Roosevelt thought it would be good for the morale of the nation. I was accompanied by a well known mineralogist from the USGS who knew nothing more about pollution damage to stone than I did. It was a memorial I had been to as a tourist many times and never noticed any problems. It was amazing, however, that when you started to look for stone damage, you could see it all over the place. We had carte blanche to examine the memorials and monuments so we even went up on the roof and down into the basement which I didn’t know existed before. There were long, perhaps a yard long, and thin stalactites coming down from the ceiling as acid rain filtered down through cracks in the main floor of the memorial. On the roof, there were small clots of grayish material standing slightly above the surrounding marble, i.e. in positive relief. Sometime later, I remembered that I had forgotten to measure by how much relief these clots were so I requested permission from the NPS to go back up on the roof again and got permission from the Park Police to do so. When I got to the kiosk guarding the stairs to the roof, the guard called someone on the phone and then someone else. These calls were taking quite a bit of time so I asked what the problem was. The guard told me that Qaddafi, the dictator of Lybia, had threatened to kill President Reagan so permission also had to be obtained from the FBI and CIA. I said, “For heaven’s sake, why didn’t you tell me. I would rather these organizations had never heard of me. I would have come back some other time.” I did, however, get permission to go up on the roof and got my measurements. It was true that from the roof of the Jefferson Memorial you did have a good, if distant, view of some windows in the White House.