Craig Newmark points out that Americans can actually read the details of the bailout packages:

Want to know what’s in that $700 billion bailout legislation for the mortgage companies? What should be in the legislation? The folks at Sunlight have posted publicmarkup.org both the Administration’s bill and one being offered by Senator Chris Dodd in a way so that you can read and comment on them section by section.

Thanks Craig!

The first paragraph of AP News says it all:

The Environmental Protection Agency has decided there’s no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled public water supplies around the country.

This is a completely baseless and counterproductive decision, as the movie FLOW illustrates.

The AP article says the EPA claims to have used a risk calculation that decided Americans do not deserve the cost of cleanup:

The EPA document says that mandating a clean-up level for perchlorate would not result in a “meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public-water systems.”

In other words, the government does not want to spend its money on cleanup of a toxin that they are primarily responsible for dumping into the water. The EPA is harming national security.

Lenny Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View, Calif., added: “This is an unconscionable decision not based upon science or law but on concern that a more stringent standard could cost the government significantly.”

The Defense Department used perchlorate for decades in testing missiles and rockets, and most perchlorate contamination is the result of defense and aerospace activities, congressional investigators said last year.

The Pentagon could face liability if EPA set a national drinking water standard that forced water agencies around the country to undertake costly clean-up efforts. Defense officials have spent years questioning EPA’s conclusions about the risks posed by perchlorate.

Fortunately, states are acting on their own to set a health standard for drinking water that includes a limit on perchlorate. The states do not seem to be as biased towards protecting the Pentagon budget in their calculations.

California uses 6 parts per billion as a level of concern, whereas the US Navy uses 24 parts per billion. The problem with perchlorate is that it travels through water into plants, milk, and people; even nursing babies are at risk:

A chemical pollutant that is commonly found in water supplies could harm nursing babies, even lead to mental impairment in extreme cases.

Perchlorate-an industrial pollutant linked to thyroid ailments-has been found in US drinking water and a survey is currently under way to find out its extent and impact in the UK.

Now it has been discovered that it becomes actively concentrated in breast milk, according to a team at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore.

Today perhaps you can feel lucky that you don’t live in a city like Rialto, California (that has 22 wells contaminated with perclorate and one registering 10,000 ppb) but tomorrow you might be wondering why the EPA does not want to protect you and your family from danger.

The EPA should immediately go after the sources of contamination, public and private, and declare levels above 6 ppm an unacceptable risk to American safety and security. Keep in mind that the cost of cleanup will decrease significantly if the EPA takes a stand on this issue — demand for new cleanup technology will spur innovation.

Interesting to read about Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volker and his early warning about the risks of deregulation. PBS has the story:

Thomas Theobald, then vice chairman of Citicorp, argues that three “outside checks” on corporate misbehavior had emerged since 1933: “a very effective” SEC; knowledgeable investors, and “very sophisticated” rating agencies. Volcker is unconvinced, and expresses his fear that lenders will recklessly lower loan standards in pursuit of lucrative securities offerings and market bad loans to the public.

Oh, that was in 1987.

In August 1987, Alan Greenspan — formerly a director of J.P. Morgan and a proponent of banking deregulation — becomes chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. One reason Greenspan favors greater deregulation is to help U.S. banks compete with big foreign institutions.

It seems to me that if you have to change the rules or remove the referees to win, then maybe you do not really intend to play the game anymore. Imagine basketball with no refs, baseball with no umpire. This is not my idea of the best way to compete. The power-vacuum of deregulation not only allows for unsustainable excess and fraud (cheating on the field) but also spirals downward into a match of sheer aggression and violence. So deregulation leads to far higher operating costs, more permanent failure and decreased quality of service. Who wins from that equation?

The Radio New Zealand News gives details about the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad.

The heavily guarded hotel was attacked at 8pm local time on Saturday, when a truck blew up at the hotel entrance after it was stopped for a security check.

There is no security footage of the main blast because it destroyed the camera, but officials said the vehicle was packed with 600kg of high-quality explosives, as well as grenades and mortars.

Aluminium powder was also used to accelerate the explosion and added to the ferocity of the blaze, officials said.

The photos I have seen reminded me of the WTC explosion in 1993, and I couldn’t help but notice both mention 600 kg (1310 lb) explosives in trucks, even though the trucks could hold more. Why 600 kg? The 1993 bomb at the WTC also was made from urea nitrate (fertilizer) with aluminum.

A quick search found similar details in a story about a UK man from the BBC:

Defendant Anthony Garcia purchased a 600kg bag of ammonium nitrate fertiliser in November 2003, the jury was told.

This was kept at a self-storage depot in Hanwell, west London, until staff became suspicious and called police.

Mr Garcia is one of seven suspects accused of planning attacks on pubs, nightclubs and stations in the UK.

Some of the suspects are alleged by the prosecution to have received training in explosives and use of the poison ricin in Pakistan.

600 kg of fertilizer (equivalent to 500 kg of TNT high explosive) in these events must be more than a coincidence. The 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, the 2002 Bali bombings and the Istanbul HSBC bombing in 2003 have similar notes.

It seems to me that a subtext of ammonium nitrate creation, export and control is missing from the news stories I have read so far. Remember how Timothy McVeigh was accused of using 2,300 kg (5,000 lb) of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane in the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bomb? Even more shocking was the 1947 explosion at the Galvaston ship canal at Texas City on the French Freighter Grand Camp that killed over 576 people, injured 5,000 and caused $67m in damage. Few go over this history of industrialized fertilizer mischief or bring up the question of regulation in these stories about “threats”, but there seems to be a clear pattern.

The US signed a “Secure Handling of Ammonium Nitrate Act” in 2007 but it apparently “leaves the U.S. with weaker controls on ammonium nitrate than Britain, Germany, Australia, Israel, Saudi Arabia and many other nations.” Australia has a list of Principles for the Regulation of Ammonium Nitrate.

I started to look and see if there are any fertilizer early-warning systems under development (e.g. sniffers that could have alerted security that a truck laden with fertilizer was driving through an urban area), and also whether there are ways to neutralize combustibility (detonation resistance) with an additive, but did not get very far. I am sure the latter exists, but what of the former?