Paul Haeder, Author

famous last words: the costs upfront are profits next for the titans of tyrants, and the externalities will titrate deep into your soul, into your unborn generations’ souls

You know parasitic capitalism is the cancer on the world — when the dirty thugs and polluters poison our schools, man?

Cured-in-place pipe lining creates a new pipe inside an old one by inserting a soft, resin-soaked liner into the existing structure, inflating it with pressurized air, then heating it so it hardens. Because it’s faster and less expensive than traditional pipe rehabilitation, cities across the country are turning to cured-in-place contractors to upgrade their old underground lines. 

But those cost savings can come at a price.

Hazardous air pollutants released during the heating process can enter homes, schools and other buildings and sicken the people inside. 

Styrene, a probable carcinogen and key ingredient in many cured-in-place projects, can be especially toxic and causes a constellation of symptoms like those reported at Merrimack Valley High School – headaches, nausea, vomiting, loss of balance and, sometimes, unconsciousness. 

Similar exposures across the country have landed people in the hospital, required building evacuations and sparked claims of lasting injuries and even death, USA TODAY found. 

Sarena Quintanilla, whose daughter attends Merrimack Valley High School, said the teen suffered severe congestion with a burning in her sinuses and throat after the incident. Even now, weeks later, Quintanilla said, her daughter continues to experience headaches that she believes stemmed from exposure to the fumes. (source)

Read the USA Today article. READ it. You will never ever get people quoted in it who say this is unfettered toxic capitalism on parade, and that these techno-chemical “fixes” are at a cost TOO high for a society.

No discussion in the article about how we have gutted infrastructure writ large because we are a casino capitalism system of revolving doors and captured agencies, and that the only solution is to flip the fucking script and end this predatory privatization of everything system of grand theft everything; to stop the degregulation, to end the Poison Ivy League creeps steering this country into a black hole of emptiness.

A D-minus from civil engineers? This is it for USA Today? Never ever will the inverted crappy pyramid of junk journalism talk about how zero tolerance should be the rule, that is, precautionary principle and do no harm, and that we just need to send home the bloody merchants of death in 800 proxy warring bases, and get this country to BUILD something, to WORK on the flagging communities, our crumbling sea walls, the collapsing highway bridges, the urban-rural-wildland interfacing where hundreds of millions of dollars “worth” of homes and infrastructure are at risk for wildland fires.

The entire plastics and polymers industry is dirty, cancerous, a system of deaths by 10,000 genetic (genotoxic) and endrocrine CUTS:

Cured-in-place-pipe (CIPP) is the most popular water pipe repair method used in the U.S. for sanitary sewer, storm sewer, and is increasingly being used for drinking water pipe repairs. Today, approximately 50% of all damaged pipes are being repaired using CIPP technology. The CIPP procedure involves the chemical manufacture of a new plastic pipe called a CIPP inside a damaged water pipe. Before CIPP installation, workers precut and lay-up the felt and fiberglass liner and saturate it with a polyester, vinyl ester, or epoxy resin. The resin is sometimes mixed by hand or using an automated mechanical mixer, manually poured or drawn into the precut liner. Liners are then passed through rollers to ensure that the fibers are saturated with resin. The resin impregnated liner (referred to as an uncured resin tube) is typically refrigerated until use, as it may contain volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds (VOCs, SVOCs) and thermally sensitive chemicals. This uncured resin tube is often pulled through the damaged water pipe or inserted into the damaged water pipe and inflated using forced air or water. During the installation process, the curing is facilitated by periodically forcing steam into one end of the resin tube, recirculating hot water, and/or passing an ultraviolet (UV) light train through the tube. Plastic coatings are sometimes included inside and outside of the uncured resin tube for a variety of reasons. Once the facilitated curing process has ended, the hardened ends of the CIPP are cut and removed. Connections to pipe laterals are reinstated by cutting holes into the pipe walls. A reported advantage of this in-situ repair process is the avoidance of roadway shutdowns and open-trench excavations to remove the damaged pipe. The CIPP process is also being used to repair pipes in buildings.

Little is known about CIPP worker exposures and health risks. CIPP manufacturing sites are highly transient, with a single installation location being used from a few hours to a few days. Unlike traditional manufacturing operations, there is not a ‘permanent address’ to visit or inspect. Once the construction process is complete, the workers and equipment move on. The CIPP manufacturing process can expose workers to raw chemicals, forced air, steam, hot water, ultraviolet (UV) light, materials created and released into the air during manufacture, as well as liquids and solids generated by the process and worker activities. To date, CIPP air monitoring studies have been unable to comprehensively characterize occupational exposures because of a narrow focus on VOC vapors and the use of nonspecific detectors.  See below for information on the October 5^th free webinar “Public Health Implications and Occupational Exposures during Water Pipe Repair Activities” (to view webinar, click here ). (source)

Go to any number of sources to see this system of polystyrene here: EWG

Styrene.

Those cost savings — read, massive billionaire, millionaire and Eichmann profits — kill kill kill, and the lies and the propaganda and the agency capture and the Mafia that is the trucking-oil-highway construction are killing us softly and hard.

The records reveal a remarkable and disturbing hidden history, a case study of government inaction in the face of an obvious threat to public wellbeing. Year after year, federal officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the country’s primary roadway safety agency, ignored credible scientific research and failed to take simple steps to limit the hazards of underride crashes.

NHTSA officials failed to act, in part, because they didn’t know how many people were killed in the crashes. Their poor efforts at collecting data over the years left them unable to determine the scale of the problem. This spring the agency publicly acknowledged that it has failed to accurately count underride collisions for decades.

According to NHTSA’s latest figures, more than 400 people died in underride crashes in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available. But experts say the true number of deaths is likely higher.

Again, styrene gassing of students, or these death machines, trucks, sometimes three unit trucks, kill kill kill. The logical is thrown out with the baby’s bathwater.

David Friedman was a top official at NHTSA during the Obama years. “NHTSA has been trying, for decades, to do something about underride deaths. And yet over and over, they haven’t made the progress that we need. Why? Well, I think part of it is because industry just keeps pushing back and undermining their efforts,” said Friedman, who served as the agency’s acting administrator in 2014. “There are so many hurdles put in the way of NHTSA staff when it comes to putting a rule on the books that could address issues like underride.”

The technology at issue — strong steel guards mounted to the back and sides of trucks — is simple and “relatively inexpensive,” Friedman argued. “The costs are small.” (source)

Simple solution, almost fourth grade level stuff (though putting fourth and six graders in a large conference room with teach-ins and fuzzy problem and solution events, and, man, most solutions to this sick country’s problems would be solved, and be warned: it would be really strong left socialism, as in . . . )

“We have to tell those people they can’t do that or make that or develop that anymore without a huge screening and vetting process. Why are they killing us and our futures?”

Let the youth take the helm: Project Based Learning turning into Community Based Learning and then turned into Legislative-Connected Project Based Learning: 7 Real-World Issues That Can Allow Students To Tackle Big Challenges.

Again, take over the high schools, the elementary schools. Fill the parking lots with teepees and hands-on teach-in stations. Get the youth to cook their food, and get the youth working with amazing facilitators to get into a fuzzy problem solutionary situation. Call it a global or local or regional problem solving charrette. Get the stupid policy makers, the chamber of commerces, and the big wigws in business to show up and, no, not dominate or even castigate.

Come up with a list of major problems the youth are seeing they WILL face the next 60 years — local, family, educational, county-wide, state-wide, country-wide and globally.

A weekend of rice, beans, corn, pancakes, tortillas, a global simple menu, and then, let the kids go. Every month, after the first weekend’s top 20 problems are set and discussed, a new teach-in and solutions based camp-in for each problem . . . . Get this on cable, on TV, uploaded, streamed, what have you. It will fucking work.

1) Climate Change – Climate Change will have a significant impact on our students’ lives. Indeed, there may not be one issue that will impact them more comprehensively. Students have seen the data and witnessed the changes, and are listening to the science community. They know that this an urgent issue that will affect almost everything, including, but not limited to, weather, sea levels, food security, water quality, air quality, sustainability and much more. Many organizations – such as NASA, The National Park Service, National Center for Science Education, National Oceanic Atmospheric Association and SOCAN to name a few – are working to bring climate change curriculum and projects to teachers and students.

2) Health Care – Since this has become a prominent topic in the national debate, students are becoming aware of the issues in our country related to rising costs, access, quality and equity. They are beginning to understand the importance both individually and societally. Like the aforementioned topic of climate change, students are also (and unfortunately) learning that we are not necessarily leading the world in this area. They know that this problem is connected to profits, insurance, bureaucracy and more, but they also have a fresher sense of how it could be different, and how we could learn from others around the world. The work on this topic, like many others, is being led by our universities. Institutions such as University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins and Stanford are leading the way.

3) Food Insecurity – as our students become more aware of their surrounding communities, as well as the peers they interact with daily, they begin to see differences. Differences in socioeconomic status, opportunities for growth, housing, security, support services and more. And since 13 million young people live in food-insecure homes, almost all of our students, as well as educators, know someone who is hungry on a daily basis. This may often start with service-based projects, but can also lead to high quality project based learning complete with research, data analysis, diverse solutions and ultimately a variety of calls to action. If you want to see how one teacher and his students transformed not only their school, but entire community related to food insecurity, check out Power Of A Plant author Stephen Ritz and the Green Bronx Machine.

4) Violence – This is a natural given current events taking the nation by storm. However, the related topics and issues here are not new. And yes, they are politically charged, but young people care about these issues. They care about their collective safety and futures, but also know something can be done. In addition to the specifics related to school violence and safety, students can study details of how to advocate, organize, campaign and solicit support, learn that this is a complex problem that has many plausible causes, and, perhaps most importantly, hope for progress. They also know that although they are concerned about attending school in safe environments, our society and culture have violence-related problems and issues that they want to see addressed. Following the recent incident in Florida and the subsequent response from students, the New York Times has compiled a list of resources for educators on this topic.

5) Homelessness – We often hear the expression “think globally, act locally.” The topic of homelessness has garnered more attention than ever as more and more communities wrestle with a growing homeless population. In addition to opportunities for our students and schools to partner with local non-profit organizations dealing with homelessness, this topic, like others, is also a great way to elicit empathy in our students. We often hear from educators, employers and others that we want to raise adults that are able to solve problems, improve our communities, and have the ability to see beyond themselves. This topic can provide a number of options for helping students develop those skills. Finally, we also have a growing population of homeless students. So, the relevancy and urgency are all there. Many have laid the groundwork for us to address this within our curriculum. Organizations like Bridge Communities, National Coalition For The Homeless, Homeless Hub and Learning To Give are some of the many leading the way.

6) Sustainability – This is an extremely global issue that affects everything from energy, to food, to resources, economics, health, wellness and more. Students are becoming more and more aware that our very future as a species depends on how we address sustainability challenges. They are aware that this challenge requires new ways of thinking, new priorities, new standards and new ways of doing things. Sustainability is all about future innovation. Students have tremendous opportunities to collaborate, think critically, communicate, and be creative when questioning if a current practice, method, resource or even industry is sustainable without dramatic change and shifts. Students who tackle these challenges will be our leaders – business, political and cultural – of the future. Educators and students can find almost infinite resources and partners. A few of these are Green Education Foundation, Green Schools Initiative, Strategic Energy Innovations, Facing the Future and Teach For America.

7) Education – It seems that each and every day, more and more of us (though maybe still not enough) are moving closer to realizing that our educational systems are seemingly unprepared to make the big shifts needed to truly address the learning needs of 21st-century students. The related challenges are many – new literacies, skills, economic demands, brain research, technology, outcomes and methodologies. It’s a good thing that more and more people – both inside and outside of education – are both demanding and implementing change. However, one of the continued ironies within education is that we (and I recognize that this is a generalization) rarely ask the primary customer (students) what they think their education should look, feel and sound like. We have traditionally underestimated their ability to articulate what they need and what would benefit them for their individual and collective futures. One of the many foundational advantages of project based learning is that we consult and consider the student in project design and implementation. Student “voice & choice” creates opportunities for students to have input on and make decisions regarding everything from the final product, to focus area within a topic or challenge, and even whom they may partner with from peers to professionals. It’s this choice that not only helps elicit engagement and ownership of learning, but offers opportunities for students to enhance all of the skills that we want in our ideal graduates. As one might guess, there is not a lot of formal curriculum being developed for teachers to lead students through the issue of education reform. This may need to be an organic thing that happens class by class and school by school. It can start as easily as one teacher asking students about what they want out of their education. Some other entry points are The Buck Institute for Education, Edutopia’s Five Ways To Give Your Students More Voice & Choice, Barbara Bray’s Rethinking Learning and reDesign.

This is not intended to be an exhaustive or comprehensive list. However, these seven broad topics present hundreds of relevant challenges that our students can and should have opportunities to address. If they do, they will not only be more prepared for their futures, but also poised to positively impact all of our futures.

Source.

That above list doesn’t have the fuzzy problem statement: “Can we come up with a better, more human, more resilient, more human and earth centered system to help the world thrive and undergo the massive changes reeling us with a world without ICE?” But it should!

Throw out a two dozen issues to a hundred high schools, and work work work on those, and then in those respective states, hit the county and city councils and head up to the state capitals. REALLY.

How easy is it to fix our broken windows and pipes and dirty drinking water problems. How easy is it to fix those extreme highway deaths, these underride accidents and other accidents.

If this isn’t sick,

Then is this?

Solution? Give those students a decent weekend charrette, and throw in all sorts of options and alternatives, and of course, those kids will want to be conservative in their approach: “Why so many flammable trucks are on the road . . . why are they, the government leaders and agencies, giving them, the owners, capitalists, everything and we don’t get anything?”

Just throw this out, and see what youth do with this criminal problem:

Another impetus for fraud stems from the blank checks that the Pentagon writes to contractors. The most common method of winning contracts is through the “cost-plus” contracting system, in which the government reimburses contractor expenses and tacks on a commission as profit. According to Hartung, the system works in such a way that “the more work [contractors] do, the more profit they get, even if their work is inefficient. … It basically says, ‘If you spend a billion dollars building a weapons system, you’ll get a 10 percent profit or $100 million.’” Essentially, for contractors, “you do better if you are wasteful.”

Yes yes, these students need REAL world thinkers, and no, solving the world’s problems should not be funneled into STEM ONLY— science technology engineering and math. The world is run by minds, perception, politics, community engagement, rhetoric, research, writing, debate, history, geography, and so much more OUTSIDE the real of computing, bridge building, mRNA bioweapons, algorithms.

As the late Gore Vidal pointed out in his book, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated, the United States always appears to find a new enemy to attack to perpetuate controlled wars, or small conflicts that keep dollars flowing to sustain the defense industry. William Hartung, the Center for International Policy’s Arms and Security Project Director, stated that there is an “excess of usable military equipment relative to any possible need.” As Hartung put it, the overriding sentiment in the government has been that “we need [the money] to defend the country, so we can’t ask too many questions.” When there are calls to cut the defense budget, to withdraw and stop intervening in world conflicts, or to use older equipment available, contractors and lobbyists respond by arguing that the country “needs a new generation of equipment,” or that the Pentagon needs to continue a steady stream of purchasing in order “sustain the defense industrial base” to prepare for the next war. (source)

That Gore Vidal: “He’s denounced Washington for waging what he called “a perpetual war for perpetual peace” and said American aggression was only nurturing fresh hatreds.

In a scathing attack on U.S. foreign policy, Vidal told Reuters that the United States would have been better served trying to buy peace with Osama bin Laden rather than send in the bombers to try and kill him.

Vidal, one of contemporary America’s harshest critics, has had trouble finding an audience for his views back home and is publishing his latest collection of essays in his adoptive country, Italy.”

And so, cancelled and thrown into the dustbin of distraction and dumbdowning. Oh, that sacred shitting, burping, farting, urinating cow: “US Military Pollution: The World’s Biggest Climate Change Enabler”

Hmm, what would those fifth, eighth eleneth graders say? In AmeriKKKa now, there is hardly any critical thinking in K12, and the demands on teachers are out the window, and the parents are checked out, and their kiddos are one learning disability and allergy and chronic illness away from disability!