PNN 12/9/12 - FDP Chair Candidates

PNN - Dec 9 FDP Chair Candidates
=============================================

7:00-7:15 Rick's opening
7:10-7:15 : Introduce Pres. Sally Phillips,
                                1st VP Dr. Maureen McKenna
                                 Pres. Susan Smith
7:15-7:45 : Alan Clendenin
7:46-8:15 : Annette Taddeo-Goldstein
8:16-8:45 : Panelists Wrap up with explanation of the voting process;
8:50-9:00pm Rick's close

Invited Candidates:

Alan Clendenin - Hillsborough County DEC State Committeeman
Annette Taddeo-Goldstein - Miami-Dade DEC Chair
Allison Tant Richard - Leon DEC Chair (candidate)

The program will be hosted by:

Progressive News Network's Rick Spisak
Florida Democratic GLBT Caucus President Sally Phillips
Democratic Women's Club of Florida 1st Vice-President Dr. Maureen McKenna
President, Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida
President Susan Smith

========================================
1. Covering Obama’s Secret War
When drones strike, key questions go unasked and unanswered
n the spring of 2009, New York Times reporter David Rohde was being held captive by Taliban gunmen in a house in Waziristan, a mountainous region on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan. Aerial drones soared overhead, filling him and his kidnappers with a sense of dread, until one day, he later wrote, “Our nightmare had come to pass.” A drone fired missiles near their house, killing several militants on a road and terrifying people in the area. The house withstood the attack but, Rohde wrote, “the plastic sheeting covering the window hung in tatters.” He learned about the efficiency of the drones on that day and also saw the wrath they incurred: “My captors expressed more hatred for President Obama than for President Bush.”
Rohde is one of the only Americans to see the drones up close: not, it turned out, as a reporter, but as a prisoner. His first-hand perspective on the strike is rare, and the novelty of his reporting underscores the difficulties of covering this new kind of war, a remote-controlled campaign officially denied by the US government that is unfolding in a region where Pakistani officials have forbidden reporters to travel independently.
Journalists are struggling under these challenging circumstances. Even those reporting safely from afar have not succeeded in digging down to basic questions about drone attacks: How are targets chosen? Under what legal authority? How successful are drones in killing enemies and sparing civilians? Are the drones helping win the war against would-be terrorists?
War reporting is one of journalism’s highest callings, and for good reason: citizens need to know if battles are successful, and what the costs are in blood and money. But it is difficult to grasp the new war that Americans are fighting in Pakistan. As described by former US officials who participated, it is conducted not by military generals but by cia officers who are guiding drones from offices in Langley, Virginia, that kill people in a country with which the US is not at war.
“I think this is an issue that we—both as a profession of journalists and the public—have accepted without sufficient debate,” said Washington Post op-ed columnist David Ignatius, who often writes about the CIA and national security issues. “There is something about assassination from ten thousand feet that is more acceptable than it would be from one foot, by the bayonet.”
Indeed, the existence of this large-scale, secretive program that is designed to “neutralize” people has become one of the biggest and least understood stories of the Obama administration. Because it is hard for journalists to bear witness, it is difficult for citizens to get a clear picture of what is being done in their name.
Drone Strikes Ramp Up
President Barack Obama has authorized 193 drone strikes in Pakistan since he took office in 2009, more than four times the number of attacks that President George W. Bush authorized during his two terms, according to the New America Foundation, a Washington-based public-policy institute.
Unmanned aircraft became part of the US arsenal in the 1990s, as reconnaissance drones recorded images of terrain in the Balkans. After the September 2001 terrorist attacks, President Bush signed a directive that authorized arming the drones, called Predators, with Hellfire missiles to try to take out terrorism suspects, according to military officials. He later widened the directive to allow strikes against anyone working inside terrorist camps, not just individual suspects.
Today, according to military officials, the United States is running two drone programs: the military is in charge of drones in Afghanistan, where the country is officially at war; the cia, meanwhile, runs the drone program in Pakistan, an ally in the war in Afghanistan. The drone operations in Afghanistan are relatively straightforward and US officials routinely release information about the attacks. In Pakistan, where the CIA is running the show, the situation is different.

2. Oil Companies bribing Gulf Coast States
Recently, Gulf area legislators have been pushing to get their states a larger share of government income from offshore drilling. We’re told that they need the extra revenue to improve flood protection. But more is afoot here, and it deserves scrutiny.
First, here’s the background, from the Los Angeles Times:
Severe flooding from Hurricane Isaac has prompted a new effort by Gulf Coast lawmakers to secure a larger share of federal offshore drilling revenue to fund projects such as flood protection.
But the idea faces opposition from lawmakers who say it would siphon away money needed to pay Uncle Sam’s bills.
Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) stoked the debate this week by appealing to President Obama during his visit to the storm-battered area to support letting states share 37.5% of federal revenue from energy production off their coasts…..
Fair enough. But there’s a missing piece of this, about who benefits most. And it’s not the public.
Flood control work generates a ton of local income. It creates jobs. Channeling a larger share of the federal share of drilling income into the local area, you give residents a reason not to oppose continued drilling. Of course, these are the same people whose environment has been so badly harmed, perhaps permanently, by the risky practices of offshore production.
In other words, the very same people facing massive economic dislocation, the devastation of their ecosystem, and related chronic illness are being given a reason to put up with even more potential problems in the future.
Why shouldn’t the money from drilling go directly to the public to alleviate the harm done to it—and to develop alternative energy sources to reduce our dependency on the dangers increasingly associated with extraction of fossil fuels?
Actually, the region already gets plenty for harm remediation related to the BP spill.
One possible source of new money: the fines of as much as $21 billion that BP is expected to pay for the 2010 Gulf Coast oil spill. Congress recently voted to steer 80% of the penalties to Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to help restore coastal ecosystems and rebuild regional economies.
But Landrieu is seeking additional money from offshore drilling, noting that inland states such as Colorado and Wyoming receive about half the revenue from drilling on federal land. “Coastal states should receive a similar allotment so they can engage these funds in flood protection,” she said in a letter to Obama.
She is among a bipartisan group of lawmakers sponsoring legislation that would let states receive 37.5% of all federal offshore drilling revenue. The idea has gained the backing of pro-production lawmakers who see it as a way to build public support for expanded offshore energy exploration that would reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
There it is—in paragraph NINE. Should be in the first paragraph, and should be in the headline. Instead, it is buried under the bland headline
CONGRESSIONAL FORECAST: FIGHT OVER COASTAL FLOOD PROTECTION FUNDS
…which resulted in almost no one paying any attention to this story, dated September 6—and to what is really going on.
Of course, contrary to what the Los Angeles Times asserts, the real reason the lawmakers support the move is NOT their concern to reduce dependence on foreign oil. It is to increase our tolerance for risky domestic drilling.
If you doubt there’s more to it, consider who feathers Sen. Mary Landrieu’s nest. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the vast majority of her campaign contributions from 2007-2012 ($2.5 million) came from  law firms, lobbyists, and the oil & gas industry. Guess who is one of the biggest clients of law firms and lobbyists? The oil & gas industry. It’s a safe bet that without doing that industry’s bidding, Mary Landrieu is toast. So she has to promote measures like this that do harm to the public interest and produce more profits for the dominant industry in her area.
It’s not that Mary Landrieu is a good or a bad person, any more than any of her Gulf Coast colleagues, of both parties, who also support this move. It’s that the system is so dirty. And that the public doesn’t have a media that can afford to just tell it to us straight—in such a way as to make us care, and make us want to actually do something about it.
Bet that, without public understanding of what is at stake, the very people who have a reason to fight against more offshore drilling in the gulf will be out there arguing for it.

3. Progressive Journalists get off the record meeting with the White House
    TPM + KOS +
(Later Discussion on TPM - "What's the Big Deal with Drone Warfare?"
  on subscription only part of Website.

4. The Low Power FM Deception
In response to the recent decision by the Federal Communications Commission to expand the LPFM broadcast service based on the Local Community Radio Act of 2010


by Stephen Dunifer
Free Radio Berkeley
www.freeradio.org

Despite the well-intentioned efforts of organizations such as Prometheus Radio Project and Free Press to reform the media landscape, these efforts have only played into the hands of the government and the corporations who control it. This is the nature of reform, nothing more than a discussion about how to make the jail cell more comfortable - leaving intact the established relationships of power, control and finance. In the case of Prometheus Radio Project, they have fallen victim to their own historical revisionism, forgetting it was a national campaign of electronic disobedience (the Free Radio Movement) that forced the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to revisit the issue of low power community broadcasting. Hardly a gesture of beneficence from then FCC chairman William Kennard who began his legal career with a 1 year fellowship from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), assuming the role of assistant general counsel for the NAB shortly thereafter. Moving on from there, he made partner in a DC law firm (i.e. lobbyists) representing corporate communications interests prior to being appointed FCC Chairman by Bill Clinton in 1997. Currently, he is the Managing Director for the Global Telecom and Media Group of the Carlyle Group. It was Bill Clinton who signed the Telecommunications Deregulation Act of 1996, leading to an intense period of further media consolidation and control.

As a whole, the Free Radio Movement was not interested in a few crumbs off the table or an extremely thin slice of the pie -- it wanted the entire bakery! The airwaves belonged to the people and the people were going to take them back. Despite its own particular shortcomings, this movement, over a period of less than 10 years, was able to elevate the discussion of media ownership and control to both a national and an international level. Although it did not blossom into a movement until 1993, it owed much to the slightly earlier efforts of radio radicals such as Black Rose, Bill Dugan, Mbanna Kantako, and Tetsuo Kogawi. During this period, normally not well known academic authors and media critics such as Robert McChesney were finally able to find a national platform for their views on media consolidation.

With a history beginning in the early days of radio broadcasting, radio as a tool of popular liberation, struggle and expression has always been the instrument of choice whether as: a voice of US labor in the 1920's; part of the Resistance during WWII; an expression of the Bolivian tin miners' struggles in the 1950's; Radio Rebelde, the voice of the Cuban Revolution; radio ships blasting rock and roll into the British Isles when the BBC refused to play such music; the pirate radio explosion in Europe during the 1970's and 1980's; and, Radio Venceremos and Radio Farabundo Marti in El Salvador during the Central American “Dirty Wars” of the 1980's.

It was this spirit that attracted many individuals and communities to the Free Radio Movement. Although the campaign of electronic civil disobedience did not get really rolling until early 1995, when a Federal Judge refused the FCC's motion for a preliminary injunction to shut down Free Radio Berkeley, broadcasting stations started taking to air soon after Free Radio Berkeley received widespread publicity in 1993. Unlicensed FM radio broadcast station took to the airwaves across the breadth of the US and divergent areas such as: the traffic medians of Mexico City and Haitian Slums. From the beginning, Free Radio stations operated by communities of color received a rather disproportionate degree of enforcement action by the FCC.

Faced with a radio rebellion, the FCC and National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) responded with the expected heavy hand of repression – the NAB is considered to be the most powerful lobbying group in DC since their member control any given politician's face time in the media. For the FCC, this consisted of raiding stations and threatening the levying of high fines against anyone who had the temerity to believe that the airwaves belonged to the people. A laughably histrionic PR campaign was waged against the Free Radio Movement by the NAB – one claim being that the proliferation of unlicensed stations would literally cause airplanes to fall from the sky. To many, it seemed possible the NAB might consider the hiring of private mercenaries to deal with the situation if their PR efforts and the enlisting of local radio stations in an overall campaign against Free Radio Stations failed to stem the tide. During the course of their convention in 1998 where they were met with organized demonstrations for Free Speech on the airwaves, an NAB daily trade publication stated that they had originally considered one of the leaders of the Free Radio Movement to be just a minor annoyance, but in light of the protests on their doorstep in Las Vegas, he was now considered to be a major threat.

In fact, this sort of kick-down-the-doors, SWAT team mentality lead to the early retirement of the head of the San Francisco FCC field office during the mid 90's. He was perceived by his superiors at the FCC as being too much of a loose cannon. (Although, this did not prevent an actual multi-jurisdictional SWAT raid on the home of a Tampa Radio broadcaster, Doug Brewer.) Despite immense efforts and resources, both the FCC and NAB lost the PR battle, as far as the court of public opinion was concerned.

Most likely, cooler heads prevailed at the FCC who told the NAB to back off and allow them to handle the situation in a time tested manner – co-option. Given the trend, it was likely a full-fledged Federal Court victory would be given to the Free Radio Movement – almost achieved in the case against Free Radio Berkeley. A Waterloo moment the FCC sought to avoid at all costs.

Combining co-option with an another trusty tool, divide and conquer, the FCC announced that it would establish a Low Power FM (LPFM) broadcast service, but anyone who had been engaged in unsanctioned acts of broadcasting would not be eligible for a possible future LPFM license. In other words, go off the air now if you ever have any hope obtaining a license at some indeterminate point in the future. To be expected, quite a number of Free Radio folks responded with a resounding “F” you. Other stations went dark.

In typical fashion, the FCC created a rather difficult and costly (at least in terms of what it cost to set up a Free Radio Station - $1000 to $2000) LPFM license application process in 1999. Of course, the NAB got its Congress Critters (the lobbying probably carried out by the FCC Chairman's former law firm) to immediately to pass a bill ironically titled the The Broadcast Preservation Act of 1999. This bill severely curtailed the number of LPFM stations by imposing upon them harsher technical standards than were applied to non-LPFM stations – thus preventing any stations from being established in urban areas of any size.

Some former broadcasters (labeled pirate by both the FCC and NAB) decided to unfurl the Jolly Roger, sheath the broadswords and spike the cannons, seeking a less confrontational approach by organizing the Prometheus Radio Project to assist communities with the LPFM application process and station building. Unfortunately, they engaged in more than a modicum of historical revisionism in attempt to cast off their past and make themselves more appealing to funding organizations such as the Ford Foundation, who are more than skittish about “illegitimate activities”. These same foundations fund a number of so-called progressive voices, considered by a number of folks to be information gatekeepers.

According to the Prometheus narrative, the entire LPFM service, limited as it was, came about as a result of a reasonable and fair-minded FCC chairman William Kennard seeing the need for such a service. Given his corporate background, pigs were much more likely to fly. Such a narrative was a disservice and an affront to the many people, communities and their supporters and legal groups such as the National Lawyers Guild who had put so much on the line in the cause of Free Speech.

Unprepared to the handle the large number of LPFM applications, it took the FCC an inordinately long time to grant LPFM construction permits and licenses to community organizations who had managed to deal with the entire process. Several large national religious organizations contributed more than their fair share to the confusion by filing hundreds of what amounted to be bogus applications on behalf of local religious groups who had no idea what LPFM was or that someone else had filed in their name.

During this period much of the energy of the Free Radio Movement dissipated due to a number of factors. Engaging in media reform was more appealing and less risky than electronic civil disobedience. The established, progressive left never accepted the Free Radio Movement - concerned about image and offending Democrat Party associated foundations, the source of much of their funding. Being a rather diverse amalgam of anarchists, DIY punks, community activists, libertarians, 60's radicals and contrarians with very little in the way of funding and resources, the Free Radio Movement was not able to create a more evolved, comprehensive and unified strategy, moving beyond the more immediate aspects of putting FM broadcast stations on the air.

Despite these shortcomings, the Free Radio Movement made a number of significant contributions to the media landscape. One being the idea of sharing media content, specifically MP3 audio, via the internet several years prior to Napster and podcasting becoming household words. Instead of audio cassettes being mailed between radio stations, an audio content sharing website, Radio4all.net, was established to facilitate the sharing of radio programs. Radio4all.net is still going strong today with thousands of audio programs available for download. This ultimately led to the concept of the open publishing model being applied to all types of media – the basis for the Independent Media Centers. In collaboration with Wired magazine, some the first webcasts of live radio were made from the studios of Free Radio Berkeley. Finally, the first time a webcast had been made of a political protest occurred when live audio from a demonstration outside the Berkeley studios of KPFA in 1999 was relayed by a small FM transmitter supplied by Free Radio Berkeley to a nearby receiver feeding the audio to a computer audio server.

An embryonic LPFM service presented a number of challenges to the Free Radio Movement. Many folks felt this was a small victory but more concessions from the FCC should be demanded. During the commentary phase prior to the official launch of the LPFM broadcast service, the FCC received thousands of letters and such. From the point of view of the Free Radio Movement, if such a service was going to established, it would have to be totally non-commercial, locally owned and controlled and structured in a manner to be as financially and technically feasible as possible for grassroots organizations. Further, with the advent of digital TV (an 80 billion dollar give away of spectrum) looming on the horizon, a demand was made for the ultimate expansion of non-commercial FM broadcasting into VHF TV channels 5 and 6 (to be abandoned when the digital transition to UHF channels took place), thereby adding 60 new FM channels to the broadcast spectrum. Needless to say, this has yet to implemented – the phrase “a snowball's chance in hell” is appropriate.

A general consensus along with a good deal of grumbling emerged from the Free Radio Movement along the lines of - we will accept LPFM, but the war is not over. At that point, two divergent currents emerged. One being the folks who decided they would keep putting stations on the air no matter what and the other represented by the Prometheus Radio Project. A third wave consisted of people who held a more ecumenical position of maintaining the need for a continuing campaign of electronic civil disobedience while at the same time providing whatever assistance they could to communities who wished to engage in the LPFM process. If a few deserving communities could establish a voice with an LPFM station, then that was all for the greater good of media democracy and Free Speech.

The Prometheus Radio Project did their best to create a firewall between itself and the notion of electronic civil disobedience. Inherently, this is the genesis of the title of this article – the LPFM deception. It was a deception on a number of levels. By distancing themselves from civil disobedience the Prometheus Project deceived itself into thinking it could prevail on the policy level with out the threat of street heat. Instead it found itself in a protracted, decade long legislative struggle to expand the LPFM service. By what amounted to a legislative miracle, they did prevail with the passage of the Community Radio Act of 2010. As a result, the FCC will open the window for new LPFM applications in the Fall of 2013. In addition, in coalition with a number of other organizations, they were able to beat back an effort by the FCC for further media deregulation. Ultimately, their strategy may have worked, but at what cost?

By focusing primarily on the legislative level and achieving legitimacy, another deception has taken place - that being to limit the imaginative possibilities grassroots broadcasting offers. Imagine this, non-union workers are demonstrating outside of a Wall Mart armed with the usual picket signs, leaflet and megaphones. But wait, there are also large signs being held up at key points in the parking lot and entry points on nearby roads. These signs say “Tune to 87.9”. A transmitter has been set up nearby in a van or car to broadcast a continuously looping message at the frequency of 87.9 MHz – an electronic leaflet. Workers who are supportive can listen to the broadcast in the safety of their cars without risking their jobs by being seen by management taking a leaflet directly from the folks on the picket line. Drivers going by can tune to the station to hear about what is happening, hard to hand a physical leaflet to car going by at 35 MPH. Drive by Radio. This is one of many possibilities. Temporary stations pop up at community gatherings such as flea markets, concerts and farmers' markets. All schools, senior and community centers and libraries should have their own stations as well, an impossibility under the current regime imposed by the FCC.

Another not so obvious self-imposed deception concerns the exact nature of a broadcast license. At the most fundamental level, a license is a business law contract between an individual acting on his own behalf or on the behalf of an organization and the government agency issuing the license. It does not matter whether it is a fishing license, driver’s license or broadcasting license. Signing the license form is an implicit abandonment of normally protected rights and presumption of innocence. Possession of a broadcast license allows the FCC to regulate speech (the 7 dirty words), issue fines without any proof other than their say so and enter the station premises at any time without notice or search warrant. Further, fines and penalties cannot be adjudicated at a local Federal District Court. They must first be appealed through a serpentine process within the FCC itself prior to seeking any other legal remedy. After exhausting all administrative remedies within the FCC, the appeal process is then handed off to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Washington, DC – arguably one of the most conservative and reactionary court districts in the US. Needless to say, the FCC appeal process is an exhaustive and expensive journey. Individuals operating a Free Radio station without sanction or license retain their basic rights of Free Speech, presumption of innocence and protection from unlawful search and seizure – at least in theory with what is left of the Bill of Rights.

At another level, it is deceptive thinking to assume that what the FCC has offered us is the best that can be achieved. Yes, an additional 800 LPFM stations is a good thing, depending who ends up with licenses. The major issue of who owns the airwaves has yet to be resolved in any meaningful way, however. Leading to the more general question of who is going to control and own the Commons – the people or the corporations? The current chairman of the FCC is putting forth a proposal that would allow one corporation to own 8 radio stations, 2 TV stations, one newspaper and internet access in any given market area. By taking the strategy of electronic civil disobedience off of the table, the FCC, in relative peace, can continue to being a captive protector of the corporations it is supposed to regulate.

One could take the cynical position of radio broadcasting does not matter, being a legacy technology in this new era of internet information and such. But the reality is that if they come for my radio in the morning, they will come for your internet in the afternoon. Free Speech is anathema to the state and the corporations it serves. Remember, it was just recently proposed to give the White House an internet kill switch. Events taking place in the Middle East over the last few years demonstrate what happens when governments feel threatened by popular movements and revolt – they shut down the entire communications network, forcing a return to the use of legacy technologies such as fax, packet radio, dial-up ISPs, etc. Imagine the consequences if folks in those countries had had portable FM transmitters with laptop studios ready to go. All the various forms of communications do not exist in isolation from one another. They must be combined together to form a synergistic whole, as the Independent Media Centers have demonstrated, to achieve their full potential as a tools for personal and collective liberation.

While the potential addition of 800 or so new LPFM stations is to be welcomed, it remains to seen as to whether radical and grassroots communities will find a voice by this means. It is a matter that will require a high degree of organizing and the establishing of coalitions on an unprecedented level. Finally, one must avoid self-deception by not seeing LPFM as a final victory, but rather one battle of a continuing war for not only the broadcast airwaves but the entire Commons.

5. What are the T-Party Billionaires afraid of?
The great mystery of American politics, a mystery which no one in the world can fathom, not even most Americans, is why so much money, hot air and spittle is being spent on literally paralyzing the American political system and making it impossible, not just to negotiate solutions, but to even have an intelligent conversation about solving the problems facing everyone, everywhere today. For that is what the Tea Party is really about: making first thought, then negotiation, and finally action impossible.
What is all this sound and fury covering up?
In my opinion it has much to do with where contemporary globalization is leading, the forces that it is setting in motion, which for historically minded Americans could elicit a bit ofdèjá vu.
It seems to me that the globalization of today is in many ways similar on a world scale to the explosion of growth, power and sophistication of the US economy in the period after the Civil War, commonly called “The Gilded Age“. This was the period of the “robber barons” and viewed nostalgically by many of the American right as a paradise of anarcho-capitalism. This was a period of immense growth and innovation, but also one of enormous inequality, suffering and exploitation and financial crisis, all of it interpenetrated by an ubiquitous political corruption as the enormous new wealth so recently created set about purchasing and deforming to its benefit the institutions of American government: federal, state and local.
The excesses of the Gilded Age gave birth to a mass reform movement in the United States called, “Progressivism“. This movement, in a titanic struggle, bridging decades, among other things brought into effect: the regulation of interstate commerce, the breaking up of the monopolies known as “trusts“, laws regulating the purity of food and drugs, the rise of labor unions, laws eliminating child labor and in 1913, even progressive income tax, something which still causes intense indignation on the American ultra-right.
I would maintain that today the “Gilded Age” is happening on a global scale. The same viral growth and innovation; the same inequality, suffering and exploitation and financial crisis and similar corruption as rootless, multinational corporations evade much needed tax money and corrupt the political systems where they find themselves, world wide. And today we can add the more recent concerns for climate change and renewable energy.
Action and reaction, just as in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the grotesque abuses of the system brought forth a muscular reform movement to tame the beasts of the Gilded Age, today the feeling is growing all over the world that this new Gilded Age must also be brought under some sort of rational control and regulation. As the center of the world economic system, any general reform and regulation of globalization logically must begin in the United States of America.
That is what the one-percent are afraid of and that is why they fund and promote the paralysis of the American political system.
Just to show you the symmetry between the urge to reform one hundred years ago and to reform today, I’d ask you to take the trouble to read two texts, they are like the tiny samples taken to analyze DNA.
I’m sure you have heard about the terrible fire in a garment factory in Bangladesh a few days ago,which took the lives of over a hundred workers trapped in the blaze, (the color photo at the top of the page shows the aftermath) so the first text I’d like you to read, is about that tragedy:
(…) On the third floor, where firefighters later recovered 69 bodies, Ms. Pakhi was stitching sweater jackets for C&A, a European chain. On the fifth floor, workers were making Faded Glory shorts for Walmart. Ten bodies were recovered there. On the sixth floor, a man named Hashinur Rahman put down his work making True Desire lingerie for Sears and eventually helped save scores of others. Inside one factory office, labor activists found order forms and drawings for a licensee of the United States Marine Corps that makes commercial apparel with the Marines’ logo. In all, 112 workers were killed in a blaze last month that has exposed a glaring disconnect among global clothing brands, the monitoring system used to protect workers and the factories actually filling the orders. After the fire, Walmart, Sears and other retailers made the same startling admission: They say they did not know that Tazreen Fashions was making their clothing.(…) David Hasanat, the chairman of the Viyellatex Group, one of the country’s most highly regarded garment manufacturers, pointed out that global apparel retailers often depend on hundreds of factories to fill orders. Given the scale of work, retailers frequently place orders through suppliers and other middlemen who, in turn, steer work to factories that deliver low costs — a practice he said is hardly unknown to Western retailers and clothing brands. The order for Walmart’s Faded Glory shorts, documents show, was subcontracted from Simco Bangladesh Ltd., a local garment maker. “It is an open secret to allow factories to do that,” Mr. Hasanat said. “End of the day, for them it is the price that matters.” New York Times
A little over a hundred years ago something almost identical happened in the USA. You probably know about it, but read the following text to refresh your memory and to compare it with the Bangladesh tragedy:
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York and resulted in the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history. It was also the second deadliest disaster in New York City – after the burning of the General Slocum on June 15, 1904 – until the destruction of the World Trade Center 90 years later. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrant women aged sixteen to twenty-three; of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was Providenza Panno at 43, and the youngest were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and “Sara” Rosaria Maltese. Because the managers had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits – a common practice at the time to prevent pilferage and unauthorized breaks – many of the workers who could not escape the burning building jumped from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors to the streets below. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers. (emphasis mine)Wikipedia
The only real difference between the two fires is that today the money is not bringing poor immigrant women to America to do the sewing, they are sending the sewing out to poor women in their home countries.
The text I put into bold type, the reforms the Triangle fire produced, is the key, the symbol, to explain the energy and funds behind the Tea Party’s mostly successful struggle against rational thought in the USA today.
It is easy to imagine that we will be seeing more and more incidents like these sweatshop fires, some of them may cause thousands of deaths, pollute the atmosphere or spread disease in much the same way that the financial crisis that began in the USA has spread around the world. Today, unless the world cooperates to regulate, what goes around, comes around.
Now it happens that there is only one state in the whole world that is still, for the moment at least, potentially powerful enough to be able to bring this situation under some sort of control at home and abroad, and this state is in theory a democracy that is elected by its citizens to serve them.
That state is, of course, the United States of America.
Now, for the state apparatus of the United States of America to bring the situation under control in America and to a great extent around the world, all the branches of the state, executive, legislative and judiciary would have to be in nearly total alignment, as they were during World War Two.
Keeping that from happening, paralyzing the political system, with racism and paranoia so that unity is entirely unthinkable except around “supporting our troops” to defend the “homeland” against the threat of “terrorism” is what the Tea Party movement and every move of Fox and Kochs is about.
So that is what it is really all about: it is about not legislating and not getting things done… to paralyze the government of the United States of America at a critical time in its history and the history of the world at large. To prevent the system from flushing itself out and regenerating itself. To cut the wires of the burglar alarms so they can sack the house, the house of everyone in the world, in peace. Their peace.
Cross posted from: http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com

6. War brewing on the latest front line against terrorism in Mali
BAMAKO, Mali — The next war against terrorism is taking shape in this West African country, as African nations backed by the United States and France are readying a force to recapture Mali’s north from extremists linked to al-Qaeda and prevent another haven for jihadists from taking root on the continent.
But whether a military intervention can defuse such a complex crisis remains in doubt. Mali’s transitional government, installed after a military coup earlier this year, is weak and lacks legitimacy. Its poorly equipped army is in disarray.
African and Western powers are already in disagreement over the timing and goals of a military strike. Also unclear is whether regional African forces are strong enough to defeat well-armed militants in desert terrain the size of Texas without help on the ground from Western armies.
Johnnie Carson, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, said this week that “the military concept proposes an Africa-led effort, but several key questions must be answered to ensure that this effort is also well-planned and well-resourced.”
Nevertheless, after months of hesitation, the momentum for a military intervention has surged in the region and among Western powers, as the radical Islamists and al-Qaeda militants have deepened their grip over the north.
Analysts and U.N. officials say that any military strike is still months away, but the United States and France are playing an active diplomatic role in it and encouraging African nations to take the lead — a model used most recently in Somalia, where Islamist radicals also seized much of the country. Last month, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) approved a 3,300-member force for northern Mali.
Thousands of Malians have fled to this capital to escape the Islamists’ brutal rule, and many say military action is the only way to liberate the north. “It’s the only solution,” said Aziz Maiga, a 27-year-old rapper who recently left the north. “Negotiating with the Islamists will not work.”
The American role has intensified since U.S. officials implicated al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb — the terrorism network’s North and West Africa affiliate known as AQIM — in the September assault on a U.S. mission in Libya that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. AQIM is one of the three major groups that now control northern Mali.
In a telephone interview, a senior Islamist leader denounced the United States, declaring that its people are “against Islam” and that superstorm Sandy was “a punishment from God.”
“If the Western countries send troops, that will be fine. We are prepared for war,” said Oumar Ould Hamaha, the military leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, known as MUJWA, which is an offshoot of AQIM. “If they don’t come here, one day we will attack them. If we cannot do this in our time, our sons and the next generation will attack the West.”
Coalitions and factions
This landlocked former French colony, much of it in the Sahara Desert, is one of the world’s poorest countries despite an abundance of natural resources, including gold and uranium.
Long before the seizure of northern Mali, AQIM kidnapped Westerners and operated a drug pipeline to Europe and other criminal enterprises to finance its operations.
In March, the group and other radical Islamists joined forces with secular Tuareg separatists, angered by decades of political marginalization and neglect by the central government. They overran the north, taking advantage of a power vacuum that followed the military coup in Mali’s capital, Bamako, in March
The Islamists then seized control from the Tuareg rebels. They imposed Islamist sharia law on a moderate Muslim population and began enforcing it with public beatings, amputations, stonings and prison sentences.
Initially, there were two main groups of extremists — AQIM and Ansar Dine, or “defenders of the faith,” which is led mostly by Malian hard-liners and linked to AQIM. But by September, MUJWA — which splintered from AQIM late last year — seized significant territory. Despite their differences, all three groups remain loosely linked. They have been joined by some fighters from Boko Haram, an Islamist force in Nigeria, according to the United Nations, Malian and regional African military officials.
French President Francois Hollande recently cited intelligence that some French Muslims had joined the jihadists and could perpetrate terrorist acts upon their return to France. Mali’s neighbors are also worried about radical Islamists spilling across their borders.
“They have killed so many of our soldiers, our sons,” said Sadou Diallo, the former mayor of Gao who fled to Bamako. “They have abused our sisters. They have destroyed 50 years of development in the north.”

7. Turnout unusually high among Democratic officials for committeman vote that saw Ramos beat former party chairman Siegel
Elected officials tend to have finely calibrated Geiger counters to detect and avoid any hint of political radiation, so it’s not surprising they were among the biggest supporters of Palm Beach County Democratic State Committeeman John Ramos’ reelection bid last week against former county chairman and end-times controversialist Mark Alan Siegel.
The normally low-profile race for committeeman drew a remarkable 88.5 percent turnout at Thursday’s Democratic Executive Committee meeting, with 254 of 287 eligible voters casting ballots. By comparison, only 227 people voted earlier in the evening for the more visible position of county chair, which Terrie Rizzo won.
Siegel was the face of the county party for nearly four years. But Siegel, who is Jewish, was pressed to resign in September after he told a conservative website during the Democratic National Convention that pro-Israel fundamentalist Christians “just want us to be there so we can all be slaughtered and converted and bring on the second coming of Jesus Christ.”
Siegel apologized for the remarks the next day. He recently told the Politics column that his September words were “talking about the end of days, not next week. … I did not say, would not say, didn’t believe then, don’t believe now that any Christians want to slaughter any Jews.”
In the committeeman race, Ramos got 128 votes to 87 for Siegel and 39 for Irving Rosenthal. While Ramos beat Siegel by a comfortable margin, he barely avoided a runoff. Party rules require a majority for election. So Ramos needed exactly the 128 he got to win outright.
Local elected Democrats voting in person or by proxy were a key for Ramos. All five Democratic county commissioners — Shelley Vana, Mary Lou Berger, Paulette Burdick, Priscilla Taylor and Jess Santamaria — backed Ramos. So did Tax Collector Anne Gannon, Public Defender Carey Haughwout, state Sen. Joseph Abruzzo, state Reps. Lori Berman, Kevin Rader, Bobby Powell and Irving Slosberg and Port of Palm Beach Commissioners George Mastics, Wayne Richards and Jean Enright.
Elected Dems who supported Siegel included U.S. Rep.-elect Lois Frankel, Clerk and Comptroller Sharon Bock, and Port Commissioner Blair Ciklin.
U.S. Rep.-elect Patrick Murphy voted by proxy for Rosenthal.

8. BBC -
Fukushima fish still contaminated from nuclear accident
Levels of radioactive contamination in fish caught off the east coast of Japan remain raised, official data shows.
It is a sign that the Dai-ichi power plant continues to be a source of pollution more than a year after the nuclear accident.
About 40% of fish caught close to Fukushima itself are regarded as unfit for humans under Japanese regulations.
The respected US marine chemist Ken Buesseler has reviewed the data in this week's Science journal.
He says there are probably two sources of lingering contamination.
"There is the on-going leakage into the ocean of polluted ground water from under Fukushima, and there is the contamination that's already in the sediments just offshore," he told BBC News.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
With these results it's hard to predict for how long some fisheries might have to be closed”
Prof Ken Buesseler WHOI
"It all points to this issue being long-term and one that will need monitoring for decades into the future."
Prof Buesseler is affiliated to the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
His evaluation covers a year's worth of data gathered by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF).
Its monthly records detail the levels of radioactive caesium found in fish and other seafood products from shortly after the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami - the double disaster that triggered the Fukushima crisis.
The caesium-134 and 137 isotopes can be traced directly to releases from the crippled power station.
MAFF uses the information to decide whether certain fisheries along five east-coast prefectures, including Fukushima, should be opened or closed (it is not a measure of contamination in actual market fish).
 The data is used to decide when fisheries should be opened or closed
The caesium does not normally stay in the tissues of saltwater fish for very long; a few percent per day on average should flow back into the ocean water. So, the fact that these animals continue to display elevated contamination strongly suggests the pollution source has not yet been completely shut off.
He notes that although caesium levels in any fish type and on any day can be highly variable, it is the bottom-dwelling species off Fukushima that consistently show the highest caesium counts.
For the WHOI researcher, this points to the seafloor being a major reservoir for the caesium pollution.
"It looks to me like the bottom fish, the fish that are eating, you know, crabs and shellfish, the kinds of things that are particle feeders - they seem to be increasing their accumulation of the caesium isotopes because of their habitat on the seafloor," he explained.
Prof Buesseler stresses however that the vast majority of fish caught off the northeast coast of Japan are fit for human consumption.
And while the 40% figure for unsafe catch in the Fukushima prefecture may sound alarming, the bald number is slightly misleading.
Last April, the Japanese authorities tried to instil greater market confidence by lowering the maximum permitted concentration of radioactivity in fish and fish products from 500 becquerels per kilogram of wet weight to 100 Bq/kg wet.
This tightening of the threshold immediately re-classified fish previously deemed fit as unfit, even though their actual contamination count had not changed.
It is also worth comparing the Japanese limit with international standards. In the US, for example, the threshold is set at 1,200 Bq/kg wet - significantly more lenient than even the pre-April Japanese requirement.
And Prof Buesseler makes the point that some naturally occurring radionuclides, such as potassium-40, appear in fish at similar or even higher levels than the radioactive caesium.
Nonetheless, the contamination question is a pertinent one in the Asian nation simply because its people consume far more fish per head than in most other countries.
"At one level, there shouldn't be any surprises here but on another, people need to come to grips with the fact that for some species and for some areas this is going to be a long-term issue; and with these results it's hard to predict for how long some fisheries might have to be closed," said the WHOI scientist.
Prof Buesseler, with Japanese colleagues, is organising a scientific symposium in Tokyo on 12/13 November to present the latest thinking on Fukushima and its impacts on the ocean. The information will then be shared with the public in a free colloquium on 14 November


9.Almost half of Fukushima children now have thyroid disorders from radiation poisoning, officials blame 'too much seafood'

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038185_Fukushima_children_thyroid_disorders.html#ixzz2Eb3bsHpX

NaturalNews) Not much information comes out of Japan about Fukushima anymore, and the American MSM seems to have forgotten what watered down reporting they had done earlier. But the human suffering has begun in Japan, and even the Japanese government is trying to pretend it's not happening.

The curtain is pulled over the total impact of this disaster to protect the nuclear power industry. The government and media blackout has become known as "plume gate" for the radioactive plume that was released from the Fukushima mishap. (http://www.naturalnews.com/035789_Fukushima_Cesium-137_Plume-Gate.html)

The Fukushima reactors were designed by General Electric, and 23 reactors of the USA's 104 operating reactors are very similar to Fukushima's. Lately, awareness of nuclear power's pitfalls is growing and casting a shadow on nuclear power's illegitimate

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038185_Fukushima_children_thyroid_disorders.html#ixzz2Eb3mrInL

The suffering has already begun
Thousands of Japanese children from Fukushima and the nearby areas have been diagnosed with cysts and nodules on their thyroid glands. So far, 41.1 percent of 57,000 tested have shown these early warnings of potential thyroid cancer.

Even worse, four out of five Fukushima evacuees have been observed with developing thyroid abnormalities. It's not just iodide isotopes with their relatively short radioactive half-lives that can penetrate thyroid glands, cesium-37 isotopes with longer half-lives can too. Here's the shocking truth about radioactive half-life. (http://www.lbl.gov/abc/Basic.html#Half)

However, the official medical line from the head of this research is that maybe they've eaten too much seafood or taken too much iodine. It's also an official decree that the testing be stopped before it begins in other areas of Japan.

Even in Tokyo, doctors are reporting dramatically increased incidents of incurable diarrhea, non-stop nose bleeds, and flu-like symptoms. Some parents are becoming activists in Japan to get at the truth and get their children treated properly. Children are more easily affected by radiation poisoning.

A Japanese pediatrician even put out a YouTube video asking for outside help since the Japanese government is not helping as they should. (http://enenews.com)

Dr. Christopher Busby, visiting professor at the University of Ulster's School of Biomedical Sciences and Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk put out this video about Fukushima. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdvfsBsXNS4)

He's been attacked. But as a saying goes: "You know you're getting close to the target when you're getting flack." Here's Busby's counter attack: http://fukushimaupdate.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038185_Fukushima_children_thyroid_disorders.html#ixzz2Eb3xd2Pr



10. VOTING BLAME GAME - by Sen. Dan Gelber
It is the theatre of the absurd to watch the Republicans in the legislature and the Governor try to affix blame for Florida’s election fiasco on someone other than themselves. Today they went after election supervisors who they claim didn’t provide enough capacity to process voters. Let’s be clear, while election supervisors might have done more to accommodate voters, they were without authority to prevent the voter suppression that was purposefully and willfully committed by the Republican Legislature and Governor Scott. The facts and run up to the 2012 election prove that point convincingly…

Prior to the 2008 election, the Republican legislature tried to limit early voting to 96 hours over a 14 day period, and to only city halls and libraries. Democrats hollered that the limitations on hours each day (8) and locations would cause long lines but the Republicans defeated all amendments trying to enlarge the time and places for early voting.

The result:  lines were so long during the 2008 election that in the middle of early voting Governor Crist issued an executive order expanding early voting to 12 hours each day (for a total of 120 hours). If you remember, even with Crist’s expansion there were still long lines, some around the block in many communities.

The Legislature knew exactly who the early voters were because it had commissioned a study after the election. http://www.flsenate.gov/Committees/InterimReports/2011/2011-118ee.pdf . The Legislature’s study showed that 52% of the early voters in 2008 were Democrats and only 30% were Republicans.

So armed with the knowledge that more Democrats voted early, and knowing full well that 120 hours was insufficient, the Republican Legislature and the Governor again limited early voting in advance of the 2012 election, this time to 48-96 hours over 8 days. They limited locations to only city halls and libraries and forbid early voting the last Sunday before the election (a popular voting day for African American churches). Again Democrats hollered that the limitations would cause long lines, but Republicans defeated amendments to the election bill that would have expanded hours and days and allowed more locations for early voting.

The sponsors of the bill claimed it was necessary because of “fraud” in early voting. Of course there is no evidence of even insignificant fraud in early voting and the claim was an outright lie. Yes, a lie.

The legislature also put on the ballot 11 constitutional amendments, many of which had multiple parts. Rather than use short descriptions of the amendments, the legislature made the summaries as long as possible (some up to 600 words) ensuring that any conscientious voter would have to spend inordinate time to actually vote.

So, the resulting voting delays were not simply predictable, they were intended by a legislature and governor who had all the facts necessary to know precisely what there law would do. There is no blaming anyone else. This was done for the singular purpose of making it harder to vote for people who the Republican legislature believed tended to vote for Democrats. Case closed.

===============================================================
Candidate Questions

PNN 12/2/2012 - Show Files

DEC 2nd PNN
----------------

Dr Bob Bowman       7:10-7:25pm
Space Coast Progressive Alliance

Rebecca Marques     7:26-7:45pm
Oceana

Matthew Schwartz     7:46-7:59pm
– Wildlands

Drew Martin               8:00-8:15pm
P. Bch Soil & Water Conservation Brd

Phil Compton             8:16-8:30pm
Sierra Club
==============================

Lighted Sign Revealed
at Lake Worth Holiday Wonderland Bears
 Message for Lame Duck Congressman:  
“West, Don’t be a Tax Cut Grinch”
At Lake Worth’s Holiday Wonderland, the crowd chuckled and clapped as local constituents   revealed a lighted “holiday” message for their lame duck congressman - West Don’t Be A Tax Cut Grinch. The activist, with the group StandUp Florida, emphasized that extending the middle class tax cuts averaging $2,200 per family is the holiday assurance people need that they can make ends meet in the New Year.    
The activists said the re-election of President Obama and defeat of Allen West was a clear mandate of the economic policy people want locally and nationally.  The President has called for extending middle class tax cuts and increasing taxes on the very wealthy. The constituents are calling on West to vote the will of the people as fiscal cliff negotiations continue in the lame duck Congress.
"Donald Trump doesn’t have to go to door buster sales in the middle of the night or worry about free shipping to be sure his family members receive a gift. But, the middle class do. We need the middle class tax cuts, it creates local jobs and keeps the economic recovery going,” said Carole Fields, a Palm Beach School System retiree.  
“It is not common to have political messages at holiday events, but this is important” said Louis Porteous, a local resident .  “We are trying to get the point across in a cheerful way to let people know what is at stake.  If the richest Americans pay a fair share of their income in taxes again, they will be doing their part to reduce the deficit.  If they don’t we could end up with a budget deal that cuts vital services people count on -- Medicare, Medicaid, childcare – resulting in job loses right here in our community. “
Petitions were circulated through the crowd for signature, which will be delivered to West’s office at a later date to get the point across.  Flyers were distributed with an 800 number requesting attendees they call their congressman on Wednesday (Dec. 5) about extending the middle class tax cuts.
Based on the crowd reaction the group said they will attend other events with the sign, so stay tuned for the where the fiscal cliff Grinch will be next.

A 14-year-old Afghan girl was beheaded and killed in an attack by two men, one of whom apparently asked her to marry him.
The attack happened Tuesday, a day before new legislation was introduced in Congress calling on the U.S. government to take steps to help protect Afghan women and girls as the U.S. military prepares to exit Afghanistan.
Gasitina, a student, was beheaded in the Imam Sahib district of Kunduz province. The attack was initially reported by local media, and was confirmed by Amnesty International researcher Horia Mosadiq in an email.
The girl was fetching water when she was accosted, according to reports. The men, who have not been identified, were arrested by police. The girl and her parents had refused a marriage proposal by one of the men, according to the Amnesty International report.
This was the 15th deadly attack on a female victim in Kunduz in 2012, the human rights organization said.
"Amnesty International is very concerned about the violations against women in Afghanistan," said Cristina Finch, director of the organization's Women's Human Rights program.
Amnesty reported a similar incident in October, when a young woman was murdered and her throat slashed. In that case, the woman apparently refused to work as a prostitute.
Although it appears such attacks are increasing in frequency, it may be that the world outside Afghanistan is just beginning to hear about them, Finch said.
On Wednesday, Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican from Texas, introduced the Afghan Women and Girls' Security Promotion Act. If passed in its current form, the bill addresses how women's security will be monitored as the U.S. military withdraws from the country.
The bill also calls for improved gender sensitivity among Afghanistan's national security forces and recruitment of women within the ranks of those forces.
Amnesty International USA's executive director Suzanne Nossel applauded Casey and Hutchison for introducing the bill.
"As the United States military transitions out of Afghanistan, Afghan women's human rights continue to be at grave risk and demand urgent attention," Nossel said in a statement. "The fate of women will be a crucial determinant of that country's prospects for a stable and prosperous future."
In a report on Afghan violence against women, Amnesty International wrote that one of the justifications of the U.S. military going into the country in 2001 was to ensure the protection of human rights, including women's rights.
"More than 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban, modest advances have been made for girls and women in Afghanistan," the report said. "But much remains to be done. Peace talks between the Taliban, Afghan government and the U.S. jeopardize even these modest gains as the U.S. searches for a quick exit."

*********************************************************************************
DOGGETT AND THOMASBURGER WILL ALSO REVIEW “THE NEW JIM CROW” ON
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 7 P.M.at
  First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Palm Beaches, 635
Prosperity Farm Rd, North Palm Beach 33408
******************************************************************************************************************************************************************

OCCUPY FORT LAUDERDALE LABOR OUTREACH group - Unitarian Universalist
Church of Ft Lauderdale, 3970 NW 21st Avenue, Oakland Park 33309


AND MARK YOUR CALENDAR – SUNDAY, JAN 13. UUCFL -

What Would Martin Luther King, Jr. Do And What Will You Do -  In 2013?

Commemorate Dr King’s Commitments-Sunday, January 13, 2013
Unitarian Universalist Church of Ft Lauderdale
3970 NW 21st Avenue, Oakland Park 33309

11 A.M. - Sunday Service
Sermon: Dr. King On Peace, Internationalism, Militarism
Judith Le Blanc, of Peace Action - the nation’s largest grassroots peace group

Occupy Fort Lauderdale Labor Outreach
After Lunch - 12:50 – 4 P.M.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
ECONOMIC JUSTICE,  FORECLOSURES • HOMELESSNESS • MASS INCARCERATION • PEACE

GROUP SINGING led by PINK SLIP

Open Mik - Add your Activist Group's Message

Activist groups are invited to TABLE
Contact ragmando@gmail.com

Everyone is invited to FINISH THE PLANNING and PITCH  IN
Contact bob@benderworld.com – 954-531-1928


The NYT has a long study on subsidies for profitable companies. Please explain to me why for profit companies needs subsidies .
Instead of giving grants, at least get an equity in the company.

What the NYT highlighted is that the companies take them and than leave the state or local region. It is not a surprise.

Therefore, the jobs they are supposed to bring did not happen......

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/01/us/government-incentives.html#FL

Florida
Florida spends at least $3.98 billion per year on incentive programs, according to the most recent data available. That is roughly:
        $212
per capita
        16¢
per dollar of state budget
        Top Incentives by type
    .    $3.66 billion in Sales tax refund, exemptions or other sales tax discounts
    .    $108 million in Cash grant, loan or loan guarantee
    .    $102 million in Corporate income tax credit, rebate or reduction
        Top Incentives by industry
    .    $142 million in Agriculture
    .    $83.9 million in Film
    .    $43 million in Manufacturing
    .    GRANTS TO COMPANIES (1,804)
    .    STATE PROGRAMS (43)

Drone Crashes At Civilian Airports Are Rising
Posted: 01 Dec 2012 05:00 PM PST

Don't worry, the defense contractors who make drones will cover up enough of these reports to make their widespread civilian use seem like a fine idea!
An inexperienced military contractor, operating by remote control in shorts and a T-shirt from a trailer at Seychelles International Airport, committed blunder after blunder during a six-minute span April 4.
The pilot of the unarmed MQ-9 Reaper drone took off without permission from the control tower. One minute later, he yanked the wrong lever at his console, killing the engine without realizing why.
As he tried to make an emergency landing, he forgot to put down the wheels. The $8.9 million aircraft belly-flopped on the runway, bounced and then plunged into the tropical waters at the airport’s edge, according to a previously undisclosed Air Force accident investigation report.
The drone crashed at a civilian airport that serves a half-million passengers a year, most of them sun-seeking tourists. No one was hurt, but it was the second Reaper accident there in five months — under eerily similar circumstances.
“I will be blunt here,” an Air Force official at the scene told investigators afterward. “I said, ‘I can’t believe this is happening again.’ ” He added: “You go, ‘How stupid are you?’ ”
The April wreck was the latest in a rash of U.S. military drone crashes at overseas civilian airports in the past two years. The accidents reinforce concerns about the risks of flying the robot aircraft outside war zones, including in the United States.
A review of thousands of pages of unclassified Air Force investigation reports, obtained by The Washington Post under public-records requests, shows that drones flying from civilian airports have been plagued by setbacks.
Among the problems repeatedly cited are pilot error, mechanical failure, software bugs in the “brains” of the aircraft and poor coordination with civilian air-traffic controllers.
On Jan. 14, 2011, a Predator drone crashed off the Horn of Africa while trying to return to an international airport next to a U.S. military base in Djibouti. It was the first known accident involving a Predator or Reaper drone near a civilian airport. Predators and Reapers can carry satellite-guided missiles and have become the Obama administration’s primary weapon against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Since then, at least six more Predators and Reapers have crashed in the vicinity of civilian airports overseas, including other instances in which contractors were at the controls.
The mishaps have become more common at a time when the Pentagon and domestic law-enforcement agencies are pressing the Federal Aviation Administration to open U.S. civil airspace to surveillance drones.
The FAA permits drone flights only in rare cases, citing the risk of midair collisions. The Defense Department can fly Predators and Reapers on training and testing missions in restricted U.S. airspace near military bases.
The pressure to fly drones in the same skies as passenger planes will only increase as the war in Afghanistan winds down and the military and CIA redeploy their growing fleets of Predators and Reapers.

1. DHS to Double US Drone Fleet
By Trevor Timm, Electronic Frontier Foundation
22 November 12

Despite renewed criticism from both parties in Congress that domestic drones pose a privacy danger to US citizens - and a report from its own Inspector General recommending to stop buying them - the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has indicated it wants to more than double its fleet of Predator drones used to fly surveillance missions inside the United States.
Yesterday, California Watch reported that DHS signed a contract that could be worth as much as $443 million with General Atomics for the purchase up to fourteen additional Predator drones to fly near the border of Mexico and Canada. Congress would still need to appropriate the funds, but if they did, DHS' drone fleet woud increase to twenty-four.
While many people may think the US only flies Predator drones overseas, DHS has already spent $250 million over the last six years on ten surveillance Predators of its own. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) - a division of DHS - uses the unmanned drones inside the U.S. to patrol the borders with surveillance equipment like video cameras, infrared cameras, heat sensors, and radar.
They say the drones are vital in the fight to stop illegal immigrants, but as EFF reported in June, the DHS Inspector General issued a report faulting DHS for wasting time, money, and resources using drones that were ineffective and lacked oversight. The Inspector General chastised the agency for buying two drones last year despite knowing these problems and recommended they cease buying them until the problems could be fixed.
Perhaps worse, DHS is also flying Predator drone missions on behalf of a diverse group of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies for missions beyond immigration issues. We know they have lent the drones out to the county sheriff's department in North Dakota and the Texas Rangers, among others, but unfortunately, we don’t know the full extent DHS lending program. DHS, as is their custom, is keeping that information secret.
In response, last month EFF sued DHS under the Freedom of Information Act demanding answers about how and why it loans out its Predator drones to other law enforcement agencies across the country. EFF's lawsuit asks for the records and logs of CBP drone flights conducted in conjunction with other agencies.
These drones pose a multitude of privacy concerns to all Americans, as the Congressional Research Service (Congress’ non-partisan research arm) detailed in this comprehensive report on domestic drones and the Fourth Amendment. The report explains drones can be equipped with, among other capabilities, facial recognition technology, fake cell phone towers to intercept phone calls, texts and GPS locations, and in a few years, will even be able to see through walls.
Despite these concerns, DHS has not publicly issued any privacy rules to make sure drones do not spy on US residents in border states going about their daily lives. In fact, at a Congressional hearing on the subject, DHS refused to send anyone to testify, leading both parties to criticize their absence.
This is even more troubling given DHS is also leading the push to get local police agencies to purchase their own drones by handing out $4 million to agencies to “facilitate and accelerate” their use. The FAA estimates as many as 30,000 drones could be flying over US territory by the end of the decade.
The booming drone industry, which has announced a PR campaign in an attempt tamp down the public’s privacy concerns, is quick to point out that these police drones - which cost anywhere from under $100,000 to $1 million - are smaller than Predators and do not have the same flight time, so police would not be able to surveil Americans for hours or days at a time like Predator drones could. Yet as the technology advances rapidly and becomes cheaper every year, smaller drones will soon be able to fly for an extended time period as well.
For example, Lockhead Martin has developed a drone that weighs only 13.2 pounds, well within the FAA’s domestic weight limits, and can be recharged by a laser on the ground, allowing it remain in the air indefinitely.
Several members of Congress have commendably introduced bills that would protect the privacy of Americans and increase transparency surrounding their use. These members, who voted for increased drone use in February but have recently expressed second thoughts, should call DHS representatives before Congress to explain their position. The American people deserve answers about to whom Homeland Security is loaning its drones, how DHS plans on protecting Americans’ privacy, and why they even need any more, given they are misusing the drones they already have.

2. Pentagon officer gets restraining order against anti-drone activists
A US military commander has received a court order to keep a group of anti-drone activists at a distance, thereby suppressing criticism by preventing peace advocates from protesting in front of the military base where he works.
­The Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, located near Syracuse, NY, has an area where nonviolent protesters can demonstrate on a weekly basis. After anti-drone protesters repeatedly came to the base and vocalized their opinions on what they call President Obama’s “program of murder,” a lieutenant colonel at the base received a court order banning 17 peace activists from coming anywhere near him – even though some of them don’t know who he is.
The order came after the group protested in front of the entrance to the base in late October. The 17 individuals who remained in place when police told them to move were charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct – and were banned from nearing Lieutenant Colonel Earl A. Evans.
Under the order, the activists will be arrested and could face up to seven years in prison if they demonstrate anywhere near Evans – even if they are in the permitted demonstration area near the base, according to David Swan, anti-war activist and owner of the website warisacrime.org. They are also prohibited from going anywhere near the man’s home or school, the addresses of which are unknown to them. Not knowing what to avoid, the activists could very well accidentally stumble upon the places from which they are now banned.
The temporary protection order for the colonel also forbids protesters from assaulting, stalking, harassing, harming, touching, intimidating, and threatening Evans and his family. Swan believes this order is simply an attempt to silence the activists, since they have allegedly never even had an encounter with Evans.
“This looks to me like an outrageous court action to block us from using First Amendment rights to comply with international law,” said Elliott Adams, one of the protesters. “We’ve been arrested a number of times blocking one of the entrances to Hancock Air National Guard Base while trying to serve an indictment to the base for violation of international law with the drones operated from the base.”
Prior to the court order, officials at the Hancock Field have used other methods to keep concerned citizens out of sight and away from their entrance.
“Some friends of mine have gotten arrested more times than I can count now for the offense of protesting drone use outside Hancock Air Field,” Swan wrote for the online publication Dissident Voice. “Often they’ve been aware of the risk of being arrested. But they’ve gone into court and argued that the larger crime is being committed inside the base by drone pilots.”
But the arrests are not restricted to Hancock Field. Earlier this month, nine California residents were arrested and cited for trespassing at Beale Air Force Base for protesting the use of armed drones by the US military. The nine peace activists had been protesting in front of the main gate, thereby making it difficult for cars to pass. They are now awaiting court dates and could face up to six months in prison.

3. President Barack Obama's administration is in the process of drawing up a formal rulebook that will set out the circumstances in which targeted assassination by unmanned drones is justified, according to reports.
The New York Times, citing two unnamed sources, said explicit guidelines were being drawn up amid disagreement between the CIA and the departments of defense, justice and state over when lethal action is acceptable.
Human-rights groups and peace groups opposed to the CIA-operated targeted-killing programme, which remains officially classified, said the administration had already rejected international law in pursuing its drone operations.
"To say they are rewriting the rulebook implies that there isn't already a rulebook" said Jameel Jaffer, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Center for Democracy. "But what they are already doing is rejecting a rulebook – of international law – that has been in place since [the second world war]."
He said the news was "frustrating", because it relied on "self-serving sources". The New York Times piece was written by one of the journalists who first exposed the existence of a White House "kill list", in May.
The ACLU is currently involved in a legal battle with the US government over the legal memo underlying the controversial targeted killing programme, the basis for drone strikes that have killed American citizens and the process by which individuals are placed on the kill list.
Jaffer said it was impossible to make a judgement about whether the "rulebook" being discussed, according to the Times, was legal or illegal.
"It is frustrating how we are reliant on self-serving leaks" said Jaffer. "We are left with interpreting shadows cast on the wall. The terms that are being used by these officials are undefined, malleable and without definition. It is impossible to know whether they are talking about something lawful or unlawful.
"We are litigating for the release of legal memos. We don't think the public should have to reply on self-serving leaking by unnamed administrative officials."
The New York Times said that, facing the possibility that the president might not be re-elected, work began in the weeks running up to the 6 November election to "develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials".
It went on to say that Obama and his advisers were still debating whether remote-controlled killing should be a measure of last resort against imminent threats to the US, or whether it should be more widely used, in order to "help allied governments attack their enemies or to prevent militants from controlling territories".
Jaffer said he was sceptical about the significance of the debate outlined in the piece. He said: "The suggestion is that there is a significant debate going on within the administration about the scope of the government's authority to carry out targeted killings. I would question the significance of the debate. If imminent is defined as broadly as some say it is within the administration then the gap between the sides is narrow.
"It matters how you define 'imminent'. The Bush administration was able to say it didn't condone torture because of the definition of torture. You might think that if someone says, 'I believe we should only use targeted killings only when there's an imminent threat,' you might think that sounds OK. But without terms like 'imminent' being defined it is impossible to evaluate the arguments."
Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Code Pink, an anti-war group, said the news that formal rules were being written for targeted killing was "disgusting".
"That they are trying to write the rules for something that is illegal is disgusting" said Benjamin. "They are saying, 'The levers might be in the wrong hands.' What about the way they are using them right now? There is nothing about taking drones out of the hands of the CIA – which is not a military organisation – or getting rid of signature strikes, where there is no evidence that people are involved in terrorist activities."
In Pakistan and Yemen, the CIA and the military have carried out "signature strikes" against groups of suspected and unnamed militants, as well as strikes against named terrorists.
Benjamin said she had just come back from Pakistan, where the "intensity of the backlash will take generations to overcome".
The New York Times quotes an official who, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was "concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands" after the election.
In October, Obama referred to efforts to codify the controversial drone programme. In an interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show on 18 October, the president said: "One of the things we've got to do is put legal architecture in place and we need congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president is reined in, in terms of some of the decisions we're making".

While Obama and administration officials have commented publicly on the legal basis for targeted killings, the program is officially secret. In court, government lawyers fighting lawsuits by the ACLU continue to claim that no official has ever formally acknowledged the drones, and that there might not even be a drone programme.
Two lawsuits – one by the ACLU and the other by the ACLU and the NYT – seeking information on the legal basis on targeted killing, are still pending.

Akiko Yoshida, Friends of the Earth – Tokyo:
This is the contamination survey in October this year.
4. The hot spots still remain in these areas and also in other cities in Fukushima.
The hotspots is moving from here to another place, but still remain there.
The government said that they do decontamination, but the effect of decontamination is very limited. […]

RELEASE THE REPORT on the 9/11 torturing (Maine Editorial)
We are at such a time when it comes to the CIA interrogations during the Bush administration that relied on torture to extract secrets from terror suspects.
This program is the subject of what has been described as a 6,000-page classified report in the hands of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is said to exhaustively detail the techniques used and the results produced and should now be part of the public record.
The Intelligence Committee, which includes Maine's Sen. Olympia Snowe, should release the report and let the American people know, finally, what was done in the name of their security and whether it was worth it.
It's important that this report comes out and becomes part of the historical record. Otherwise, partial versions and misleading accounts will influence future policy makers.
Earlier this year, former CIA Deputy Director of Operations Jose Rodriguez told Time magazine that information produced by torturing a captive was instrumental in finding and killing Osama bin Laden.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., immediately issued a rebuttal, stating that the information that led to bin Laden's death did not come from CIA detainees who had been tortured. Feinstein had seen the report, and so should the rest of us.
There's plenty about torture that is not a secret. For one, it's illegal. For another, most experts consider it ineffective. And a country's willingness to use torture damages its reputation in the world and in history.
Now we should find out finally what was done in the war on terror and what was its result. Snowe and the other members of the committee should accept the report and submit it to the painstaking process of declassifying it for public consumption.
These secrets have been kept too long already.

IG Review of FISA Compliance Completed But Not Released
November 26th, 2012 by Steven Aftergood
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Justice said it had recently completed a review of the Department’s use of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act (FAA), but the report is classified and its findings have not been released.
“The OIG examined the number of disseminated FBI intelligence reports containing a reference to a U.S. person identity, the number of U.S. person identities subsequently disseminated in response to requests for identities not referred to by name or title in the original reporting, the number of targets later determined to be located in the United States, and whether communications of such targets were reviewed.  The OIG also reviewed the FBI’s compliance with the required targeting and minimization procedures,” according to a November 7 OIG memorandum on Top Management and Performance Challenges in the Department of Justice.

A copy of the classified report has been requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
Earlier this year, Sen. Ron Wyden placed a hold on reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act “because I believe that Congress does not have enough information about this law’s impact on the privacy of law-abiding American citizens, and because I am concerned about a loophole in the law that could allow the government to effectively conduct warrantless searches for Americans’ communications.”

A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.
Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law's main purpose: GOP victory.
Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.
"The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates," Greer told The Post. "It's done for one reason and one reason only. … 'We've got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,' " Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.
"They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue," Greer said. "It's all a marketing ploy."
Greer is now under indictment, accused of stealing $200,000 from the party through a phony campaign fundraising operation. He, in turn, has sued the party, saying GOP leaders knew what he was doing and voiced no objection.

Fukushima Update

BBC
Fukushima fish still contaminated from nuclear accident

Levels of radioactive contamination in fish caught off the east coast of Japan remain raised, official data shows.
It is a sign that the Dai-ichi power plant continues to be a source of pollution more than a year after the nuclear accident.
About 40% of fish caught close to Fukushima itself are regarded as unfit for humans under Japanese regulations.
The respected US marine chemist Ken Buesseler has reviewed the data in this week's Science journal.
He says there are probably two sources of lingering contamination.
"There is the on-going leakage into the ocean of polluted ground water from under Fukushima, and there is the contamination that's already in the sediments just offshore," he told BBC News.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
With these results it's hard to predict for how long some fisheries might have to be closed”
Prof Ken Buesseler WHOI
"It all points to this issue being long-term and one that will need monitoring for decades into the future."
Prof Buesseler is affiliated to the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
His evaluation covers a year's worth of data gathered by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF).
Its monthly records detail the levels of radioactive caesium found in fish and other seafood products from shortly after the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami - the double disaster that triggered the Fukushima crisis.
The caesium-134 and 137 isotopes can be traced directly to releases from the crippled power station.
MAFF uses the information to decide whether certain fisheries along five east-coast prefectures, including Fukushima, should be opened or closed (it is not a measure of contamination in actual market fish).
 The data is used to decide when fisheries should be opened or closed
The caesium does not normally stay in the tissues of saltwater fish for very long; a few percent per day on average should flow back into the ocean water. So, the fact that these animals continue to display elevated contamination strongly suggests the pollution source has not yet been completely shut off.
He notes that although caesium levels in any fish type and on any day can be highly variable, it is the bottom-dwelling species off Fukushima that consistently show the highest caesium counts.
For the WHOI researcher, this points to the seafloor being a major reservoir for the caesium pollution.
"It looks to me like the bottom fish, the fish that are eating, you know, crabs and shellfish, the kinds of things that are particle feeders - they seem to be increasing their accumulation of the caesium isotopes because of their habitat on the seafloor," he explained.

Prof Buesseler stresses however that the vast majority of fish caught off the northeast coast of Japan are fit for human consumption.

And while the 40% figure for unsafe catch in the Fukushima prefecture may sound alarming, the bald number is slightly misleading.

Last April, the Japanese authorities tried to instil greater market confidence by lowering the maximum permitted concentration of radioactivity in fish and fish products from 500 becquerels per kilogram of wet weight to 100 Bq/kg wet.

This tightening of the threshold immediately re-classified fish previously deemed fit as unfit, even though their actual contamination count had not changed.

It is also worth comparing the Japanese limit with international standards. In the US, for example, the threshold is set at 1,200 Bq/kg wet - significantly more lenient than even the pre-April Japanese requirement.
And Prof Buesseler makes the point that some naturally occurring radionuclides, such as potassium-40, appear in fish at similar or even higher levels than the radioactive caesium.
Nonetheless, the contamination question is a pertinent one in the Asian nation simply because its people consume far more fish per head than in most other countries.

"At one level, there shouldn't be any surprises here but on another, people need to come to grips with the fact that for some species and for some areas this is going to be a long-term issue; and with these results it's hard to predict for how long some fisheries might have to be closed," said the WHOI scientist.

Prof Buesseler, with Japanese colleagues, is organising a scientific symposium in Tokyo on 12/13 November to present the latest thinking on Fukushima and its impacts on the ocean. The information will then be shared with the public in a free colloquium on 14 November

RESPONSE TO A STUART NEWS - L2E

Mr. Robertson, you have a very curious attitude about the majority of Americans who elected President Obama.

Obviously you are blissfully unaware of the RIGHTWING MILLIONAIRES funded attempts to restrict voting in 37 states across this great nation. You may also have noticed the KOCH brother (heirs to their John Birch Society dad ) Citizen United decision that unleashed "secret" corporate funding that also tried to swamp the election in RIGHT-WING Money.

I am puzzled about your mentioning race, since we on the (PROGRESSIVE - SIDE) of the American Political Scene have been assured that RACISM is not a part of the RIGHT WING CONSERVATIVE AGENDA. Maybe you are the sole exception.

You might try to get used to the idea, that Native Americans, Hispanics, African Americans Eastern Europeans and even Women, have the right to vote. Its been that way for several years now, check you desk, you probably have the memo.

I was surprised though by your comment "We're in for four more years of incompetence and bad governance"

I remember a republican president, one obviously forgotten at the Tampa extravaganza who joked about his lie that was the foundation of the WAR on IRAQ. [Which cost well over 5 thousand American lives and UNCOUNTED Iraqi lives.] Do you remember his joking video appearance when he made light of looking for the WMDs. It was so cute when he ducked his head under his desk, and said, WMDs not here. And when you combine that with IGNORING the THREAT of OSAMA and allowing the ATTACKS on New York, and the Pentagon? ((so much worse than Benghazi - don't you think?))

Now that and crashing the ECONOMY - that's some mighty big INCOMPETENCE SKILLS to Compete Against eh?

Another of your interesting comments - "It appears that a coalition of various left-wingers, unionists, welfare moochers, racist minorities and man-less women, mostly concentrated in the urban cesspools of America, has pulled President Barack Obama over the finish line."

When you say, urban cesspools your referring to the great cities of America? When you decry UNIONISTS - you must be one of the Americans who rejected the UNIONS PROGRESSIVE AGENDA when during the last Century. they fought so that every American might have a WEEKEND, A PAID VACATION, and a forty hour work week. Obviously you never enjoyed any of those hard won union perks.

"Truly Bastille day for America." - I have to gently chide you on this one though, Bastille Day here in America will come when the victimless crime of MARIJUANA usage, no longer clogs the FOR PROFIT PRISON INDUSTRY. That will be Bastille Day, when the crook, who steals 1 million dollars faces the same JUSTICE as the petty thief who steals $20. That my friend, would be Bastille Day. When corporate polluters who steal health and life from the poor who lives near their TOXIC DUMPS are treated as the criminals they are, That Mr. Robertson, would be BASTILLE DAY in America.

"There is little hope of intelligent problem-solving leadership from the White House."
Do you mean to suggest that the gaggle of republicans who sought the Republican ticket none of whom understood the Scientific Concepts of either Evolution or Climate Change could provide more intelligent answers, maybe they could PRAY the BUSH WAR DEBT away, or dip it in HOLY WATER and maybe it might Shrink.

You summation really requires a rebuttal -
"The corrupt left-wing media are predicting the demise of the Republican Party and suggesting that to survive the party will have to offer a platform attractive to black/brown transgendereds who need contraceptives and free marijuana and want a path to citizenship with full welfare benefits."

By corrupt left wing media you obviously refer to the WALL STREET JOURNAL, MONEY MAGAZINE, CNN, ABC/DISNEY - or do you refer to the one cable channel that doesn't solely read from the REICH-WING HYMNAL? MSNBC - If you give them credit, believe me their AD Revenues will certainly increase.

Obviously the republican candidates who again and again, believe they can define RAPE and decide for WOMEN when they can have access even to information about their own bodies had nothing to do with the elections loss. The suggestion that all the Hispanics should be either rounded up, or will magically SELF-DEPORT - We left wingers still like that one. I suspect the NATIVE AMERICANS might hope that all those pesky EUROPEANS might SELF-DEPORT TOO... Except they are too sensible.

When you go on, and on about races, and transgenders, you only show how utterly uneducated you are. Humanity has for weeks now, come in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes and even sexual types. Check your Bible, Read your Socrates and Aristotle or even the Code of Hammurabi. But you probably shouldn't read Plutarch on the lives of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, you might be shocked.

But please continue to speak out after all, we enjoy keeping track of the gradual evolution of your moral understanding.

You mention the fine young men like Congressman Ryan and Senator Rubio in your party's future (PS RUBIO IS HISPANIC not Italian American) we know the laughs will keep on coming.

"At least the "moochers" know what they want!" This time I suppose your complement seems to suggest, that your part of the American spectrum of Opinion, is not quite certain they're somehow unclear, do they want a serial Monogamist, like Newtie or an 11th Century Biblical Scholar like the HUCK or a Unreconstructed KNOW-NOTHING like that Texas Governor, who had a three point plan that he could remember at least two-points of.

Yet you (republicans) have so much to offer America - a return to JIM CROW a "BACK TO BAREFOOT & PREGNANT" agenda for WOMEN and an ALL WAR Foreign Policy - So much - So Much - But lets see, Billionaires, versus Union Carpenters - Who can slosh more democracy into the American Future.

As a Progressive - I can tell you - We'll be here! And if our Socialist Healthcare plans become a fact of life. You might be here too!

ORIGINAL LETTER

PNN - Tally the Troops - NOW CHAD FREE

                      PNN -  Election Round Up

          Tallying The Troops  - NOW ALL CHAD-FREE


RWS - the News - 7pm - 7:10pm

Denis Campbell  - 7:11 - 7:30pm - Expat-Looks Back

Roundtable         - 7:31 - 8:10pm
Luis Cuevas
Emine Dilek
Gwen Holden Barry
Hans Meyer

Trish Shelton      - 8:11 - 8:21pm GM Foods Update

Roundtable        - 8:22 - 8:30pm
Luis Cuevas
Emine Dilek
Gwen Holden Barry
Hans Meyer


1. Bradley Manning Offers to Plead Guilty to Partial Charges, Including Leaking to WikiLeaks

Nov 2012 Accused WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning offered on Wednesday to plead guilty to parts of the charges he is facing, in exchange for the government pursuing lesser charges. Manning did not plead guilty but indicated in a plea notice submitted by his attorney, David Coombs, that he is willing to accept responsibility for some of the lesser included charges, but not the charges as they stand in whole. The move is known as "pleading by exceptions and substitutions" and is a strategy for negotiating the charges against him, which his attorney has tried repeatedly to do, unsuccessfully, via other means during pre-trial hearings.

2. U.S. WikiLeaks Criminal Probe 'Ongoing,' Judge Reveals
07 Nov 2012 A 2-year-old federal grand jury probe into the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks is still "ongoing," a federal judge in Virginia revealed Wednesday in a brief ruling. It's the first official confirmation since WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was granted asylum by the Ecuadorean government in August that the grand jury investigation is continuing. U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady of Alexandria, Virginia, noted the investigation in a legal flap surrounding three WikiLeaks associates who lost their bid to protect their Twitter records from U.S. investigators. The three had asked the court to unseal documents in their case.

3. Tepco terrorists too big to fail:
Tepco seeks more govt bailouts as Fukushima costs soar --Tepco indicates costs could rise to *120 bln 07 Nov 2012 Fukushima nuclear plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Wednesday it would have to seek more government funds to tackle the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, as cleanup costs soar four months after the utility was nationalised. A senior minister said the government saw no alternative to providing continued support for the utility, known as Tepco. Tepco officials suggested the costs of compensation and decontamination could double to 10 trillion yen (*124.55 billion), making greater government support vital.

4. Environmental Activists on the Re-Election
 From Grist by Lisa Hymas
Beyond Obama: Here are green ballot measures that won and lost
From 350.org, founder Bill McKibben’s response was to organize a Global Movement to Solve the Climate Crisis. Here’s what he wrote about Hurricane Sandy in The Guardian:
Hurricane Sandy has drowned the New York I love
I’m an environmentalist: New York is as beautiful and diverse and glorious as an old-growth forest. It’s as grand, in its unplanned tumble, as anything ever devised by man or nature. And now, I fear its roots are being severed.
From Hon. Elizabeth May, Canada’s only Green Party Member of Parliament:

No Time For a Victory Lap, Mr. President. Your Planet is Calling.
In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Sandy and the summer of parched earth and lost crops, the president must listen to his science advisor, Dr. John Holdren, and the head of climate science at NASA, Dr. James Hansen, and actually lead on climate. The world needs the U.S. to join the European Union in moving aggressively to a low-carbon economy. Barak Obama got a second chance. Let’s hope that the rest of us did too.

From the Center for Biodiversity:
Mr. President: 5 Ways to Salvage Your Environmental Legacy (and Our Future)
1. Address climate change and ocean acidification. There’s no crisis bigger than the one that’s rapidly transforming the world’s climate and oceans. We need to fix this, and fast. 2012 is on track to become the warmest year on record; some 40,000 temperature records have been shattered in the United States this year, while Arctic sea ice has melted to a record low.
The urgency of this crisis is manifested in the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, record droughts, massive wildfires, disappearing coral reefs, floods and a terrible, continuous stream of bleak headlines. Left unchecked, climate change threatens millions of people around the globe and countless species already on the brink of extinction. It’s time to stop waiting for someone else, including Congress, to lead. The best way to start: Fully harness existing laws like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act to reduce carbon pollution.
Environmental Defense Fund Statement of president Fred Krupp on the results of the election
“Congratulations to President Obama on his re-election to a second term, and to all of those who will be serving in the 113th Congress. We look forward to working with them to solve our country’s most pressing environmental problems, including global climate change. As the President declared last night, ‘We want our children to live in an America … that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.’
“Exit polls confirm that for millions of American voters, Hurricane Sandy and climate change were decisive factors in this election. As the historic storm just reminded us, we have no time to waste; we must get serious about climate solutions in order to protect our loved ones and communities from terrible impacts — extreme weather disasters, droughts, heat waves, and other dangerous consequences of global warming. Especially in the wake of Sandy, which demonstrated that doing nothing about climate change is much costlier than taking action, this issue clearly should be a top priority for our leaders in government.”- Fred Krupp, President, EDF

From Greenpeace, by Kumi Naidoo

On the future of America’s children or whether Obama will have a different approach this time around
I felt relieved when I heard Obama’s victory speech this morning, and I particularly resonated with him when he spoke about the future of America’s children.
“We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burnt by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet,” said Obama during his speech. Crowds burst into applause, while probably millions of other citizens of the world heard his vision.
My relief came with the realisation that Barack Obama shares our vision. When President Obama was elected four years ago, his challenge was to stop the US from going into financial freefall. His challenge is even greater now – he needs to play a more assertive roleinternationally on the issue of climate change and stop us all from climate freefall.

5. CCR - on the re-election
    •    Close Guantanamo, and end torture through indefinite detention. Repatriate or resettle the men the government does not intend to prosecute, and provide fair trials for the rest
    •    End the use of solitary confinement in prisons across the country
    •    End unlawful “targeted killings” and the expansion of the Orwellian “disposition matrix.” Acknowledge, investigate and provide reparations for unlawful civilian killings
    •    End the war in Afghanistan and pull all private military contractors out of Iraq and Afghanistan
    •    Abandon the endless global war paradigm as the basis for abusive national security policies and end the use of war force outside of war zones
    •    Investigate and prosecute former high-level U.S. officials who bear responsibility for torture and war crimes committed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the “black sites”
    •    Provide medical treatment and compensation to people subjected to torture in U.S.-run detention facilities, including in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Guantánamo, and provide war reparations to communities in Iraq and Afghanistan for harms done to the people and the environment
    •    End the persecution of whistleblowers and journalists like Julian Assange, Wikileaks and Bradley Manning for protected First Amendment activity
    •    Increase transparency, sunshine and freedom of information in federal law enforcement and prisons and end overclassification of unlawful or embarrassing government conduct
    •    Stop the criminalization of dissent: end the stifling of activist expression under the anti-free-speech National Defense Authorization Act and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act and end overbroad prosecutions for terrorism under material support laws
    •    Stop the criminalization and profiling of communities based on race and religion: end the devastating Secure Communities program that destroys families and spreads fear in immigrant neighborhoods
    •    End warrantless surveillance and stop the indiscriminate targeting and surveillance of Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities under the guise of national security
    •    Support human rights internationally: stop funding and training police and militaries abroad implicated in human rights abuses in places like Honduras
    •    Center women’s equality in all policy and legislative initiatives concerning their bodily autonomy and right to health

6. Argentina 'freezes Chevron assets' over Ecuador damage
A judge has ordered $19bn (£11.9bn) of assets held by oil company Chevron to be frozen in Argentina over an environmental damages claim in Ecuador, lawyers in the case say.

The Ecuadorean plaintiffs accuse Chevron of polluting land in the Amazon region for almost three decades.
Last year, an Ecuadorean court ordered Chevron to pay $19bn in damages.
Since Chevron has few assets in Ecuador, the plaintiffs are trying to get the ruling enforced abroad.

7. Nobel Prize for Malala
Thousands of people have called for a Nobel peace prize for Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old who was shot by the Taliban while campaigning for girls' education in Pakistan.

8. Election Numbers
There was a real turnout oddity in this election, when compared with 2008
turnout #s in 2008 prexy = 130 milion
turnout in 2012 = 120 million
In California, 13 million voted in 2008
9 million in 2012
there were 4 million fewer voters to the polls, really? Yes.
Obama vote in 20008 was 69 million vs.
61.5 million in 2012
goopers vote
2008 = 60 million for McC
2012 -= 58.5 million for Rmoney
where did they all go?
OB turnout machine is being touted for turning out 8 million fewer voters?

9. Michael Moore - "This country has truly changed, and I believe there will be no going back. Hate lost yesterday. That is amazing in and of itself. And all the women who were elected last night!  A total rebuke of Neanderthal attitudes.  Now the real work begins. Millions of us – the majority – must come together to insist that President Obama and the Democrats stand up and fight for the things we sent them there to do. Mr. President, do not listen to the pundits who today call for you to "compromise." No. You already tried that. It didn't work. You can compromise later if you need to, but please, no more beginning by compromising. And if the Republican House doesn't want to play ball, do a massive end run around them with one executive order after another – just like they have done and will do if given the chance again. And please Mr. President, make the banks and Wall Street pay. You're the boss, not them. Lead the fight to get money out of politics – the spending on this election is shameful and dangerous. Don't wait til 2014 to bring the troops home – bring 'em home now. Stop the drone strikes on civilians. End the senseless war on drugs."

10. ON Elizabeth Warren's entrance to the Senate
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that “no other candidate in 2012 represents a greater threat to free enterprise than Professor Warren.”

But Ms. Warren raised a stunning $39 million, the most of any Senate candidate this year, proving that it was possible to run against the big banks without Wall Street money and still win.

11. President Obama - from Juan Cole
President Obama's reelection should mean more to progressives than simply dodging the bullet of a Romney presidency indebted to the Tea Party. Democratic politics has to be more than relief, while playing Russian Roulette, that this time we got the empty chamber. Progressives are a significant wing of the Democratic Party, and if we continue to be ignored, the party will ultimately falter.

Progressives will have to push Obama to the left if we are to get what we want. This situation is nothing new– FDR's New Deal would not have amounted to much if workers hadn't engaged in widespread wildcat strikes and if people had not resorted to civil disobedience.

As for positive accomplishments, here are a few we should pressure him and Congress on:

1.     We need the tax break for wind energy to be continued. Uncertainty here is deadly to the industry. And it is facing competition from cheap fracked natural gas (which is itself an environmental disaster every which way from Sunday). Wind energy could easily provide a quarter of all the electricity the US produces annually, and it is a way of slowing the rapidly rising average temperature of earth's surface. Obama should deploy Republicans from high-wind states such as Iowa and Colorado to help make his case. It is to Obama's credit that green energy doubled in the US from 3% to 6% during his first term. But 6% is almost nothing, with Portugal, Germany, Scotland and others being far more ambitious. Scotland wants to be 100% green by 2020. Obama should emulate John F. Kennedy, Jr., and give a major address committing the the nation to try to go green in 8 years, just as Kennedy pledged to put us on the moon.

2.    The Citizens United and other such rulings of the Supreme Court that allow dark money to dominate our elections needs to be undone by legislation. Corporations are not people, and Superpacs shouldn't be buying our elections. Obama should start the work on a constitutional amendment that would permit actual campaign finance reform so that our elections look more like those of Western Europe and less like those of Pakistan.

3.    Banking regulation still needs to be strengthened. There is nothing really in place that would prevent a repeat of the 2008 meltdown. Moreover, relief for homeowners under threat of losing their mortgages unfairly or arbitrarily needs to be pushed for again.

4.    Obama needs to show leadership in pushing back against Koch Brother attempts to destroy public sector unions. Moreover, he needs to create a legal framework for the protection of the right to unionize in the private sector, a right that has been gutted by corporations such as Walmart. It was the unions that gave Mr. Obama Ohio, and if they are undermined during the next four years, they won't be there to deliver the state again.

5.    He needs to have the Department of Justice look into the Koch Brother-backed legislation in two dozen states restricting the franchise by requiring a paid-for state i.d., which is a kind of poll tax. In many states, this legislation violates the 1965 Voting Rights act. We can't let a couple of sour billionaires undo the achievements of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., achievements for which he gave his life.

6.    That use of the Department of Justice would perhaps make its workers and its head, Eric Holder, too busy to go around kicking down the doors of medical marijuana clinics and confiscating their computers, records and cash, in states where the state has legalized marijuana. Obama was elected the first time by the youth, and had promised to cease Federal harassment of pot clinics, but reneged and proved much worse than Bush on this issue. Holder should stop denying the clear medical uses and benefits of pot. In Colorado and Washington states, the same people who voted for him have legalized recreational marijuana. Moreover, the RAND Corp. concludes that legalization would defund the Mexican cartels. If the the Democratic Party continues on this Draconian path, it should not be surprised when it begins losing elections because a substantial younger constituency deserts it for the Green Party.

7.    Obama put off further consideration of the PATRIOT Act until 2014. Several of its remaining provisions have been tagged by Senators Wyden and Udall as unconstitutional and pernicious because of the way law enforcement is interpreting them "secretly." These unconstitutional provisions must be repealed altogether. Moreover, Obama needs to come clean about the extent of Federal violations of fourth amendment rights, warrantless surveillance of citizens, and the data mining of our emails and possibly their storage by the National Security Agency. As a victim of illegal White House/ CIA surveillance myself, I am furious that Obama has continued Bush-era abuses, and moreover that the Democratic Party has not so much as bothered to launch an investigation of my case.

8.    The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy have to be allowed to lapse.

9.    Obama must give up the fiction that a Department of Justice review of assassination targets is the same thing as a court trial that ends in an execution. The separation of powers is there in the constitution because King George III used to use the executive to declare people "outlaws" and have them killed on a whim, too. Maybe Obama and the national security state think they have invented something new. They haven't. Targeted assassination by executive fiat has been around for a long time, and the Founding Fathers wanted it prohibited.

10.    Obamacare has to be tweaked in the direction of a single payer system

12. Anti-Torture Psychologists Respond to Attack from APA Division Chief
By: Jeff Kaye Wednesday November 7, 2012 1:47 pm    

The battle within the American Psychological Association (APA) to bring that organization into line with other human rights groups and attorney organizations in opposing the use of psychological personnel in national security interrogations accelerated last month when a prominent APA official came out strongly against a petition to annul APA’s ethics policy on national security and interrogations.

In June 2005, the APA published their report on Psychological Ethics and National Security (the PENS report). APA, stung by criticism that psychologists had been involved in torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere, nevertheless stacked the panel hastily assembled that Spring with over fifty percent military and/or military connected members.

These were not just any military individuals, but included the former Chief of Psychology at Guantanamo, a SERE psychologist who supported use of SERE techniques in interrogations, and a Special Forces top psychologist who, according to an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee, had actually trained interrogators in use of SERE torture techniques in interrogations.

Reposted below is a letter from the Coalition for Ethical Psychology (CEP), responding to an October 26  letter from the President of the American Psychological Association’s Division 42, Psychologists in Independent Practice, who had written a reply to CEP’s request for support for their call for annulment of the APA’s PENS report.

The original petition to annul the PENS report was posted at CEP’s website in October 2011. The petition called PENS “the defining document endorsing psychologists’ engagement in detainee interrogations.”

The petition continued: “Despite evidence that psychologists were involved in abusive interrogations, the PENS Task Force concluded that psychologists play a critical role in keeping interrogations ‘safe, legal, ethical and effective.’ With this stance, the APA, the largest association of psychologists worldwide, became the sole major professional healthcare organization to support practices contrary to the international human rights standards that ought to be the benchmark against which professional codes of ethics are judged.”

The political heat around the anti-PENS petition increased noticeably when CEP came out publicly against a so-called “member-initiated task force” to “reconcile policies related to psychologists’ involvement in national security settings.” This task force, actually established with APA Board and staff support, was opposed to the annulment petition, and likely was formed to blunt the impact of CEP’s call for annulment, which was gaining much support. One of the prominent members of this new “task force” is William Strickland, the president and CEO of the long-time military contractor-research group, Human Resource Research Organization (HumRRO),

13. Excerpts of a play about Bradley Manning
hypothetical question: if you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time… say, 8-9 months… and you saw incredible things, awful things… things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC… what would you do?
or Guantanamo, Bagram, Bucca, Taji, VBC for that matter…
things that would have an impact on 6.7 billion people
say… a database of half a million events during the iraq war… from 2004 to 2009… with reports, date time groups, lat-lon locations, casualty figures… ? or 260,000 state department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective?
Hilary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and finds an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format to the public…
uhm… crazy, almost criminal political backdealings… the non-PR-versions of world events and crises… uhm… all kinds of stuff like everything from the buildup to the Iraq War during Powell, to what the actual content of “aid packages” is: for instance, PR that the US is sending aid to pakistan includes funding for water/food/clothing… that much is true, it includes that, but the other 85% of it is for F-16 fighters and munitions to aid in the Afghanistan effort, so the US can call in Pakistanis to do aerial bombing instead of americans potentially killing civilians and creating a PR crisis
theres so much… it affects everybody on earth… everywhere there’s a US post… there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed… Iceland, the Vatican, Spain, Brazil, Madascar, if its a country, and its recognized by the US as a country, its got dirt on it
it’s open diplomacy… world-wide anarchy in CSV format… its Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth… its beautiful, and horrifying…
and… its important that it gets out… i feel, for some bizarre reason
it might actually change something
i dont believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore… only a plethora of states acting in self interest… with varying ethics and moral standards of course, but self-interest nonetheless
i mean, we’re better in some respects… we’re much more subtle… use a lot more words and legal techniques to legitimize everything
its better than disappearing in the middle of the night
but just because something is more subtle, doesn’t make it right
i guess im too idealistic
i think the thing that got me the most… that made me rethink the world more than anything was watching 15 detainees taken by the Iraqi Federal Police… for printing “anti-Iraqi literature”… the iraqi federal police wouldn’t cooperate with US forces, so i was instructed to investigate the matter, find out who the “bad guys” were, and how significant this was for the FPs… it turned out, they had printed a scholarly critique against PM Maliki… i had an interpreter read it for me… and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled “Where did the money go?” and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet… i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees…
everything started slipping after that… i saw things differently

14. Gov. Scott defends Florida elections process

BY STEVE BOUSQUET
HERALD/TIMES TALLAHASSEE BUREAU
Gov. Rick Scott on Friday defended the state’s handling of the election, while his elections chief said the state bears some responsibility for long voting lines and late vote counts.
As his top elections official conceded that the state bears responsibility for long lines and late vote counts that have made Florida a target of national ridicule, Gov. Rick Scott on Friday defended the state’s handling of the election.
“We could have done better. We will do better,” Secretary of State Ken Detzner said on CNN during pointed questioning from anchor Ashleigh Banfield.
But in an exclusive interview with the Herald/Times, Scott made no apologies for the problems that led to an incomplete final vote count Friday, three days after the election.
“What I’m trying to do is improve the way government works,” Scott said. “I believe in efficiency. I believe every vote has to count. I want to have a good process that people feel good about.”
The governor said he would solicit suggestions from legislators and county election supervisors on how to improve Florida’s elections machinery. But he said the long ballot with 11 statewide amendments and a surge of early and absentee voters were part of the reason for long lines.
“All these ballot initiatives have an effect on how long it takes somebody to vote,” Scott said.
On CNN, Detzner twice demurred when offered a chance to say he was sorry for inconveniencing so many voters. He said the length of the ballot and record turnout of 8.4 million contributed to bottlenecks that forced people in Miami-Dade to wait several hours to vote. He did concede that the state should have allowed counties to add more early voting sites.
“The solution is that in current Florida law, there’s a limit on the number of locations that supervisors can use in early voting. We need to take a very serious look at that and open up the number of locations,” Detzner said.
From author Carl Hiaasen on CBS (“a freak show”) to The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart (bleeped-out expletives for Florida), writers and comedians have had a field day lampooning the state’s latest electoral embarrassment. The scrutiny would have been immeasurably worse if Ohio had not sealed President Barack Obama’s re-election.
But it’s no joke, and the most ferocious criticism is aimed squarely at Scott, the former hospital-chain CEO who repeatedly urges people to hold him accountable for his performance.
“Look, It was a close race. We want to make sure every vote gets counted. Every vote’s important, so I think the secretary did the right thing,” Scott said. “Here’s what people should feel good about: We have a diligent and thorough process, and every vote’s getting counted.”
Thousands of Floridians have flooded Scott’s email in-box with criticism, some promising not to vote for him when he seeks re-election in 2014.
“The fact that Florida is an embarrassment yet again falls within your purview,” Danielle McWilliams, a teacher in Stuart, told Scott in an email. “This is yet another reason why you should be out of office.”
Paul Adams of Sarasota ridiculed Scott’s choice of Detzner, a former lobbyist for the beer industry, as the state’s chief elections officer.
“Your people can’t get it together,” Adams wrote Thursday. “Who won the election?”
Florida elections officials Friday were still counting absentee ballots in Palm Beach County, and though Obama held a 60,000-vote edge statewide, news organizations had yet to declare Obama the winner of Florida’s 29 electoral votes.
What Detzner did not say on TV was that for years, Republican legislators in Tallahassee have ignored pleas by county election supervisors to let them expand early voting to sites beyond their own offices, city halls and libraries, so crowds at each site would be smaller.
For the past three years, Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston, filed bills to add flexibility to the choices of early voting sites. The 2012 version, SB 516, was shelved and never heard by a committee chaired by Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, whose county had by far the longest lines and who voted with other Republicans to reduce early voting days.
“The Legislature wouldn’t hear that bill,” Rich said. “The governor and Republican-dominated Legislature caused this to happen, by reducing early voting days and by putting all of those constitutional amendments on the ballot.”
Rich and other Democrats say the limited sites and long ballot were a sinister plot by Republicans to make it harder for Democrats to vote.
Elections are run by counties in Florida, but are governed by state law.
In 2011, Scott signed into law changes that cut early voting days from 14 to eight. As the early voting lines grew longer last month, he refused requests to issue an executive order adding more days. The day after the election, he said: “Let’s look and see what we can improve.”
In turning down a request last week by Monroe County elections chief Harry Sawyer to add additional days of early voting, Detzner said the state had no authority to do so except during a state of emergency that could risk lives or property.
CNN’s Banfield, who said she spent 14 hours at Miami-area voting sites Tuesday, peppered Detzner with tough questions and demanded he explain why the state didn’t expand the locations.
“We were following the law,” Detzner said. “It appears as though now we need to redress the issue regarding the locations. The governor has asked me to look at that issue.”
Banfield told viewers it was time for Scott to “face the music” and explain what went wrong.
As she closed her program, Friday, she spoke directly to Scott, noting that he has declined two offers to appear on the air.
“We’d really like you to join us,” she said, “and answer for your state.”
Tampa Bay Times researcher Natalie Watson contributed to this report.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/09/v-fullstory/3089783/florida-elections-chief-we-could.html#storylink=cpy

15.  Who is responsible for Florida's second infamous elections debacle since 2000?
There will be plenty of blame to go around, especially when Miami-Dade County finally finishes counting provisional ballots and gets to the bottom of who declined to shore up voting operations, and when. But blame will also likely fall on conservative state legislators, who fought for two years to reduce the number of early voting days and limit registration after heavy 2008 turnout in the state for Democrats.
"Obama won the most where the lines were the longest," former state Sen. Dan Gelber (D-Miami Beach) told the Tampa Bay Times, speaking of the 2012 turnout.
Gelber called the law reducing early voting "hubris and overreaching by the Republicans, who may learn a lesson that 'Maybe we shouldn't abuse our prisoners that much because sometimes they'll get back at you.'"
Citing admittedly non-existent fraud, the GOP gang reduced the number of early voting days from 14 to 8, eliminating the Sunday before Election Day disproportionately preferred, in large numbers, by blacks, Hispanics, young people and first-time voters.
As a result, many voters were squished onto a final Saturday of early voting, with lines so long the last voters in Miami cast their ballots at 1 a.m. Some voters were forced to leave lines to care for children or keep appointments, sending even more South Floridians back to the lines on Tuesday.

16. Karl Rove and his investors were the biggest losers on Election Day.

FROM - TZ-  Yet, of the $204 million in so-called independent expenditures reported by American Crossroads, Crossroads GPS and a related super PAC called Crossroads Generation, $190 million went toward television or radio ads backing Romney and GOP congressional candidates. Only $11 million went toward Web advertising, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission data.

Of the 31 races in which the groups aired ads, the Republican won only nine. And, since the groups spent $137 million on the presidential race, less than 5.7 percent of their total spending went toward helping winning candidates, according to a POLITICO analysis.
================================================================
The Republican strategist created the model for outside money groups that raised and spent more than $1 billion on the Nov. 6 elections - many of which saw almost no return for their money.
Rove, through his two political outfits, American Crossroads and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, backed unsuccessful Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney with $127 million on more than 82,000 television spots, according to Kantar Media's CMAG, an ad tracker based in New York.
Down the ballot, 10 of the 12 Senate candidates and four of the nine House candidates the Rove groups supported also lost their races. The results have angered some Republicans who blame Rove for "sidelining conservatives" and diverting money from them.
"Right now there is stunned disbelief that Republicans fared so poorly after all the money they invested," said Brent Bozell, president of For America, an Alexandria, Va.-based nonprofit that advocates for Christian values in politics. "If I had 1/100th of Karl Rove's money, I would have been more productive than he was."
Donald Trump posted a message on Twitter saying: "Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money."
Jonathan Collegio, a Crossroads spokesman, declined to comment. Attempts to reach Rove were unsuccessful.
Rove argued Thursday that Romney lost in part because President Barack Obama outspent him on TV when outside groups are taken out of the equation.
"This shows that money does matter in politics," Rove said on Fox News, where he is a paid commentator. In hindsight, Romney should have used his resources to defend himself because that isn't the strong suit of groups like Crossroads, Rove said.
Obama aired more than twice as many ads on local broadcast and nation cable as Romney during the general election, according to CMAG. However, when outside groups such as the ones Rove steers are added in, each side had about the same number of ads on TV.
The Election Day results showed Rove's strategy of bringing in huge donations from a few wealthy benefactors and spending that money almost completely on television advertising failed. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates the two Crossroads groups spent about $176 million, making them the top non- candidate and non-party spender of the election. Rove has bragged of raising more than $300 million for his groups.
American Crossroads, a super-political action committee, discloses its contributors and spending to the Federal Election Commission. Its affiliate, Crossroads GPS, is organized as a nonprofit social-welfare group that conceals its donors and reports only a fraction of its political activities.
"If the rule in politics is you win or lose by the election results, Karl Rove is a big-time loser in the 2012 presidential and congressional races," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, which advocates for limits to campaign spending.
Still, "Karl Rove certainly knows how to make a lot of money for political consultants and TV stations," he said.
Democrats also piled on. "If Crossroads were a business, and Rove was the CEO, he'd be fired for getting a poor return on his investment," New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the chamber's third-ranking Democrat, told reporters Thursday at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.
The return on investment for American Crossroads donors was 1 percent, according to an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based group that advocates for open government. The group calculated the number based on how much of the money was spent supporting winners.
For donors to sister-organization Crossroads GPS, the success rate was 13 percent, the group said. That's a lower return than for donations to the National Republican Congressional Committee and to the two major Democratic congressional super-PACs, according to Sunlight.
Houston homebuilder Bob Perry gave $7.5 million to Rove's American Crossroads and another $8 million to Restore Our Future, a super-PAC that supported Romney. He also gave $1 million to Independence Virginia, a super-PAC that backed former Republican governor George Allen in a U.S. Senate race. Allen, with 47 percent support, lost to another former governor, Democrat Tim Kaine, who won 52 percent of the vote. Even after the losses, Perry spokesman Anthony Holm said the super-donor has no regrets.
"Bob Perry will always support efficient government and pro-liberty and opportunity agendas, always," Holm said in a telephone interview. "He was proud to do it this election cycle and is likely to continue into the next cycle."
The Crossroads groups spent $10.2 million in an effort to oust Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown from the Senate, and overall outside groups spent much more. Brown beat his opponent, State Treasurer Josh Mandel, 50.3 percent to 45.1 percent, with an independent candidate winning 4.6 percent of votes cast.
"His brand of politics is pretty discredited," Brown said of Rove on a conference call. "He thought spending $40 million against me and against the president would bring us down."
Rove was particularly upset about Romney's Ohio loss. A former adviser to George W. Bush, he was acting as a commentator on Fox News when the network called the state for Obama. Rove, on air, said he didn't believe it. He continued to argue with the newscasters while shuffling through papers and calling Ohio's secretary of state and Romney's campaign manager for more information.
"This is premature. We've got a quarter of the vote" outstanding, he said. Fox didn't withdraw its Ohio call for Obama and neither did other networks, predictions that ultimately proved true when the final votes were counted.
Rove's groups spent $11.4 million in their bid to defeat Kaine in Virginia. They spent $7.76 million trying to unseat Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, according to CMAG. Nelson, a Democrat, held his seat as well. The CMAG estimates are for ads on broadcast TV and national cable from April 10, 2012 through the day before the election.
The Crossroads groups bet successfully - although less than $200,000 - on Republican Deb Fischer to win an open seat in Nebraska.
On the House side, Rove scored wins in five of nine races. Among those winners was David Valadao of California's 21st District, where Crossroads GPS spent $437,390, and Republican Tom Latham who beat Democrat Leonard Boswell in Iowa with the help of $432,640 from Crossroads, according to CMAG.
Still, in Nevada's 4th District, where Crossroads was most active, Democrat Steven Horsford beat Republican Danny Tarkanian by almost eight percentage points.
Serving as a Democratic counterweight to Rove was Bill Burton, a former Obama aide who left the White House to form Priorities USA Action. That super-PAC raised and spent about $67 million, a fraction of the budgets for the pro-Romney groups that carried a 100 percent return with Obama's re-election victory.
"There will be a lot of questions raised about just how much bang for their buck Republicans got out of super-PACs," Burton said. "Billionaires on the Republican side are probably wondering what difference their contributions made in this election."
He said he spoke with many of his own large donors Thursday and described them as "ebullient."
Majority PAC, which aided Democratic Senate candidates, spent about $37 million, and 70 percent of that money was used in successful elections. House Majority PAC backed Democratic congressional candidates with $31 million; 44 percent went into winning races, the Sunlight study found.
Other groups emulated the Rove approach, bringing at least $306 million of untraceable donations into the 2012 races, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Americans for Prosperity, founded 10 years ago by industrial billionaires David and Charles Koch, didn't have much of a better night than the Rove groups.
The nonprofit group raised and spent $140 million this year, President Tim Phillips said in an interview.
It bought about $34 million in TV ads attacking Obama and urging people to vote him out. Its $14 million purchase of TV ads in Senate races also turned up few victories.
"We leveled the playing field, but we weren't quite able to get it done," he said.
The largest chunk of the money, $1.2 million, went into the Wisconsin Senate race, according to CMAG.
"Have you seen Tammy Baldwin's voting record?" a woman asks with disgust in a spot than ran about 800 times last month. Baldwin, the Democrat, won last night
The group also spent $622,400 on ads attacking Nelson in Florida, $513,000 on McCaskill in Missouri, $486,000 on Kaine in Virginia, $466,000 on Joe Donnelly in Indiana and Jon Tester in Montana. Those Democrats all won.
AFP made $754,000 in ad buys in Nebraska and Nevada and saw its preferred Republican candidates win in those races.
Phillips said the group is in politics for the long haul, and compared Republicans with Democrats in 2004, when they lost the White House, yet went on to win Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008.
Phillips has said he is modeling the group after voter- turnout efforts billionaire investor George Soros made in 2004. Soros put up $24 million - at the time a record - in a failed effort to defeat Bush.
"George was certainly disappointed at Bush's victory in 2004, but he did not feel that he had made a mistake," said Michael Vachon, his spokesman. "He felt he acted out of his conviction that Bush was leading the country in a dangerous direction."
Soros, however, pulled back on his political activities after the loss. It remains to be see whether rich Republicans will come back for another round after these results.
Sheldon Adelson, whose family's $53.4 million investment in federal candidates and outside groups made him 2012's top donor, didn't give money to American Crossroads. Yet he, too, saw his preferred elected officials swept away. Adelson, the 25th richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is head of Las Vegas Sands Corp., the world's largest casino company.
While leaving Romney's post-election party in Boston last night, Adelson was asked by a Norwegian television reporter how his political donations were spent.
"By paying bills," he said.

==================================

Who is responsible for Florida's second infamous elections debacle since 2000?
There will be plenty of blame to go around, especially when Miami-Dade County finally finishes counting provisional ballots and gets to the bottom of who declined to shore up voting operations, and when. But blame will also likely fall on conservative state legislators, who fought for two years to reduce the number of early voting days and limit registration after heavy 2008 turnout in the state for Democrats.
"Obama won the most where the lines were the longest," former state Sen. Dan Gelber (D-Miami Beach) told the Tampa Bay Times, speaking of the 2012 turnout.
Gelber called the law reducing early voting "hubris and overreaching by the Republicans, who may learn a lesson that 'Maybe we shouldn't abuse our prisoners that much because sometimes they'll get back at you.'"
Citing admittedly non-existent fraud, the GOP gang reduced the number of early voting days from 14 to 8, eliminating the Sunday before Election Day disproportionately preferred, in large numbers, by blacks, Hispanics, young people and first-time voters.
As a result, many voters were squished onto a final Saturday of early voting, with lines so long the last voters in Miami cast their ballots at 1 a.m. Some voters were forced to leave lines to care for children or keep appointments, sending even more South Floridians back to the lines on Tuesday.