We know everybody's just looking for a little good news today, but the column's not called Blessings Happened, y'know?
Officials will investigate whether or not the city of St. Pete violated its permitting when it dumped millions of gallons of partially treated wastewater into Tampa Bay last week in the wake of Tropical Storm Colin. Here's an idea: calculate the cost of such an investigation, multiply that by the number of weeks in summer, then multiply THAT by 20 or 30 years, then make that the budget for fixing the fucking system, because it doesn't seem inclined to fix itself.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Puerto Rican law attempting to restructure a significant portion of the territory's overwhelming $72 billion debt, saying that law conflicts with American law prohibiting governments below the federal level from enacting their own bankruptcy laws. Of course, Puerto Rico is for some reason specifically excluded from the critical restructuring protections of federal Chapter 9 bankruptcy law. So basically America invited Puerto Rico to a cookout, but won't let it have any Benefits Of Associating With America Burgers(tm), and when Puerto Rico said, "OK, that's no problem, we brought our own We'll Fix The Problem America Helped Create Hot Dogs(tm)," America slapped them out of Puerto Rico's hands and stomped them into the dusty turf and asked it how it got so hungry in the first place.
Scientists reported that the Earth's atmosphere has reached a point of greenhouse gas saturation where it will likely never fall below a carbon dioxide concentration of 400 parts per million — a level not seen since before recognizable humans walked the planet. "Who gives a shit, if it doesn't have anything to do with taxes or jobs," said somebody who apparently doesn't realize that doing jobs and dealing with taxes require breathable air.
And finally, maker of annoying bloated software Microsoft is buying annoying "social network for professionals" LinkedIn for $26 billion, ensuring that, when LinkedIn sends you yet another request to join someone's network when you don't know that person or even have a LinkedIn account to begin with, it'll freeze your computer as well as piss you off.
This article appears in Jun 9-16, 2016.
