Why I Love To Blog -- Reason #2 -- April 2, 2017

Updates

June 11, 2017: on a completely different note, but part of the "war on coal" story, and for the archives, the DrudgeReport banner today: coal mine opens in Pennsylvania. The story:

President Trump lauded the opening of the nation's first new coal mine in recent memory. Corsa Coal Company will operate the mine in Somerset County, Pa. - outside of Pittsburgh.

Corsa CEO George Dethlefsen ... praised Trump's easing of regulations and encouragement for fossil fuel exploration. Dethlefsen told Leland Vittert that for the 70 positions available in the mine, 400 people applied.

"It's a hard day's work every day, but it's worth it," one miner said. Vittert said the news contrasts with Hillary Clinton's message that she would "put a lot of coal miners out of work."

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D), who endorsed Clinton, joined the mine company in watching a video message from Trump commemorating the occasion.

Later, 7:58 p.m. Central Time: when it rains, it pours. A reader asked earlier about Trump, coal, natural gas. My longer reply is in the original post. Now, I see an article in PennEnergy:

Part of a coal-fired power plant in northwestern New Mexico is still scheduled for retirement despite President Donald Trump's executive order Tuesday to roll back measures aimed at tackling global warming.

And the state's largest electric provider has no plans to shift gears when it comes to promoting cleaner energy, a spokesman said.

The president argued his order would revive the coal industry and create a level playing field for workers.

"It will take time to see how the president's actions may or may not impact our business going forward," said Pahl Shipley, a spokesman for Public Service Co. of New Mexico. Pressure to limit regional haze-causing pollution and other emissions from coal-fired power plants resulted in an agreement between the utility and federal and state regulators to close two units at the utility's San Juan Generating Station by the end of 2017.

Trump made good on a campaign promise to unravel the previous administration's efforts to restrict coal use. Several of the mandates could be suspended, rescinded or flagged for review to boost domestic energy production in the form of fossil fuels.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Original Post 

Earlier a reader asked if Trump was doing such a good job taking on Obama's "war on coal," why are so many natural gas power plants being built?

I love it when someone at the The New York Times reads my blog, or someone reads The New York Times and finds a better answer than the one I gave. I don't know if folks have noticed but it seems that for Trump if he can save one American job that's worthy of saving hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Just like a 1,000-mile journey begins with the first step.

And here we have a great example. No, no matter what President Trump does, he isn't going to turn back the tectonic tide  -- or should we say, tsunami -- set in motion by the Bakken revolution. No one is going to put natural gas back in genie's bottle and open the almost-limitless coal resources that the US has.

But if President Trump can save one American job by taking on Obama's "war on coal" he will consider that a job well done.

In this case, President Trump may have just save the livelihood of a number -- a great number -- of Native Americans. The story at The New York Times. Archived.

From the article:

“We don’t know Donald Trump,” said Henry Old Horn, 74, a Crow elder. “All we know is that he’s a good, successful businessman. And we also know that he’s not your typical politician. It’s like rolling the dice. Who knows, he may be our savior.”

Maybe.

I may come back to this one. It's important, as Peggy Noonan would say.

Later: Trump saves 600 jobs and the alt-left blows it off, suggesting 600 jobs is trivial. Tell that to the 600 folks/families who have jobs.  I get a kick out of this: from my perspective, President Trump seems to be the first president truly to be more concerned about folks that couldn't be more different than he is. Abraham Lincoln comes to mind, but Lincoln was coming from an easier valley.

Nothing To Do With The Bakken -- October 27, 2016

At National Review, our neutron bomb election.

I was sent the link to this review by several readers.

Many, many comments.

1. The writer of this editorial a) either did not know any of this before she wrote the editorial; or, b) she did know this.

Either she did or she didn't.

If she did not know of any of this before WikiLeaks, she is, hands-down, no question, the winner of the Geico Rock Award for 2016. I can think of only one other past winner who has said something more incomprehensible: "We cannot simply drill our way to low gasoline prices."

If she did know this before WikiLeaks, one has to ask why she waited until the week or two before the election to write it. (Not that it would have made any difference.) But did it require WikiLeaks for this writer of this editorial to learn about the following four items cited in this editorial?

• CNN vice president Virginia Moseley is married to Hillary Clinton’s former deputy secretary at the State Department Tom Nides (now of Morgan Stanley) — suggesting “The Clinton News Network” is not really a right-wing joke.
• Former ABC News executive producer Ian Cameron is married to Susan Rice, a — pre-Benghazi — regular on the Sunday talk shows.
• CBS president David Rhodes is the sibling of aspiring novelist Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for “strategic communications and Speechwriting,” whatever that fictive title means.
• ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman married former White House press secretary Jay Carney (now senior vice president for “worldwide corporate affairs” at Amazon: not just “corporate affairs” or “worldwide affairs” but “worldwide corporate affairs”).

You and I may not have known all of those (or many others), but that's not our job. It's the job of the media to bring that to our attention, not WikiLeaks.

2. Ninety-nine percent of Americans will never read the editorial at The National Review. Shoot, I'm not sure even nine percent of Americans have even heard of The National Review. The one percent who do read The National Review editorial should already know the facts that were in it, even if the writer did not.

3. What bothers me most: anyone who actually read this editorial (one percent of Americans) and who found this material new or shocking; they, too, are nominees for the Geico Rock Award for 2016.

4. But this is the biggest problem: the analogy to the neutron bomb. From the lede, the first three sentences in full:

• The shells of our institutions maybe survive the 2016 campaign, but they will be mere husks.
• The infamous neutron bomb was designed to melt human flesh without damaging infrastructure. 
• Something like it has blown up lots of people in the 2016 election and left behind empty institutions.

The writer is correct about only one thing, which was expressed in the second sentence: what a neutron bomb was designed to do. Everything else is wrong, dead wrong.

Does anyone really believe:

• that the shells of our institutions will be mere husks after the 2016 election?
• that something like a neutron bomb has blown up lots of people in the 2016 election and left behind empty institutions?

In fact, after the 2016 election, the federal institutions will still be there, and they will be stronger than ever: including but not limited to the EPA, the IRS, DOJ, DOE, HHS, Congress, the Supreme Court, and POTUS (especially if a felon by any other name is elected).

Does anyone seriously doubt that?

After this election, our federal institutions will certainly not be "mere husks."

With regard to the second wrong point, WikiLeaks (which this editorial is all about) did not "blow up" a single individual. If anything, every individual "exposed" by WikiLeaks is stronger than ever (by definition: "that which does not kill us, makes us stronger"). If anything, every individual mentioned in the editorial, starting with the network news anchors, are stronger than ever. (Megyn is asking for a $20 million salary, isn't she? That's more than POTUS will likely earn.)

If I'm wrong, name one individual "exposed" by WikiLeaks whose career has been destroyed and whom we will never hear of again or who might actually go to prison. Nope, not one. Okay, maybe the wiener.

In fact, if Hillary is elected, it will simply be "revolving doors" writ large as deputy directors of federal agencies move to become directors of other federal agencies. In fact, if there are not enough agencies to go around to reward everyone named in WikiLeaks, existing departments will spin off new departments. EPA will spin off a new agency: the Federal Agency of Global Warming. Treasury will spin off a Federal Agency of Debt, thereby moving $19 trillion in debt to a new federal agency, and simply mandate that the US Treasury start over with a clean slate, with a zero balance. The Treasury Department will take in revenue; the Federal Agency of Debt will simply keep a separate set of books, classified ultra-top secret, to be seen only by George Soros. The Federal Reserve will spin off a Federal Reserve Agency for Journalism to post minutes that cannot be interpreted by anyone.

If Trump is elected, the bureaucracy is such he might be able to appoint/move/fire/affect 200 individuals but that leaves about 150,000 entrenched bureaucrats who have learned to survive by showing up to work generally on time, keeping their heads down, and simply waiting out any president. Does anyone really think the Senate will approve any Supreme Court justice appointed by Trump? We've survived the past year with eight justices; we can survive four more (years) without Sarah Palin on the bench.

For me, all WikiLeaks did was start to level the playing field. Prior to WikiLeaks only one or two percent of Americans were in on the joke. Ninety-eight percent of Americans had no clue; some may have had suspicions but nothing "concrete" on which to hang their pitchforks. Now maybe six percent of Americans are in on the joke.

By the way, speaking of jokes, the cruelest joke (and there have been many) in this administration was this which was "revealed" just this past week: $25,000 in 2017 in the US is considered a "modest" income by the folks who brought us ObamaCare. That's why Megyn needs $20 million.

I don't watch network news so I don't know if WikiLeaks has been reported to any extent on ABC, NCB, CBS, CNN, HLN, MSNBC, FOX, etc, etc., but I assume not. Nor do I suspect we will ever see anything from WikiLeaks mentioned on Sixty Minutes.

So, back to the writer of this editorial. If she really was unaware of Caligula's Circus or Nero's Nepotism in Washington, DC, she is the winner of the 2016 Geico Rock Award.

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Updates

October 28, 2016: grifters-in-chief, from The Wall Street Journal; again, it took WikiLeaks to open this reporter's eyes. Wow.

October 28, 2016: most Americans think media is biased. 

Overall, 56 percent of likely voters say the media is biased against Trump, just 5 percent say it's biased in his favor and 37 percent say coverage is mostly balanced.

Eighty-seven percent of Trump's supporters see the media as biased against him, and even Hillary Clinton's supporters are more likely to see bias against Trump than bias in his favor, 30 percent to 8 percent. Sixty percent of Clinton's supporters see no bias in either direction.

Supports my thesis above. At least 54% of Americans are not paying attention. And among Clinton supporters, at least 60% of them, are just like Clinton herself. Delusional.

Total Electricity Sales In US Fall For 5th Time In 8 Years -- Pretty Much Says It All About The Obama Recovery -- March 14, 2016

Regular readers know that I consider gasoline sales (in volume, not dollars) my number one data point for tracking the health of the US economy. Sales of electricity might be the second most important data point. It might be the first, but I had not tracked it before. So, now I have a second data point to track the health of the economy.

Electricity, of course, would be even a better indicator than gasoline for gauging the health of the US economy (I would imagine).

Total electricity sales fell in 2015 for the 5th time in past 8 years -- EIA.

This pretty much says it all about the Obama recovery. In fact, the only year that electricity sales stand out is in his second year, suggesting it takes a while for a huge economy like the US to turn around ... but then look at the data for every subsequent year in the administration of a president who probably played more golf than Ike.

ObamaNation.

From the EIA caption:

Total electricity sales in 2015 fell 1.1% from the previous year, marking the fifth time in the past eight years that electricity sales have fallen.

The flattening of total electricity sales reflects declining sales in the industrial sector and little or no growth in sales to the residential and commercial building sectors, despite growth in the number of households and growth in commercial building space.

Declining rates of electricity demand growth reflect a combination of factors, including the market saturation and increasing efficiency of electricity-using equipment, a slowing rate of economic growth, and the changing composition of the economy, which has reduced the role of electricity-intensive manufacturing.

It is interesting to compare this graph with the change in overall US wealth, posted earlier.

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Connecting Russian Dots

Ayn Rand, 1905 - 1982.
Coco Chanel, 1883 - 1971.
Doctor Zhivago, the novel spans 1903 -- 1943.

I have no idea, now, exactly how it started, how I got into my "Doctor Zhivago" stage. Most likely it started when we visited the Dallas Museum of Art and saw the "reconstruction" of the Riviera home of Coco Chanel. That led me to read Garelick's biography of Coco Chanel (which I am still reading).

Probably unrelated, but coincidentally and with serendipity, I watched "Doctor Zhivago" for the first time in several years, and then re-watched it several times in the past few weeks. That led me to ordering a used copy of the novel which I am now reading.

About the same time, but slightly before the Coco Chanel biography and watching "Doctor Zhivago" I read Ann Heller's biography of Ayn Rand.

I think if I were teaching Russian history at the AP level in high school or to freshmen/sophomores in college, I would have them become familiar with these three books as their "outside" reading, along with "standard" history books.

In addition to the "history" of this period, these books provide a wonderful feeling for the things that were going on the daily lives of people during that period, mostly in Russia but also elsewhere vis a vis how Russia thought was influencing global events. 

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School Is Out For Spring Break

I'm sitting in Starbucks in Southlake, TX -- yes, I know -- some time ago I said I would never visit Starbucks again after they raised their prices, but I make exceptions. Today is one of them. The smallest ("tall") coffee is $2.00 here with tax; bottled water of the same amount: $2.45. If I come here in the afternoon after a bike ride, I buy the water; if in the morning, a coffee. After 5:00 p.m., a martini. Just kidding. LOL. I wish. More on that later.

I say all that to say this: the weather is wonderful and the sidewalks are full of young women ages 12 - 16 carrying those cute little boutique bags with purchases from Victoria Secret and the like. What a great country. My eyes watch out of curiosity but no longer out of "lust" -- my thoughts only return to my soulmate, and years past.

Years ago, as a junior in college (or thereabouts), four of us took a road trip from Sioux Falls, SD, to South Padre Island, TX. Lots of fun, but in retrospect, more trouble than it was worth. But it was a box to be checked off; part of an adolescent's bucket list, I suppose.

Yes, it's a great country:

It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere, Jimmy Buffett and Alan Jackson

Another Interactive Oil And Gas Map: Canada; ObamaNation: More Americans Than Ever Living In Multi-Generational Household (2014 -- Five Years Into The Reovery; Story Based On 2012 Data)

For those interested in tracking Bakken/Spearfish wells just north of the Canadian border, consider this interactive map: https://www.geoactivity.ca/views/map.aspx?O8la79Wkzr7Uxn96KD/IL+zSkTpjE6KdFJuNz9GVXjYKkXMCAw8aNSQdL2OcQXQexNFvrVLAe/2AQy/pZZ2BKLnISurkoMZ1AK9iRDKw84I=.

Sent to me by "anon 1." I will add this to the "Data Links" page.

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ObamaNation Five Years Into The Recovery: More Americans Than Ever Live in Multi-Generational Households

In a long, rambling note of July 14, 2014, I wrote:

Out here in California, on the surface, things look really, really good. But just beneath the surface, I'm not convinced everything is so hunkey-dory. Two things that one can't fail to notice almost immediately: the number of cars parked in driveways and on the streets in residential neighborhoods; and the price of gasoline, now pretty much averaging $5.00/gallon.

In middle class neighborhoods, houses were built for two-car households; now it appears it is not uncommon to see three-, four-, and five-car households. These are all sedans, pick-ups, SUVs, not recreational off-road vehicles. Local folks probably noticed this some time ago, but are now finally talking about it: multiple generations of same family living in three-bedroom homes. Across the street is a typical example, noted by many: grandparents, young adult children (both working), and elementary school children living in a small three-bedroom house, probably 1,500 square feet. Four cars. My brother-in-law lives in middle class neighborhood where townhouses are now going for $750,000 -- in Williston they would be $350,000 houses; in Williston, before the boom, they would have been $100,000 houses. His house and his neighbor's house share one wall. The neighbors are renting. The landlord is probably unaware of living situation: the landlord thinks a nice young couple moved in. In fact, there are three families living in the house: the parents and two of their adult children, both married. The parents and one son/wife life in the house; the second son/wife live in the garage. There are eight adults altogether in the house. The homeowners' association allows only two cars per townhouse to be parked in the complex. It took six months to a year to finally get the family to play by the rules; they now park six of their eight cars on a street outside the complex. A very, very nice family; all/most work at Disneyland (security guards, operating rides, etc; none professional as far as we know). No judgement. Simply a new phenomenon.

I wrote that on July 14, 2014. Today, three days later, The Los Angeles Times does the same story based on Pew Research:

More Americans than ever live in multigenerational households, and the number of millennials who live with their parents is rising sharply, according to a study released Thursday.

A record 57 million Americans, or 18.1% of the population, lived in multigenerational arrangements in 2012, according to the Pew Research Center.

That's more than double the 28 million people who lived in such households in 1980, the center said.

A multigenerational family is defined as one with two or more generations of adults living together.

The sluggish job market and other factors have propelled the rise in millennials living in their childhood bedrooms.

About 23.6% of people age 25 to 34 live with their parents, grandparents or both, according to Pew. That’s up from 18.7% in 2007, just prior to the global financial crisis, and from 11% in 1980.

For the first time, a larger share of young people live in multigenerational arrangements than of Americans 85 and older.

Hmmm..... I'm not going to add anything; the story speaks for itself.

TrainWreck

Pennsylvania is a swing state.

No Comments Necessary

That Needle In The Haystack

I'm still trying to locate the hype that folks say characterized the Bakken and the Eagle Ford.

From The Oil Drum, which is calling it quits:

Even drawing back the curtains of hype over the Bakken and Eagle Ford production [insert "LOL" here], which Rune and Art have so ably done, can only be written about at a certain low frequency before folk see it as repetitious.

Recoverable oil: the "hype":

The 1995 estimate of Bakken recoverable oil: 151 million bbls.

From the 2008 USGS report:

North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation.

A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10 shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.

From the 2013 USGS report:

The 2013 USGS report: doubled again to 7.4, and perhaps as much as 11.4, billion bbls. And this is a conservative estimate; it does not include the TF2, TF3, and TF4.

11.4 billion bbls is back where we were in 1974; see below.

Bonus paid for mineral acres in the Bakken:

1980s: $50/acre
2012: $14,000/acre 

Too many links to post regarding OPECs concern about burgeoning US shale oil production.

From wiki:

A landmark paper by Dow and a companion paper by Williams (1974) recognized the Bakken formation as a major source for the oil produced in the Williston Basin. These papers suggested that the Bakken was capable of generating 10 billion barrels (1.6×10⁹ m³) of oil (BBbls). Webster (1982, 1984) as part of a Master’s thesis at the University of North Dakota further sampled and analyzed the Bakken and calculated the hydrocarbon potential to be about 92 BBbls. These data were updated by Schmoker and Hester (1983) who estimated that the Bakken might contain a resource of 132 BBbls of oil in North Dakota and Montana. A research paper by USGS geochemist Leigh Price in 1999 estimated the total amount of oil contained in the Bakken shale ranged from 271 billion to 503 billion barrels (8.00×10¹⁰ m³), with a mean of 413 billion barrels (6.57×10¹⁰ m³).While others before him had begun to realize that the oil generated by the Bakken shales had remained within the Bakken, it was Price, who had spent much of his career studying the Bakken, who particularly stressed this point. If he was right, the large amounts of oil remaining in this formation would make it a prime oil exploration target.  

I don't see the hype. Some folks have been talking about 10 billion bbls of recoverable oil from the Bakken as far back as 1974, and it seems the current projections confirm that. As noted, the 2013 USGS survey estimates as much as 11.4 billion bbls.

And, of course, we don't even need to review

• the huge amount of money flowing into the Bank of North Dakota because of the Bakken
• the resurgence of the US rail industry because of the Bakken
• the re-emergence of at least three east coast refineries because of the Bakken
• the complete "re-alignment" of the US pipeline infrastructure because of the Bakken
• saving Canada's bacon -- the Tioga/Hess/ethane story -- all because of the Bakken

Call it hype, but every prediction seems to be coming true. Meanwhile, The Oil Drum calls it quits. Folks don't quit reading something because it becomes repetitious; they quit reading when it lacks credibility.

I believe the #1 book still sold in America is the Bible, and its message hasn't changed in 2,000 years.

That needle in the haystack: can anyone point me to a legitimate source that has predicted more than 11.4 billion bbls of technically recoverable oil form the Bakken, which is now the USGS's prediction (the high end of the range), other than the wiki references above?

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This does not make sense. This convicted felon is not allowed to have guns, but yet it sounds like someone wants him for killing a 4-y/o and he is now considered armed and dangerous. One would think that if he was not allowed to have a gun, this should not have happened. Of course, the bigger question is how does a 25 y/o become a felon and released from jail at such a young age? I guess the felony did not carry that big a sentence.

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US food stamp program for Jamaicans, Haitians, and DomReps.

Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found.

The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city.
The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.

Peanuts.

Well, This Is Crazy, But Not Unexpected From This Administration

Terrorists can avoid long security lines when coming to the US now that the US has opened FIRST customs post in the Middle East.

"Everybody" is against it. Only winner: Abu Dhabi 's Etihad Airways. I can't make this stuff up.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting:

Amid strong objections from U.S. airline pilots and carriers on both sides of the Atlantic, White House officials have agreed on a customs facility in Abu Dhabi that will allow passengers from there to bypass long lines upon their arrival in the U.S.

The agreement between the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates, which was firmed up this week, calls for the Department of Homeland Security to set up a preclearance post at Abu Dhabi International Airport—the first of its kind in the Middle East.

Under the arrangement, which mirrors similar facilities in Canada, Ireland and the Caribbean, passengers would go through U.S. customs and immigration before takeoff and avoid delays at their destinations.

The sole beneficiary of the move would be Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways, which operates the only non-stop service from that fast-growing hub to the U.S., and has been expanding its routes along with its Persian Gulf peers, Emirates in Dubai and Qatar Airways. 

This is truly incredible. What are we thinking?

The Disaster Continues; Wells Coming Off The Confidential List; BEXP Has Another Gusher; American Eagle Has a Huge Well Near The Canadian Border;

I'll get to the wells that came off the confidential list today, but more important things first.

Yesterday this was posted:

Killing coal, killing Keystone XL, and now killing the nation's fuel supply system seems to be the perfect trifecta. It is amazing what one president can do in one term, when his party controls the Senate. He will leave quite a legacy.

To that list one can add another sector that was working until this administration came along: the health care. Today, the headline story, front page, Wall Street Journal, Health Insurers Warn on Premiums.

Health insurers are privately warning brokers that premiums for many individuals and small businesses could increase sharply next year because of the health-care overhaul law, with the nation's biggest firm projecting that rates could more than double for some consumers buying their own plans.

The projections, made in sessions with brokers and agents, provide some of the most concrete evidence yet of how much insurance companies might increase prices when major provisions of the law kick in next year—a subject of rigorous debate. 

The House sees the debacle coming down the road, but the House is powerless. Cue up Connie Francis. 

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Okay, now the wells coming off the confidential list today:

21557, drl, QEP, MHA 1-31-36H-150-92, Heart Butte,  this is a short little lateral, the well file report is not available;
23320, 3,611, BEXP, Porter 35-26 2H, Alexander,  t1/13; cum 18K 1/13;
23375, 669, EN-Ortloff 156-94-2635H-3, Big Butte, t2/13; cum 4K 1/13;
23465, 851, American Eagle Energy, Haagenson 3-2-163-101, Colgan, t12/12; cum 39K 1/13;

It will be interesting to the results of the Ortloff well above compared to its sister well reported earlier this week:

• 23374, 8,683, 863, Hess, EN-Ortloff 156-94-2635H-2,  Big Butte, t2/13; cum 17K 1/13; [UPDATE: a reader just sent me a note: NDIC updated the error. The IP is now being reported as 863 bbls.]

Congress Has Given Up -- Just Extend The Payroll Tax Cut -- ObamaNation 2012

What is another $100 billion on a $15 trillion debt?

Obama Wants $1 Trillion for Arab Spring -- ObamaNation 2012 -- Absolutely Nothing To Do With The Bakken

There are two links.

The first link has to do with the Obama budget request to send $1 trillion to the Mideast to help expenses incurred in "Arab Spring." (This site often rounds numbers.) The actual number is closer to $775 billion but government figures tend to be a bit understated, especially in highly politicized venues. For me, the Obama number for "Arab Spring" is $1 trillion.

The second link is to the group who will manage that money, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Meanwhile the slaying of women and children continues in Syria, with very little reporting/photographic coverage coming out. Arab Spring continues, I guess. It's nice to see that the US won't go into Syria to stop this horror unless the Syrian government invites us in. Something tells me Assad won't be sending us a petit bleu. It's not often the US waits for an "invite."

Just saying.

Okay, three links. I had just planned on two links, but then got to rambling. Somehow they're all connected.

Southern California Grocery Workers Ready To Go On Strike Over Health Care

Link here.

Ralphs currently pays more than 90 percent of employee health coverage costs, Doyel said. Workers hired before 2004 pay nothing for health insurance while those hired later pay either $7 a week for single coverage or $15 a week for family coverage.

The companies' proposal would raise that to $9 a week for singles and $23 a week for families. That is much lower than the average cost of health care insurance in California, she said.

But Shimpock said that the union is concerned about the long-term sustainability of the health care fund.

"With the amount they're offering now, the fund would go bankrupt by next September," he said. "We're worried about increased costs, of course. But it doesn't matter if premiums are $2 or $200 if the benefits are eventually eliminated."

49 Steps

Forty-nine bureaucratic steps deter energy development on federal land.

Yup.

Something to Watch While Waiting for Bakken News

http://wimp.com/budgetcuts

This post will be removed later today, so if you want it, copy and paste the link.

Update: it turns out this is more popular than I expected, and I will keep this link, and give it a tag.