Forget Tax Day: You Won’t Believe All that’s Happened on THIS Day

Forget Tax Day: You Won’t Believe All that’s Happened on THIS Day
BY LARRY WINES

Is April 14th history’s worst day? You decide.

It was a silent ambush during the closing night performance of the comedy “Our American Cousin” in Ford’s theater in Washington, D.C. Lincoln would die the following morning, April 15th. And his death isn’t the only tragedy that began on an April 14th and ended early the next day. (Wait for it.)

The Lincoln assassination also introduced Americans to the unacceptable idea that an inconsequential nobody could change history by killing a very important president. That same unacceptable idea, sadly, would plague us again and again.

Back to April 14th. In 1912, while on her maiden voyage, the largest and most luxurious ship ever built (to that time), the RMS Titanic, struck an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland at 11:40 pm, ship time. Two hours and 40 minutes later, on the morning of April 15th, she sank into the strangely calm, smooth-as-glass, icy waters of the North Atlantic. Over 1500 men, women, and children lost their lives because the ship had been built and put into service with a grossly insufficient number of lifeboats, making it one of the most arrogant acts of hubris ever. The sinking is also regarded as the end of “The Gilded Age,” because some of the most pampered, insulated, privileged and influential people in the world froze and drowned along with nearly everyone from Third Class, who had pretty much always known a hard life filled with sudden and tragic death.

Eight years later, in 1920, an April 14th tornado outbreak tore things to pieces in Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi. In all, it left 219 people dead, hundreds more injured, many seriously, and millions of dollars in damage at a time when a million dollars was a LOT of money.

Fifteen years after that, April 14th, 1935 brought the worst sandstorm of “The Dust Bowl” of 1931-1939, the Great Depression of 1929-1940, and all of American history. That April 14th would become known as “Black Sunday” across much of the United States because the daytime sky over the plains and Midwest was literally black.

Though the U.S. wasn’t yet in it, Europe was in the throes of World War II on April 14th, 1941, when the first massive Nazi roundup of Jews took 3,600 people from Paris, France to the concentration camps as the first major step in the horror of the Holocaust.

Twenty-eight years after that, on April 14th, 1969, a powerful tornado caused an estimated 660 deaths and tens of thousands of injuries in what was then East Pakistan and is now Bangladesh.

Thirty years later, Sydney, Australia was struck by “a gigantic and severe” hailstorm on April 14th, 1999. An estimated 500,000 tons of hail fell. Insurers were hit with 1.7 billion dollars in claims, monetarily the costliest event in Australia’s history. One fisherman died, but only 50 injuries were reported.

Five years ago, on April 14th, 2010 the region around Yushu, Qinghai, China, experienced six separate earthquakes plus related aftershocks, killing more than 2,700 men, women, and children. The largest was 6.9 on the Richter scale. In the town of Gyegu, 85% of all structures were destroyed, including 11 schools.

And one year ago, April 14th, 2014, over 200 school girls were abducted by terrorists in the north of Nigeria.

And you thought the 13th was always bad. Or maybe you were worried about the April 15th tax deadline tomorrow.

Perhaps the old Creedence Clearwater Revival song should be the anthem of April 14th:

“I see a bad moon a’ rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin’
I see bad times today.

“Don’t go around tonight
Well it’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise.

“I hear hurricanes a’ blowing
I know the end is a’ coming soon
I fear rivers overflowing
I hear the voice of raze and ruin.

“Well, don’t go around tonight
Well it’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise.

“Hope you have got your things together
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks like we’re in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye.

“Well don’t go around tonight
Well it’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise.

“Don’t go around tonight
Well it’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise.”

Be careful out there.

Larry Wines

POSTED ON APRIL 14, 2015 

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WEDNESDAY, 15 APRIL 2015 Hillary Clinton for President: An Open Letter to the California Progressive Voter John Marciano: Why would you – an antiwar, pro-marriage equality, environmentally aware progressive who rejects deepening inequality and control of the country by the Wall Street One Percent – vote for someone who opposes all you claim to support? READ MORE Forget Tax Day: You Won't Believe All That's Happened on THIS Day Larry Wines: Exactly 150 years ago, on this day in 1865, the least regarded member of a famous family of American actors shot President Abraham Lincoln. READ HERE Migration as a Universal Human Right Alvaro Huerta: If migration is certain and constant, why do so many Americans and their leaders fuss about Latino immigration to the United States? READ MORE The Storm Is Over Kathy Kelly: I've seen flashes of fury, followed by sad resignation, like lightning giving way to rain, in the faces of guards and prison administrators witnessing these scenes occurring on their watch, but as powerless to stop them as to call off those storms the other night. READ MORE Neocons: First in War, Last in Peace Murray Polner: More than most on all sides of the perennial and bitter political clashes of those years, Irving Kristol knew how to use politics and power to grow his fledgling ideological enterprise. READ MORE

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Road Salt Infiltrates Drinking Water Supplies

Road Salt Infiltrates Drinking Water Supplies 

• By Kyle Rogers
• Online Exclusives 
• April 14, 2015

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 Keeping roads safe for drivers during winter has its price. Learn how northern communities are dealing with high levels of sodium chloride in groundwater.

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Residents of Spring Harbor Neighborhood in Madison, Wisconsin, say their drinking water is a little on the salty side these days. And their taste buds aren’t deceiving them.

According to a report by local TV affiliate WKOW, a well that provides water to the neighborhood is reporting salt concentrations of about 120 mg/L. Joe Grande, water quality manager for the Madison Water Utility, says the culprit is decades worth of road salt used during winter.

“The sodium and chloride that’s in that road salt doesn’t break down, it doesn’t degrade, so all those thousands of tons of salt are now in the soil, in the groundwater or in the lakes,” Grande says. “It doesn’t disappear. It’s been accumulating for 60 years over the six decades we’ve been applying road salt here in the city.”

Related: “Yuck” Not a Factor in Brownwood Direct Reuse Plan

He says without that human impact, the typical salt concentration in groundwater would be approximately 5 to 10 mg/L. The rate of increase has been more significant in Spring Harbor in recent years, partly because University Avenue near the neighborhood gets a lot of traffic and thus is heavily salted in winter.

“People expect summer driving conditions throughout the winter,” Grande says.

A national problem
It’s a similar situation in other northern communities that rely on salt to keep roads clear during winter. United Water’s drinking water supply for 800,000 people in New Jersey’s Bergen and Hudson counties had sodium concentrations of 108 mg/L as recently as early March. It goes beyond affecting the taste of tap water.

Related: Blog: New Jersey law banning medicine dumping seems like a no-brainer

“It’s not a health concern for the typical customer, but customers who have health issues should consult with their family physicians,” says Steven Goudsmith, a United Water spokesman, to the Bergen Record.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends drinking water sodium levels no higher than 20 mg/L for those on sodium-restrictive diets.

According to the Bergen Record article, another New Jersey utility — the Passaic Valley Water Commission — combined water from two different sources to keep salt concentrations in check. The commission’s main intake on the Passaic River has seen salt levels rise as the salt travels from roadways into storm drains that dump into the river. The commission is currently mixing water from the river with a supply from the Wanaque Reservoir, an area surrounded by more rural terrain.

Related: Blog: When are effluent nutrient limits excessive?

Wisconsin Salt Wise, a group raising awareness about the effects of road salt, says chloride concentrations in Madison’s Lake Mendota have increased about 1 mg/L each year in the past 50 years. At that rate, the lake will eventually reach concentrations too toxic for aquatic life.

Long-term studies of other water bodies have produced similar results. According to aSmithsonian Magazine article, a group of scientists tracked salt levels in the Mohawk River in upstate New York from 1952 to 1998. They found sodium levels increased by 130 percent in that time and chloride levels increased by 243 percent, likely due to road salting as the surrounding area became more developed.

Another study of a stream in southeastern New York from 1986 to 2005 showed a similar pattern with road salt accounting for about 91 percent of the watershed’s salt content. More than 40 percent of urban streams had chloride levels too high to support aquatic life, according to a study released by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2009. Only 4 percent of the streams in agricultural areas had the same levels. The study examined 100 streams covering parts of 19 different states in the northern part of the country. Yet another study by University of Minnesota researchers in 2009 suggested 70 percent of the salt applied to roads in the Twin Cities metro area has been retained in the area’s watershed.

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While acknowledging that abolishing the use of road salt is unlikely, groups like Wisconsin Salt Wise — of which Madison Water Utility is a member — are at least trying to mitigate its effect. Wisconsin Salt Wise and other groups provide information about how salt can be applied most effectively so less is used during winter.

Dealing with the problem
The environmental impact aside, when it comes to remedies to reduce salt concentration in just the drinking water supply, the solutions can be costly or produce a new set of challenges. For example, the most common method of desalination — reverse osmosis — is often cost-prohibitive for water utilities.

“Costs vary, but the lowest price for desalinated water from a reverse osmosis plant is around $750 an acre-foot — more than double the average cost of groundwater,” says a report in the journal Yale Environment 360.

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For Madison Water Utility, one possible action to counter the high salt levels in Spring Harbor’s drinking water would be making the well deeper. But according to Grande, that’s at least 10 years away and wouldn’t be a perfect fix.

“All of our wells that are cased into that lower aquifer … they have iron and manganese and to some extent, they have radium,” Grande says. “Those introduce additional water quality problems that would require some treatment.”

According to the WKOW report, the Madison Water Utility is hoping to perform a study in the next few years to find ways to reduce the amount of salt in the area’s groundwater.

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The Exxon Mobil-BP Merger Rumor That Just Won’t Go Away

The Exxon Mobil-BP Merger Rumor That Just Won’t Go Away

Apr 15th, 2015 

by John Donovan. 

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SeekingAlpha.com article byDave Dierking published 15 April 2015

The Exxon Mobil-BP Merger Rumor That Just Won’t Go Away

Summary

• The rumors of the viability of an Exxon Mobil-BP merger surfaced once again recently following the Royal Dutch Shell-BG merger.
• Exxon Mobil could be compelled to make such a transaction due to BP’s relatively inexpensive valuation and the tens of millions of dollars in cost savings a merger would create.
• The potential scope and size of such a merger – the combined entity would be worth close to $500B – make it unlikely to occur.
• Exxon Mobil could be turned off by BP’s outstanding litigation concerns and costs as well as BP’s Russian investment in Rosneft.

Even well before Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) made a $70 billion bid to buy BG (NYSE:BG), talks of the merger & acquisition market in the energy sector heating up have persisted for months. The Shell-BG merger it’s thought could just be the first domino.

Analysts are keeping an eye on other big name oil companies like Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) and BP (NYSE:BP) as other firms that could be looking to make an acquisition or even combine in a merger themselves. Logically speaking, it would make more sense for the two companies to make acquisitions themselves to fill in holes in their businesses where they might be lacking. As oil prices have plunged, the value of energy stocks have dropped as well and the perception could be that many of these companies are now “on sale” and could fuel this additional M&A discussion.

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Posted in: BG Group, BP, Exxon Mobil, Gas, Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
Tagged: BP · ExxonMobil · Gas · Oil · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Seeking Alpha

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Oil CEO Wages Immune to Price Slump as Shareholders Vote on Pay

Oil CEO Wages Immune to Price Slump as Shareholders Vote on Pay

Apr 15th, 2015

by John Donovan. 

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Article by Rakteem Katakey published 15 April 2015 by Bloomberg.com

Ben van Beurden, Chief Executive Officer of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, pauses as the company announce their fourth-quarter results in London on Jan. 29. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Oil’s plunge has forced the world’s biggest energy producers to lay off workers and stall projects. Their chief executive officers have so far proved immune.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s biggest oil company, paid CEO Ben Van Beurden a total of $32.2 million last year, almost three times the amount his predecessor Peter Voser earned in 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. At BP Plc, where shareholders will vote on compensation at the annual general meeting on Thursday, CEO Bob Dudley’s total pay rose 4.9 percent to $15.4 million.

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Posted in: Ben van Beurden, Bloomberg, BP, Exxon Mobil, Oil, Oil Company Profits, Oil Prices, Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
Tagged: BP · ExxonMobil · Rex Tillerson · Royal Dutch Shell Plc · Shell

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