Tim Brough's Black Leather Bookshelf

Or was he about to call him a Nickleback Fan?

Remember, when Republicans say they care about you, they're lying.

Set your sinks on fire

4 Out of 5 Stars


You've probably seen all the America's Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) commercials of late, cheerfully consoling us that safe, clean, natural gas can be easily extracted from the ground while happy people live above, leading clean and healthier lives. The Oscar nominated GASLAND exposes the corporate lie of Natural Gas mining. From the start, where filmmaker Josh Fox receives a letter offering him something near $100,000 for the rights to drill gas from his mountain and creekside home in upstate Pennsylvania, to the end, where you watch New York City and State lawmakers fight to keep the watershed that provides millions of people from polluted drinking water, Fox explores how the Power Companies have managed to manipulate the system with the help of corrupt and gullible politicians the outright greed of the Bush/Cheney administration.


The central point of GASLAND is that, in 2005, the EPA made changes in environmental policy that are called "The Halliburton Loophole." That rule, snuck through by Cheney and his secretive energy board buddies (including then CEO of Enron, Ken Lay), exempted the Halliburton developed technology of hydraulic fracturing (now widely known as 'fracking') from regulations of the old Clean Water Act. The end result? Drilling for natural gas and the unbelievable amount of water and chemicals pumped into the ground required to create a well are all but completely exempt from regulations regarding the toxins that are needed to extract the gas.


Of course, all the companies involved say that they have nothing to do with hundreds of drinking wells across the country suddenly turning unsafe withing weeks of fracking. Or animals getting sick and losing their hair. Or the methane explosions of people's homes. Or the mass die-offs of animals and fish when chemicals leak into a stream. But Fox, who tried to contact companies and individuals in mining throughout the course of his investigation gets the same treatment as the folks in states across the country; either "no comment" or massive run-arounds. When a State Environmental Agency head in Pennsylvania tells Fox that he'd help Fox and other PA citizens of Dimok (the first town Fox visits), only to note when the meeting ends that the state slashed the office's budget and basically dismantled it.


But more revealing than anything else in the movie is the notorious flaming sink footage. When fracking shatters the aquifer of a peace of land, the gases seep into the water table. The chemicals used to pump the gas out also get into the water, and before you know it, you have flammable tapwater. It's not just that water that is getting mixed up, the air outside the well is loading up with toxins to the point where a rural area of Colorado where the population is approximately one person per square mile is as dangerous or more so than a bad day in Los Angeles. GASLAND serves as a warning and reminder; the same smiling advertisers trying to convince you that clean, accessible natural gas is not threat to you at all are the same folks that told you off-shore drilling was both safe and existing regulations guaranteed that even if the miniscule chance accident were to ever take place, they could stop it from becoming disastrous.


When you watch GASLAND, there will probably be a detractor ready to tell you that the film is just lefty propaganda. Just remember the last sentence of the previous paragraph, and make sure to remind your companion of two little words. Deepwater Horizon.







 

It will take decades to undo this damage
5 Out Of 5 Stars

A few years ago, I watched the documentary "The Smartest Guys In The Room," about how Enron systematically duped the system, employees and the public into believing their fraudulent practices were a legitimate business. In 2005, they went from the USA's seventh largest company to bankruptcy, leaving a trail of death, debt and broke employees while the principles scooted away with the bulk of their fortunes. It was revealing to watch how they cozied up to presidents, regulators, and essentially eliminated anyone that caught on to the giant ponzi scheme the company was. I watched and wondered, how did they get away with this, and could we stop it from ever happening again. The Oscar Winning "Inside Job" answers that creeps like Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were only the tip of the iceberg.

"Inside Job" takes an in-depth look at how, starting with Reagan and continuing with President Obama, the financial pirates of Wall Street bought their way into massive paper fortunes, played the markets like parlor games and then got the world to buy them free passes when the house of cards came down. Narrated by Matt Damon, featuring plenty of interviews by several key government players, including Elliott Spitzer and Barney Frank (who, the film does NOT mention, voted for the "Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000", which is a key bill in the slippery slope). Several of the key Government types get sudden convenient cases of memory loss when pressed for certain details that they were intricately involved in (see the financial lobbyist who gives his Wall Street masters a 'B' grade for their handling of the collapse), and how major ratings firms suddenly turn their respected viewpoints of Triple A commodities ratings for companies on the verge of collapse into "it's just an opinion."

Nobody, left or right, gets out unscathed. Reagan gets first whacks for elimination of regulatory agencies, put in Alan Greenspan as his ideological watch-dog, and opened the world up to Savings and Loans. It took about nine years for them to collapse (under Bush One), so Wall Street had to come up with something new. That became derivatives, which Clinton legalized despite strong strong objections (and the person objecting is told firmly to keep her mouth shut) under Graham/Leach in '99 and effectively repealing the Glass-Steagall act from The Depression. With all the regulatory firewalls removed, banks could now effectively make a poorly advised loan, bundle it to a whole bunch of risky loans, sell this to someone else, then that group could sell it up the chain, with the complicity of the bonding agencies that gave these ticking time bombs triple A ratings.

When it comes to deregulating, though, nobody did it better than Bush the second. In 2004, he got the Securities and Exchange Commission to drop regulations against predatory lending, unleashing a new wave of sub-prime lending to the poor even if it was obvious that the loans wouldn't be repayable. Just bundle it into securities/assets, sell it and the risk belonged to someone else. By 2004, banks could leverage funds beyond their wildest dreams, so they did; some up to 33 times their available cash. Then came the biggest hit of all, the watchdog arm of the SEC was cut to a single employee. In an industry that has 5 lobbyists for each elected official, there was only one person left to investigate wrongdoing.

"Inside Job" also tackles the thorny issue of morality; when is too much not enough? Banks began to figure out that these bundled securities weren't going to be able to withstand the market much longer, they insured themselves against their failure then sold them even harder to drive the profits up before the explosion. They could profit now, success or failure, and things began to resemble a competition. Who has the most jets? Who has the most houses? Who has a private elevator that no-one else can use? So when the explosion came, starting with Bear Stearns in Spring 2007, the bankers had already covered their own behinds. And again, thanks to Bush Two, when the bankers realized the house of cards was about to enter meltdown, when they came crying to the government with their hands out, AIG and Goldman Sachs got 100 cents on the dollar. No risk, all reward.

President Obama fairs little better. He is criticized for putting the same old robber-barons in place (Tim Geithner, Larry Summers) and not pushing for tougher regulations post-crash. Even scarier is how these old hands are now advisers to business schools AND financial groups, which means the same flawed rules they played by to create this septic situation are being bought and paid for by financial institutions and taught and sold for by educational institutions. That is what is so maddening and ultimately depressing bout "Inside Job." While Enron (and folks like Bernie Madoff, Bernard Ebbers (MCI), Allen Stanford and his ilk) give you a convenient and singular target, "Inside Job" shows just how spread the dominoes are, and just how eager most of the players are to reset the table just as it was before.

With all the hooey about Reagen's 100th birthday and the pig vomit being espoused about his greatness, one needs to be reminded not just of Iran-Contra, the destruction of the middle class, his lust for deregulation and union-busting, but most of all for his political homophobia and the ignorance that led to so many of my friends dying tragic, unnecessary deaths,

Aids Activist Larry Kramer wrote The following piece, which was published in The Advocate issue dated July 6th, 2004

Our murderer is dead. The man who murdered more gay people than anyone in the entire history of the world, is dead. More people than Hitler even. In all the tributes to his passing, as I write this two days after his death, not one that I have seen has mentioned this. The hateful New York Times (“all the news that’s fit to print”) of course said nothing about this. We still are not fit to write about with total honesty in their pages. Not really. Just as we were not fit for Ronald Reagan to talk about us. What kind of president is that?

I have been writing a long work of history which I call The American People. I chose this title because in every speech he ever made Reagan went on and on about “the American People.” We of course were never a part of his American People. And we knew it. Year after year of his hateful and endless reign we knew we were not a part of the American People he was President of. He would never talk about us, of course, or do anything for us except murder us. There were no social services for us. There was no research into our health. Even as we were dying like flies. How could he not have seen us dying? The answer is he did see us dying and he chose to do nothing. There was no representation in his government of us. There was never anything for us but his ignoble dismissal of us. All of Washington, indeed the world, knew that Reagan hated us. How could they not? Most of them did, too. And when Daddy doesn’t love you, who is there who will stand up to Daddy? This is a trick that Hitler used and which I believe the young Reagan learned from him. He never had to say much out loud himself about his hatreds; but everyone knew what they were. Gays were as hated under Reagan as Jews were under Hitler. It is a trick that both George Bushes have carbon-copied. We have not been included among their American people either.

I could never understand why Reagan’s hatred of us was so intense and manifest and never-ending. Some of Nancy Reagan’s best friends were gay, the self-loathing Jerry Zipkin, at one time her principle “walker,” chief among them. It is said he taught her how to dress. In my play, Just Say No, I dramatized my own theory of why she and her husband kept gays off their agenda as if we were the plague, which of course, as in some hideous self-fulfilling prophecy, we became. Ron Reagan, Jr. That is why. It was no secret in an ever-widening circle that Ron Reagan, Jr. was suspected of being gay. In his freshman year at Yale (I believe this was his only year there; perhaps there were two) I have been told he had numerous gay experiences. I am well known at Yale. Indeed, I have established the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale to document the evil acts that American “history” has performed on us.

And just as damning of the son’s reputation of course, because it could not be hidden, was that Ron Reagan, Jr. was a ballet dancer. This did not look good and was obviously exceedingly embarrassing to a father who rode so many horses. So off with the tutu and on with a wedding ring. Junior was married off and sent to far-off places in positions of low visibility. I have gay friends in Hollywood, equally closeted, who knew him and know him and protect him. To know him is to be sworn to some sort of pact of secrecy. What a hideous life Ron, Jr. must have led all these years. To be denied a life and to have been so utterly gutless about fighting back. (Well, we know all about that.) While his own mother was gallivanting around with some of the biggest fairies in the world. What hateful parents to have had in the prime of your life, “the great communicator” of a father out there communicating how much he hated you and his wife out there going along with this. I suspect by now Ron Reagan, Jr. actually believes he is straight. By now he may very well be. He may well have been all along. He just looked so suspicious, and of course it was this perceived suspicion that, one way or the other, is what caused his father to murder so many of us. Why does history not recognize this monstrous and never-ending history of hatred and the inestimable number of deaths it continues to cause?

People magazine called me for a quote Reagan’s death. “I wish he had died before he was elected” is what I told them. I wonder what they will run.

It is remarkable that two of the so-called “greatest presidents” have also allowed the greatest perpetrations and perpetuations of mass murder. Franklin D. Roosevelt was shamefully inept in dealing with “the Jewish question,” (see my play The Normal Heart), most ironically since so many Jews were his most loyal supporters, the Jerry Zipkins of their day. No one really writes about this. Roosevelt is one of history’s great gods. Just as no one really writes about Reagan and “the gay question.” These two major murderers so far have got away with helping to cause the two major holocausts of modern history. Just as Jews are asked to never forget their Holocaust I implore all gay people never to forget our holocaust and who caused it and why. Ronald Reagan did not even say the word “AIDS” out loud for the first seven years of his reign. Because of this some 70 million people, so far, have become infected with HIV/AIDS. I wonder what it feels like to be the son and the wife of a man responsible for over 70 million people so far becoming infected with a virus that has killed over half of us so far. I wonder what it felt like while he was alive to ponder this. For surely he must have thought about it. How could he not? He has been called the consummate actor who came to believe all his lines. Does this not make his legacy even more grotesque? It should.

Hitler knew what he was doing. How could Ronald Reagan not have known what he was doing?

But of course no one is writing about this. Reagan too is one of history's gods.

So far he has got away with murder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhMepzqJvIw

Sadly, they are serious.