Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on October 16, 2018
Dissecting the science behind the oil and gas setbacks initiative
“The OEHHA chronic benzene REL considers several studies published after USEPA’s 2002 benzene assessment, which found increased efficiency of benzene metabolism at low doses, decreased peripheral blood cell counts at low doses (800−1860 μg/m3)…”
It takes another 20 words — with terms like “metabolic enzymes” and “benzene detoxification” — to close out this sentence from a recent University of Colorado study that looked at the potential health impacts of Front Range oil and gas operations. Thousands of equally abstruse passages fill hundreds of other studies from around the world examining the effects of drilling and hydraulic fracturing on human health.
Welcome to the science behind Proposition 112, the oil and gas setbacks measure that will likely be among the most complex ballot issues to ever go before Colorado voters.
The initiative aims to increase the required distance of any newly drilled wells from homes, schools and water sources to 2,500 feet. The current setback is 500 feet from homes and 1,000 feet from densely occupied buildings, like hospitals and schools.
Opponents say the measure will block off so much acreage to drill rigs — it’s estimated that 85 percent of non-federal land in Colorado would be off-limits — that the $31 billion industry in Colorado would virtually collapse. Backers of 112 say without bigger buffers, Coloradans will continue to be exposed to noxious emissions from well sites, like toluene, formaldehyde, xylene, and cancer-causing benzene, to say nothing of the environmental harm from potent greenhouse gases, like methane.
What is the average voter supposed to do with the reams of data, some in conflict with one another, in deciding whether Proposition 112 is critical to public health or ruinous to Colorado’s economy?
“It’s hard when we ask voters to vote on technical issues like this,” said Tanya Heikkila, a professor at CU Denver’s School of Public Affairs who focuses on environmental policy, management and law.
She said few voters have the time, patience or expertise to navigate through the copious scientific research that has been done on energy extraction. As such, she said, they’ll likely turn to the people they know for advice on which box to check on the ballot — their friends, their neighbors, their doctor.
“I don’t think people’s decision on this will come down to what the science says — it will come down to who they trust,” Heikkila said.
It’s also likely, she said, that voters will employ “motivated reasoning” or be swayed by “confirmation bias” to make their choice on Proposition 112.
“Cognitive research has shown that when people are emotionally attached to an issue, it’s easier to reason away or dismiss the information that contradicts those beliefs — or conversely use information that supports their beliefs to confirm those beliefs,” Heikkila said.
Arguments from each camp are compelling, she said, and voters may find virtue on both sides of the issue.
“No one wants to be exposed to carcinogens, to noise, to (truck) traffic,” she said. “At the same time, when people say 112 is going to cost them their jobs and ruin the tax base, that resonates too.”
“Something is happening here”
Anne Lee Foster, who is with the pro-112 group Colorado Rising, knows she can’t fight the oil and gas industry on the financial front. As of the most recent reporting period from late September, the anti-112 group Protect Colorado had dropped just over $20 million on its battle against the measure, while Colorado Rising had spent less than $650,000.
Foster hopes science speaks louder than cash. She and her allies point to a compendium of studies — now numbering more than 1,300 — that are assembled and updated on the Physicians for Social Responsibility website. The studies have examined one aspect or another of fracking’s harms and risks, pointing out connections to cancer, low birth-weight babies, asthma, headaches and bloody noses for families living near oil and gas wells.
Fracking involves injecting at high pressure a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into a well to fracture rock and allow minerals trapped underground to flow back out. An assortment of toxic and combustible gases and compounds often rise to the surface as well.
A worker inspects a drill pipe at the Precision Drilling rig 462 on the Lincoln Pad west of Windsor last week.
The danger of oil and gas activity close to neighborhoods was thrown into stark relief last year, when a leaking flowline filled the basement of a home in Firestone with gas. The gas ignited and exploded, killing two men and injuring a woman. Scrutiny of Colorado’s oil and gas sector has picked up in the last few years as production has ramped up, much of it near fast-growing communities north of Denver.
The state produced 132 million barrels of oil last year — four times its 2010 volume. There were more than 55,000 producing wells in Colorado as of the end of 2017, according to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, with nearly half located in Weld County.
The COGCC has received more than 2,200 complaints from residents between January 2015 and May of this year regarding oil and gas activity, ranging from odor to air quality to noise to flaring.
“Something is happening here,” Foster said. “This is about health and safety — this is about keeping an explosive industry away from our homes and keeping benzene away from our playgrounds and children.”
But exactly what the health hazards are — and more specifically what distance from wells is required to avoid them — is the confounding question at the heart of Proposition 112.
“No bright line”
In April, the former head of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment criticized a CU study that found that those living just outside the 500-foot oil and gas buffer faced an increased risk of developing cancer. Then-CDPHE Executive Director Dr. Larry Wolk said the study’s data conflicted with the state’s own monitoring, which hasn’t detected worrying levels of benzene or other chemicals. He called for further study.
John Adgate, a professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Colorado School of Public Health, said one of the big challenges in the field is trying to pinpoint the source of pollution. How much is the oil and gas industry to blame, as opposed to other sources like highways or emissions from industrial activity wafting in from other states, he asked.
Add in topography, weather conditions, the size of the well pad, and people’s lifestyles and genetic predispositions — and determining an optimum setback distance that protects public health is a tough call.
“There is no bright line between safe and unsafe,” Adgate said. “It’s hard to do the causal attribution the public would like to see.”
Even the CDPHE, which released a report in 2017 that found “the risk of harmful health effects is low for residents living near oil and gas operations,” noted there is a need for more research.
The agency analyzed 10,000 air samples for 62 substances associated with oil and gas activity and estimated that for those living just outside a 500-foot buffer from a well pad, exposure to those substances was in a safe range. However, the agency suggested levels of hazardous benzene, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde “are a high priority for continued monitoring.”
“We couldn’t conclusively say there were no problems from the existing data, but we didn’t find anything that was elevated risk from that data,” said Tami McMullin, state toxicologist with CDPHE.
Colorado Oil and Gas Association President and CEO Dan Haley criticizes the proposed 2,500-foot setback as arbitrary and unscientific.
“I have seen no credible science that indicates that the current setback distances need to be increased,” he said.
The fact that Proposition 112 would place so much of Colorado’s land surface off limits to new drilling, Haley said, means companies would likely pick up and leave the state. The Colorado Legislative Council calculated that a 2,500-foot buffer would designate 450 acres surrounding a protected point as a no-drill zone; under a 500-foot setback, 18 acres is off-limits.
A study from a local business consortium that 112 opponents often cite calculated that the greater setback would jettison up to 147,800 jobs in Colorado by 2030 and slash state and local tax revenues from oil and gas activity by up to $258 million in 2019 alone.
Both candidates for governor have come out against Proposition 112, as has Gov. John Hickenlooper.
“We can have a healthy economy and a healthy environment,” Haley said. “We can and we do.”
The precautionary principle
But if there’s even a modicum of doubt about how volatile organic compounds and other pollutants associated with fracking are affecting people living nearby, why not err on the side of safety? That’s the question that Sandra Steingraber, a biologist with the Concerned Health Professionals of New York, asks.
“The science of public health errs on the side of protecting people,” Steingraber said. “It comes down to how you want to look at uncertainty and the burden of proof.”
The precautionary principle was invoked by Howard A. Zucker, acting state health commissioner for New York, when that state banned fracking five years ago.
“We cannot afford to make a mistake,” Zucker said in December 2014, as reported by The New York Times. “The potential risks are too great. In fact, they are not even fully known.”
Steingraber said the resistance to larger setbacks for oil and gas wells reminds her of the early opposition that was mounted by industry when it came to acknowledging the hazards of lead paint or secondhand smoke.
As it stands, the science — both in quality and volume — is firmly on the side of those pushing for Proposition 112, Steingraber said. She criticized the 2017 CDPHE study for a lack of rigor, saying it didn’t consider local geography or weather events and didn’t feature continuous monitoring, meaning any “conclusions about short-term impacts will be invalid.”
If recent fires and leaks at oil and gas facilities on the Front Range are any indication of the sudden and severe danger a highly industrialized facility like an oil and gas pad can pose, many say caution is the recommended course of action.
A Denver Post review of state records found that at least a dozen explosions and fires occurred along Colorado oil and gas industry pipelines in the eight months after the April 2017 Firestone tragedy. Two of those explosions killed workers.
Less than half a year following Firestone, a crowd at a football game in Greeley had to be evacuated after an equipment failure on a compressor resulted in a high-pressure gas leak. Last November, state regulators cited Denver-based Crestone Peak Resources after workers improperly vented volatile organic compounds at a well pad next to Aspen Ridge Preparatory School in Erie.
“We found leaks and contamination at every step of the process,” Steingraber said of oil and gas sites across the globe. “If you have bigger setbacks, you’ll save lives.”
Fracking: The “f-word”
How big matters to Mike Eberhard, chief operations officer for SRC Energy. The company’s 8-acre fracking site, known as the Greeley Rothe pad, has nearly 40 employees and contractors working there on any given day. The drilling of 12 wells began in the summer and fracking those wells will continue through the rest of 2018.
He said the pad, which features horizontal wells that extend two miles underground toward downtown Greeley, wouldn’t have been allowed under Proposition 112’s 2,500-foot setback.
Colorado has some of the strictest regulations on the industry, Eberhard said, but even so fracking has become the “f-word” in the larger conversation about energy development — politicized to the point where no matter what environmental controls are put in place by oil and gas operators, it won’t satisfy the anti-drilling contingent.
“Hydraulic fracturing has become a synonym for so much,” he said.
Workers watch the progress of the wire line (right) on one of the 12 wells being fracked at SRC Energy’s Greeley Rothe Pad west of Greeley last week.
The improvements the industry have made in the last few years are substantial, Eberhard said. At the Greeley Rothe pad, he pointed to sound walls with lights mounted inside the walls, an arrangement designed to cut down on noise and light pollution. SRC uses a Sandbox system to deliver sand to the site, which greatly reduces the amount of particulates escaping and blowing off site, he said.
The pad also has water piped in off site, which sharply reduces truck traffic and accompanying emissions across Weld County, Eberhard said.
The industry points to its use of pollution-reduction technology, like methane capture, leak detection cameras and remote monitoring equipment, for helping make drilling and fracking a cleaner process than it once was.
“These are some of the things we’ve done to minimize impacts,” Eberhard said. “We take it very seriously. We live here.”
But claims of improved operations at Colorado’s oil and gas sites are of little solace to those who feel like they are under siege in their own homes, suffering from unexplained health ailments.
Stacy Lambright, who lives near a producing well pad in her North Creek Farms neighborhood in Thornton, said she and her children began experiencing nose bleeds and headaches right around the time a subcontractor found a leaking flow line at the site nearly three years ago.
That discovery triggered a remediation effort that resulted in the excavation and treatment of 3,500 cubic yards of soil and the removal of 3,000 barrels of groundwater, which contained elevated levels of benzene. A children’s playground sits just a few hundred feet away from the well pad.
Stacy Lambright with her goldendoodle Teddy walks along the South Fork Preble Creek Trail near her home in the North Creek Farms neighborhood in Thornton. The trail passes an oil and gas site near her neighborhood that she thinks is harming her family’s health.
“We are guinea pigs,” Lambright said. “I really think in so many years from now we’ll look back at this and say we were wrong. There are too many unknowns.”
Susan Noble, a Commerce City resident, says energy companies are seeking permits for nearly 200 wells at multiple well pads within just a mile or two of her Reunion neighborhood.
“Parents are especially concerned about their children’s and future children’s health — kids are most susceptible to the VOC emissions from these sites — and are talking about moving away,” she said. “Heavy petrochemical activity doesn’t belong near or in residential areas.”
Just a year ago, state regulators were putting pressure on the industry for more controls to cut Front Range air pollution and smog. Ozone levels in the metro area haven’t met limits set by the federal government in years.
“A political mistake”
Pat Quinn, Broomfield’s former mayor who served on the state’s 19-member oil and gas task force a few years ago, is no fan of Proposition 112. At the same time, Quinn thinks a 500-foot setback is insufficient.
That’s largely because today’s well pads can have up to 30 or more wells, he said. While the multi-well approach limits impacts to the land surface, it boosts industrial activity at a well pad to a much more intense level.
“Once you’re 500 feet away, they are practically in your backyard,” said Quinn, who has worked for the oil and gas industry as an accountant. “I don’t believe that even the industry believes 500 feet is acceptable for a 40-well pad.”
Broomfield established a 1,320-foot buffer — one-quarter mile — that oil and gas firms are asked to comply with if they want to drill in the city. It’s a compromise that addresses the desires of both sides in the debate, he said.
“Had the industry addressed this issue five years ago when they started coming into these urban and suburban areas — letting local governments have a say about where the locations would be — it would have taken the pressure off of the industry,” Quinn said. “It was a political mistake.”
COGA’s Haley admits that the industry didn’t do a good job in the last few years of communicating with homeowners and city officials when it came to the issue of compatibility of drilling and fracking with fast-growing communities. But he said Proposition 112 is not the answer.
“What I know doesn’t work is inserting blunt instruments into state law that don’t allow for dialogue, waivers or nuance,” he said. “COGCC is a better place to address this issue than the ballot box.”
23 Comments on "Dissecting the science behind the oil and gas setbacks initiative"
Here we go again on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 1:13 am
Nice long article I didn’t have to read…make it so Fckin complex no one knows which end is up…something like the financial instruments Warren Buffet was talking about.
Boy, these guys are good…keep the hamster running on the wheel whatever it takes…
BTW AGW is a hoax, Cheeto says so…good enough for maw
Sissyfuss on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 8:51 am
Whether it’s 500 feet or 2500 feet matters not to the Keeling Curve. There is no way to keep a safe distance from an atmosphere that is being inexorably altered to a composition not seen in 800,000 years. Our desperate actions to maintain BAU are shielded by the 10 year lagtime of our emissions and that allows us our fantasies of normalcy until reality grabs us by the throat and squeezes.
Cloggie on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 4:22 pm
Ocean Cleanup started operations:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/ocean-cleanup-starting-operations/
Dutch-based organization wants to clean up the world’s oceans, to begin with the Pacific, the dirtiest one, courtesy Asian bed-wetters.
Pilot first, an entire fleet at a later stage. Think of a giant broom of several hundreds of meters wide.
Anonymouse1 on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 5:41 pm
You stupid autistic fraud. The ‘dutch’, are not going to clean up the worlds ocean with a boom a couple hundred meters wide, Yidiot. The ‘oceans’, FYI, are somewhat larger than than that. You whine like a little sniveling rodent all the time about so-called ‘virtue signaling’ by others here. Well, I wonder what you would call the idea that the ‘Dutch’* are going to spearhead some noble effort to suck all that plastic shit out of the oceans?
Sounds a lot like virtue signalling to me. Or maybe it is not even that since the idea of removing all that plastic shit suspended in the ocean is a pipe dream and even an autistic fraud like you probably knows that it the case. And then there is issue that ‘virtue’ as a concept, is entirely absent from your limited range of experiences anyhow.
BTW Yidiot, the EU practice has been to export much of its plastics waste, to, guess where? Yea Asia. Except they are less willing to take it in these days. I guess the ‘bed-wetters’ must be getter smarter or something.
Oh, and look, the EU generates 31kg of plastic waste per person per year. Who knew? Not you, that’s for certain.
But wait!, there’s more.
https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution
I.4 Plastic waste generation across the world
Download the CSV data sheet and sort by highest per capita and what do we find?
The Netherlands is ranked #11! @ .424 KG of plastic waste per day.Even managed to edge out the bedwetters in Hong Kong.
Tip of the hat, to all you bed-wetters in the Netherlands.
FYI
#10 -Ireland
#9 – Germany
Sound like those Netherlander bedwetters should clean up there act first, doesn’t it cloggenKike? Maybe you waddle your, worthless fat ass down the ocean and get to work.
*The Dutch are not going to clean the worlds oceans of plastic. Shell is not a ‘green’ eco-friendly energy corporation, and batteries are not energy sources.
And you are not ‘Dutch’, fraudmeister cloggraham.
Outcast_Searcher on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 5:50 pm
Science is complex. Math is complex.
That shouldn’t stop us from using it.
The built-in process of peer review should help us be able to trust the big picture where major scientific consensus exists over time (such as AGW).
The article wastes lots of words on such obvious issues. Is the author getting paid by the word instead of effectively saying something meaningful?
Richard Guenette on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 6:14 pm
Most of the plastic waste in the ocean today originates from 10 rivers in South America, Africa and Asia.
Richard Guenette on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 6:32 pm
Somebody has been using my name. I did not write this comment “Most of the plastic waste in the ocean today originates from 10 rivers in South America, Africa and Asia.”
Gaia on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 6:35 pm
Ban fracking worldwide.
Richard Guenette on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 6:37 pm
I didn’t say that
Richard Guenette on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 6:41 pm
Administrator, please remove this troll who is using my name. I don’t want to get into any trouble with this site. I go here to express my views, not insult people.
makati1 on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 7:21 pm
This site is being ruined by a few who think it is mature and intelligent to use other peoples names. When you have an unregulated site, the insane take advantage and destroy it.
Some people cannot handle view points that differ from their own or from reality. They resort to bullying, putdowns and childish behavior. Free speech does not exist unless it is their speech. The new term for such people is “snowflake”.
Anonymouse1 on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 8:57 pm
Exactly Mak.
I can understand the frustration Richard. It is impossible to get rid of the offenders. We’ve been hoping the worst of the trolls and sock puppeteers would just go away on their own. [Ex: davy dumbass] But they are like a bad rash, they never go away.The worst trolls here, are in no particular ranking.
Davy Dumbass. Lunatic and all around trouble-maker
Marimco: (Serial sock puppeteer)
CLoggenfraud. Super-Troll. Specializing in, Donald Trump gossip, flying cars, World War II, and Yiddish folk songs.
Short of any of them dropping dead of a heart attack, or choking on a matzoh ball or something fortuitous like that, good luck getting rid of any of them.
Anontarded1 on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 10:00 pm
hey anontard and aswange and richard the tard.
you said to “get rid of offenders”
woop da dee doo. you’re tarded.
my supertards built the intardweb for me to enjoy, russians didn’t do it. so you say kick off the “offenders” so the tards (russians) who didn’t build it can spread fake news 24×7? haha
you’re good.
and then richard the tard can cover for muzzies or is it Christians when they attacked mumbai, london bridge, or ariana grande concert in manchester
those damn christians, or “religions” if you prefer to tard harder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFo_rR90Tr8
Cloggie on Wed, 17th Oct 2018 10:45 pm
“The ‘dutch’, are not going to clean up the worlds ocean with a boom a couple hundred meters wide, Yidiot.”
Who says that “the dutch” are going to clean up the oceans? Nobody, you stinking cotton-picking nihilist invader from Toronto.
“Oh, and look, the EU generates 31kg of plastic waste per person per year. ”
Maybe, but none of it ends up in the world’s oceans, you lying POS. The destruction of the world’s oceans is entirely the work of darkies like you. And whitey is supposed to clean it up. And if they do, all they get is the sneers, because nothing else will ever come out of that minute talentless dull “brain” of yours. You and your kind are nothing but a dead weight to society:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/07/detroit-illiteracy-nearly-half-education_n_858307.html?guccounter=1
Only needs, but nothing to give.
The only positive thing that can be said about you is that you will help blow up North-American society for us, probably as soon as the next decade. Your depressing presence is the ONLY reason why North-American whitey is going down the drain, has declining life-expectancy, is going on drugs, etc, because he is facing drowning demographically into the third world that you represent. Don’t cry victory too soon, moussie, we don’t need zombies like you for anything. And additionally in Eurasia everybody has enough of ZOG. “One World” is nearly over, the center won’t hold and after that everything is possible and decades of enforced “anti-racism” will morph into its opposite, with devastating results:
https://documents1940.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/amerikaner/
So and now go back to your daily routine of attacking pompous but defenseless whiteys like davy and boat and dig your own grave.
Davy on Thu, 18th Oct 2018 4:57 am
“I can understand the frustration Richard. It is impossible to get rid of the offenders.”
LOL, a-noise anyone that spends as much time as you do here as the board ad-hom soldier and board sock cop is likely the culprit. Look at you dumbass accusing me of it when I am one of the biggest victims. My handle is stolen most here. There are several socks used against me. For me it is mission accomplished and a sign of victory when these dumbasses have to resort to this childish activity. I would put you right up at the top of likely conspirators. You made one lame pissed off and anti-neder comment on plastics in the ocean. Kind of a hybrid comment more an attack on neder than a real comment. The previous 3 weeks were ad-hom attacks and sock cop whining. You are noise and this noise is part of what is ruining this board.
Davy on Thu, 18th Oct 2018 5:05 am
“This site is being ruined by a few who think it is mature and intelligent to use other peoples names. When you have an unregulated site, the insane take advantage and destroy it.”
Wow, what a stupid comment, Billy. You have been promoting this kind of bad behavior for a long time now. You love the gang land tactics you and your group engaged in. BTW, what happened to that group? Kinda faded away….. Anoise1 was never really part of that gang but he loved the turmoil. Perfect environment for him. My handle is stolen and socks used against me but hey that’s ok because it is me. More of your stupid hypocrisy in action.
Davy on Thu, 18th Oct 2018 5:08 am
“So and now go back to your daily routine of attacking pompous but defenseless whiteys like davy and boat and dig your own grave.”
Yea, neder, how about your “SUM” sock? Where has he gone off too? You are a poor puppeteer so I would leave him in the box. You would be one of our better commenters if it was not for all the other trash you dump here besides your excellent renewable posts.
Davy on Thu, 18th Oct 2018 6:38 am
“Lacalle: Italy’s Problem Is Not The Euro, It’s Political Spending”
https://tinyurl.com/yashepq3
“The Italian government has created another massive turmoil in European markets with its 2019 budget proposal. Not only does it represent a huge increase in a country that already has 131% of debt over GDP, but a brief analysis of the tax revenue estimates shows that the figure presented is simply unattainable. Most independent analysts pointed the evidence of over-optimistic estimated revenues, raising fears of an additional 14 billion euro financial gap.”
“This is what happens when a country with enormous internal problems launches itself to the eternal magic solution of spending much more and increasing deficits. Many commented that this is the “price of sovereignty”. Someone has to enlighten me on how you achieve sovereignty raising debt and increasing current spending. Anyone who believes raising imbalances and threatening with default and leaving the euro is going to be the solution for Italy ahead of billions in maturities and with banks burdened with enormous non-performing loans and government bonds, simply dreams. The prospect of capital controls, bank runs, and domino bankruptcies is even conservative.”
“The biggest problem of the proposals is that they are the same old mistakes that never worked. Massive subsidies and political spending are not tools for growth but the recipe for stagnation and ultimately larger and more painful adjustments in the long term. Italy has been one of the main beneficiaries of the ECB bond purchase program. Despite the enormous bubble and bond yield compression created by the quantitative easing policy, Italian bond yields have soared. Imagine outside of the eurozone and with a central bank committed to copying Argentina and Turkish monetary policies, as Spain or Italy did before the euro. Italy’s enormous debt burden is not a consequence of “austerity”. It is misleading to define as austerity a Government spending of 48.9 percent of GDP in 2017. Government Spending to GDP in Italy averaged 49.83 percent from 1990 until 2017. The monster public spending that Italy is proposing is not the solution. Even less, it would be impossible outside of the euro, with the historical knowledge that the central bank would pursue an inflationary and purchasing-power destructing policy, as it did in the years before the euro.”
“Italy’s economic problems are self-inflicted, not due to the Euro. Italy has seen more governments since World War II than any other country in the European Union. Governments of all colors have consistently promoted inefficient dinosaur “national champions” and state-owned semi-ministerial corporations at the expense of small and medium enterprises, competitiveness and growth. Labor market rigidities remained, leaving high unemployment and differences between regions. A perverse incentive financial system, where banks were incentivized to lend to obsolete and indebted state-owned companies in their disastrous empire-building acquisitions, inefficient municipalities, as well as finance bloated local and national government spending. This led to the highest Non-Performing Loan figure in Europe. A nightmare legal system that makes it virtually impossible to repossess assets from bad debt, led non-performing loans through the roof and malinvestment to soar. A thriving export and small enterprise ecosystem were constantly limited by taxation and bureaucracy. This made the thriving companies smaller and actively looking to set activities outside of Italy.”
Davy on Thu, 18th Oct 2018 7:05 am
“Minority Of Radical Leftists Dominate Democratic Party Agenda, Study Finds”
https://tinyurl.com/yccqzqch
https://tinyurl.com/y9p4x3qo
“According to one analysis of our current hyperpartisan political environment carried out during a year-long study entitled “Hidden Tribes” a project organized by More in Common, an organization that aims to help mitigate the divisive state of American politics, progressive activists on the liberal wing of the Democratic Party comprise only 8% of Democrats, but are responsible for nearly all of the “shouts, posts” and many of the votes, too.”
“Meanwhile, what the study called “traditional liberals” comprised another 11% of the electorate. Progressive Activists (8 percent of the population) are deeply concerned with issues concerning equity, fairness, and America’s direction today. They tend to be more secular, cosmopolitan, and highly engaged with social media. Traditional Liberals (11 percent of the population) tend to be cautious, rational, and idealistic. They value tolerance and compromise. They place great faith in institutions. Despite their focus on identity politics and the liberation of “oppressed” groups, members of the far left are 80% white and well-educated.”
“Meanwhile, 67% of the population falls into what the researchers called “the exhausted majority”. They’re either centrist democrats, unaffiliated moderates or completely politically disengaged. Stephen Hawkins, the organizer of the study, told Axios that the progressive left and, on the other side, devoted conservatives, are “talking to each other too little, with too much suspicion and too little giving credit.”
Davy on Thu, 18th Oct 2018 7:50 am
“Blain: “Analysts Are Looking At A Cascade Crisis In China”… And That’s Great News For Trump”
https://tinyurl.com/yctxoqdj
“China vs US Meanwhile… let us cast our minds far to the East where the real story is probably China. Lots of stuff in the press about China and debt… and much of it casting doubt on the sustainability of China’s economic miracle – including its ability to continue as the major economic partner across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.”
“The US can withstand declining energy exports to China far longer than Xi can withstand real growth tumbling from the Party’s mandated 7% to closer to 5.5% (or whatever it really is). The government are combating weakness by letting the currency fall – courting further Trump anger at perfidious currency manipulators. Analysts are looking at a potential cascade crisis in China: falling growth, declining house prices, rising personality cult of Xi, increasing unrest, demographic crisis, nascent corporate debt crisis, banking weakness, and loss of confidence in stock markets. Some of them conclude it’s a binary game China is bound to lose – and a collapse in China will have catastrophic effects on the global economy. Today the main headlines are about burgeoning China debt over the past years – how much hidden regional government lending is hidden within the financial system and how much has been squandered. Its also about unreported corporate debt linked to regional government and how overextended banks and domestic lenders are to companies now facing slowdown. As the Chinese economy relies heavily on corporate investment for growth, any slowdown caused by a banking crisis or even retrenchment creates a perception of weakness. As I’ve said before, debt is needed to fuel growth, but when it takes over.. its never a good thing. A China in crisis plays well for Trump, demonstrating the success of his economic campaigns. Sure, he can afford a few job losses, or, who blinks first? Xi knows China won’t win an economic battle with Trump’s US. What other cards does Xi hold? Not enough. Yet.”
I AM THE MOB on Thu, 18th Oct 2018 8:42 am
This nails those CHUDS davy and clogg
https://i.imgur.com/MoHjHnf.png
LMFAO!
Anontarded1 on Thu, 18th Oct 2018 8:52 am
supertards built this intardweb for me to enjoy. supertard Davy wouldn’t be trolling you, that’s out of charaxcter for him. you guys troll after your leader aswange. i’m a tard and a former paultard and if you’re a hs dropout moving to phils to find bfs, i’m gona call you out. u don’t ban nobody. if u do, next thing you ban luke 22:36 then how i defend supertards? how supertards defend themselves?
makes no sense bro
Dredd on Fri, 19th Oct 2018 5:58 am
Oil-Qaeda results in the Southern Ocean (Hot, Warm, & Cold Thermal Facts: Tidewater-Glaciers – 6)