Crystal Geyser in Mt. Shasta - What do We Get?

December 16, 2013

Dear Editor:

It may very well be that Crystal Geyser in Mt. Shasta will be the best thing that’s happened since Swiss Cheese.  There are similarities between the two products.  Both are sold to us with holes in them.  We tend to like the holes in Swiss Cheese.  However, the holes in the story that Crystal Geyser is trying to sell us are troubling. 

Look at what we are promised by Crystal Geyser when they join us in our Mt. Shasta home.  We’ve been told by Siskiyou Economic Development Council executive director, Tonya Dowse that the facility will provide 60 to 65 jobs.  However, estimates of wages could not be made.    Will these be living wages?  Or will the top jobs be filled by relocating experienced Crystal Geyser workers from the Calistoga plant?  Think of it. These jobs are the only benefit the people of Mt. Shasta can expect.  

What will we give in exchange?  We will be giving away our water.  How ironic this is considering that many Siskiyou County citizens are pushing to secede from California over the issue of “sending our water south.”  Why then should it not be equally troubling to allow our water to be given over to a corporation based in Japan?  And there is more.   How will Crystal Geyser’s pumping water affect our local wells, our water supply?  Questions need to be answered concerning the 1,000,000 gallons or more of water that will be pumped daily when the plant becomes fully operational.  Will Crystal Geyser reduce or cease pumping in the event that our home wells adjacent to the plant foul or run dry.  What about drought?  Will water shortages affect our property values?  We need to ask these questions and fill in the holes before we give away Mt. Shasta.

Dr. Stephen R. Concklin

Learn More About this Proposed Bottling Plant in a Small Headwaters Community of Northern California

You want to visit the W.A.T.E.R.S. Web: http://groupspaces.com/WATERS/

The web has been put together by citizens of Mt. Shasta, California who are concerned about the establishment of a Crystal Geyser bottling plant in our mountain community. 

 

 

This is a photo of me from our Siskiyou Progressive Alliance demonstration to stop the attack on Syria that the United States Government was moving toward just this fall, 2013.

 

 

 

These are other members and participants below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Opposites Do Attract

Retired colleagues Barbara Walter and Stephen Concklin are big fans of the work each carried out at Shasta College, but they're political polar opposites.



I'm the handsome guy behind the "Shut Down LaMalfa" sign.  I'm sharing with my great friend, Barbara Walter, who was with a counter protest group representing the Tea Party.  We met on Thursday, October 3, 2013 In front of Congressman Doug LaMalfa's  Redding office.  This photo and a short news item appeared in the Friday, October 4, 2013 Redding Record Searchlight.  It described how Barbara and I knew each other and worked together at Shasta College in enabling students with intellectual and developmental disabilities to be a part of the college student body. 

Dear Editor:

Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, published its 2013 report.  Scientists from 195 countries participated.  You can read it for yourself at: http://www.ipcc.ch/. Human influence on the climate system is clear.  The report states:  “Warming in the climate system is unequivocal and since 1950 many changes have been observed throughout the climate system that are unprecedented over decades to millennia. Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850 …”

 When meteorologist, Eric Holthaus, who has covered weather for the Wall Street Journal, read the IPCC report he wept.  Eric’s response reminded me of the September afternoon in Washington, D. C. several years ago when I was hand cuffed in a police van with five other activists. We were part of the 1153 citizens who were arrested at the White House during climate action to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline.   While waiting, one of our fellow activists, Richard, suggested that we share our reasons for risking arrest.  We all spoke but when it was Richard’s turn he choked up and began sobbing.  It was chilling to watch a grown man reduced to tears. In his mind he saw what was in store for us unless we cut carbon emissions and move to renewable energy.  Rich was  like the “Weeping Prophet” Jeremiah, who saw what was coming and fell into despair that his warnings were not being heeded.

What can we do?  Human activity is changing earth’s atmosphere.  We must stop it.  The first step is to draw the line.  Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline.  The President will make this decision in the coming year.  Write to him.  Tell him no pipeline.  Our country can take a lead in preventing this human made catastrophe.

NSA Spys for the Ruling Elites not for a Democratic State

The mega issue behind the spying across all media in the US is not that a democratically centered state is just taking the ultimate precautions to protect its population.  Rather the issue has to do with the ruling elites who actually control the state.  Voters are presented with filtered choices made available to them by the elites.  I'm speaking of the wealthy classes who have used government to amass their wealth and their power.  The NSA is being used to maintain that power base.  Any alternative to it will be thwarted.  What really happened to Occupy?  How much of the NSA surveillance apparatus was employed to protect the government and its allies in the financial services industries?  We are faced with absolute power here with a monopoly on violence.

Huffington Post Reports "Walmart's Low Wages Could Cost Taxpayers $900,000 Per Year, House Dems Find"

This happened in the factories in England during the 1860's.  Factory wages were held so low that the local parish supplemented workers' income in order to help the workers stay alive.  This fact is documented by Marx in Capital Vol. 1.  Moreover, this is exactly the kind of thing Wal-Mart is doing.  I'd be willing to bet that the price tag reported by the House Democrats is grossly understated.  In addition, as noted above, Wal-Mart associates must also rely on Medicaid to survive.  Yet, the Wal-Mart family heirs control as much wealth as the lower 40% of Americans.  These are not handouts to the working poor:  Rather this shifting of Wal-Mart's responsibilities for providing living wages amounts to a tax-payer supplied hand-out to Wal-Mart.  Democracy is impossible without economic democracy.

The National Security State

President Obama said this today in regard to the AP intrusion by the government:

"Leaks related to national security can put people at risk, they can put men and women in uniform that I've sent into the battlefield at risk," Obama said, while declining to comment on the pending case.

This should awaken every American.  When the President refers to the "national security", he really means the "national security state."  What do we call a state whose reason for existing becomes the state itself? Take your pick.  History abounds with examples ... some fairly recent.

The national security state will always excuse its excesses in preventing accountability by invoking the safety of the people, the troops.  The troops.  Are they the national security state's central concern?  I think not.  Eighteen veterans commit suicide each day.  Sexual assault in the military is covered up.  I side with the First Amendment.  That will really help the troops to keep us free.

Physics of Capitalism: You be the Judge

There's physics.  If capitalism isn't curbed by us, physics will do the trick for us.  Physics is not amenable to political decisions.  Many geologists surmise that we are now in the beginning of the anthropocene mass extension.  Looking at local weather and saying, "it's cold", and, therefore  global warming is not real, is like looking at the 50 to 52 yard line in a football game and trying to get the whole picture.  The United States accounts for just 2% if the earth's global surface.

Capitalism: No Borders, No Accountability

Home Land Security needs to be involved here in Texas.  The West Fertilizer blast is an example of the built-in terrorism of unregulated capitalism.  When profits become the criterion of success, public service, which should be the reason for any corporation to exist, takes a back seat.  We need a corporate sunset rule.  Not in the public service? ... out of business.  The garment building collapse in Bangladesh is another symptom of profits before human rights.  This might as well have happened here in the US.  With corporations it’s just “one world.”  There are no borders.

Terrorism and Capitalism: The Institutionalized Element

The Bangladesh Tragedy is just another example, too numerous to ignore, of institutionalized terrorism.  That is to say, terrorism built into the capitalist mode of production.  For example, there was a huge, preventable explosion at a fertilizer plant near Waco, Texas.  Around the same time as fourteen people were killed in Texas and a small town decimated, the Boston Marathon bombing occurred which killed three people.  Is Homeland Security investigating the Texas explosion?  I think not.  This is plainly the result of business as usual with OSHA so deliberately understaffed that it would take 114 years in order to secure the safety of all US factories and places of business.  That would imply safety regulation; truly a threat to … the bottom line.  It’s time to draw a new line.

Stop the Pipeline

Global warming is here … life as we know it will not be possible unless we take drastic steps immediately to reduce emissions that come from burning fossil fuels: oil, coal and natural gas.  The draft of the US National Climate Assessment is available on the web for your review: http://www.globalchange.gov/what-we-do/assessment.  The reading is stark and should raise one serious question:  What can we do to curb the rise of man-made emissions that are causing global warming?  Call the White House.  Tell the President to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline.  The President has the authority to do this.  And, the President will make his decision within the next month. 

The Keystone XL Pipeline, if it is allowed to go ahead, will carry toxic oil-like substances from tar sands deposits in Alberta, Canada.  The Keystone XL Pipeline will cross the heartland of our country to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.  The tar sands oil will then be shipped.  It’s not for us.  Moreover, the notion that the Keystone XL Pipeline will create jobs is propaganda from TransCanada, the Canadian company pushing to off-load its toxic product through our country.  No more than 6,500 part-time jobs will be created.  But that’s not the worst of it.

James Hansen, the chief climate scientist for NASA, has declared that the burning of the huge tar sands oil deposit in Alberta will spell “game over for the climate.”  The Keystone XL Pipeline will be the fuse to a giant carbon bomb.   We have to think of our lives as well as those of our children and our grandchildren.   We must urge the President to deny approval for the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline.  This could begin the turnaround that will encourage the development of alternative energy before more damage is done.