I made a friend while I was walking down Ellis today. This lady was standing in front of the group home  hovering over a dead deer.

I smiled at her gently, hoping she would tell me why she was petting the carcass. She waived me over and asked if I would call the game commission and have them remove the deer. That’s reasonable, I thought.

She said the deer was cold and pregnant, but I assure you that it was dead and bloated.  I walked closer to look at the foam bubbling from the deer’s nose. The woman told me that the local oil company poisoned the deer and dropped it on the lawn to scare the residents. You see, my take is that they sprayed sewage on the corn field and waited for the deer to eat it so they could then use the carcass to scare the mentally disabled residents and veterans out of their homes.

Then she waved her hand over a “bullet hole” on the belly of the deer.  She was talking about a chunk of mud, absent of blood, lodged in its fur. She had marked the “wound” with a piece of roadside trash- a Mapquest map printed on an 8′x11′. She ripped a hole in it and centered it around the wound so the game commission would find the evidence.

She gave me clues about her dimension and I found it relaxing…even therapeutic. I listened to tangled conspiracies for the next 15 minutes. She is a good story teller and entertained me with her comparison points of veterans and victims of rape. “We all suffer from PTSD, ” she declared. I abandoned her for a moment to explore those words out of context.

I told her it was time for me to be on my way and she asked if she could take my hand. I remembered what I had been clutching all morning and a huge grin spread across my face. I told her she could hold my hand, but I would have to take my magic pine cones out of it first. She collected them too! We smiled at each other and she squeezed my hand and offered me a scarf from her apartment. I declined…I was wearing two at the moment. I gave her a magic pine cone and smiled inside.

I continued walking and she yelled at me across the parking lot not to walk alone at night and if I do, I should carry a bat or a jackknife. No, I had no idea that it’s legal now to carry a jackknife in this state. She said I could even carry a couple lit cigarettes and “burn ‘em”.

I saved the other pine cone for Margo and returned it to myself from her car seat when she wasn’t looking.

Cone 6 Oxidation, White Stoneware

Cone 6 Oxidation, White Stoneware

Cone 6 Oxidation, White Stoneware

While a great many enticing tidbits cascade across the Ministry’s agenda this evening, including the riots in London, the scud missiles flying out of Tripoli or the harrowing new candidacy of a grotesque Bush clone, I must, for my part, forgo all temptation and focus on what’s really important, right now, at this precise moment.

Water.

Nothing, nothing on this planet, short of the very air we breathe, is a necessity comparable to the quality, protection and availability of our drinking water. At every moment, it is what’s most important. Right now, it comprises our greatest fight. Yet at every moment, it’s being taken for granted. Right now, it’s being taken away.

And at this particular moment, the most visible battle is surely this fracking bullshit.

Recently upgraded to hot-button status is the hydraulic fracturing craze which in recent years has been applied to shale rock formations thousands of feet underground. The process essentially consists of a blast injection of a mix of water, sand, and chemicals into the shale for the purpose of natural gas extraction.

Even to an entry-level tree-hugger that modest description of fracking alone should be enough to raise some red flags. Not only are we talking about going into areas and upsetting rock beds that shouldn’t be accessed, but releasing gasses from them and risking setting off seismic activity as well. Add to that the fact that before you even frack you have to drill and drill hard, releasing methane and all kinds of shit through faulty operation and leaky pipes which contaminate drinking water and fill streams with the chemicals.

But that’s just the drilling part.

And while offenses from drilling and careless disposal of chemicals by these teams have led to fines and penalties and other menial slaps on the wrist, it’s only the devil we know. Fracking is a whole different animal. This blasting of chemical-laced fluids is a subterranean beast that has been ravaging our water supplies under the surface and, more importantly, above government regulation.

Fracking operations have occurred with virtual government invulnerability, save their disposal of hazardous chemicals (great job on that one shitheads!!), after a hollow and baseless 2004 EPA report absolved the frackers of any wrongdoing. This conclusion was achieved because the writer did not do any actual monitoring of the fracking process or analysis of chemicals used and rather relied on interviews with industry leaders and local government officials.

It should come as no heart-stopping revelation that this compelling report was more than enough to sway the Republican Congress of the time overseen by George W. Bush; a legislative body which steadfastly green-lit any and every piece of legislation that would keep us rocketing along the fast track to environmental holocaust. A feat often overshadowed by their vast array of foreign policy accomplishments.

In 2005 the worst Congress in history approved the exemption of frac fluids from the Safe Drinking Water Act, which was included in that year’s energy bill. From that point on its been open season on opening shale.

So with no monitoring or investigation how are we supposed to attack the fracks?

As if the government invisibility cloak wasn’t enough, fracking’s industry supporters have buffered themselves in the arena of public debate with semantic battles. As a Greenwire article featured in the NY Times in May points out, the tendency to describe the separate operations of drilling and fracking as one, is used to the advantage of the operation’s supporters. While there is no shortage of contamination and chemical spills linked to the drilling phase, defenders of natural gas extraction hide behind the deregulation of the fracking phase maintaining that there is no “proven” instance of it contaminating ground water.

Finally, after six years uncontested, the madness was somewhat confronted this past April when a committee of Congressional Democrats conducted a study of just what the fuck these people are pumping underground. The report listed 750 chemicals and compounds that oil and gas companies used in hydraulic fracturing operations over the five years following the 2005 exemption. Of these many chemicals, 29 are known carcinogens or otherwise hazardous to human health.

The gas and oil lobbyists… were unaroused…

“If the breaking news here is that fracturing fluids contain stuff you would never want to drink, that’s not much of a headline at all,” said Chris Tucker (of natural gas drillers representative, Energy in Depth). “The only way that’d be relevant in a public health context is if those materials were somehow finding their way into potable water supplies underground.”

OH SNAP! But that’s the real trick isn’t it? With a process like hydraulic fracturing being deregulated and outside government oversight NO ONE CAN FIND OUT if its getting in the water! BRILLIANT!

Fracking supporters who don’t work for the gas and oil lobby will admit to you that there absolutely has been contamination of water supplies, but only due to the human error element of poorly constructed wells. Essentially, that we should all just sit back and keep faith in the essential decency of industry and trust them to look out for our well-being.

FUCK THAT!!!

The EPA is finally caving to public pressure and conducting a new study that will supposedly include actual monitoring of the process instead of just asking around amongst sources who will directly benefit from its deregulation.

Here’s hoping you don’t fuck it up this time asshats!!!

So what can we, the water drinkers, do in the meantime? I’ve always found the Canadians to be a great place to start. Also, my fellow New Yorkers need to come down hard on Cuomo and his people as they bring this monstrosity to our doorsteps.

But even all this is but a simple squall within this vicious maelstrom we face.

We’re losing our water.

We’re losing our fucking water.

This is not a fantasy problem. This is not a debate. This is not a prospective issue that maybe possibly could be an issue somewhere off in the distant future.

This is an absolute. This is assured. Water does not appear out of thin air. It is not a celestial gift that magically falls from the sky by some far off heaven regardless of how we use it.

It is a real and tangible resource, the ultimate resource, that we can monitor and maintain and measure.

And we can destroy.

In his quintessential masterpiece, It’s All For Sale: The Control of Global Resources, James Ridgeway clearly outlines the careless contamination of groundwater, the link between water scarcity and population growth and, ultimately, the privatization of our water supplies by multinational corporations.

Ridgeway writes: “The earth now faces the volatile confluence of two major trends: a continuing, exponential growth in population, especially in the developing world, and a reduction in the supplies of clean, fresh water. As the demand for water increases and supply wanes, international companies sensing a profitable opportunity have jumped into the water business.”

With the most desperate demand yet on the horizon and various industries increasing water pollution, the shift to a privatization of the ultimate resource is happening almost seamlessly, before our very eyes.

Of those among us who already oppose bottled water, many do so only for the purpose of cutting down plastic production (Awwww! They made the bottle caps smaller! Lovely!) while remaining unawares of the true damage this industry is doing us. One need not be a master mathematician to discern the outcome of sucking fresh water from our aquifers at a rate 15 times faster than they’re replenished. And with the World Resources Institute predicting “by 2025, at least 3.5 billion people or nearly 50 percent of the world’s population will face water scarcity,” it is clear that the game pieces are being strategically placed and pending some form of radical shift in this world’s heading, the future wars will not be for oil.

They will be for water.

If we don’t want this war, what will we do to stop it? The question is not what can we do because that much is clear already. While a call has been made for increased taxation on bottled water sales and a just case can surely be made for an all out ban of the industry based on its threat to the public, the most clear and obvious answer remains the most ignored:

Stop

Fucking

Buying

It.

And even then, the greatest threat we face, the loss of our ultimate resource as the most essential key to our survival, is still one hideous appendage in The Great Leviathan. The gargantuan, omnipotent, power apparatus of consumption, absorption and waste. And this is but the most extreme case of the public good being superseded by the profit motive; as the most essential resource for the survival of the human race is horded by industry to capitalize on the impending drought of our future, regardless of the consequences, regardless of whether it spells our final doom.

But to summon the phrase of that spirited, aforementioned lobbyist for Energy in Depth:

That’s not much of a headline at all.

-

Jared W. Adams
Grand Minister for General Mayhem
Irving Bastion, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY
August the 16th 2011
1:14 PM EST

It would seem we have a real barnburner of grotesque extremities going down on K Street right now which demands addressing. Only the most firm, hard-hitting and moist of analyses will do. But before one engages in any semblance of a legitimate and intelligent discussion over the national debt and even longer before even considering discussing the proposed raising of the debt ceiling it is absolutely essential that all parties concerned acknowledge the reality of the situation and accept that there is no simple answer to why our country went from a bustling surplus in the 90′s to an unfathomable debt that has skyrocketed out of control beyond any discernible explanation.

Oooooooopsies!!! MY BAD!!! Actually, as it happens, there IS such an answer!!!

But let’s set that gem aside a minute for now, just for the sake of acknowledging and addressing that which the mongrel bloodthirsty horde leashed and curbed by the multinational corporatist regimes will actually acknowledge and address with us! You know, something like making sure everyone pays their taxes! We all need to shoulder some of the burden to help out the downtrodden and we can’t leave all of that up to big business.

OH SHIT!!! As I live and breathe!!! Turns out we don’t leave ANY of that up to big business!!!

Now then, when our government isn’t selflessly assisting Middle Eastern countries in their pursuit of American freedom or rewarding multinational corporations for rampant tax fraud, it assists the elite class of this nation in securing their billions by any means necessary (for some, all three of these objectives coincide). Assisting the elite in that pursuit are the vast majority of the Democrats and every single fucking Republican. After all, most of them come from an elite background and are, of course, embedded in government by members of their own class for the purpose of protecting their shared interests. So when something like letting the Bush Tax Cuts expire on the elite class, thus raising their taxes to, maybe, Clinton Era levels enters the agenda? It exits the discussion almost by default. Indeed, this is true bi-partisanship in action.

So, to keep shit timely and firmly grounded in reality, let’s place taxing millionaires and billionaires off in Candyland along with the prospects of changing their war-mongering ways (which now includes Libya btw!), and get down to brass taxation.

The point and purpose to which I was directing y’allz this fine mid-week afternoon (evening? IT’S EVENING!?!?!? Jesus! It’s Friday… and IT’S NIGHT!) which is rapidly approaching Week’s End is that of the latest developments in The Debt-acle in D.C.!!! (Ooooooo!!!!! THAT’S GOOD!!! I’m going to add that to the title right nowwww!!!)

I gotta tell you, if you’ve never before considered mixing Coronas with powdered lemonade mix CONSIDER IT NOW!!!!!

Where was I? Ah yes, The Boner.

The Speaker of the House has been a real bastard lately, hasn’t he? And Barack hasn’t been much better, but I’ll get to his ass in a minute.

The showdown is ostensibly a power struggle over to raise or not to raise the government’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling where the legal limit of government spending is currently poised. That’s a shitload of money, right? Would you believe we’re about to pass it?

The Republicans want it all gone. ALL OF IT. Be it through their current plan of attack: cutting around $900 billion in spending over ten years, giving a six-month grace period for Washington to settle a debt it couldn’t settle in six years and prolonging the derailing of the most vital entitlement programs, which is inevitable under the master GOP “plan.” They’ll also organize a hunting party! Yes, it’s true! They’re getting all the boys together loading up the trucks and sniffing out an extra $1.8 trillion in deficit reductions!

One wonders where they’ll find this great stag?!

Essentially, the movement they created is now telling them to abolish government and so they are therefore telling themselves through a self-initiated third party that there should never be taxes again, there never should have been any before and that we should stop all that.

The only hitch in this otherwise airtight plan is that the only way out of this de/repression is to RAISE TAXES!!!

YES!!! YESSSSS DEAR FRIENDS!!!! I SAID IT!!!! RAISE THEM!!! RAISE THEM HIGH!!!!!!! SOOOOOOOOOOO HIGH!!!!!! HIGHER THAN THE MOTHERFUCKIN ROOFTOPS!!!!! HIGHER THAN THE MOTHERFUCKIN MOUNTAINTOPS!!!!! TOUCH THE SKY!!!!!!!!!!!!

But as I said before that’s impossible. I mean, election’s right around the corner. Election’s been right around the corner since the millisecond old B-Rock won the big show over 2 1/2 years ago! Raising them on the one’s that will make a difference (Bougie types) is out of the question and raising them on us??? BIIIIIIIITCH PLEASE!

And so our president is left with but a squirt gun in his arsenal, having expired all ammo on a stimulus package that was far too meager to solve the problem and barely escaping the deadly obstacle course of The Obamacare Clusterfuck, what’s he going to do now?

Ah yes… he puts slashing cuts to our most vital entitlement programs on the table, speeding up the derailing that the Republican agenda would see completed eventually down the line anyway.

Just for the sake of context, I should probably lift the curtain a bit and divulge here that in any discussion I engage in over what I think President Obama should do or would do as, you know, a “Democratic President” is all purely hypothetical. I am of the ilk that gives the man enough credit to assert that no one should fall for the notion that he really, truly just sort of stumbles into these kind of situations only to be totally bewildered by the Republican stalwarts he discovers standing in the way and must begrudgingly acquiesce to. If this scenario that he and his administration repeatedly try to sell us were true, than it would only validate every accusation of inexperience and ineptitude leveled against him by the ongoing dog & pony show from the Far Right.

I believe him to be now, as I did before his election,  an elephant in jackass clothing, which is not a critique of his clothing style but rather his style of governing with respect to the long-held anthropomorphic designations of our political parties.

I never held any illusions of who we were getting when he took office: a center-right candidate prepped for appeasement of the elite constituencies that funded his candidacy, maintenance and fortification of Bush Era policies and a strategy of centrist bi-lateral rightward legislation. The latter strategy would bring about the formers by being coupled with this pervasive desire of his to be a “Constitution President” who allows the legislators to do the legislating while he sits back and uses his Executive power for, essentially, nothing but moral support (with some exceptions, naturally). These two strategies are linked in an effort that is apparently designed to unite Washington along with the country and bring an end to partisan gridlock, but is in actuality a brilliantly executed political maneuver designed for a Democratic President to move policy further to the right without doing it as overtly as a Republican President would.

Although it’s getting pretty fucking overt these days.

And so! Finally, at long last, we reach The Ceiling! Boehner’s Brute Squad knows what they’re going to do. Right now in The House they’re voting on his plan and it looks like… WELL I’LL BE DAMNED!!! They passed it. However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has assured us this doesn’t matter. There is no way that his Senate will pass the House’s dumbass bill! NO WAY NO HOW!

But Reid’s bill doesn’t stand an iceball’s chance in H-E double toothpicks either. Raising the debt ceiling $2.7 trillion through 2013? Cutting the deficit by $2.2 trillion mostly on the condition of ending the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations??

Dream big, girlfriend.

But what’s really precious here, is of course the balanced budget amendment that the Republicans are lacing their bill with! An amendment that will filter all future government spending through strict parameters to ensure that it’s all paid back within a specific amount of time!

Yes, an amendment to the Constitution demanding a fantasy be made flesh.

The Constitutional measure that has actually been worth discussing of late is that of the Executive power of the President in this debate. There are a range of interpretations flying around over the 14th amendment and whether its 4th section stating that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned” would secure the President’s ability to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling without Congressional consent.

While this reasoning is certainly good enough for Bubba large swaths of frothing conservatives have insisted this would unequivocally constitute an impeachable offense. Regardless, Obama would never do this because the reality is that this debt thing is a hot potato that each party has passed from one to the other and won’t hold onto unless held together. It would be political suicide for him to take sole possession of this. That’s why Boehner and McConnell started the mantra of “this is Obama’s debt.”  That’s why he hasn’t even put a veto on the table.

Of course, I’m with the squad that thinks the debt ceiling’s very existence is unconstitutional as there will always be needs of the populace that require borrowing to pay off and all this ceiling bullshit does is allow the right-wing cowfuckers in Congress to play their little games and throw their little pep rallies and toy with a nation in need; the most recent of which is only the beginning.

But as it stands, the consequences of not getting this thing raised are immeasurable compared to anything else. It’s not just the impoverished citizens that these scumbags pretend don’t exist who will get fucked now. If the ceiling is not raised by next week (we’re in the 4 day countdown) it is very much a reality that more will suffer than our national credit rating. And if it does get raised, but these Social Security and Medicare cuts Obama put on the table are to stay in the deal? It won’t just be the invisible poor who are left sick and ailing.

I become tense with unbearable rage every time I hear Boehner or Obama or any of them seeking encouragement and approval for how much they think they’ve sacrificed or naming what they can live with or what the people are calling for. Because none of this is about us. If it were, there would be no debate. There would be no constant move by both parties to the right. There would be no need to call ending the wars, taxing the wealthy accordingly and punishing corporate tax evaders as impossible answers to keeping our debts paid and our house in order.

Call me illogical, call me sentimental, but the truth is I always have been and always will be, in it for those with the least among us. If these bastards can choose to be sentimental for the billionaires and their businesses, who will keep everything regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised or not, I’ll choose to be sentimental for everyone else and keep throwing in my lot with those who their ceiling will cave in on if it doesn’t.

-

Jared W. Adams
Grand Minister for General Mayhem
Irving Bastion, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY
July the 29th 2011
6:41 PM EST