Columnists George Will and David Brooks both claimed that the deficit reduction provisions of the Senate health care bill are, in Brooks' words, "totally bogus" because "it has 10 years of taxes and six years of benefits." In fact, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the Senate bill will not only reduce budget deficits through 2019, but will continue to reduce deficits in the following decade.

Will, Brooks claim deficit reduction is "bogus" and due to "10 years of taxes and six years of benefits"

Brooks: "[A] lot of the deficit control is totally bogus." Appearing on the March 14 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, Brooks said he "lean[s] against" health care reform, in part because "a lot of the deficit control is totally bogus." Brooks added: "We're [going to] have 10 years of revenue to pay for six years of costs."

Will: Legislation's deficit reduction is due to "accounting gimmicks." On the March 14 edition of ABC's This Week, host Jake Tapper said to Will, "[F]ormer Congressman Ray LaHood ... has an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune today talking about why, as a member of the House, he would have voted for this bill, because this bill reduces the deficit, and it also brings down health care costs and it will make insurance more affordable. Do you believe that he would have voted for it as a Republican congressman?" Will replied: "Not a bit. It reduces the deficit because you have 10 years of taxes and six years of benefits and other accounting gimmicks."

In fact, CBO has estimated Senate and House bills will continue to reduce deficits after 2019

CBO expects Senate bill to continue deficit reduction during decade after 2019. From the March 11 CBO estimate of the Senate health care bill:

CBO expects that the legislation, if enacted, would reduce federal budget deficits over the decade after 2019 relative to those projected under current law -- with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between one-quarter percent and one-half percent of GDP. That judgment is unchanged from CBO's previous assessment, and the imprecision of that calculation reflects the even greater degree of uncertainty that attends to it, compared with CBO's 10-year budget estimates.

CBO estimated the House bill will also result in deficit reductions in the decade after 2019. From the November 6 CBO estimate:

According to CBO and JCT's assessment, enacting H.R. 3962 would result in a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $109 billion over the 2010-2019 period (see Table 1) [this estimate was later updated to $138 billion over the same period]. In the subsequent decade, the collective effect of its provisions would probably be slight reductions in federal budget deficits. Those estimates are all subject to substantial uncertainty.

As always, I await Elizabeth Warren's critique. But it doesn't take an expert to see that forbidding states from writing their own, tougher regulations probably isn't good:

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee will unveil on Monday a proposal to revamp the nation’s financial regulations that would empower shareholders to have advisory votes on executive pay and to nominate directors for the boards of public companies through company proxy ballots, several people briefed on the draft legislation said Saturday night.

The shareholder provisions, which have been vigorously opposed by many corporations and by Republicans, will be part of a bill that would amount to the most sweeping overhaul of financial regulations since the Depression. But with no Republican support yet for the proposal, Democratic lawmakers and the White House have been gearing up for a potentially bitter partisan fight.

The impending proposal by the chairman, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, hews in many ways to a proposal advanced last summer by the White House, the people briefed on the legislation said.

[...] The bill would create a consumer financial protection agency under the umbrella of the Federal Reserve, but with a director appointed by the president and the ability to write rules governing mortgages, credit cards, payday loans and a wide range of other financial products.

It would have some ability, within certain parameters, to ensure that the rules are followed; how the rules would be enforced has been a major source of partisan division. As in a House version of regulatory overhaul adopted in December, the bill would, in some circumstances, restrict states from writing their own, stronger consumer protection rules.

The Federal Reserve would see its bank supervision powers significantly diminished. It would continue to oversee bank holding companies with $50 billion or more in assets, and would be entrusted to regulate systemically important nonbank financial institutions. Mr. Dodd had considered setting the threshold at $100 billion, which would have been even worse for the Fed.

The bird who has eaten cannot fly with the bird that is hungry. --attributed to the Omaha

It can be said, alternately, that the hungry bird cannot fly as far or hunt as successfully as the bird who has already been fed.

The larger picture

When it comes to internet broadband connectivity, much of the United States is still a hungry bird. The United States has fallen far behind globally in terms of the number of households who access the internet via broadband. At the start of the Bush administration, the US ranked fourth in broadband access and adoption in households and businesses across the country. As of 2009, US broadband connectivity is now ranked somewhere around 13th to 15th, according to a report published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Another source, Strategy Analytics, estimated broadband at the household level in the US as twentieth in 2008, well behind Scandinavian countries, several Asian nations, and the UK. The company projects that the US will fall to 23rd once figures for 2009 are reported.

There are a multitude of reasons why this country lags behind in broadband and fiber optics development; the reasons are the usual suspects – economic obstacles, policy conflicts, and existing infrastructure. There’s also the ongoing dialogue of whether broadband should be extended only through private industry development or with government funding as an open-access utility, like electricity or water, or a hybrid of financing through both public and private.

For the record, the US is one of the few “developed” countries in the world, and the only industrialized nation, that has yet to adopt a national broadband policy.

The United States is currently the only industrialized nation without a national policy for Internet access. Estonia, Greece, France and Finland have recognized Internet access as a basic human right in accordance with the United Nations recommendation. TechNewsDaily: U.S. Considers 'Internet Access for All'

A potentially huge sea change in national broadband policy is being presented to Congress on Tuesday, March 16th. Courtesy of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the FCC will introduce a National Broadband Plan that charts a $25 billion course over the next ten years for greater rural broadband access and increased wireless for police and fire departments.

Additionally, the Plan includes improved initiatives for broadband access for Native American reservations in regions where there is currently little to no broadband or even DSL access via telecommunication landlines.

The micro picture

These new initiatives in the upcoming National Plan are intended to build upon the first FCC Indian Telecom Initiatives established in 2002. Seven years from that first Initiative, broadband adoption rate on Native American reservations is estimated somewhere between a lowly 5% to 10%.

Here are the starved birds.

There are more than 300 tribal reservations in the Continental United States; in addition, there is one tribal reservation, along with several tribal townships and villages in Alaska.

Many of these reservations float like uncharted islands in the middle of a remote ocean when it comes to 20th and 21st century technologies. The services and the infrastructure, and more to the point, the profit margin for potential corporate and business investment, do not exist. Often, the available satellite and DSL/T1 services that are offered on some reservations are prohibitively expensive (in some areas twice to three times the average urban monthly cable bill). The download and capacity speeds are much slower and less efficient.

There is no tax base for any kind of local or state municipal bond development or levy proposal to establish underlying physical infrastructure, which can complicate seeking grants for matching federal funds. There is little political will on the part of most state level policy makers to work with tribes towards improving access to technology. Not enough voters? Not enough money.

The upper Midwest and Great Plains reservations provide examples where the topography and extensive distances from main broadband hubs and urban areas complicate affordable broadband adoption. Extending phone lines, basic cable lines, fiber-optic cable – even electric service in some areas - to a comparatively small population is rarely financially feasible for private industry providers, large or small. In addition, to bridge connectivity, many reservations must partner effectively with adjacent communities outside the reservations to obtain continuous access to broadband resources and to improve total cost of installation and maintenance.

Such isolation from access to technology impedes every element of an already difficult life on reservations rife with poverty, unemployment, and a tragically underserved and undereducated youth population.

In an address to the National Congress of American Indians in Washington D.C. on March 2,  FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski discussed the need for this access far better than I can paraphrase.

High-speed Internet is not only the Web and
email; it’s a telephone; it’s television; it’s a library; it’s a town hall.

Broadband has the potential to help Tribal communities advance farther, faster, than any new technology in our lifetime.

Broadband is a platform for job creation and economic growth.
Studies from the Brookings Institute, MIT, the World Bank, and others all tell us the same thing -- that even modest increases in broadband adoption nationally can yield hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and broadband can generate jobs in Indian Country.

Broadband is a platform for innovation. If you have a high-speed Internet connection, you can dream big, bring those dreams to life, and then bring them to the world.

Broadband also is a platform for solutions to so many of our major challenges: education, health care, energy, public safety, and democratic engagement.

Broadband’s ability to transcend the barriers of distance could be particularly potent for Tribal communities.

With broadband, entrepreneurs on Tribal lands don’t need to move to the cities. They can collaborate, innovate, and create new small businesses and high-value jobs because they have access to robust and open information networks.

With broadband, kids in Tribal schools can have access in their classrooms to the best teachers in the world, and access in their homes to up-to-date e-textbooks and high quality tutoring from energized college and grad students around America.

With broadband, a Native American with diabetes can get dietary counseling on her home computer, a remote diagnosis in a nearby facility, and, if necessary, even surgery aided remotely by specialists at teaching hospitals.

As Genachowski states, there are obstacles in broadening the reach of even basic technology on many remote reservations.

One of the main statistics I often cite when talking about the need for a National Broadband Plan is that ONLY 65 percent of Americans have broadband in the home.

In Indian Country, 65 percent is roughly the adoption rate for TELEPHONE service. That’s unacceptable.

The high unemployment, extreme poverty, and alarming mental and physical health conditions on many reservations, such as the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, are amplified not only by lack of access, but by the ability to pay for it.  The Chairman, to his credit, doesn’t avoid addressing this economic divide.

Where broadband is available, in general we’ve found that a major barrier to broadband adoption is affordability. With crippling poverty on Tribal lands, that’s going to be an even bigger obstacle in Indian Country.

Put simply, bringing faster, affordable broadband service to people in Monument Valley is a lot harder than bringing it to people in Silicon Valley. I get that.

Not surprisingly, there are echoes of the New Deal in the debate over increasing broadband access in both rural areas and on reservations through government funding as part of our nation’s crucial infrastructure improvement.

The dispute over municipal broadband bears a striking similarity to the development of the electric power industry a century ago. As James Baller—an attorney who represents local governments and public utilities—first warned in a 1994 paper written for the American Public Power Association: “The history of the electric power industry casts substantial doubt on the notion that our nation can depend on competition among cable and telephone companies alone... to ensure not only prompt and affordable, but also universal, access to the benefits of the information superhighway.”

....
In 1935, he (Roosevelt) created the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), which gave loans and other help to small towns and farmer cooperatives interested in setting up their own power systems. The REA turned out to be one of the New Deal's most successful programs. Within two years, hundreds of new municipal power utilities were up and running across the country, and within 20 years, virtually all of rural America had electricity, provided either by rural co-ops or big utilities spurred to action by municipal competition. Baller  concluded: “The plain, hard truth is that universal electric service would never have developed on a timely basis in the absence of municipally owned electric utilities and rural electric cooperatives”—which still account for more than a quarter of the power in the country today.

It’s likely that the FCC has a major struggle ahead over the allocation and specific application of both licenses and federal monies, both with Congress and the many powerful special interests in the telecommunications and broadband industries.

One of the proposals in the upcoming National Broadband Plan outlines re-allocating at least a portion of the over $8 Billion Universal Service Fund towards broadband promotion and internet access as a necessary service, much like telephone access was formalized in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Genachowski hinted at the possibility of increasing broadband infrastructure and programs on tribal lands by using a portion of this Fund.

There will be fireworks in Congress over the contents of this Plan. It is essential that in the upcoming debate, residents of tribal reservations are not left starving for access and resources once again.

All dreams spin out from the same web. --Hopi

Reference Links

• National Broadband Plan
• FCC Chairman’s Remarks to the National Congress of American Indians
• Ten Years of Reducing The Gap: Bringing Speed and Reach to Remote America
• Tribal Digital Village
• Navajo Broadband
• WorldBank.org - Connecting People and Making Markets Work
• Global Broadband Adoption Rates by Household
• Effort to Widen U.S. Internet Access Sets Up Battle
• Foreign Affairs/Thomas Bleha: Down to the Wire
• New Consortium Funded by the European Commission Established to Increase Mobile Broadband Infrastructure Density Tenfold
• Broadband Plan Calls for Up to $25 Billion in New Spending
• Let there be WiFi

FCC Broadband.gov webcasts

• Workshop: Unserved/Underserved Deployment webcast - from August 12, 2009

• Workshop: Diversity and Civil Rights Issues in Broadband Deployment and Adoption webcast - from October 2, 2009

Oh, I'm sure He will be so pleased to know that He's not really a religious symbol:

The San Francisco Appeals court has ruled that "Under God" is not a prayer when used in the Pledge of Allegiance. In 2002, the court declared that the phrase was unconstitutional. The new 2-1 ruling from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals states it is a "recognition of our founders' political philosophy that a power greater than the government gives the people their inalienable rights [...] Thus, the pledge is an endorsement of our form of government, not of religion or any particular sect."

In a separate 3-0 ruling, the "In God We Trust" was also found to be non-religious; the motto is patriotic and ceremonial.

The ruling itself is not so much an issue with me; I don't have a problem with saying "under God". But I do have an issue with Judge Carlos Bea's reasoning in his decision:

Bea wrote that the pledge is indeed a patriotic exercise, and the words "under God" must be viewed in that context.

"The pledge reflects many beliefs held by the founding fathers of this country -- the same men who authored the Establishment Clause -- including the belief that it is the people who should and do hold the power, not the government," Bea wrote. "They believed that the people derive their most important rights, not from the government, but from God."

Hold on there. Before one starts invoking "the Founding Fathers" in justifying the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, one might actually to do research into the Pledge. Like the fact that the Founding Fathers had nothing to do with the Pledge. It was written in 1892 (more than a 100 years after the founding of the country) by a Baptist minister, Francis Bellamy. It's a little disingenuous to claim the Founding Fathers as the authority on this, since none were alive when the pledge came to be. As it was originally written, it hardly had the patriotic or religious fervor that Bea ascribed:

I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.(ref. Wikipedia)

It has gone through four iterations before coming to its current state. The phrase "under God" wasn't added, as many of you know, until 1954, and only then as some sort of strange pre-emptive move against communism, as if making schoolchildren say those words inoculated them against communist sympathies.

As for the Founding Fathers' endorsement of the rights of Americans are derived from God, well, that's a disputable statement as well.

The word "God" does not appear within the text of the Constitution of the United States. After spending three-and-a-half months debating and negotiating about what should go into the document that would govern the land, the framers drafted a constitution that is secular. The U.S. Constitution is often confused with the Declaration of Independence, and it's important to understand the difference.

The Declaration of Independence is seen as that document that established the new nation of the United States. It was written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. It was signed by the Continental Congress and sent to King George III of England. It is a very eloquent document that is celebrated every July 4th, but it is not the law of the land. It is a statement of sentiments directed to King George III in reaction to unfair taxation. The U.S. Constitution was ratified on March 4, 1789 -- thirteen years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence refers to "the Creator:"

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document; it is not the U.S. Constitution. Foes of the principle of separation of church and state often refer to the word "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence as proof that the framers of the U.S. Constitution intended for the United States to be ruled by a sovereign being. Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States Constitution was written and ratified by elected officials representing a coalition of Enlightenment rationalists and evangelical Christians who were deeply concerned about entanglements between religion and government.

I'm sure it's not a surprise that Judge Carlos Bea is a Bush appointee to the 9th Circuit. That he was joined in his decision by Judge Dorothy Nelson was surprising, as she normally tends to rule with Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the lone dissenter (his 133-page dissent [.pdf--dissent begins on page 61] should tell you how strongly he felt about this). However, a former clerk for Judge Reinhardt suggests that she may have been nervous about the ramifications of siding with Reinhardt:

"She's a conciliator. She's not a bomb thrower," Hastings College of the Law professor Rory Little said of Nelson, who was dean of the University of Southern California Law School before she joined the court.

Adds (former Reinhardt clerk and current Stanford Law School professor Michele) Dauber: "It doesn't take a brain surgeon -- or a professor at Stanford -- to think Judge Nelson doesn't want Glenn Beck giving out her home address so people can go picket her house."

This is part of the continuing series that I have been writing about oil shale. And, while I just digressed in talking about using nuclear devices to break the rock and heat it, the key problems that those posts highlighted remain. The first was that the oil is not really oil and won’t flow to the well, and the second is that there are no easy paths for the oil to flow though, even if it could. And this creates a problem when it comes to getting the kerogen (or oil for simplicity) separated from the rock around it. As I said in the first post on this topic, the oil can be separated in a retort, after being mined. The retorting can be self-energized and, by heating the oil it can be transformed into a form of bitumen that can then be further refined into a commercial grade. And if you think it is easy, there is this quote I found at Econbrowser, that might give you some perspective. He quotes Bubba, of Belly of the Beast:
If you heat this shale to 700 degrees F you will turn this organic carbon (kerogen) into the nastiest, stinkiest, gooiest, pile of oil-like crap that you can imagine. Then if you send it through the gnarliest oil refinery on the planet you can make this s*** into transportation fuel. In the mean time you have created all kinds of nasty byproducts, have polluted the air and groundwater of wherever you have extracted it.

Mining shale and then processing out the oil is, therefore, fairly expensive, both in terms of energy, and hard dollars. At the same time, once the oil is extracted, the spent shale has to be disposed of. That costs more money. Considering all these potential expenses and potential problems, it is therefore not surprising, from the beginning, that the idea of trying to create the initial retort in the rock, and making that transition to oil in-place looked as though it might be a winner.

There has been considerable technical success in recent times in getting natural gas from the tight shale around the country, but natural gas is, comparatively, easy to extract if some additional cracks are artificially driven through the rock to create the needed permeability.

Unfortunately that only potentially treats one of the problems with the oil shale. The other is that the oil will not move, even if the cracks are there, unless it is heated to the point that it will either vaporize, or transform into a flowable hydrocarbon. And this takes a lot of heat. Thus the attraction of having a nuclear device to create a cavity, radically fracture the rock around the cavity, and generate enough heat to start an underground fire, that could be sustained, and controlled, by adding additional air, and from which the oil could be released.

OK, so accepting that we can't use nukes, can we do this another way? Because of space and time I’m going to talk of the more conventional retorting today, based on the idea of doing most of the processing of the oil in place. Why do we need to do that? Well, it gets very expensive to mine and move that rock from the deeper deposits, and though it has been and is being done for metal ores, their costs are still much higher than that of oil.

If we can process the rock in place, so that the oil is heated sufficiently, then we save the transportation costs. So what will we need? For the more conventional approach we still need some sort of cavity in which to start the fire, and to allow it to spread. Then there has to be air fed to the fire to keep it going (and this will require that boreholes be drilled down into the area to sustain the air flow). And then there has to be some way of getting the mobilized oil out of the ground, so that it all doesn't end up being burned down there.

It is an idea that has been suggested for a number of different energy sources. And it is why I included a post on in-situ combustion processes at the beginning of this series. The first dealt with burning coal in place, and then I wrote about the THAI process that is being investigated in Canada for producing the heavy oil in the sands above Fort McMurray.

It might be helpful to insert a slight digression here. In a normal oil refinery, the heavy oils, or residuum, that come out of the bottom of the initial fractionating column have almost no light hydrocarbons left in them, and so are sent to a Coker, where at a temperature of around 1200 degrees, the final hydrocarbons are driven off, and cracked into lighter fractions, leaving the carbon residue known as coke (or petroleum coke to distinguish it from that made from coal). From my youth I can tell you that coke is a much harder fuel to start burning than conventional coal, since it no longer has any volatiles left in it. Thus, for example, even after the intensity of the fires in the Kuwaiti oil field, coke was deposited around the burning wells and required barrels of C-4 to break it up, so that the fire fighters could reach the top of the well, put out the fire, and replace the fixtures. The reason that I mention this is that Petrobank are burning this coke to provide the heat for the reactions. And from the modifications from the first test to the second have found that the process needs a lot of air to be supplied to the burning zone to sustain the fire - over the full face of the burn. I'll come back to that in a bit.

The situation with the oil shale is a little more complex than for oil sand, since the structure of the rock is tighter than the sands in Alberta, and the oil has to be heated to a significantly higher temperature before it will transition and move. The first underground experiments were carried out by Sinclair, in 1953 and 1954. (So we are back to paper references -see Ref 1 at the end). In those days, drilling technology wasn't as advanced and so, for the first experiments, they drilled a hole near the outcrop of the shale, and then created a crack from the well to the outcrop by pressurizing air in the well until the rock fractures (a simple variant on hydrofracing a well). By adding sand, the crack can be propped open so that air can get into it. It took a couple of tries to get it working, but they were able to start fires in the oil shale at the well, and then by continuously pumping down air, carry the fire along the crack. The heat of the fire changed the kerogen to oil, in the same way as with the retort, and oil was seen coming out of the crack at the outcrop. The rock around the well was, however, fairly fractured from being near the outcrop, so that air passage to encourage the flame to progress, was possible. It is worth quoting some of the conclusions to that work:
Under field conditions - particularly if the operation requires high pressures - volumetric conformance and thermal efficiency can differ significantly from model predictions. The burning zone probably will expand to more closely follow the retorting isotherm and shorten heat transfer distances. In addition, convection may become significant. To illustrate, shale retorted under simulated overburden pressures in the laboratory does not spall or crack as it does at low pressure. Instead, a consolidated rock having high porosity and low permeability remains after pyrolysis of the kerogen. Bulk volume is greater than in the un-retorted state. It is possible that some of the injected air will move through this permeable matrix of spent shale to more fully utilize the fuel content of the spent shale and accelerate heat transfer to raw shale over the rates computed from the mathematical model.

Coring of the oil shale as a precursor to the aborted nuclear shot at Rio Blanco (Ref. 2) showed that at depth the shale appeared to have considerable jointing, which would be a real help in any in-situ retorting method, as Socony anticipated (Ref. 3). When looked at under a microscope, the retorted shale also had a number of voids, left by the volatized kerogen, that provided some permeability to the shale (Ref. 4).

It is the presence or absence of cracks, voids and other passages that the controls the success of conventional in-situ retorting of oil shale. Cyclic hydro-fracing or air fracing of the shale can induce a series of fractures around a well bore at depth, but these are going to be relatively narrow. There is not the mobility within the structure that one gets from the oil sands. Further the environment has to be heated to a much higher temperature to induce transition first to the bitumen and then to the crude. In the tight rock that exists under pressure at depth, the only path that air has to the fire is from boreholes drilled to that depth. (In contrast with close-to-surface conditions where ground fracturing will open cracks to the surface.) With the cracks being relatively narrow the air that must be supplied to the fire must be at a relatively high pressure, and in considerable volumes.

Without an underground cavity, into which some of the rock can displace, or a means for removing some of the rock to allow multiple fractures of the shale, and fracture opening to allow air access, starting and sustaining a large underground fire will be a significant undertaking.

Unfortunately also "Lean shale tends to be brittle, fracturing under stress, while rich shale tends to be tough and resilient, resisting fracture by bending, and tending to yield plastically under stress." (Ref. 5) This is going to make it harder to grow the cracks where we need them to be.

The other problem with in-situ retorting is controlling the flame front to go where you want it. It is hard to control where the fractures go underground, and the path that the air takes, to make sure that all the shale is retorted, so much more air has to be pumped underground than might be needed otherwise. And this is where it gets frustrating because, though it may only take 260 Btu to raise a lb of shale to 900 degF, (Ref. 6) and that can come from the carbon content of the shale (the coke above), getting enough air there and having somewhere for the released oil and gas to go can take a lot more energy.

For example if two wells are drilled, say 500 ft apart, and a crack run between them, then the air to the burning front, and the flow from it, is gong to be limited by the width of the crack. These processes are relatively slow. A model of the process (Ref. 7) has shown that it can take 10 years for the front to move from one well to the next. During that time air has to be continuous injected, and the volume of air required, for a barrel of oil recovered can be calculated.

Depending on the temperature at which the air was injected (since it shouldn't cool the fire) it can take between 24,000 scf (standard cubic feet) and 86,000 scf/bbl. To get that air into the fire effectively it would have to be pumped into the well at 2,500 psi. (A conventional air compressor runs at around 120 psi). To generate a flow of 50,000 barrels a day was found to require an air compressor system run at 272,000 horsepower. To cut a longer story short, this turns out not be economic, at 1968 costs.

Hmm! Well, I am not quite finished, but perhaps this explains in part why Shell are using heaters, rather than fire. I will have a short discussion of that, next time.

References

Ref. 1 Grant B.F. "Retorting Oil Shale Underground - Problems and Possibilities", 1st Oil Shale Symposium, CSM, 1964.


Ref. 2 Stanfield K.E. "Progress Report on Bureau of Mines - Atomic Energy Commission Corehole, Rio Blanco Country, Colorado", 3rd Oil Shale Symposium, CSM, 1966. 


Ref. 3 Sandberg C.R., "Method for recovery of hydrocarbons by in situ heating of oil shale", US Patent 3,205,942, 1965.


Ref. 4 Hill G.R. and Dougan P. "The characteristics of a low temperature in-situ shale oil", 4th Oil Shale Symposium, CSM, 1967.


Ref. 5 Budd C.H. McLamore T.T., and Gray K.E. "Microscopic examination of mechanically deformed oil shale," 42nd Petr. Engrs Fall Mtg, SPE 1826, 1967.


Ref. 6 Carpenter H.C. and Sohns H.W. "Application of above ground retorting cariable to in situ oil shale processing", 5th Oil Shale Symposium , CSM 1968.


Ref. 7 Barnes A.L. and Ellington R.T. "A Look at in situ oil shale retorting methods based on limited heat transfer contact surfaces", 5th Oil Shale Symposium, CSM, 1968.

A lot of us have funds that we have set aside for retirement, perhaps with some matching from employers. Some of these are pre-tax funds that are hard to get to--our employer gives us some investment choices and that is about it. Other funds are ones we have set aside ourselves. The question arises, what should we be doing with these funds?

Within the options available, how should we be investing it? Or should we be taking money out?

Some of us have self-directed Individual Retirement Account (IRA)s, or have saved money outside of IRAs. This gives a little more flexibility.

I am not an expert on this, and would not give advice if I could.

I am sure the rules vary from country to country, so anything that is true in the USA might be different elsewhere. One question that might come up is what are the rules for taking money out of an IRA. This is a short summary I found in that regard.

You can take money out of an IRA whenever you want, but be warned: if you're under age 59 ½, it could cost you. That's because the government wants to discourage you from raiding your IRA until you're retired. (It's a retirement account, after all.)

If you are under 59 ½: If you withdraw any money from a traditional IRA, you'll be slapped with a 10% penalty on the amount you withdraw. That's in addition to the regular income tax you'll owe on your withdrawal. Bad idea.

Roth IRAs offer a bit more flexibility. Generally, you may withdraw your contributions to a Roth penalty-free at any time for any reason, as long as you don't withdraw any earnings on your investments (as opposed to the amount you put in) or dollars converted from a traditional IRA before age 59 ½. In that case, you'll get hit with that same 10% penalty. Not sure which money is considered a contribution and which is considered earnings? The IRS views withdrawals from a Roth IRA in the following order: your contributions, money converted from traditional IRAs and then earnings. So if you take out more than you've contributed in total, then you're starting to dip into conversion dollars or earnings, and will be penalized and taxed accordingly.

If you're 59 ½ or older: You can usually make penalty-free withdrawals (known as "qualified distributions") from any IRA. But you'll still owe the income tax if it's a traditional IRA. To make qualified distributions from a Roth IRA, you must be at least 59½ and it must be at least five years since you first began contributing. And if you converted a regular IRA to a Roth IRA, you can't take out the money penalty-free until at least five years after the conversion.

There are several exceptions to these rules. You can withdraw funds for certain specified purposes without penalty (college expenses, first time home purchase, disability, certain medical expense). According to the same site:

You can also withdraw money from a traditional IRA and avoid paying the 10% penalty if you roll the money over into another qualified retirement account (such as a Roth IRA) within 60 days. But then you wouldn't actually be able to spend it.

Are you really that desperate for cash? Well, if so, it is possible to take money out of your traditional IRA in what's called "substantially equal periodic payments." Here's how it works: The IRS will determine what amount you can receive each year based on your life expectancy. That's the amount you must withdraw each year.

So what are your thoughts on retirement funds?

Politics in the Zeros: Lehman Brothers bankruptcy fraud report. Massive excplosions already felt, more coming

RSN: Is Elizabeth Warren the Democrats' secret weapon?

The Impolitic: A real sick bastard

distributorcap NY: Are doing the right thing or getting re-elected really mutually exclusive concepts?

Kiko's HouseI: Christine Todd Whitman's hypocritical role in the Ground Zero health disaster

Words of Power: Inconvenient truths from three leading economists

There are few more arrogant and wrongheaded statements of policy and intent than that offered by Jim DeMint in his own words:

"If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him, and will show that we can, along with the American people [an afterthought] begin to push those "freedom solutions" [what the hell is he talking about? As opposed to socialism, I guess] that work in every area of our society.

There are many odd things about that short statement, not least of which is the idea that only one side fought at Waterloo, which is why Napoleon must have lost. Therefore, any reference to Waterloo here on in must refer to the losing side.

Of course, there was a triumphant side to that as well. And Republicans are getting mighty nervous about the fact that the Waterloo analogy might not be working out for them as planned.

Robert Shrum wrote a lovely post about the scorecard: Is Obama winning?

I doubt that congressional Democrats will heed the solicitous advice of Republicans that the only way to save themselves politically is to forsake health reform. They understand, as the president has argued, that they are far better off with Americans experiencing the bill than fearing it. I’m also convinced that enough members of the Progressive Caucus will consult their consciences—and conclude that health coverage for 30 million more Americans is more urgent than even the best-intentioned demand for all or nothing. (If the GOP and the insurance industry so bitterly oppose the bill, then it must be worth passing.)

In fact, looking at who's aligned against change, and who is writing about it, is rather instructive. For example we have (David Bielspiel's description) geezer pollsters Caddell and Schoen warning Democrats' blind ambition : Health-reform push could spell doom for the party..., easily refuted here by Joel Benenson, if anyone actually cared what Caddell and Schoen had to say. Doug Schoen in 2008 brilliantly predicted an easy win for John McCain if only he'd pick Joe Lieberman for VP:

Sen. John F. Kerry tried hard to recruit McCain as his running mate in 2004. Had McCain agreed, Kerry would almost certainly be president today. By offering the vice presidency to a well-regarded moderate such as his old friend Joe Lieberman, McCain would go a long way to ensuring victory in November -- unless Clinton or Obama beats him to the punch.

Uh, yeah. The fact that the GOP delegates would have walked out en masse from their own nominating convention doesn't play into the equation? Only in Washington are repeated failures rehired on the theory that they are 'experienced'. It's the same theory that rehires baseball managers, and brings John McCain back to Meet the Press every Sunday, and makes reporters cover whatever accusation comes out of Dick Cheney's mouth as if it's seriously thought out and reflects policy.

Then there's our friends, the Republicans.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, warned Democrats on Tuesday that Republicans would use the issue of health care to bludgeon them in the November midterm elections if Democrats succeeded in passing a comprehensive overhaul.

Really? If it's so devastating to Democrats, just sit back and let it pass, Mitch. Let's call your bluff.

We also have the propaganda machine on the right, the ones who have labeled this "ObamaCare" and "socialized medicine". The trouble is, Obama remains popular and for that matter, so is socialized medicine. There's nothing as dumb as an argument that says "I don't want your government-run health care plan, and don't touch my Medicare."

So where do things really stand? Here

The office of Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who is the assistant to Speaker Pelosi, sent a memo to Democratic staffers today telling them to clear members' schedule for next weekend, saying a vote could come as early as Friday or Saturday, and noting that it was no coincidence that President Obama pushed back his trip abroad from March 18 to March 21st.

and here (sensitivity set to "high"):

I don't recall if the original Waterloo was a scheduled event, but chances are CSPAN didn't cover it the way this century's version will be. The question for Republicans is what's their plan B?

Gasoline refining lacks its spark, for now NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- While the cost of crude has risen in the past year much faster than the price of gasoline at the pump, Big Oil absorbed a huge body blow to the bottom line.

After racking up sharp losses on their refining businesses in the last quarter of 2009, energy companies are facing a longer-term struggle even as the summer driving season approaches and the economy shows signs of life.

"There's been a fundamental shift in the U.S. demand and the price of gasoline," said Lynn Westfall, chief economist for Tesoro Corp., an independent refiner that posted a loss of $179 million in its latest quarterly report. "Growth in China and India are driving crude prices higher. But demand in the U.S. is weak and so you can't pass the higher costs along."

The Falklands: For Argentina, Oil Reopens Old Wounds Argentines could be said to share three passions: soccer, the tango and their longstanding claim over Las Malvinas, which the British who control the island archipelago 300 miles off Argentina's coast call the Falklands. Even though Britain decisively beat back an Argentine invasion of the Falklands in 1982, the cry of "Las Malvinas son Argentinas!" (The Malvinas are Argentine!) still resonates in national politics. "It doesn't matter if you're from the left or the right, when you become President in Argentina, sooner or later you start beating your chest about the Malvinas," says writer Sylvia Walger, who is set to publish a book on current President Cristina Fernandez.

That time has now come for Fernandez, who has begun vigorously asserting Argentina's rights to the Falklands after a British oil rig recently arrived to explore what may be vast crude reserves beneath the sea bed around the islands. Last month, Fernandez vowed to argue "one thousand and one times for [Argentina's] international rights" to the islands and the oil, and ordered all ships stopping at Argentine ports obtain a special government permit if they want to continue on to the Falklands. This month, during a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she requested Washington's mediation in the dispute — and while Clinton declined to mediate, she appeared to endorse the principle that the dispute ought to be up for negotiation. "We would like to see Argentina and Great Britain sitting down to discuss this issue," she said.

Iran says no need to change OPEC output ceiling TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday there was no need to change OPEC's output ceiling at the oil producing cartel's meeting on March 17 in Vienna, the Iranian oil ministry's website SHANA reported.

"There is no need to change the output ceiling in the next OPEC meeting ... OPEC will insist on the members' quota compliance in the next meeting," Iran's representative to OPEC, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, was quoted as saying by SHANA.

Qatar minister sees no OPEC output change KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia: OPEC is not expected to make any fundamental change in output at its next meeting, Qatar's oil minister was quoted yesterday as saying by Al-Hayat newspaper.

Separately, the Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh quoted an unnamed senior OPEC official as saying the producers group is expected to maintain its production ceiling unchanged at the meeting.

Relax, there’s plenty of oil and gas We are not staring soaring oil prices in the face. After crossing the then-record $120/bbl mark in May 2008, oil moved on to just shy of $150. By end 2008 the pricking of the financial bubble saw the price fall to $30/bbl and it has taken months to creep back to $80 or so. But, one argument goes, the millions of new cars expected on Chinese and Indian roads over the next decades will mean soaring demand and prices for oil. Perhaps.

Daniel Yergin, founder of CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates), is not convinced. Demand in rich countries fell in 2008 as oil prices soared and affected economic activity. In the US, daily oil consumption fell by two million barrels last year, though motoring only accounted for 15% of the fall and slower economic activity and flying for the rest. Meanwhile, the world looks increasingly awash with crude.

Spillage from the Oil Curse “Not a single one of the 23 countries that derive most of their export earnings from oil and gas is a democracy today,” Diamond noted in an essay earlier this year. Especially in Arab countries, the fabulous riches that come from under the ground tend to create overbearing governments with apathetic citizens. “In these systems, the state is large, centralised, and repressive,” 
Diamond wrote.

Societies are usually “intensely policed” because “there is plenty of money to lavish on a huge and active state-security apparatus,” and bureaucracies are “profoundly corrupt.” They tend to see the money that pours into state coffers as everybody’s and nobody’s, and therefore more or less free for the taking. The public pays no taxes in the richer states, and in the view of the entrenched potentates no taxation means no need for representation.

Delta Says Strategic Review Is in ‘Advanced Stages’ (Bloomberg) -- Delta Petroleum Corp., the money- losing U.S. energy producer whose largest shareholder is Kirk Kerkorian, said its review of strategic alternatives including a possible sale is in “advanced stages.”

Cnooc to Announce Information on Overseas Cooperation ‘Soon’ (Bloomberg) -- Cnooc Ltd., China’s biggest offshore oil explorer, may announce information about the progress of overseas cooperation “very soon,” said Chairman Fu Chengyu.

“We have stressed our intention to intensify cooperation with foreign countries and companies since the crisis, and good progress has been made,” Fu said in an interview today in Beijing, where he’s attending parliamentary meetings.

Cnooc to Buy Half of Argentina’s Bridas for $3.1 Bln (Bloomberg) -- Cnooc Ltd., China’s biggest offshore oil explorer, said it will buy half of Bridas Corporation from Carlos Bulgheroni for $3.1 billion, giving it a stake in Argentina’s largest oil exporter.

Nigeria's state-owned oil corporation to go private Nigeria's state-owned National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has initiated talks with investment banks including Standard Chartered, JP Morgan, and Deutsche Bank to explore financing options as it changes into a fully privatised commercial company.

China Delivers Venezuela Jets For Anti - Drugs Fight CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela on Saturday tested six training and light attack jets bought from China for defense and anti-drugs flights in a deal that dodges an embargo banning sales of U.S. weapons parts to oil exporter Venezuela.

President Hugo Chavez ordered a total of 18 K-8 jets built by China after a plan to buy similar jets from Brazil's Embraer fell through, apparently because they include U.S. electrical systems.

Global hunt for phosphates is on Are we facing a food disaster with catastrophic shortages of fertilisers? Will the world feed the three billion or so more people likely to be added, by 2050, to the six billion already on the planet?

Plunging price heats up ethanol CHICAGO — Ethanol, the commodity that cost Bill Gates more than $44 million the last time prices collapsed, is poised to rally as much as 20 percent as the fastest drop since 2008 spurs demand.

Falling corn prices and record ethanol supplies have driven the price down more than 17 percent in three months to $1.585 a gallon Friday, its worst run since 2008's fourth quarter. It will average $1.96 a gallon at the peak of the U.S. summer driving season as refiners from Valero Energy to Sunoco mix more into gasoline made from increasingly pricey oil, according to the median of 10 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Taxpayer-subsidized manure digesters stimulate factory farm pollution At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last December, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack unveiled plans to promote manure digesters as a way to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent. The trick is that you have to be a factory farm to qualify.

Renewable energy also needs to be sustainable energy William "Bill" Ayres, business manager for the biomass division at R3 Sciences, has an idea that could dramatically increase the sustainability of the biodiesel industry. Ayres has been involved with biodiesel since 1990 and helped form the National Biodiesel Board.

"I did some research several years back and took some soybean oil and soy biodiesel, ran them through a catalytic reformer and converted them to hydrogen," Ayres said. "I did it just to show that it could be done."

Tokyo Electric Power planning trial of smart meters TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power Co said Thursday it will launch trials of smart meters for more efficient power consumption by October in a bid to start their full-fledged introduction in two or three years.

Operations normal at Japan nuke plants after quake TOKYO (Reuters) - Operations at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi and Daini nuclear power plants are as usual after a strong quake hit northern Japan on Sunday, a spokesman at the company said.

Health Costs of California Air Pollution Filthy air in California cost federal, state and private health insurers $193 million in hospital costs, according to a RAND Corporation study released last week.

The report is the first to show how California’s failure to meet federal clean air quality standards is increasing hospital expenses and its impact on insurers, said John Romley, the study’s lead author and a RAND economist.

China, Not UN, Controls Supply for CO2 Offsets, Stanford Says (Bloomberg) -- China’s power to set prices for electricity from windfarms is dictating the supply of tradable emission credits in the UN carbon market, the world’s second biggest, according to a report from Stanford University.

State suing for responsible scientific conclusions The Environmental Protection Agency recently concluded that man-made greenhouse gas emissions — including carbon dioxide — are harmful pollutants and must be regulated. The lawsuit I filed challenging that finding does not address the disputed science surrounding global warming. Instead, it focuses on the indisputable fact that the EPA relied on information that has been discredited, manipulated, lost or destroyed, and sometimes evaded peer review. The lawsuit does not attempt to show that the globe is not warming. It does, however, show that the process used by the EPA in deciding to regulate greenhouse gases is riddled with errors that render its conclusion untrustworthy.

Climate snapshot reveals things are heating up THE nation's two leading scientific agencies will release a report today showing Australia has warmed up significantly over the past 50 years. It is a response to recent attacks on the science underpinning climate change.

The ''State of the Climate'' snapshot, drawn together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, shows the mean temperature has increased 0.7 degrees since 1960.

The snapshot also finds average daily maximum temperatures have increased every decade for the past 50 years.

The report states temperature observations, among other indicators, ''clearly demonstrate climate change is real''.

Sunday funnies, and did you remember to "spring ahead"?

Frank Rich:

The opening salvo, fired on Fox News during Thanksgiving week, aroused little notice: Dana Perino, the former White House press secretary, declared that "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term." Rudy Giuliani upped the ante on ABC’s "Good Morning America" in January. "We had no domestic attacks under Bush," he said. "We’ve had one under Obama." (He apparently meant the Fort Hood shootings.)...

Could any of this non-reality-based shtick stick? So far the answer is No. Rove’s book and Keep America Safe could be the best political news for the White House in some time. This new eruption of misinformation and rancor vividly reminds Americans why they couldn’t wait for Bush and Cheney to leave Washington.

But the old regime’s attack squads are relentless and shameless.

That they are.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, representing pro-life women:

Republicans oppose President Obama's health-care reform for many reasons: It will cost too much, it's "socialist," it's big government at its worst. But they are letting Stupak and his fellow antiabortion Democrats lead on that issue. And the more the GOP ignores abortion and focuses on economic populism -- taking up the "tea party" cause -- the more the Republicans risk leaving crucial votes behind in November.

Doubtful, but intriguing.

Howell Raines:

One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration -- a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?

Now there's a question "real" journalists should be addressing.

Nate Silver:

But what if we don't build in an exception for the so-called "liberal no's" -- that is, simply take every vote at face value? It turns out, then, that [Artur] Davis is no longer the least valuable Democrat. Instead, it is Dennis Kucinich, who voted against health care, the hate crimes bill, the budget, the cap-and-trade bill, and financial regulation -- all ostensibly from the left -- in spite of coming from from the strongly Democratic Ohio 10th district near Cleveland.

If you want to know why Kucinich "don't get no respect", you're looking at it. Give him points for the theater, but get it done.

Steven Pearlstein says

If you read only one book about the causes of the recent financial crisis, let it be Michael Lewis's, "The Big Short."

Better than House of Cards? Well, Lewis did write Liar's Poker.

Episode 803 of Seinfeld: "The Bizarro Jerry"

Remember how "hope and change"-y we all felt a year ago?

Brand new president, full of feel-good soaring rhetoric. Nice big majorities in the House and Senate, it was time to feel good about the direction the country was going in again. Doesn't it feel like somewhere along the line in the last year, we've crossed over into Bizarro World?

We're told constantly that the President must stop governing from the left and embrace the center (as Chris Matthews & Co. ask again today) and yet, I'm still waiting for any politician--other than our stalwarts, like Dennis Kucinich or Anthony Weiner--to even acknowledge the left's values much less govern from them.

Meanwhile, the sleaziest person in the Bush White House--and the person acknowledged by the media as the one responsible for all matter of deception and dirty tricks--is feted once again on the Sunday shows. Karl "Turdblossom" Rove gets to offer us yet another round of "is waterboarding torture or not" on Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday, media outlets too disingenuous to remember that we've already had this discussion and decided that yes, in fact, waterboarding IS torture.

And finally, pending the vote for the weakest possible health care reform--one made pathetic by the obstructionism of Republicans and the spineless timidity of Democrats--the noisiest, whiniest, most dishonest Republicans (Graham, Boehner, Cantor) get to go on after WH adviser David Axelrod to keep telling the public that they don't want health care reform. Face the Nation adds insult to injury by also inviting the head of AHIP to complain about what little restrictions remain in the bill. But is there anyone from HCAN on to advocate for the people?

Surely, you jest. Not in Bizarro World.

ABC's "This Week" - White House senior adviser David Axelrod; Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.; Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Axelrod; Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.; Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; and Karl Rove, a former adviser to President George W. Bush.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Dan Rather, Katty Kay, Helene Cooper, Joe Klein. Topics: Obama's Road to Reelection: To the Left or To the Center? Mr. Universe: Why Is Obama's Popularity Abroad A Political Liability At Home? Meter Questions: Should Obama Move To the Center Instead of the Left As A Reelection Strategy? YES: 11 NO: 1;
Will "Repeal Health Care" Be A Winning Slogan For Republicans This Fall? YES: 5 No: 7.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Axelrod; House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"Fox News Sunday" - Gibbs; Rove; Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va.

So what is catching your eye this morning?

Friday morning the Texas Board of Education voted to approve changing the state's social studies curriculum to make it more closely reflect the views of God's Own Party. Among the changes are:

• Replacing the heathen, Thomas Jefferson, with theologian John Calvin;

• Tearing down the wall between church and state;

• Rejecting "capitalism" in favor of the "free-enterprise system"; and

• Prohibiting discussion of "transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else."

Given Texas' influence on the national textbook market, you're probably better off home-schooling your kids. Or not.

A police report about the shooting of a man whose burned corpse was later discovered in a car on the Algiers levee after Hurricane Katrina apparently differs from the report originally written by the sergeant whose name appears on the document’s cover page, sources close to a federal investigation into the matter say.

The report attempts to explain why an officer fired his rifle at a man he thought was looting an Algiers strip mall on Sept. 2, 2005, four days after Katrina.

Though the officer, David Warren, did not think his shot struck anyone, details of the incident described in the report square with the shooting of Henry Glover, who perished in police custody later that day and whose corpse was later incinerated in a car on the levee.

The report offers a few more details about what may have happened to Glover, the subject of an intensive federal civil rights probe expected to result in police indictments.

That probe is occurring against the backdrop of another sprawling probe into the shootings by New Orleans police of six people on the Danziger Bridge on Sept. 4, 2005, which have led to two guilty pleas by officers who say they participated in a wide-ranging cover-up. All told, the FBI has confirmed at least seven civil rights probes into the New Orleans Police Department.

The report about the Sept. 2 shooting incident raises as many questions as it answers.

For instance, the initial incident report purports to have been written by Sgt. Nina Simmons. But sources close to the case say she did not write it, at least not in its present form.

While Simmons, then a supervisor in the Algiers-based 4th District, filled out and signed the NOPD’s standard cover page for a police report and submitted a report to superiors, a source said she did not write the following two typewritten pages.

The report is vague about whether the man who was shot at posed a threat to Warren, saying the officer saw something in the man’s right hand “which he perceived was a weapon,” causing him to fear for his safety and fire. In general, officers aren’t supposed to fire their weapons unless they are facing a person posing a physical threat to themselves or others.

Although protocol requires all weapons discharges to be reported to the Public Integrity Bureau, in this case, the report says, Warren’s superiors simply reviewed the shooting and deemed it justified. That course was followed, the report suggests, because Katrina made following normal practices impossible. Experts who examined the report said there isn’t enough information in the report to determine whether the shooting was proper.

City ‘Plagued by Looters’

And while police incident reports are generally dry recitations of the relevant circumstances, the Warren incident report pauses at several points to make reference to the conditions around the city.

“It should be noted that at this time the entire City of New Orleans was plagued by looters at almost every section of the city,” it says, after describing the alleged looter’s truck. “It is also a fact that Police Officer Kevin Thomas had been severely wounded by being shot to the head by a looter. These brazen criminal acts had all police officers on high alert.”

The NOPD declined to answer questions about the report, citing the ongoing federal investigation. NOPD spokesman Bob Young provided this statement: “The information that you are requesting is part of the federal investigation currently in progress. The NOPD will not comment on any part of the ongoing federal investigation. The NOPD has cooperated with the federal investigators and will continue to cooperate throughout their investigation.”

Simmons’ attorney, Townsend Myers, declined to comment, while Warren’s attorney did not return a request for comment.

Shooting Reported Promptly

Warren’s attorney, Joseph Albe, has previously acknowledged that federal investigators think his client shot Glover, although he has disputed that the known facts definitively connect Warren to that shooting. Warren left the force in 2008.

In an interview last month, Albe explained Warren’s situation like this: Warren was guarding a building at the time, and because two men were “charging” toward the building, Warren felt he was in danger. He fired his rifle once, not knowing where the bullet landed, then called ranking officers and reported the shooting.

“He did exactly what he was supposed to have done,” Albe said.

A newcomer to the NOPD at the time of Katrina, Warren was actually stationed in the 7th District in eastern New Orleans, Albe said. But Warren lives on the West Bank and wasn’t able to get to that flooded area of the city, so after the storm he reported to duty at the 4th District.

On Sept. 2, supervisors paired Warren with Officer Linda Howard, a more experienced officer, assigning them to protect the 4th district’s detective bureau, on the second floor of a shopping complex that included a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. Both Warren and Howard were on the second-story balcony outside the bureau, according to the report.

The shooting actually took place behind the complex, according to the report. The officers heard a car approaching. As they moved to the part of the balcony facing a narrow parking lot bordering Seine Street, referred to as a “back service alley,” Howard saw a white pick-up truck with a “Firestone” logo, according to the report.

Two men got out of the truck, heading quickly toward the rear gate of the building, she said.

The report states that Warren, who was in uniform, identified himself as a police officer, yelling, “Police—get out!” One of the men looked at him and continued toward the building, the report states. Warren then saw “an object” that he “perceived was a weapon.”

A handwritten “resisting arrest report” also obtained by The Times-Picayune is less specific about what Warren saw. This document, also signed by Simmons, as well as then-Lt. Gary Gremillion, says Warren spotted an “unknown type object” in the alleged looter’s right hand.

Officer Thought His Shot Missed

In both reports, Warren, who won a precision shooting award in the NOPD’s academy, says he feared for his safety. He fired his gun in the direction of the suspect below him. Both men then took off down Seine Street.

After the shooting, Warren believed “he missed the suspect,” the report states.

Howard could not see Warren fire his weapon from her position, according to the report. She did not return a call for comment.

In the last three paragraphs, the report states that after the shooting Warren notified Simmons, although it doesn’t say when. Other officers looked for a shooting victim, but couldn’t find one, the report states.

The report notes that knowledge of the incident went up the NOPD command structure to 4th District Capt. David Kirsch and Lt. Robert Italiano, head of the district investigative unit. The required notifications to the Public Integrity Bureau and other units could not be made because of the storm, the report says.

Kirsch and Italiano, along with the on-scene supervisor, eventually concluded the use of force by Warren was justified, the report states. The NOPD’s operations manual notes that state law defines the justifiable use of deadly force as when an officer is in “imminent danger of losing his life or receiving great bodily harm” or must protect another person from the same level of threat.

Kirsch did not respond to a request for comment; Italiano, who has since retired from the force, declined to comment.

Key Facts Absent From Report

Experts who reviewed the report at the request of reporters said the document left many questions unanswered—including whether Warren acted properly in pulling the trigger.

“It’s impossible to tell from the report whether you had a good shoot or you didn’t,” said Ron McCarthy, a former Los Angeles police officer who has consulted for the U.S. Justice Department on shooting incidents.

In his view, key facts are absent from the report, including Warren’s distance from the citizen he fired at, and how long he waited before notifying his superiors of the incident. McCarthy also wondered what became of the white pick-up described in the document. “What about the truck?” he asked. “That’s missing from the report.”

However, he tempered his criticism by saying the department couldn’t do a thorough investigation until the crisis had abated. “It’s unreasonable” to expect officers to do full-blown investigations under catastrophic conditions, said McCarthy, who has trained police in multiple countries.

McCarthy also found some positive signs in the document, starting with the fact that Warren chose to alert his bosses to the incident. Officers, he said, have “a tendency not report to shootings in circumstances that are chaotic or out of control, like Katrina.”

David Klinger, an associate criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St.Louis and senior research scientist with the Police Foundation in Washington, wasn’t ready to draw firm conclusions from the report.

“Given the thinness of the document, it’s very hard to assess” whether the shooting was appropriate, said Klinger.

Klinger said he thinks NOPD brass should have gotten a more complete picture by conducting interviews with Warren and Howard when the situation in New Orleans stabilized. Such an approach would have generated “a fine-grained statement” from Warren.

In Klinger’s view, “The officer’s been done a disservice because we cannot know what officer Warren was thinking when he pulled the trigger.”

Klinger, who wrote a book titled “Into the Kill Zone: A Cop’s Eye View of Deadly Force,” said it’s crucial for police departments to investigate all police shootings—including those with no apparent victims. It’s not uncommon, he said, for officers to believe their bullets have missed when they’ve actually wounded or even killed citizens.

It doesn’t appear that any investigative team was called in to examine the shooting, although the report concludes with the revelation that civilians in the 3400 block of Seine Street—one block from the strip mall—told officers a man had been shot nearby and was taken to the hospital by “an unknown person.”

The report notes that the homicide squad was not called, although department policy requires homicide detectives to evaluate any police shooting that results in injury or death. Although the report was written in December, after the immediate chaos caused by the storm had subsided, the report said the unit was not available in “the wake and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”

If Warren had missed the man he shot at, NOPD policy would call for the incident to be reviewed by a Public Integrity Bureau investigator and, eventually, a team of supervisors to determine whether the shooting was an indication that more training or discipline was warranted.

But it doesn’t appear that review happened. These reviews are triggered by the assignment of an “ASI number,” which is assigned to each officer-involved shooting, said Felix Loicano, former commander of the Public Integrity Bureau. “That is what generates the next step,” he said.

The NOPD declined to comment on whether such a review took place.

Algiers Man Is Flagged Down to Help

Given Glover’s location, it’s difficult to understand how Warren would not have realized it if he had been shot.

William Tanner, an Algiers man, has said he was driving by and encountered Glover, his brother and a friend near the intersection of Texas Drive and Seine Street. That is about a half-block from the balcony perch where Warren said he was stationed—a spot in clear view of the shopping center.

Tanner was flagged down by Glover’s brother, Edward King, who said a man had been shot and needed assistance.

After getting the injured man in the car, Tanner said he decided the hospital was too far away and instead opted to drive to a nearby elementary school, where the NOPD’s SWAT team had set up camp.

But at the SWAT encampment, Tanner and King have said, they were handcuffed, beaten and yelled at. Officers indicated they believed Glover was a looter and offered him no assistance.

Eventually, one of the officers took Tanner’s keys and drove off with his car. Glover’s body was still inside, Tanner said. It’s not clear when he died.

While the police let the other men go, Tanner did not learn for weeks what had happened to his car. Eventually, a federal agent alerted him that its burned remains were on the Algiers levee, not far from the 4th District station. Glover’s charred body was pulled out of that vehicle, according to the Orleans Parish coroner’s office.

Have YOU put together your brain wave machine this weekend? [Sooo geeky I love it.]

It's Daylight Saving time again. Don't forget to set your clocks forward an hour tonight.

PS Our sincere condolences to Keith Olbermann on the loss of his father.

Open thread below.

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are BentLiberal, srkp23, jlms qkw, watercarrier4diogenes, sunspark says, shayera and Got a Grip.

This evening's selections for your edification are:

• bobswern discovered just which emperors were fiddling while Rome Wall Street burned thanks to the NYT: NY Fed, Ernst & Young Enabled Lehman; Others Involved. (shayera)
• At serious risk to personal sanity, Avenging Angel dares to enter The Bizarro World of the Bush Torture Apologists. (sunspark says)
• desmoinesdem bravely uncovers some serious crazy in the Heartland in Caution: Now entering a fact- and logic-free zone. (jlms qkw)
• Having received more than enough FWD: OMG emails, Merry Light says I'm fighting back (with poll) and delivers a solid lesson in how YOU can do the same. (watercarrier4diogenes)
• Scott Cobb provides details about a challenge to the Texas death penalty in a Houston courtroom and the efforts of some students to effect change in Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break, March 15-19, 2010. (BentLiberal)
• In an ongoing series, icemilkcoffee fleshes out some lesser known benefits of the Senate HCR bill in Devil in the Details 3: Medicaid goes Mainstream. (BentLiberal)
• mole33 reports on CREDO's $2,680,211 in Donations to Progressive Causes. (jlms qkw)
• Dems2006 shares the touching story of why she does what she does in Not quite seven... (jlms qkw)
• WarrenS shares his experiences Hanging Out With A Man From Saturn. (srkp23)

jotter has High Impact Diaries: March 12, 2010.

carolita has Top Comments – 3-13-10 – Endangered Attractions Edition.

Please use this open thread to promote your own diaries or your favorites of the day.

Title: All the Things You AreArtist: Ella Fitzgerald

"All the things you are." Welcome Spring.

What are you listening to this Saturday night?

DOWNLOADS: (340)
PLAYS: (1289)

As our own Jon Perr noted, Amy Holmes joined the ranks of the Bush torture apologists on Real Time with Bill Maher when she compared the attacks by Liz Cheney's group Keep America Safe on DOJ lawyers who represented terrorism suspects to criticism by the left of the Bush torture lawyers such as John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Jim Haynes and Steve Bradbury.

The Bizarro World of the Bush Torture Apologists:

Now, conservatives on both sides of the Liz Cheney "Al Qaeda 7" smear of the Obama Justice Department have entered Seinfeld's Bizarro World where the polar opposite of truth reigns. For the likes of David Brooks, Marc Thiessen and Amy Holmes, the Obama DOJ lawyers who defended the U.S. Constitution are no different than the Bush torture team that undermined it.

Read on...

I really wish Bill would quit bringing this annoying woman on his show all the time. All she does is regurgitate one right wing talking point after another every time she’s on.

Holmes: I agree with you. I don't think it's remotely fair to tar lawyers with the crimes of their clients. You could never have anyone defending a murderer or a rapist or anything like that and we do have a system where you get a fair defense, but other folks say—I don't agree with it—but turnabout is fair play. Look at what the left did to the lawyers in the Justice Department who were trying to give advice under the Bush administration. They were singled out. You know they were... fingers were pointed at them...

Maher: Oh lord...

Holmes: ...to try to tear them down and I think a lawyer should be able to do his job...

Maher: Wow...

Holmes: ...without being tarred as you say...

Maher: That is quite an analysis there.

Last week, Devilstower introduced the Saturday Evening Geek Out: S.E.G.O. -- Science Fiction You Should Be Reading, and while I don't have his expertise (or writing ability), I've been arguing with the likes of Larry Niven since the 70's when I was a SF geek in college (I went to an engineering school, and we had strong opinions about what was real and what was not, and on the engineering side, what ought to be included and what ought to be thrown away.)

Now, these days there's more eclectic choices. You can get sucked in to the newest Final Fantasy video game (the franchise is up to thirteen), just out a few days, or turn to English translations of Japanese graphic novels ("It's not a comic book, it's a graphic novel!!") like Rurouni Kenshin by Nobuhiro Watsuki, my favorite of the genre, though you gotta love Bone. And there's always The Crow and Watchmen, though if you only know them from the movies, you've missed the best parts.

But if you lean towards the fantasy side of sci fi the way I do, there's got to be a place on your shelf for the early twentieth century masters. One of my favorites is Ernest Bramah (Kai Lung's Golden Hours):  

The first edition included a preface by Hilaire Belloc, which has also been a feature of every edition since. Its importance in the history of fantasy literature was recognized by its reissuing by Ballantine Books as the forty-fifth volume of the celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series  in April, 1972. The Ballantine edition includes an introduction by Lin Carter.

which I discovered as a teen when the Ballentine paperback reissues came out in the 70's. Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Sayer's great detective (and erudite romantic interest, as she fell in love with her own character - but mysteries are for another day) was familiar with Kai Lung, mentioning it in both Busman's Honeymoon and Gaudy Night.

Another great author from the era, short story writer Clark Ashton Smith, was introduced by the Ballantine series, and I still have decaying copies of Zothique (my favorite, lots of magic, baleful wizardry, necromancers and the like), Hyperborea (if you want barbarians, there's always Robert E. Howard's classic Conan series, finished by modern authors), Xiccarph (Ashtom Smith's most science fiction-y stories) and Poseidonis (really, tales of lost Atlantis.) Ashton Smith published his stories in Weird Tales, and with the likes of Howard, Lord Dunsany (pure fantasy, like The King of Elfland's Daughter), HP Lovecraft (horror, my favorite being At the Mountains of Madness), the 30's were a golden era of that kind of fiction.

In fact, you can tell from the above that I really like the short story as a vehicle for fantasy and SF.

You can also look for modern equivalents and parallels, if you wish. For example, I found Barry Hughart's Master Li and Number Ten Ox series thoroughly delightful and very reminiscent of Bramah's work. Hughart found the publishing biz tough going, so there are only three novels in the series.

And if I had to vote for a modern fantasy master, I'd list Roger Zelazny (Amber series) and Jack Vance (The Green Pearl) among the greats, and with George R.R. Martin making his way into the pantheon (assuming that J.R.R. Tolkien is his own category.)

Finally, I have to make mention of the sword and sorcery genre, encapsulated by the works of Michael Moorcock (Elric and the eternal hero cycles) and Fritz Lieber (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.) Lots of necromancers here, too, though usually the focus is more on enchanted weapons and Joe (the swordsman) Sixpack's task of staying alive in a world full of evil banksters enchanters and evil politicians kings.

By the way, there was a fun response to Deviltower's diary here: The Other Science Fiction: A Response to Devilstower by hepsheba.

I'm sure you have your own favorite list of things you like to read when you're sick of reading about Republican obstructionism, and we'd love to hear about them. After all, if it's Saturday, it's S.E.G.O.

On this, the 60th birthday of American actor William H. Macy (who, it seemed, was featured in every movie that I watched between 1997 and 2002), we have a bursting-at-the-seams weekend edition of the Wrap....

THE U.S. SENATE

CO-Sen: New PPP Poll Implies A Toss-Up In Bennet-Norton Duel
Interesting new numbers out late in the week on the competitive Senate race in Colorado. Appointed incumbent Michael Bennet (D) has rebounded a little bit off of his previous lows, and is now dead even with Republican frontrunner Jane Norton, according to new numbers from PPP. The pollsters have Bennet and Norton tied at 43%. Worth noting, however, is that they confirm an interesting Rasmussen finding from last week, in that Democratic primary opponent Andrew Romanoff actually does better, opening up a five-point edge over Norton (44-39). In other Colorado news, Bennet got some good news on Friday, when suburban Denver Congressman Ed Perlmutter offered his endorsement.

LA-Sen: Dueling Polls on the Bayou on the Vitter-Melancon Race
The latest polls out of Louisiana on the Senate battle between Republican Senator David Vitter and his Democratic challenger, Charlie Melancon, show a lead for Vitter. How big a lead, of course, depends on who you ask. If you ask Rasmussen, it is a blowout, with Rasmussen showing Vitter up by twenty-three points (57-34). However, Melancon is releasing some nums of his own, courtesy of some internal numbers from Anzalone Liszt. That poll shows Melancon trailing by just ten points, with Vitter failing to reach 50% of the vote (48-38).

WI-Sen: Right-Wing Poll (No...not THAT Poll) Says Thompson Up Big
A new poll from the right-wing Wisconsin Policy Research Institute is getting positively Rasmuss-ey about the prospects of a Tommy Thompson challenge to incumbent Democratic Senator Russ Feingold. They claim Thompson has a 12-point lead over Feingold (51-39). Of course, Thompson has not declared his candidacy, preferring an almost Giuliani-esque flirtation with the race, instead. If the GOP falls back on their leading declared candidate, millionaire developer Terrence Wall, it doesn't go so well for the Red Team--Feingold blasts Wall by fifteen (47-32).

THE U.S. HOUSE

CT-04: Himes Draws New Challenger, Who Launches With Polling Data
This was quite obviously a work in progress, given the fact that he was polling the race two months ago, but Easton First Selectman Tom Herrmann announced mid-week that he was seeking the GOP Congressional nomination to challenge freshman Democrat Jim Himes. The press release announcing Herrmann's launch pointed out that he has already banked over $300K. One possible dash of cold water--even his own internal polling (done by Wilson Research) had him down nineteen points to Himes (49-30).

IN-09: Sodrel Internal Gives Him Huge Lead in GOP Primary
People anticipating a fifth consecutive showdown between Democrat Rep. Baron Hill and Republican Mike Sodrel are looking like they'll get their re-re-re-rematch, if a new internal poll by Sodrel is any indication. The poll, conducted for Sodrel by Wilson Research, gives Sodrel a huge lead in the GOP primary, with 46% of the vote. Primary challengers Travis Hankins (19%) and Todd Young (13%) lie well behind. The primary is now less than two months away.

NY-29: GOP Appears To Coalesce Around Reed After Brooks Stands Down
In a move that seems to greatly reduce the likelihood of a competitive GOP primary in the race to succeed the departed Democratic Rep. Eric Massa, Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks decided not to run for Congress. This seems to ensure that former Corning Mayor Tom Reed, who entered the race long before Massa's high-profile meltdown, is in the driver's seat as the GOP nominee. Democrats are still hunting for a candidate, although several names are floating around.

PA-12: GOP Picks Their Candidate, Touching Off Major Fireworks
Democrats have to be nothing short of ecstatic with how their week has gone in Southwestern Pennsylvania. After naming their special election nominee (former Murtha staffer Mark Critz), the Dems avoided a potentially bloody primary as former state treasurer Barbara Hafer decided to stand down. Later in the week, the GOP followed suit, and nominated businessman Tim Burns as their standard-bearer, snubbing 2008 nominee William Russell in the process. Russell, to the joy of Dems everywhere, took his defeat a little more personally, charging that the fix was in and confirming that he would continue to run in the primary for November's general election.

As an excellent piece by Reid Wilson of Hotline On Call points out, this puts Burns in a potentially untenable position. If he tacks too much to the center in order to beat Critz, he could find the fairly well-heeled Russell (who is one of the clients of Base Connect, formerly known as BMW Direct) clipping him in the knees. If he tries to win the primary with Russell, he could compromise his ability to win the special election. It is not an enviable dance, and the political neophyte is going to have to show some pretty impressive campaign chops to pull it off.

THE GUBERNATORIAL RACES

FL-Gov: New PPP Poll Confirms Likely GOP Hold In Sunshine State
It has been a good long while since likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee Alex Sink has been at parity with her likely GOP rival, Bill McCollum. A new poll from PPP indicates that things for Sink might be getting worse, rather than better. PPP shows McCollum now up by thirteen points (44-31) over Sink, who was dead-even with McCollum a few months ago.

MN-Gov: Rasmussen Says Gov's Race Is A Toss-Up
The Ras-a-Palooza cools off a bit at the end of the week, with only a small handful of new polls. One of them is in Minnesota, where the Ras tests the multicandidate fields for Governor with a third-party alternative in the form of Independence Party candidate Tom Horner. Most of the matchups are very close, with Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak (D) and state legislator Marty Seifert (R) performing the best in their respective parties. Horner, for what it is worth, logs between 7-10% of the vote.

NH-Gov: Lynch Still Leads Strongly, Even According to Ras
Democrat John Lynch has been easily re-elected Governor of New Hampshire over the past few cycles, and new numbers from Rasmussen show that his grip on the governor's mansion in the Granite State does not appear to be weakening. Former state HHS Commissioner John Stephen comes the closest for the GOP, and he still trails by fifteen points (50-35). The other prospective GOPers trail by 19 and 26 points.

WI-Gov: Even GOP Pollster Sees Competitive Gov Race
The GOP-friendly poll from WPRI mentioned earlier vis-a-vis Senator Feingold also looked at the open-seat Gov's race to replace retiring Democratic Governor Jim Doyle. They, not surprisingly, find Republican Scott Walker in the lead, but, given the poll's sponsor, it is reasonably close: Walker leads by four (36-32). If former Congressman Mark Neumann is the GOP nominee, the race is all knotted up at 34-34.

For your listening enjoyment here's this week's edition of the Driftglass and Bluegal podcast. A note from Bluegal: "Usually, this podcast is not exactly work safe, but this time we've mixed things up. This time, this podcast is exactly not work safe. Enjoy!"

You can find previous editions of their podcasts here and at http://dgbgpodcast.blogspot.com/. Info on the Susie Bright podcast mentioned is here, and info on the Twilight Zone episode DG mentions ('Wordplay') is here.

Any donations are greatly appreciated if you'd like to help keep the podcasts going.