The mixture is higher than 50/50 naphtha.

Why? Because it is winter in North Dakota and Canada and in order to have the consistency of the tar correct to flow into oil cars the producer had to add more and more and more naptha until it ran like water to be sure it would load for transportation.

New oil cars regardless of their valued purpose it's going to hold up to that degree of heat and/or force of explosion. There is no vehicle that is impervious to explosion with such chemicals. The problem is not the railroad, it is the manufacturer that loads a substance that is for the most part is naphtha and highly explosive. What I am wonder is, what did the temperature change between North Dakota and West Virginia do to the mixture as well as the oil cars. Expansion and contraction or vice versa. There was a leak somewhere.

No degree of modification will change the tragic outcomes to the oil from North Dakota.

The reason the Texas oil industry has only occasional mishaps like exploding refineries (BP) is because the oil is near the refineries.

I covered all this before. The reason the oil is coming to ports in Texas is because if it is shipped internationally as everyone knows it will for tax advantages. So the idea the tar sands oil. which is 50/50 naphtha, will ever be modified enough to be safe is nonsense. It is a highly explosive mixture and is not crude oil. Not even close. Molecularly they are two different compounds. 

I know this stuff better than I know my own name. This explosion problem is a long term problem so long as the oil is being transported across the country, be it rails or otherwise. This is highly explosive stuff and Trans Canada wants to leverage taxes in their favor before they ship the lousy junk by tanker to the rest of the world.  

This is a long term problem as long as the federal government allows this to happen and no one in Congress is going to do anything about it. The US Department of Transportation's Federal Railroad Administration has to stop the cross country movement of oil from Canada. This is Canadian oil that needs a Canadian solution.

I don't find it at all reasonable to smile with moments of hope that the folks in ND will modify the mixture as if nothing is ever going to happen again. It will happen again and again. This is a volatile mixture and is made to travel over thousands of miles to leverage taxes. This Canadian product is nonsense and a burden to the USA. The clean up costs from any of these explosions needs to be sent to TransCanada to pay for the damages they are causing to US railroads as well as emergency services and clean up and repairs and inspections. 

That distance on the map from ND to Texas is as the crow flies, that is not where the rails are running. The longer the distance from extraction to refinery INCREASE the opportunity for disaster. It won't change.

The Obama White House has to end this circus and forbid the Naphtha laden oil in the country. 

Naphtha is an explosive chemical. 

Chemical Stability: (click here) coniditions to avoid aire and explosion hazards are serious when this product is exposed to heat or flame. Keep away from heat, sparks or open flame.

Does anyone ever stop to realize how completely stupid that statement is in relation to safety? To prevent tragedy with these chemicals one has to be able to predict SPARKS. Right.

Why did the BP Deepwater Horizon occur? Because the petroleum industry has OCD in regard to safety? Heck no. The only OCD the petroleum industry has is making money. 

The oil industry doesn't even play the odds with safety. They completely disregard it. BP had an oil refinery explosion killing employees. A few years later the BP Deepwater Horizon exploded at it's well head.

This is a successful company? No. It is one that has a product worth incredible amounts of money to cover up all the mistakes, injuries and deaths.

...Fatalities (click here) for the industry jumped from 112 in 2011 to 138 in 2012, a 23 percent increase and the largest number of deaths of oil and gas workers since the current data series for the BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) began in 2003. The bureau reported an oil and gas fatality rate of 24.2 deaths per 100,000 workers. That's higher than the 21.2 reported by the notoriously dangerous agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting sector...

And if this impresses anyone as tragedy and an industry out of control, the rates in the North Sea is worse. Now, an industry that sees paying life insurance to families as an operating expense has little respect for any safety at all. The cities along the transportation routes can forget the idea tragedy will never happen. It will happen and no different than with the BP disaster, the federal laws will enforce payment for the damage, but, also as with the BP Disaster the USA laws become meaningless to these companies as they play and play with the legal system.

In order to end the danger to any American city, the oil needs to be refined near it's origins. That goes for North Dakota, too. There should be a law which prohibits long distance transportation of chemicals including oil, methane of any other by product of oil refineries. 

When this explosion happened and killed those people, I guarantee you the company had no idea what the report was stating as the problem. The CEO simply paid fines, insurance policies and said, "So, we need new heat exchangers, right?" 

This is an industry that hires USA inspectors so there are less inspectors to make their rounds. There is no other reason why the petroleum industry hires USA inspectors into their employ. If the petroleum industry actually hired inspectors to better safety margins and maintain their rigs to the highest standard possible, I'd think it was great. But, that isn't why they hire them. 

They hire them out of the government to minimize the inspections. Maintaining a rig in perfect condition is too expensive and requires time. It slows down the drilling if repairs are necessary. Why was the CEO from BP on the Deepwater Horizon? To check the inspection logs? Heck, no. He was there to push the drilling regardless of whatever safety margins were breached. 

 

Heck, Boston, 95 inches of snow is interesting, but. northwest lower Michigan had 244 inches (over 20 feet) by the end of the season about the time everyone had to send in their taxes on April 15, 2015. See what you have to look forward to yet.

We are having a milder winter this year. This was the first year long time residents can remember there was no snow on Christmas. The entire month of December was green.

Yep. 

Oh, yeah, the 244 inches is twice the norm. 

As if the snow wasn't enough, spring came and the flooding was a disaster to an entire neighborhood near the river.

More of the police state.

This was written in an e-mail today to me from an older white guy.

" ...Right now,anyone that resists arrest is in for a bad day! I am all yes sir and no sir."

The subject line of the e-mail was "Grins a plenty." People are afraid of the police and are developing behaviors to reduce their risk of death.

February 17, 2015
By Olivia Laughland

About 10 years ago, (click here) Antonio Zambrano-Montes arrived in Pasco, Washington, in pursuit of what his family simply describes as “a better future”. He left behind a village in the municipality of De Aquila in the southern Mexican state of Michoacan. It was reportedly a place with no roads and no shops to buy clothes, where residents would travel by horse and cart to the next town to buy basic provisions and most worked as farm labourers.
He brought with him his wife and two daughters to the city of around 70, 000 people, in America’s north-west....

The 35-year-old Washington orchard worker who was born in Mexico was shot dead at 5pm on Tuesday after he was found throwing rocks – one described as "softball sized" – at vehicles on a busy intersection in Pasco. Police said that after "low-level force" failed to bring him under control and the deployment of a Taser had "no effect", officers fired on the suspect after his "threatening behaviour" continued.

The Administrative Procedure Act

It is Texas. It is because the Republicans are letting Homeland Security fall into dissolution.

..."arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with the law."

There is only one way to end the Executive Authority through the courts. What the Republicans are doing, as well as this judge, is nothing short of bloodless coup against the US Constitution.

February 17, 2015
By Jonathan H. Adler

...Although (click here) the court sided with the states, the court did not declare the substance of the policy itself unlawful — at least not yet.  According to the lengthy ruling by Judge Andrew Hanen, the administration failed to comply with the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.... 

Moving against the APA is gutting the powers of the Executive Branch. Texas has radical courts, that is already known. When looking across the spectrum of Republican politics, it is the Texas legislature, governor and judiciary that becomes creative with words to attempt to undo the federal laws passed under the Obama's Legislature.

The US House is assuming it can be the Executive Branch. It is carrying out legislation that is unconstitutional to take away power from the Executive Branch, including addressing Congress by foreign dignitaries. It is a US House lead coup. There is no other word for it.  

Arbitrary and capricious comes into play when the President pulls a rabbit out of his/her hat. The executive order comes out of nowhere and creates law that is a surprise. What would be a good example? Let's say the President hates dogs and orders the country to remove dogs to shelters for euthanasia. That is how out of line the Congress and this Texas judge has acted to destroy Executive Branch authority.

February 17, 2015
By Michael A. Memoli and Lisa Mascaro
 
After six weeks in session and 139 roll call votes (click here) in a House and Senate that feature some of the largest Republican majorities in generations, one of the most telling statistics from the new Congress is this: President Obama's veto threats outnumber the bills Congress has been able to send him.
When Republicans swept into power last November, they promised a new era of productivity and discipline that would break four years of gridlock. "America's New Congress," they called it.
But far from striking a bold contrast with the last two terms of stalemate, congressional Republicans have quickly run into familiar obstacles, including partisan paralysis and party infighting.
Friday, as members of Congress rushed to leave town on a bitterly cold morning, Republicans celebrated their most visible accomplishment to date: sending the Keystone XL pipeline bill to Obama's desk for his expected veto....

There are several articles in the country today about the complete break down of the federal government. This Congress is extraordinarily adverse to governing. 

The Republicans pander to their financial backers. That is a fact. The Kochs are purchasing the services of the House and Senate. It is written all over the stalemate of the Legislative and Executive Branches.

It doesn't matter if the President is including health care and education in his Executive Order. It is the TRADITION to treat the undocumented with care that most Americans have. The issue of health care is a public health problem. 

It is also not permitted by law to allow a child waste their lives in a hollow existence. The USA has always educated the children of the undocumented simply because it provides a better understanding of this country. The best example was the previous Executive Order allowing room for the "Dreamers." The Dreamers were born or brought to the USA at a very early age and have grown up within the USA and educated here. The standard of 'caring' for the Undocumented and their children has been status quo for decades.

The country's health is determined by individual participation in health care and vaccines. This is nothing the President is doing out of the ordinary. Currently there is a measles outbreak as well as other communicable diseases, because, American parents opted out of vaccines. It is in the best interest of the country to vaccinate and treat disease with anyone in our borders. 

This is a legal definition of "public health." This is listed on WHO, but, it is a standard and not an opinion.

Public health (click here) refers to all organized measures (whether public or private) to prevent disease, promote health, and prolong life among the population as a whole. Its activities aim to provide conditions in which people can be healthy and focus on entire populations, not on individual patients or diseases. Thus, public health is concerned with the total system and not only the eradication of a particular disease. The three main public health functions are:...

Public Schools:

...“There is a compact (click here) that exists between a community and its public school. It is a promise that the school will teach every child that passes through its doors—poor children, affluent children, children with disabilities and children who show great academic promise. The common public school is required to teach the easy to teach and the difficult to teach. The common public school is there for the student with strong parent advocates and for the child who is, for all practical purposes, alone....

The nature of the work of the Undocumented enters into the school attendance of their children. The Undocumented workers are in the field very long hours, leaving the child(ren) home without supervision during that time. 

If the USA were to place Social Service workers in these circumstances the children would be viewed as neglected. The neglected children would be placed in Foster homes. Once in Foster homes the children would be required to attend school anyway. Therefore, the children are left with their families and provided a public school education they would have received in Foster care.

It is unrealistic ICE would be able to find and deport every family in the USA. There has been testimony to that fact before federal Congressional committees. 

President Obama did not assign any status the Undocumented don't already enjoy as if a citizen. President Obama is upholding a long standing status quo while federal officers do necessary work that actually applies to national security. The undocumented, nor their children, have proven to be anything but a necessary element of our economy.