Monday, February 16, 2009

Chevron Accuses Richard Cabrera Of Voodoo Economic In Ecuador

Professor Richard Cabrera, the economist who's estimates have served to frame the environmental damage terms of debate in the court battle between giant oil company Chevron and the coutry of Ecuador, has been accused of what could be called "Voodoo Economics" by the San Ramon-based firm.

In a damaging press release, Chevron write the following:

Despite an awareness of these fundamental defects, Cabrera’s amended assessment makes no effort to correct any prior mistakes and introduces a new series
of egregious errors, such as:

• Recommending more than $9 billion in damages associated with “excess cancer deaths” without identifying a single victim, let alone providing any corroborating documentation such as a death certificate or a medical diagnosis.
• Recommending more than $3 billion in damages associated with groundwater contamination
even though his own data clearly indicate no such contamination exists, and Cabrera
acknowledges that he has no basis for devising a remediation plan or developing a cost estimate.
Rather, Cabrera simply adopts plaintiffs’ counsel’s demands to assess damages and repackages
them as fact.
• Conceding that his work was conducted in such a fashion as to assign blame to Chevron instead
of performing an objective and unbiased scientific analysis of current environmental conditions,
as the court had ordered.

Their assertions continue and essentially build a case to attack Cabrera's work. But my charge has been it's almost impossible to find anything about Cabrera online, other than his work on the Ecuador lawsuit against Chevron, where the country is attempting to have the oil firm pay entirely for environmental damage that Ecuador itself is largely responsible for. In this matter, Cabrera has filed fraudulent economic report claims, making estimates of monetary damage costs without providing substantiated evidence to support his report findings.

Obama On The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2/14/09: Your Weekly Address

President Obama celebrates the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act while keeping his eyes on the tough road ahead.

(this video is public domain)

President Obama's NBA All-Star Game Message

From The White House:

President Obama discusses the importance of serving others in a message aired during the NBA All-Star Game halftime on February 15, 2009.

BART Shooting: BART Board Member James Fang's Views

Newspaper publisher and BART Board Member James Fang is much talked about but seldom talked to. At a BART Shooting meeting where he was accused of being racist, I talked to Fang about the matter of the BART shooting. We also talked about the racism charge, which Fang explains is a result of a "rogue" columnist at Asian Week, which Fang owned, and who wrote "Why I Hate Blacks"..and Whites and pretty much everyone but himself.