Congress Reaches Agreement ... On Helium
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Despite the wrangling that's resulted in a government shut-down, Congress managed last week to agree on one thing: Helium. Reader gbrumfiel writes: "The U.S. holds vast helium reserves which it sells to scientists and private industry. According to NPR, a new law was needed to allow the helium to continue to flow. Congress passed it late last week, but only after a year-long lobbying effort and intense debate (and in the end, Senator Ted Cruz opposed the measure). Can a new bipartisanship rise out of this cooperation? Or will hot air prevail on Capitol Hill? (Insert your helium joke here.)" Apparently, helium is not yet so scarce that it's not available in balloons at the grocery store.
Re:Balloons (Score:3, Insightful)
"Children's balloons use recycled or low grade helium which too expensive right now be used for more worthy purposes."
What?
Re:Thank god we have Ted Cruz (Score:5, Insightful)
So he voted against a bill that earmarked the funds in favor for a version that uses the funds for "deficit reduction" which is political speak for money into my pork project. Funding is fungible and no one knows how to use smoke and mirrors to hide budgeting irregularities like a congress person.
At least he didn't waste anyone's time by filibustering it and then voting for it immediately afterwards.
Re:Dispensing our reserves? (Score:4, Insightful)
The reality is as long as America wants a for-profit health-care system, and each hospital is an independent entity, you're never going to fix this.
There is no room in the US for efficiencies in the system, because the system is being ran as a bunch of separate businesses. Nobody is going to stop running their very profitable MRI machine to conserve helium or for any other reason unless there's a benefit to them.
In the parts of the world which have a single-payer public system, they mostly shake their heads over the US and their attitude to this.
Your system is set up so that whoever can pay the most can get treated first, and the rest are welcome to suffer and go without.
For a 'civilized' country, America is shockingly indifferent to the fate of the rest of the populace. Which means any time the US does something altruistic, you have to assume there's a financial angle you're not seeing.
America has elevated being a selfish bastard to a religion. Which is what this is about is one group loudly saying "we should be completely selfish bastards and fuck the rest of the country".
Which in some circles makes your Republicans essentially terrorists because they're goal is to more or less undermine society and let the rest burn. In their mind, as long as the rich stay rich and government is small, the rest of the consequences are irrelevant.
So as long as your politicians idealize profits at any expense, and not giving a shit about people, this is what you'll get. And, quite frankly, what you deserve.
Re:Thank god we have Ted Cruz (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny. I feel that environmental issues is political speak for putting money into pork projects like Solyndra.
Re:Balloons (Score:5, Insightful)
It can be mixed with something else. Water isn't chemically degraded when it's mixed into sewage, either, but you don't go drinking it. You need to separate it first - or just drink other water that's already pure, since it's cheaper to do that than to purify sewage. This is exactly what is happening in the helium market.
Re:Thank god we have Ted Cruz (Score:4, Insightful)
National parks have a fixed budget. For FY14 they only requested $2.6 billion dollars (an increase of $ 56.6 million dollars from last year). Even with this budget they had to lower their employment levels by 242 FTE (basically a labor force reduction of approximately 242 people). The NPS manages 84.4 million acres of protected lands spread across every state in the US. They existed since 1916 and their total operating budget is barely a blip on the radar inside a $3.8 trillion dollar budget. Since 42 national parks have or will soon have natural gas wells, it seems only fair that the national park system have some financial benefit from having to monitor these projects (Helium is extracted from natural gas, especially from states like Wyoming where the Grand Tetons are located).
Pork projects tend to be a short-term investment for the benefit of a very small region. Like a new bridge in Alaska, Light Industrial Zone (with only a single customer) in a southern state, a project to document the history of minority colleges in the deep south, or 22 very expensive fighter jets that the DOD says they don't need.
"Deficit reduction" actually means if we get 16 billion dollars of income from helium, we have 16 billion dollars to spend on anything we like before we reach that imaginary debt ceiling.
You didn't notice they used the term "deficit reduction" instead of "debt reduction". If it was for debt reduction then all the money would go towards the principal of debt already owed. This is not the case.
Re:Balloons (Score:3, Insightful)
> Out here in the Wild and Woolly World of America, we sell all sorts of dangerous things that can kill
> you if you breath them - we laugh at silly things like helium (and especially nitrous oxide). Hell son,
> we'll even sell you a gun.
all sorts of dangerous things, including guns are available just about everywhere in the world. Do you mean to imply people in other places do not use paints or glues? If so, then I certainly did not know that. Also, as far as drugs go, nitrous is pretty innocuous as long as you don't do something monumentally stupid (like doing it while driving, standing, or in ways that leave no air supply for your soon to be lifeless body), or decide that being safe to use means you can use it every single day for a few weeks or months (few amusing case studies on that about the very special people who went down that road)
> We can do things that nobody else in the frikk'in world can do.
> Like shut down the entire government over health care.
Entire what? I assure you the ENTIRE government is NOT shut down, just the "nonessential" stuff....you know, like everything that might benefit you or I. Anything that benefits politicians or their corperate masters are, most assuredly, still open for business as they are "Essential".
Health care is just the cover story, this is really just about making people hurt enough to remember who writes the checks and whose life and well-being is non-essential