Obama, #DACA and #hypocrisy shattered Dreamers

Yeah, I saw Obama call out Trump yesterday on wanting to end DACA.

But, how many of you knew that Obama deported more people than any other president? That he deported more than all 20th-century presidents combined?

Snopes tries to get Obama off the hook by saying this was in part due to a change in definition. It then undercuts itself by admitting this happened under Bush, but doesn't say exactly when, or what his stats were. This is one of those clear cases where Snopes, moving from narrow skepticism fact-checking to political analysis, fails. (Obama passed Bush by 750,000.)

And, if part of it was due to other legislative changes, Snopes, did Obama try to veto any of it? This is the man who kept the "Bush tax cuts" in place, after all.

Otherwise, quick Googling of the mainstream media shows poor data there on the main stories trying to compare Obama and Bush.

I am going to make what is, I think, a reasonable assumption, that the change in numbers of full, fingerprinted deportations vs turnarounds, and any definitional changes, started not too long after 9/11, and therefore, covered most of Shrub's presidenncy.

Therefore, at a minimum, with apples to apples for most of their presidencies, suffice it to say that Obama was at least as bad as Bush, I am very sure, and still probably worse. (If I generously say the two administrations were 80 percent apples-to-apples, Obama still deports 200,000 more.)

So why the sudden concern for DACA and the Dreamers?

Guilty conscience?

I doubt it.

Legacy?

Maybe.

He should be guilty for abandoning state and Congressional Dems in 2010. But, I'm not a Dem.

Anyway, I think that Obama created DACA by executive order precisely to let him get away with deporting more adults, at least as one part of the idea behind that.

You read that right.

Hence my header.

But why?

To appear tough on crime? But, he didn't make that part of his re-election platform.

So, ultimately, I don't know.

I just know he comes off as a hypocrite on this issue.

And, sure, he was facing the tail end of a Shrub Bush spike in illegal immigration, but it declined, modestly, under his own administration. Per that Pew link, more of them were long-term residents in the US, 10 or more years, especially from Mexico, which makes their deportation even worse.

Plus, more and more were from south of Mexico, escaping places like chronically right-wing wracked Guatemala, or the Honduras of the Obama-Clinton coup of 2009. (I originally called it a non-coup, then a semi-coup, then a coup, per Wiki.)

#Harvey and evacuations

Many Houstonians, including friend Brains and a college classmate of mine, whenever the issue of Harvey evacuations was raised, adamantly sided with Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett vs. Gov. Greg Abbott.

They insisted, all while referring to the clusterfucked Hurricane Rita evac, that such a thing couldn't be done.

First, a sidebar. Per one Tweeter, despite the fact he's so anti-gummint he doesn't like the Americans with Disabilities Act, it's possible, whether true compassion or simple rationality, that Abbott's physical condition was a motivator in his thought.

That said, was he wrong?

First of all, let's remember that three years after Rita, and apparently learning from it, Houston-Galveston had a relatively orderly — given the situation — evacuation from Ike. Not all the city, but targeted low-lying areas, as well as Galveston.

Yes, I know people jumped the gun on Ike, and it wasn't as orderly as it could be. But, adequate law enforcement helps. Use the National Guard if necessary. Given an evacuation ultimately affects more than a local area, the gov (Perry then, now Abbott) should be calling it up ASAP anyway.

Harvey had even more rain, so I don't know if that could have been done as well as with Ike, but it's at least possible.

And, per the NYT, others are asking why not an Ike-like partial evacuation?

So, at a minimum, comments here (or if I post to Facebook) that ignore the Ike evacuation will be deleted. Period. You can criticize the Ike evacuation, but to say nothing but "look at Rita" doesn't fly.

Second, having started on this piece on Monday, even as regional public safety officials were going door-to-door in selected neighborhoods, couldn't greater Houston at least had "evacuation in place" plans already started? As in, having designated shelters, or volunteer shelters, in Houston's highest, relatively least flood-prone areas, already set up? And then, mass evac people from the worst neighborhoods there, earlier?

Of course it could have.

I mean, Fort Bend County ordered a mandatory evac of selected areas early Monday afternoon.

At the same time, per my post on Harvey and politics, isn't this yet another reason to "vote YOUR rascals out" in Houston and Harris County? (I know Brains didn't vote for Emmett, and if he voted for Turner in the city runoff, it was while holding his nose.)

"Evacuation in place" would also, at least partially, address the issue of people who can't afford to evacuate.

TX Progressives salute those who labor through Harvey relief

The Texas Progressive Alliance suggests a donation to the United Way Houston Relief Fund, or other reputable agency (do not put the Red Cross at the top of that list) to help everyone affected by Hurricane Harvey as it brings you this week's roundup. It also hopes that, even — or especially — if you had to work Labor Day, or if you were lucky enough to have off, you remember what the day is really about — and how the Republicans continue to gut it and Democrats continue to go along.

And with that, this week’s roundup.

Off the Kuff celebrated the federal court ruling that halted enforcement of the "sanctuary cities" ban before it went into effect.

SocraticGadfly, from up in North Texas, offers his take on both the politics behind Harvey, and pseudoskeptics, including an alleged actual skeptic in Houston, the politics behind Harvey everything behind the Arkema explosions.

After getting his 91-year old mother out of the calamity that Harvey left behind in Beaumont, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs collected some observations about the looming environmental catastrophes threatening the Texas Gulf coast.

Lewisville Texan Journal, also up in North Texas, noted how hoarding by Metroplex-area drivers was exacerbating post-Harvey gas supply and price issues.

South East Texas soil, air and water are awash in toxic chemicals thanks to deregulation by Trump and Abbott. Trump's gutting of the EPA ensures that the destruction and suffering will have the maximum effect.  CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wishes each of them could experience all of the suffering they are causing themselves.

Neil at All People Have Value said you don't have to be "Houston Strong" regarding Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey if you don't want to be. Do what you need to do to move forward. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

Dos Centavos thinks Trump's planned gutting of DACA and lack of care for Dreamers could be an election issue in 2018 and 2020.

Millard Fillmore talks about patriotic flag-flying for Labor Day.

Jobsanger says "remember the unions."

====================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Space City Weather, which got some well-earned national attention for its coverage of Harvey, assures us we will get though this.

It's Not Hou It's Me shared their pictures of high water around town.

Katharine Shilcutt found the helpers.

Therese Odell rounded up more examples of Harvey heroism.

Lone Star Ma made it through Harvey in Corpus Christi.

Dan Solomon mourns for Port Aransas.

TransGriot knows that a general evacuation of the Houston metro area would have been an unmitigated disaster.

Maggie Gordon documents the effort to save the Waugh Street Bridge bat colony during the height of the flooding.

The Overhead Wire explains why the lack of zoning in Houston had little to do with Harvey-related flooding.

The Lunch Tray details how to help Houston school kids.

Raise Your Hand Texas discusses how school districts affected by Harvey are coping.

Juanita calls your attention to a couple of folks feeding people who need it in Fort Bend.

BeyondBones tells you what you need to know about floatinf gire ant mounds (spoiler alert: stay away).

Better Texas Blog answers your questions about Harvey and health care coverage.

-->

Angelia Griffin begs you to choose the things you donate to disaster relief carefully.

"Happy" #LaborDay, including words for the #TrumpTrain and unions

Income inequality and economic immobility both continue to grow, even as Speaker Paul Ryan tells easily refuted lies about the latter.

How did this happen?

A mix of many factors.

One is not directly economic, but the general cowing of workers through courts siding with businesses in stripping away workplace civil liberties is a psychological factor. And, other than in rare cases like Ledbetter, where it's actual discrimination, not civil liberties in general, many Democrats have gone along.

Just as Democratic presidents, while not actually working to gut the National Labor Relations Board, generally declined to reverse gutting by their Republican predecessors.

On income inequality, people still don't talk about how bad it's gotten. For the US as a whole, it's as bad as Mexico. That may be another reason fewer Mexicans are coming to the US. (A greater and greater portion of Hispanic illegal immigrants are from Central America.)

An article by the NYT, claiming that $16.60/hour would be the same in Rochester, New York, as in the Bay Area, leaves it halfway pulling its punches on this issue.

It is right — but doesn't push on it hard enough — that allowing companies to designate more people as contractors is another problem. Republicans encouraged this one, too, and Democrats generally acquiesced, until Obama tried to take too big of a bite back at one time, and too late in his administration.

The biggest problem, in many ways? Organized labor.

The Carpenters and AFL-CIO heads both sitting on Trump's business council? Nothing new. Remember Nixon's hardhats in the early 1970s? Reagan Democrats? (A full 22 percent of them went for Reagan in his first election, and 34 percent of them who thought civil rights was moving too fast.) Andy Stern's suck-ups to big biz of the previous decade? 

Goes back before that.

Maybe as far as Haymarket. US organized labor was in general, at that time, more bourgeoisie than its European counterparts. And, Haymarket, Bethlehem Steel and Ludlow coal world incidents aside, more willing to play ball. The American presidential-driven, duopoly-based political system, by helping shut out a political party that might be labor-specific, was a related problem.

But organized labor itself was often part of the problem.

Yes, Debs' railway union and Bridges' longshoremen were color-blind, as well as having stiffened spines, but AFL unions before the rise of the CIO? And even somewhat after that?

Not.

Sure, Jacobin can point at Communists working to help blacks and whites organize together in the South in the 1930s, but that's the exception that proves the rule. Long before that, black workers were used as strikebusters in urban areas North, Midwest and South. Having often been shut out of organized labor by whites, having been opposed in the workforce by white laborers, at best, they often felt they had little choice; at worst, they likely felt smoldering resentment.

(The next time the likes of Jacobin writes an "it's all classism and never racism" piece, ask them how many black faces they can find in, say, pictures from the Flint strikes of the late 1930s. In my opinion, it's intellectually dishonest to try to gloss over the history of racism in organized labor, or to try to reduce racism to classism in nearly every instance — and that goes for people beyond Jacobin.)

Mainstream AFL-CIO unionism would shoot itself in the foot in other ways, or if not direct foot-shooting, undermine broader politically left issues.

It was the third leg, along with the AMA and big business, in opposing Harry Truman when he made the first serious push for national health care in the US.

It cooperated willingly with the CIA in helping establish anti-Communist sham unions outside the country, especially in South America.

Many of its leaders, as well as members (those hardhats), virulently opposed antiwar efforts in the Vietnam War — and later.

In industries like autos, its members believed the whisperings of the ownership class about job loss fears and stridently opposed the environmentalist movement as it grew in the 1970s.

Much (but certainly not all) of organized labor has slouched toward Gomorrah for decades.

That said, so has the American workforce that is not unionized.

Class-conscious in a way that the Paul Ryans of the world won't admit publicly, but surely push to enhance privately, for many gray-collar and tech-collar employees, "union" remains a dirty word.

The labor movement in America, inside and outside unions, isn't going to get better until these things happen:
1. Democrats stop nominating neoliberal candidates / or Greens start breaking through with labor voices

2. Union leaders stop willingly being co-opted by Republican leaders and business leaders

3. More workers indicate their willingness to look beyond the Democratic Party and beyond organized labor if 1 and 2 don't happen.

Movement #skepticism fail - concern-trolling, #mansplaining, #strawmanning

This is a follow-up to my earlier post about the Arkema chemical plant in Houston, because it's the events behind it.

(Update, March 12, 2018: Liberty County is now suing Arkema. Alleged are Texas Clean Air Act violations, Texas Water Code violations, Texas Health and Safety Code violations, and common law nuisances as a catch-all. The first three, generally, have an "every single day" penalty on fines. That will surely be sought against Arkema, and part of the court fight will be when the tolling dates should end.

Update, May 28, 2018: The U.S. Chemical Safety Board reports Arkema knew well in advance of Hurricane Harvey about flood risks, according to Texas Vox.)

Jeff Wagg

It's partially my fault for jumping in a conversation on former Facebook friend Jeff Wagg's page. I violated a rule of mine to generally avoid making comments on pages of people who post to "public." But I did, and because I did, this isn't privileged information.

And, the long and short is, whether one says movement skepticism, scientific skepticism, or Skeptics™,  Wagg at least in the past was one. And whether he is still or not, he is other things.

Per the previous post, Wagg whipped out the word "chemophobia" about media coverage of the Arkema plant's initial explosions. It came off as knee-jerk and looking close to strawmanning, as though "the media" is made up all of Gwynneth Paltrow vagina-steamers, chemtrailers and similar.

I relatively courteously, IMO, in one comment, said, Jeff, I'm not saying you ARE strawmanning, but it looks like that. And, in hindsight, and his actions and those of a Facebook friend of his, both now blocked, I feel more comfortable in that assessment.

Jeff didn't want to read through the actual regulatory history vis-a-vis Arkema after the conversation continued. And, even after being told that I have friends who work at Houston media outlets, and him knowing that I'm in the biz myself, he chose to generally not moderate or nuance most of his follow-up comments.

I also noted that movement skepticism has had problems with libertarianism in the past, and I cited Penn and Teller on secondhand tobacco smoke.

Naomi Baker

Then, a Facebook friend of his, Naomi Baker, who used to work for the EPA, and is either clueless about Texas politics even if she is from or living now in Texas, or else is an in-the-tank winger or close to it, chimed in. 

Per more detailed conversation in that previous post, she said I didn't know what I was talking about.

Then, trying to have the last word herself and accusing me of plugging my ears, she eventually said I was "mansplaining."

That normally is an automatic block on my part and it was then.

And I said I was blocking her, on that thread. Then I wrote about it in my own FB feed.

Well, Wagg followed me. I normally post to "friends of friends," but he was then still a FB friend. I'm bending my FB rules a little bit, but I won't directly quote him. Using the word, he said she was right, so I blocked him, too.

Jeff, maybe you still have guilt — conscious or not — over sexual shenanigans at the James Randi Educational Foundation when you were there. Don't pass your shit on to me, if that's the case. Oh, and even if you're not now, you were a ...

Movement skeptic.

Based on that work history.

Per your own words, including mentioning "drama and scandals," you were active with the group, including regular work with organizing "The Amazing Meeting." Per JREF web archives, you wrote a lot.

This probably isn't your first pseudskepticism, though. You were probably among the last-ditch defenders of Brian Dunning. And you may have overlooked the truth about Jose Alvarez / Deyvi Peña long after an actual skeptic would have admitted reality. (The truth being that Randi knew about Peña traveling on a fraudulent passport long before this conviction, and may well have known the identity theft involved to get said passport, also before Peña's conviction.) 

(I've written some about Peña and a LOT about Dunning. I don't know what Wagg's stance was early in Dunning's criminal process, but I know a lot of movement skeptics rallied around Sharon Hill when she started cutting him blank checks. And, anybody who was a semi-insider at JREF for any time, unless they were sniffing the "founder's syndrome" glue, should have known more about Jose / Devyi / "Carlos.")

That said, in what Wagg either might have known or didn't want to admit, or else didn't want to look at very closely, he was far from alone within the Skeptics™ world. And, yes, the link is Daily Grail, and deliberately so. It's called "tribalism."

Anyway, even if you have no residual guilt about "scandals and drama," your "mansplaining" was intended as an insult. It of course is not; it's a laugh.

And, if you'd exercised more actual skepticism on some of these areas, maybe we wouldn't have gotten to this point — including me adding "concern-trolling" to the header as I finished this piece out.

And, Jeff, if you really ARE worried about "the media," you would, like me, start by worrying about all the "Putin did it" bullshit.

And, speaking of being skeptical, Jeff?

Here's the background on the person who first accused me of mansplaining:

Naomi Baker talked on Facebook about how she worked WITH the EPA. Very true. She worked WITH it, she didn't work FOR it. Her LinkedIn profile says she's worked TWENTY YEARS in the energy industry. And is in Houston right now for a natural-gas processing company, one that works with dirty sour gas as part of their work, apparently. Before that? Dirty oil pipeline company ENBRIDGE! (And, graduated from Odessa Permian High, right in the heart of Texas' oil-besotted Permian Basin to boot.)

She VERY carefully said on Facebook that she'd never worked in the "chemical industry" or, IIRC, a "refinery." Very nice. Or "nice." And said this throughout a LONG Facebook thread.

And, Saturday afternoon, the AP reported it had visited a bunch of Houston-area Superfund sites — on the ground or water by the ground, NOT just "visiting" by air — that the EPA claimed were inaccessible.

If only Ms. Baker, in her working "with" the EPA, could tell me what's hindering the EPA, I would be so enlightened! 


If only Mr. Wagg, in his oh-so-diligent concern-trolling the media, would make sure the AP wasn't committing chemophobia, we'd all be so blessed!

And, this also pertains to movement skepticism. She was a Randi Foundation volunteer and is listed as a co-founder of Greater Houston Skeptics.

Given that she has extensive volunteer time with JREF, I'm sure that Jeff knows her in meatspace, not just Facebook. He therefore knew just how carefully she was parsing her language on his Facebook post about Arkema.

Therefore, as I see it, and as I think any reasonable person approaching from the outside would, I think he's as guilty of intellectual dishonesty in general on this issue as she is.

And, per Ms. Baker, if somebody's going to report my post to Facebook where I posted her LinkedIn profile, well, I can report being accused of "mansplaining" as harassment.

(Slight sidebar to friend Brains: This is why, although I acknowledge that social justice is an issue, and needs a fight, that I am not as kindly disposed as you are toward stereotypical "social justice warriors." This is not the first time I've experienced in person the "mansplaining" epithet as an attempt to shut down my conversation.)

==

Basically, "mansplaining" has gone beyond been taken beyond being, at least in part, an accurate descriptive of behavior to being a deliberate pejorative and a conversation ender. And, from that, many of the other "-splaining" gerunds and "-splainer" nouns were started as that.

There are those of us who are left-liberal, even leftist, who are repelled by such tactics even in the abstract, let alone when they're applied to us personally.

==

Update, Sept. 14: More dead horse to flog! Valero now admits, even per the currently toothless EPA, that it "seriously underestimated" (i.e., apparently lied about) how much benzene, a known carcinogen, and other volatile compounds escaped from its Houston refinery.

Update, Nov. 17: Harris County is now suing Arkema.

Update, Aug. 3, 2018: The EPA is auditing state and federal folks over post-Harvey air quality monitoring and reporting transparency.

AND ... Arkema's CEO has been indicted.

#Arkema, #Harvey, "the media," kibbitzers and strawmanners

The Arkema explosion, and a "movement skeptic" former Facebook friend's (more on that in a second post) response to media coverage of it led me to say "enough." Kibbitzing about how "the media" is ignorant about chemicals when they report on them all the time in a place like Houston led me to say "more than enough."

(Update, March 12, 2018: Liberty County is now suing Arkema. Alleged are Texas Clean Air Act violations, Texas Water Code violations, Texas Health and Safety Code violations, and common law nuisances as a catch-all. The first three, generally, have an "every single day" penalty on fines. That will surely be sought against Arkema, and part of the court fight will be when the tolling dates should end.

Update, May 28, 2018: The U.S. Chemical Safety Board reports Arkema knew well in advance of Hurricane Harvey about flood risks, according to Texas Vox.)

First, strawmanning the actual individual members of "the media" with the word "chemophobia" is a sure way to have actual individual members of the media treat your pseudoskepticism skeptically, Jeff Wagg, and others like you. (As he posts to "public" on Facebook, no privacy violations on my normal personal terms of talking about Facebook posting.)

Second, I think most people think of "the media" as like "lawyers" — bad guys until one of them is defending YOU or telling YOUR story. The reality is different.

Third, when a friend of yours comes on and starts clit-swinging (can't call it dick-swinging, can I saw that would be more "mansplaining" and more on that in the second post — and since that was the final accusation against me, I have no better way of expressing the sarcasm) about why Texas has chemical records secret AND GETS IT WRONG, you're asking for more trouble yet.

Naomi Baker

Naomi Baker claims this was all due to 9-11. NOT EVEN CLOSE.

It was a year after the West explosion in 2013, where I know first responders who fought that fire or controlled traffic (because my own newspaper was less than an hour away) that then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled Texas chemical plant records should be sealed. And cited the West explosion as why. Then said "drive around" if you want to find out.

And, whether you work, or worked at EPA, or not, if you're too ignorant to know that, and claim "9/11," you should SHUT UP. I rarely, rarely, am that direct, and very rarely use all caps. But, you earned it. And you should definitely not accuse someone of "mansplaining." That's doubly true if you live in Texas, which Naomi Baker's FB indicated was true. And, if stereotypical males are the ones who "always have to win," you seemed to be exhibiting that more than me.

(And now, Arkema and TCEQ are playing footsie with each other on non-release of Arkema's Tier Two chemical inventory. Would this also be "chemophobia" for "the media" to report on it?)

But, she worked WITH the EPA, she didn't work FOR it. Her LinkedIn profile says she's worked TWENTY YEARS in the energy industry. And is in Houston right now for a natural-gas processing company, one that works with dirty sour gas as part of their work, apparently. Before that? Dirty oil pipeline company ENBRIDGE! (And, graduated from Odessa Permian High, right in the heart of Texas' oil-besotted Permian Basin to boot.)

She VERY carefully said on Facebook that she'd never worked in the "chemical industry" or, IIRC, a "refinery." Very nice. Or "nice." But hiding a lot of dirty reality. So, she's not ignorant at all. She's #oilsplaining.

Also, if you worked "with" the EPA in Texas, you'd know that the EPA threatened to pull back its state outsourcing of urban smog regulation and similar things from the Texas Department of Environmental Quality because oversight was that bad. And that environmental organizations asked for that to be done. That's just a sample.

Of course, having discovered her real employment history, I know she knows all of this and more.

Now, to background on the actual explosion and regulatory history against Arkema. A "big" $110,000 in fines, pled down to $90,000, is a slap on the wrist. Especially when that was for not hazardous but "highly hazardous chemicals." And, given that the French parent had a  2015 revenue of more than $8 billion, $90,000, or even $110,000, is a slap on the hand indeed. That's not surprising, as Arkema is a spinoff of French oil giant Total. Its most recent net profit was $400 million.

And you'd know that Texas regulators, even more than the feds, have a habit of wrist-slapping, if you've also worked with the Texas Railroad Commission. Given that I've read about, and written stories about, actual dollar amounts of RRC fines, I actually do know that.

(As shown by High Country News, on remediation of abandoned uranium mines, the EPA in general stiffs the general public while hand-slapping big business.)

And, if you weren't strawmanning the media as if they were chemtrailers, Jeff Wagg, you might have read "highly hazardous chemicals" somewhere. And, you might have been a little less butthurt when I suggested, but did not outrightly state, that you were coming close to strawmanning. I only made that statement as a definite after I blocked you.

Ms. Baker, you'd also know that, re your ignorance about (or willful lying about) West, Gov. Abbott, etc., above, that Arkema had long refused to release its risk management plan.

Speaking of the EPA there now, and its TCEQ flunkies, or maybe it's the other way around? Per a story from the Houston Chronicle, aka "the media," this:

Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality described the incident at the Arkema Inc. facility in Crosby as a fire, not a chemical release. 

The agencies said airborne sampling shows the smoke did not contain concerning levels of toxic chemicals.

What is a "concerning level" of a chemical? Ms. Baker, since you have a chemical engineering degree, shouldn't EPA have ppm or ppb DATA on how it defines a threshold for "concerning"?

Answer is "yes," of course. 

Ms. Baker then went on to say, well, yes, Republicans are worse on this, but, these things happen everywhere.

Well, Dear Leader weakened the EPA somewhat himself. Guess his community organizing on Chicago's South Side never touched on economic justice. (And, environmental racism is real.) Also, environmental organizations, the biggest, have chemists and chemical engineers who help advise them.

That said, he didn't so weaken the EPA that it didn't propose NEW chemical safety rules. Rules shit-canned by Trump's EPA head. Ms. Baker, since you've worked "with" the EPA, you surely know that. And, per Greg Abbott's weekend driving suggestions, including through West, Texas, you know this is NOT "9/11."

And, Saturday afternoon, the AP reported it had visited a bunch of Houston-area Superfund sites — on the ground or water by the ground, NOT just "visiting" by air — that the EPA claimed were inaccessible.

If only Ms. Baker, in her working "with" the EPA, could tell me what's hindering the EPA, I would be so enlightened! 

If only Mr. Wagg, in his oh-so-diligent concern-trolling the media, would make sure the AP wasn't committing chemophobia, we'd all be so blessed!

Maybe that's why, per friend and Chronicle columnist Chris Tomlinson, Ms. Baker, Arkema's CEO is a leading (but not solo) example of hubris.

Chris begins:

Richard Rennard, the president of Arkema, shrugged his shoulders when asked what more his company could have done to prevent chemicals from burning at his plant in Crosby. 

He rattled off the systems his company employed to chill the organic peroxides: Grid power, back-up generators, nitrogen coolers and ultimately refrigerated trailers. On Thursday the refrigerator systems began shutting down and the peroxides began burning and blowing the lids off their containers. 

After the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, every facility with dangerous materials should know to keep back-up generators above any potential flood line. Yet that precaution escaped Arkema.

Then, to the PROOF, for the chemical engineer and the movement skeptic:

Rennard's fatalism in the face of a natural disaster is disingenuous. Experts identified the plant as high-risk, and Arkema could have designed a more resilient facility. But it didn't, most likely because management considered the risk too low and the costs too high. 

 We know this because the Houston Chronicle identified Arkema as a potentially dangerous plant in an award-winning 2016 investigative series called "Chemical Breakdown." 

That's almost all I can quote honestly under fair use guidelines. Go read Chris.

But, one more sample. The conclusion, in good sermonic style: 

If we learn nothing else from Harvey, let it be the danger of hubris. Despite claims to the contrary, executives will decide that mitigating a risk costs too much, and subsequent events will prove that they made a horrible mistake. 

That's why regulators, journalists and citizen groups have a role to play in demanding accountability and revealing the risks taken. Because when it comes to chemicals, the public shares in the consequences of a bad decision and often pays the highest price. 

Let's be honest, Harvey is not causing accidents. The storm is revealing the risks executives willingly took. No one has the right to shrug their shoulders and say, "C'est la vie."

And just maybe, both Ms. Baker and Mr. Wagg, you'd learn a little less hubris yourself. On regulators, you might admit the truth about Greg Abbott and about how minimal these fines were. 

One more point. Mr. Wagg, if he had just waited a bit, or not protested so much about a David Sirota link I posted, about how Texas AG Ken Paxton et al helped Arkema dodge more federal regulation, could have learned, as a good skeptic, that Arkema was much more worried about explosion dangers in 2014 than it came off as being this week, per that old Wall Street Journal.

But, you chose to say "the media" instead, claiming the media didn't know what it was talking about. Then, Ms. Baker refused to accept the reality about regulatory issues here in Texas, perhaps because she was in CYA mode. Then both of you started sliming with the "mansplaining."

Finally, as a member of "the media," I know the profession is not perfect. I've said that myself, mainly about the corporations that own it, but, sometimes, about the herd mentality, more than anything else, of writers, broadcasters and editors at its larger mainstream outlets. (I've regularly blogged and Tweeted about some of the "Putin did it" nuttery.) But, for a (former) "movement skeptic" to apply "the media" card, first, and then, to basically present media from multiple outlets in one of the nation's largest metropolitan areas (plus local representatives of national media) as ignorant was over the top.

Update to that: One other person, if not a professional movement skeptic, at least a tribalist, talks about me questioning her professional ethics. I'll let what I saw on the Facebook thread, including the parsing of exactly how she spoke, and the actual facts about chemical reporting in Texas speak for themselves. And he got blocked too.

==

Update, noon Sept. 1: Here's a full list of Arkema chemicals at its suburban Houston plant. Please, don't engage in "chemophobia." Please don't strawman that all levels of toxicity are the same. Please don't wonder about the possibility of floodwaters mixing chemicals that are currently separate.

The reality is that you have a variety of chemicals that can form either bases or acids when reacting with water. Their pH causticity would dilute eventually, but, if blown in the air by an explosion, then landing away from the plant, could be more problematic.

And, the alcohols there are of course flammable. So is hexane.

==

Update Sept. 7: First responders are suing Arkema. Here's why:

Houston lawyers Kimberley Spurlock and Misty Hataway-Cone launched a legal battle in Harris County court, accusing Arkema of gross negligence. 

Despite past flooding events and advance notice of the impending destruction of Hurricane Harvey, Arkema "ignored the foreseeable consequences of failing to prepare," the suit claims, leaving trailers of volatile chemicals susceptible to explosion after flooding knocked out the electricity and ability to cool the heat-sensitive compounds. 

The first of nine trailers of organic peroxides exploded early on the morning of Aug. 31, landing a number of first responders in the hospital following exposure to fumes from the chemicals, which ignited and left a 40-foot plume of black smoke that officials later compared to a campfire. 

"Although the explosions had occurred, no one from Arkema alerted the first responders who were manning the perimeter of the arbitrary mandatory evacuation area," lawyers said Thursday in a press release. "Immediately upon being exposed to the fumes from the explosions, and one by one, the police officers and first responders began to fall ill in the middle of the road."

But, this is surely more chemophobia. And Ms. Baker would probably add, if I'm guessing her politics correctly, that this is more of the ebil trial lawyers at work.

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Update, Sept. 14: More dead horse to flog! Valero now admits, even per the currently toothless EPA, that it "seriously underestimated" (i.e., apparently lied about) how much benzene, a known carcinogen, and other volatile compounds escaped from its Houston refinery.

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Update, Sept. 19: Superfund site spills under investigation.

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Update, Sept. 22: The newest and possibly most toxic spill yet.

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Update, Sept. 25: The AP reports that the EPA says it has removed toxic waste from some Texas sites, but won't say what they are or where they came from.

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Update, Sept. 26: Chemophobia has hit the Harris County Commissioners Court! Commissioners have voted to sue Arkema on grounds of creating a public nuisance. Update, Nov. 17: Harris County is now filing a larger suilt against Arkema.

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Update, Oct. 2: #Chemophobia? No, "the media," contra a Houston-area pseudoskeptic and her Chicago Wagg-ish friend, want the public to know about petrochemical hazards that the Houston-area pseudoskeptic, and by implication, her Chicago Wagg-ish friend, unless he repents, want to keep hidden, including with the employer of Ms. Baker surely contributing to the soft money, and maybe even dark money, that works to keep this hidden.

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Update, Oct. 4: I guess all these respiratory problems are just chemophobia too.

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Update, Aug. 3, 2018: The EPA is auditing state and federal folks over post-Harvey air quality monitoring and reporting transparency.

AND ... Arkema's CEO has been indicted.