Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Fine With Lies of Power

Turned over a new leaf I did!

"Power plant workers are said to have concealed pollution" by Katie Johnston Globe Staff  March 30, 2016 

First VW, now these guys!

The operators of a Western Massachusetts power plant have agreed to plead guilty and pay $8.5 million for tampering with air pollution monitoring equipment and reporting false data about emissions levels, US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz announced Wednesday.

That looks criminal, but thanks for the kickback. I gue$$ rates will be going up $oon.

Between January 2009 and March 2011, employees at Berkshire Power in Agawam manipulated the emissions monitoring system to conceal the fact that the plant was emitting an excess of pollutants.

Hey, why not? Government from the top on down does it.

The plant did this to avoid shutting down to make repairs needed to keep it within pollution limits, according to the Department of Justice.

A shutdown would have cut into the plant’s profits, prosecutors said.

And you would have had some angry residents without power?

The staff also lied about the plant’s availability to produce power for the New England grid, investigators found.

That's strong stuff coming from a source that regularly spews them. 

Are you sure they didn't just mislead by mistake?

In doing so, the plant’s owner, Berkshire Power Co., and manager, Power Plant Management Services, violated the federal Clean Air Act. The management company also violated the Federal Power Act for lying to the regional power grid administrator — the first-ever criminal charges under the statute, according to the Department of Justice.

“The deliberate scheme Berkshire Power Plant management and staff undertook gave them an unfair competitive advantage over responsible companies and undermined a system that depends on honest data reporting,” Tyler Amon, special agent in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency’s criminal investigation division in Boston, said in a statement. “Maximizing profit to minimize the cost of controlling pollution is placing greed over protecting nearby communities.”

You guys should have gone into banking instead.

Some of the settlement money will go toward installing electric-vehicle charging stations in Massachusetts and funding an American Lung Association program to replace inefficient wood stoves with EPA-certified wood, gas, and pellet stoves....

Oh, it will be directed into further agenda-pu$hing cau$es and ideas.

--more--"

I'm not saying that's a bad thing per se, but you do have to consider who is promoting it. 

Now about that cough....

"New England Journal of Medicine increasingly targeted by critics" by Charles Ornstein ProPublica  April 05, 2016

The New England Journal of Medicine is arguably the best-known and most venerated medical journal in the world. Studies featured in its pages are cited more often, on average, than those of any of its peers. And the careers of young researchers can take off if their work is deemed worthy of appearing in it.

But following a series of well-publicized feuds with prominent medical researchers and former editors of the journal, some are questioning whether the publication is slipping in relevancy and reputation. The journal and its top editor, critics say, have resisted correcting errors and lag behind others in an industrywide push for more openness in research. And dissent has been dismissed with a paternalistic arrogance, they say.

It's subtle elite insult in the form of a new$paper though, so its okay.

“They basically have a view that . . . they don’t need to change or adapt. It’s their way or the highway,” said Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute and chief academic officer at Scripps Health in La Jolla, Calif....

And we have all $een what has happened.

--more--"

The ties to the pharmaceutical industry present conflicts of interest?

That means they are as $elf-$erving as the financial services firms.

The next thing you know they will be telling us cholesterol and animal fats are good for you (for the purposes of dumping excess pork products and GMO corn that the world doesn't want, of course).

The lies are everywhere, folks. 

Good thing they only cost about $5 billion or $o.

UPDATE: New evidence of the dangers of living near highways