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
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments
Sunday, December 02, 2012
Thursday, November 22, 2012
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!
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!
Sunday, November 11, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Election 2012 Frailties and Foundations
7pm - 7:10pm - Intro
7:11 - 7:41pm - Prof. Robert Watson Lynn University on the Election/Debate
7:42 - 7:52pm - Winnie Tang - President of the Asian American Federation
7:53 - 8:10pm - Jose Suarez Communication Dir. SEIU
8:11 - 8:26pm - Stratton Pollitzer Deputy Director Equality of Florida
8:27 - 8:53pm - Greg Palast BBC Economics Reporter
8:53 - 9:00pm - Outro
0. Support Meredith Ockman
The Prize
The candidate with the most votes at the end of the contest period will win free registration, travel (within the U.S.) and accommodations to attend Victory's renowned Candidate & Campaign Training this November in Long Beach, Calif.
Victory's Onward to Victory contest is a chance for those thinking about running for public office or interested in working on an LGBT candidate's campaign to win an all-expenses-paid spot at our renowned Candidate & Campaign Training this November in Long Beach, Calif. To win this online mock election, declare your candidacy today and then encourage your friends to vote for you.
Hi Friends.
***ALERT: The guys in the race have taken the lead, and I am the only woman within striking distance of winning this very important Candidate Training by the Victory Foundation.
Meredith asks -
I'm trying to earn a trip to the Victory Institute so I can help get better equal representation in government for the lgbt community and for women! Please help me by voting for me and sending this invitation to your friends so they can vote for me. It takes just a couple of clicks!
Thank you!
1. Plan for hunting terrorists signals U.S. intends to keep adding names to kill lists
Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.”
The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S. officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.
Although the matrix is a work in progress, the effort to create it reflects a reality setting in among the nation’s counterterrorism ranks: The United States’ conventional wars are winding down, but the government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years.
Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaeda continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight.
“We can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us,” a senior administration official said. “It’s a necessary part of what we do. . . . We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, ‘We love America.’ ”
That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism. Targeting lists that were regarded as finite emergency measures after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are now fixtures of the national security apparatus. The rosters expand and contract with the pace of drone strikes but never go to zero.
Meanwhile, a significant milestone looms: The number of militants and civilians killed in the drone campaign over the past 10 years will soon exceed 3,000 by certain estimates, surpassing the number of people al-Qaeda killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Obama administration has touted its successes against the terrorist network, including the death of Osama bin Laden, as signature achievements that argue for President Obama’s reelection. The administration has taken tentative steps toward greater transparency, formally acknowledging for the first time the United States’ use of armed drones.
Less visible is the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war. Spokesmen for the White House, the National Counterterrorism Center, the CIA and other agencies declined to comment on the matrix or other counterterrorism programs.
Privately, officials acknowledge that the development of the matrix is part of a series of moves, in Washington and overseas, to embed counterterrorism tools into U.S. policy for the long haul.
White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is seeking to codify the administration’s approach to generating capture/kill lists, part of a broader effort to guide future administrations through the counterterrorism processes that Obama has embraced.
CIA Director David H. Petraeus is pushing for an expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, U.S. officials said. The proposal, which would need White House approval, reflects the agency’s transformation into a paramilitary force, and makes clear that it does not intend to dismantle its drone program and return to its pre-Sept. 11 focus on gathering intelligence.
The U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which carried out the raid that killed bin Laden, has moved commando teams into suspected terrorist hotbeds in Africa. A rugged U.S. outpost in Djibouti has been transformed into a launching pad for counterterrorism operations across the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
JSOC also has established a secret targeting center across the Potomac River from Washington, current and former U.S. officials said. The elite command’s targeting cells have traditionally been located near the front lines of its missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. But JSOC created a “national capital region” task force that is a 15-minute commute from the White House so it could be more directly involved in deliberations about al-Qaeda lists.
The developments were described by current and former officials from the White House and the Pentagon, as well as intelligence and counterterrorism agencies. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
These counterterrorism components have been affixed to a legal foundation for targeted killing that the Obama administration has discussed more openly over the past year. In a series of speeches, administration officials have cited legal bases, including the congressional authorization to use military force granted after the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as the nation’s right to defend itself.
Critics contend that those justifications have become more tenuous as the drone campaign has expanded far beyond the core group of al-Qaeda operatives behind the strikes on New York and Washington. Critics note that the administration still doesn’t confirm the CIA’s involvement or the identities of those who are killed. Certain strikes are now under legal challenge, including the killings last year in Yemen of U.S.-born al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son.
Counterterrorism experts said the reliance on targeted killing is self-perpetuating, yielding undeniable short-term results that may obscure long-term costs.
“The problem with the drone is it’s like your lawn mower,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and Obama counterterrorism adviser. “You’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back.”
An evolving database
The United States now operates multiple drone programs, including acknowledged U.S. military patrols over conflict zones in Afghanistan and Libya, and classified CIA surveillance flights over Iran.
Strikes against al-Qaeda, however, are carried out under secret lethal programs involving the CIA and JSOC. The matrix was developed by the NCTC, under former director Michael Leiter, to augment those organizations’ separate but overlapping kill lists, officials said.
2. Associated Press: Ex-CIA Officer Kiriakou Pleads Guilty to Leaking Covert Operative’s Identity to Reporter
October 23, 2012
Summary: This is extended coverage of GAP client and former CIA officer/torture whistleblower John Kiriakou, who pled guilty yesterday (in a plea deal) to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. The majority of Kiriakou’s charges were dropped – including all Espionage Act charges. Kiriakou was motivated to take the plea because of the desire to ensure that he could see his children grow up.
Kiriakou was one of the first to publicly acknowledge the use of torture as CIA policy. He will likely serve 30 months in prison.
Key Quote: After Tuesday’s hearing, one of Kiriakou’s lawyers described him as a whistleblower. Jesselyn Radack, an expert on whistleblower issues with the Government Accountability Project, said it was an outrage that Kiriakou will serve jail time. She was glad, though, that the charges under the Espionage Act — which she characterized as vague and overbroad — were dropped.
3. Drone Policy
But it should also be noted that US drone strikes in Pakistan currently are not really about protecting civilians in the United States from terrorist attacks in any event. US drone strikes in Pakistan today are primarily an extension of the war in Afghanistan, targeting suspected militants believed to be planning to attack US troops in Afghanistan. Since the majority of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan and want US troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan, this is a highly relevant political fact: US drone strikes in Pakistan are being carried out in support of a war in Afghanistan that most Americans oppose. Pretending that US drone strikes in Pakistan are about protecting civilians in the United States when they are primarily about extending the unpopular Afghanistan war across the border with Pakistan is therefore a pretty significant deceit.
When US troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan, as most Americans want, then there will be no reason to use drone strikes to target militants in Pakistan who are trying to attack US troops in Afghanistan, because there will be no militants in Pakistan trying to attack US troops in Afghanistan, because there will be no US troops in Afghanistan for them to attack. The situation is analogous to that which we faced in Iraq during the Bush administration: We were told we had to keep our troops in Iraq to fight the people who were attacking our troops in Iraq, but the people attacking our troops were attacking our troops because they were there. Now that our troops have left Iraq, no one is attacking our troops in Iraq anymore. The best solution to the problem of people trying to attack our troops in other people's countries is to get our troops out of other people's countries where people are likely to attack them.
Moreover, it is crucial to recognize that the mere existence of drone strikes is not the focus of international criticism. It is specific features of the drone strike policy that are overwhelmingly the focus of international criticism. There is relatively little international criticism, for example, about the US use of drone strikes in Afghanistan compared to other use of air power, given that whether one supports or opposes it, the war in Afghanistan is generally considered internationally to be lawful overall (which is different from saying that specific actions within the war are lawful). But there is a great deal of international criticism about the US use of drone strikes in Pakistan, where considerable international opinion does not accept that the US is conducting a lawful war.
4. Drone vote killers
If this year's presidential election comes down to the electoral votes in Ohio, the deciding votes could be cast on electronic voting machines manufactured by a company - Hart Intercivic - with deep financial ties to the Romney family.
Hart Intercivic is majority owned by H.I.G. Capital which controls two of the five seats on the Hart Intercivic board. An investment fund with deep ties to the Romney family and the Mitt Romney for president campaign, H.I.G. Capital was founded by Tony Tamer, a major bundler for the Romney campaign, and it is one of the largest partners of Solamere Capital, an investment fund founded by Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, Mitt Romney's chief fundraiser from the 2008 presidential campaign. This makes the
Romney family part owner of the voting machine company, through it's interest in H.I.G. Capital.
A 2007 study conducted by Ohio's Secretary of State showed that Hart Intercivic's touch screen voting machines could be easily corrupted.
I just signed a petition telling the Department of Justice to not let Republicans steal the election in Ohio with Romney-owned voting machines. Click on the link below to find out more and sign the petition.
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/romney_ohio/?r_by=-6445718-RW8Xt3x&rc=mailto1
5. The Remarkable, Unfathomable Ignorance of Debbie Wasserman Schultz
The Chair of the Democratic National Committee is completely unaware of one of the biggest stories of the Obama years
by Glenn Greenwald
On 29 May 2012, the New York Times published a remarkable 6,000-word story on its front page about what it termed President Obama's "kill list". It detailed the president's personal role in deciding which individuals will end up being targeted for assassination by the CIA based on Obama's secret, unchecked decree that they are "terrorists" and deserve to die.
Based on interviews with "three dozen of his current and former advisers", the Times' Jo Becker and Scott Shane provided extraordinary detail about Obama's actions, including how he "por[es] over terrorist suspects' biographies on what one official calls the macabre 'baseball cards'" and how he "insist[s] on approving every new name on an expanding 'kill list'". At a weekly White House meeting dubbed "Terror Tuesdays", Obama then decides who will die without a whiff of due process, transparency or oversight. It was this process that resulted in the death of US citizen Anwar Awlaki in Yemen, and then two weeks later, the killing of his 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman, by drone.
The Times "kill list" story made a huge impact and was widely discussed and condemned by media figures, politicians, analysts, and commentators. Among other outlets, the New York Times itself harshly editorialized against Obama's program in an editorial entitled "Too Much Power For a President", denouncing the revelations as "very troubling" and argued: "No one in that position should be able to unilaterally order the killing of American citizens or foreigners located far from a battlefield - depriving Americans of their due-process rights - without the consent of someone outside his political inner circle."
That Obama has a "kill list" has been known since January, 2010, and has been widely reported and discussed in every major American newspaper since April 2010. A major controversy over chronic White House leaks often featured complaints about this article (New York Times, 5 June 2012: "Senators to Open Inquiry Into 'Kill List' and Iran Security Leaks"). The Attorney General, Eric Holder, gave a major speech defending it.
But Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic Congresswoman from Florida and the Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, does not know about any of this. She has never heard of any of it. She has managed to remain completely ignorant about the fact that President Obama has asserted and exercised the power to secretly place human beings, including US citizens, on his "kill list" and then order the CIA to extinguish their lives.
Just marvel at this stunning, completely inexcusable two-minute display of wholesale ignorance by this elected official and DNC chair. Here she is after the second presidential debate being asked by Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change about the "kill list" and whether Romney should be trusted with this power. She doesn't defend the "kill list". She doesn't criticize it. She makes clear that she has never heard of it and then contemptuously treats Rudkowski like he is some sort of frivolous joke for thinking that it is real:
Anyone who observes politics closely has a very low bar of expectations. It's almost inevitable to become cynical - even jaded - about just how inept and inane top Washington officials are. Still, even processing this through those lowly standards, I just find this staggering. Staggering and repellent. This is an elected official in Congress, the body that the Constitution designed to impose checks on the president's abuses of power, and she does not have the foggiest idea what is happening in the White House, and obviously does not care in the slightest, because the person doing it is part of the party she leads.
One expects corrupt partisan loyalty from people like Wasserman Schultz, eager to excuse anything and everything a Democratic president does. That's a total abdication of her duty as a member of Congress, but that's par for the course. But one does not expect this level of ignorance, the ability to stay entirely unaware of one of the most extremist powers a president has claimed in US history, trumpeted on the front-page of the New York Times and virtually everywhere else.
6. Poison Control Centers in Drone Down-size Danger
Earlier this year, federal officials put their foot down: New Hampshire could no longer use federal preparedness money to supports its poison control efforts. The directive sent state lawmakers scrambling to find extra funds so New Hampshire residents would still have access to the life-saving service. Without new money, New Hampshire callers to the Northern New England Poison Center would get a recording telling them to call 911 or go to the emergency room.
Fortunately, New Hampshire officials found enough funds to keep the service up and running for state residents this year; however, they’ll confront the same problem again in the next budget cycle. Such ups and downs of funding are nothing new to Karen Simone and her colleagues, but it’s most definitely taking a toll.
“People seem to make the assumption that the poison center will always be there,” said Simone, a clinical toxicologist and director of the Northern New England Poison Center, which serves Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. “They seem to think that any doctor or emergency room can handle this and it’s a shock when I say your average ER doctor doesn’t know how to (handle these cases).”
Simone tells me that her poison center used to have enough staff to help every caller at a more leisurely pace — to answer every question without having to rush. But due to overall funding cuts, typical daytime staff has been cut from three or four people to one or two, and callers have to triage themselves according to a phone tree. Occasionally, the center has to shut down its nonemergency line for hours at a time because it just doesn’t have the capacity to handle every call. Previously, the center never had to shut down any of its phone lines, Simone said.
The Northern New England Poison Center managed more than 66,000 calls from Maine between July 2010 and June 2011; more than 5,500 calls from New Hampshire between January 2011 and March 2011; and more than 11,300 Vermont calls between March 2011 and August 2011.
“It’s kind of like you pay now or you pay later,” said Simone, who added that her time is increasingly being spent on trying to find funds to keep the center afloat. “If you give a little bit of money to poison control centers…you’ll save about $14 for every dollar spent down the road. You can choose not to spend that $1 on poison centers, but that dollar will be spent.”
A new report from the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) brings the situation Simone describes into even greater focus.
The value of investing in poison control
The AAPCC report, which quantifies the value of investing in the nation’s 57 poison centers, found that such centers save Americans more than $1.8 billion every year in medical costs and lost productivity — that’s a $13.39 return on investment for every dollar invested. In 2011, however, poison centers experienced a 36 percent cut in federal funding in addition to cuts at the state level. The report states:
Poison center professionals serve as primary health care providers for the home management of suspected poisonings and as toxicology consultants for health care providers and hospitals. In less than a few minutes, callers are connected to specially trained individuals knowledgeable of the treatment, prevention and safety measures that should be taken to prevent injury from a number of hazardous materials. This rapid early intervention often limits morbidity and prevents mortality.
According to the report: Three dollars in medical costs are saved for every $1 invested in poison center outreach, education and in raising awareness of the poison center hotline; poison centers save families more than $47 million every year in out-of-pocket medical costs, as well as more than $214 million in annual Medicaid spending and more than $176 million in Medicare spending; and more than $171 million annually is saved in emergency department visits and more than $518 million in hospitalizations. In 2010, the country’s poison centers received about 4 million calls, about 2.4 million of which were about poison exposures.
Richard Dart, AAPCC’s immediate past president and director of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver, noted in an association news release that the poison control system is “one of the most successful and cost-effective public health programs in the nation…It’s vital that policymakers and the public understand the importance of funding this essential public health service.” Dart told me that due to funding cuts, the Rocky Mountain poison center has lost staff and has had to cut back on educational outreach — “we can’t spare staff to do education because we need them on the phones.”
“It’s one of those nasty cycles — decreases in education lead to more poisonings which leads to more calls,” Dart told me. “We’re really holding our breath week to week and month to month because we know that many centers are very close to closing.”
A sentinel system
If a poison center closes, not only will residents and health care providers lose a vital source of expertise and life-saving help, but also the rich data that help shape effective interventions and often serve as an early warning of new dangers. For example a few years ago, young people in Colorado Springs were trying to get high off a new product called Green Hornet, which contained high levels of over-the-counter drugs diphenhydramine and dextromethorphan. It was causing seizures and the Denver poison center picked up on it, Dart said. Soon after, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took action to alert consumers to its dangers and urge people to avoid it completely.
Similarly, back in New England, Simone noted that in the aftermath of a severe ice storm that knocked out power throughout the region and led residents to hook up their generators, the poison center detected an uptick in carbon monoxide poisoning. The real-time data helped local health officials craft appropriate prevention messages and target those messages where they were needed most. Simone also noted that poison centers began noticing an increase in opioid poisoning long before the problem hit the front pages. (Prescription painkiller misuse was involved in more than 475,000 emergency room visits in 2009, a statistic that doubled in just five years.)
“This data is crucial to have — the earlier we can detect a problem, the faster we can correct it,” said Dart, who described poison control as a sentinel surveillance system. “If we start to lose centers, we’ll start losing that early detection.”
Dart said demand for the poison center’s help hasn’t declined — “people still need our help as much as they ever did.” Interestingly, though, he noted that even though opioid-related calls have gone up, overall call volume into the Denver center remains about the same. He said it might indicate that more people are turning to the Internet for poison information. In response, creating a larger presence on the web and looking for ways to interact with people via the Internet and text messaging has become a top priority, he noted. In New England, the poison center recently debuted a new chat feature on its website that residents are just beginning to use, Simone said.
Both Simone and Dart emphasized that there’s no replacement for a poison center — the emergency rooms and hospitals that would likely fill the gap also depend on poison centers and their trained staff for accurate, immediate information. As is the case with much of the public health system, decreasing poison center funds today only increases medical spending in the long run. It’s a message — regardless of the mountains of evidence in its favor — that doesn’t always fall on receptive ears. (In fact, Dart told me that one congressional representative told him that even though poison centers are among the best data-justified programs out there, he just didn’t believe the government should be paying for such a service.)
“The response from (some) politicians is that this is an individual problem,” Dart said. “Is that really an appropriate way for our society to address this? I don’t think so.”
For a copy of “Final Report on the Value of the Poison Center System,” visit www.aapcc.org. If you have a poisoning emergency, call 1-800-222-1222.
7. KOCH BROS
fund rightwing think tanks
fund ALEC
fund AFP -
fund Tea Party
DLC
Republicans
Pollution/Deregulation
Legislators/ALEC + Funding
8. Severe Birth Defects Soar in Post-War Iraq
A new study confirms what many Iraqi doctors have been saying for years – that there is a virtual epidemic of rare congenital birth defects in cities that suffered bombing and artillery and small arms fire in the U.S.-led attacks and occupations of the country.
The hardest hit appear to be Fallujah (2004), a city in central Iraq, and Basra in the south (December 1998, March and April 2003).
Records show that the total number of birth defects observed by medical staff at Al Basrah Maternity Hospital more than doubled between 2003 and 2009. In Fallujah, between 2007 and 2010, more than half the children born there had some form of birth defect, compared to less than two percent in 2000.
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, a lead author of the latest study published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, entitled “Metal Contamination and the Epidemic of Congenital Birth Defects in Iraqi Cities,” reports that in the case study of 56 Fallujah families, metal analysis of hair samples indicated contamination with two well-known neurotoxic metals: lead and mercury.
IPS correspondent Julia Kallas spoke with Savabieasfahani about Iraq’s health crisis and the long-term consequences of exposure to metals released by bombs and munitions.
Excerpts from the interview follow.
Q: You focused on Fallujah and Al Basra. Is there any indication that this problem could be affecting other Iraqi cities as well?
A: There is one other paper that has come out from another city and I think that there are similar things. I think that it is possible that anywhere could be affected. Some other places are seeing similar situations but there are no publications to indicate it. There is a great possibility that other places that have been bombed are also showing similar things.
Q: Your study found serious deformities in infants as late as 2010. How many years will the health effects of the war continue to be felt?
A: Speaking as an environmental toxicologist, I think that a long as the environment is not cleaned, as long as the source of this public contamination is not found and as long as people are exposed to it periodically on a daily basis, I think this problem will persist.
And what we can see is that they are actually increasing. I think that the best step right now is to do large-scale environmental testing – test water, air, food, soil, everything that comes in touch with people. Test them for the presence of toxic metals and other things that are in the environment. And once we find the source, then we can clean it up. Unless we do that, this is going to continue to happen because people are getting exposed.
Q: What kind of munitions would be responsible for this type of large-scale contamination?
A: We have referenced a couple of U.S. military documents and it is the kind of things that could lead to this version of metal as indicated in the references. Various metals are contained in small arms ammunition.
But it could be anything from bombardments, from the bombs that come down on the place, or bombs that exploded from the tanks, or even bullets. They all have similar metals in them, including mercury and lead poisoning, which is what we have found in the bodies of the people who live in these cities, Fallujah and Basra.
Q: Have you collaborated at all with the World Health Organisation researchers who are conducting similar research, with their findings due out next month?
A: No, I have not been in touch with the World Health Organisation or any other organisation. We have just worked with a collection of scientists.
Q: Are you aware of any formal reaction to your research by the Iraqi, U.S. or UK governments?
A: There has been some. The U.S. Defense Department responded to the report by saying that they do not know of any official reports that indicate any problems in Al Basrah or Fallujah. But I think that is the only thing that comes to my mind.
Q: How is the local health care system coping with an emergency like this? And how can contamination management and medical care procedures be provided in these areas?
A: I know that the hospitals in the two cities that we studied are overstretched and as far as that is a concern there are ways to help these hospitals. We need to organise doctors, scientists and people who are professionals in this area to help clean up. Organise them, bring them to these two cities and get them to start working. However, all of that requires financial and other kinds of support. Financial and political support together will help to make that happen.
9. Shizuoka assembly nixes nuke referendum
Kyodo
SHIZUOKA — The Shizuoka Prefectural Assembly on Thursday voted down a revised bill calling for a referendum on whether to restart Chubu Electric Power Co.'s suspended Hamaoka nuclear power station.
In addition to the revised bill, the assembly rejected the original proposal, with most members opposed to holding what would be the first referendum on restarting a nuclear plant that was suspended after the March 2011 meltdown crisis stated in Fukushima Prefecture.
During the plenary session, a member affiliated with the Liberal Democratic Party, which has a majority in the assembly, questioned the legitimacy of holding a referendum, saying it could "influence national policy on nuclear power."
The original bill, which had already been voted down by an assembly committee last Friday, was submitted after a citizens' group had collected more than 165,000 signatures calling for the referendum.
The revised bill was introduced by a group of assembly members from the Democratic Party of Japan and other groups after the original version faced opposition during last week's committee meeting, at which members from the LDP and DPJ pointed out flaws in the original proposal.
The revised bill would have set the eligible minimum voting age at 20, rather than 18 under the original version.
The newer version also stipulated that a referendum would be held "when the prefectural governor judges the central government has started considering a restart after completing safety measures for the nuclear power station." The original bill said the referendum would be conducted within six months.
Assembly members affiliated with the DPJ and New Komeito were opposed to the original version, but some expressed support for the revised bill. The LDP-linked members were against both the original and revised versions.
The beach-side Hamaoka plant in the city of Omaezaki is one of the largest nuclear power complexes in the nation. Its three operating reactors were shut down at the government's request in May 2011, two months after the Fukushima nuclear crisis erupted, because of its lack of tsunami defenses.
10. No. 1 radioactive water tanks maxed
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
AP
Workers at the Fukushima No. 1 plant are struggling to find space to store tens of thousands of tons of highly contaminated water used to cool its crippled reactors, the manager of the water treatment team said.
About 200,000 tons of radioactive water — enough to fill more than 50 Olympic swimming pools — are being stored in hundreds of gigantic tanks built around the complex. Tokyo Electric Power Co. has already felled trees to make room for more tanks and predicts the volume of water will more than triple in three years.
"It's a pressing issue because our land is limited and we would eventually run out of storage space," the water-treatment manager, Yuichi Okamura, told AP.
Tepco is close to starting a new treatment system that could make the water safe enough to discharge into the ocean. But its tanks are filling up in the meantime, mostly because cracks in reactor buildings are allowing groundwater in.
Experts worry the highly radioactive water could have a lasting impact on the environment, and fear that because of the reactor leaks and water flowing from one part of the facility to another, this is already happening.
Nuclear engineer and college lecturer Masashi Goto said the contaminated water buildup poses a long-term health and environmental threat. He worries the radioactive water in the reactor buildings' basements may already be seeping into the groundwater system, where it could travel far beyond the plant and possibly into public water supplies and the Pacific.
"You never know where it's leaking out and once it's out you can never put it back in place," he said. "It's just outrageous and shows how big a disaster the accident is."
The concerns are less severe than the nightmare scenario Tepco faced in the weeks after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and cooling systems at the power station, causing hydrogen explosions and three reactor core meltdowns in the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
The plant released radiation into the atmosphere, soil and ocean, and displaced more than 100,000 local residents who are uncertain when — or even if — they will be able to return home.
Dumping massive amounts of water into the stricken reactors was the only way to avoid an even bigger catastrophe.
Okamura remembers frantically trying to find a way to get water to the spent-fuel pools located near the top of the 50-meter-high reactor buildings. Without water, the spent nuclear fuel likely would have overheated and melted, dispersing radioactive smoke over a vast area and potentially affecting millions of people.
"The water would keep evaporating and the pools would have dried up if we had left them alone," Okamura said. "That would have been the end of it."
Attempts to dump water from helicopters were ineffective, and spraying water from fire trucks into the pools didn't work either. Okamura then helped bring in a huge, German-made pump normally used for concrete with a remote-controlled arm long enough to spray water into the fuel pools.
The plan worked — just in time, Okamura said.
Those measures and others helped bring the plant under tenuous control, but it will take decades to clean up the radioactive material emitted by the three wrecked reactors. And those desperate steps created another huge headache for Tepco: What to do with all the radioactive water that leaked out of the reactors and gathered in the basements of the buildings housing them and nearby facilities.
Some of the water ran into the Pacific, raising concerns about contamination of marine life and seafood. Waters within a 20-km zone are still off-limits, and high levels of contamination have been found in seabed sediment and fish tested in the area.
Okamura was tasked with setting up a treatment system that would make the water clean enough for reuse as a coolant, and was also aimed at reducing health risks for workers and environmental damage.
At first, Tepco shunted the tainted water into existing storage tanks near the reactors. Meanwhile, Okamura's 55-member team scrambled to get a treatment unit up and running within three months of the disaster — a project that would normally take about two years, he said.
"Accomplishing that was a miracle," Okamura said, noting a cheer went up from his men when the first unit started up.
Using that equipment, Tepco was able to circulate reprocessed water back into the reactor cores. But even though the reactors are now being cooled exclusively with recycled water, the volume of contaminated water is still increasing, mostly because groundwater is seeping through cracks into the reactor building basements.
Next month, Okamura said his group plans to flip the switch on new purifying equipment using Toshiba Corp. technology that is supposedly able to decontaminate the water by removing strontium and other nuclides potentially below detectable levels.
Tepco claims the treated water from this new system is clean enough to be released into the ocean, although it hasn't said whether it would actually do so. At any rate, that would require the permission of authorities and local consent and would also likely trigger harsh criticism at home and abroad.
To deal with the excess tainted water, the utility has channeled it to more than 300 huge storage tanks placed around the plant. Tepco has plans to install storage tanks for up to 700,000 tons — about three more years' worth of contaminated water. If those facilities were to be maxed out, it could build additional space for roughly two more years' worth of radioactive water, said Mayumi Yoshida, a Tepco spokeswoman.
But these forecasts hinge on plans to detect and plug holes in the damaged reactors to minimize leaks over the next two years. Tepco also plans to take steps to keep groundwater from seeping into the reactor basements.
Both are tasks Tepco is still unsure how to accomplish, as those areas remain so highly radioactive it is unclear how humans or even robots can operate in them.
There's also a risk the storage tanks and jury-rigged pipe system connecting them could be damaged if the area is struck by another powerful quake or tsunami.
Goto, the nuclear engineer, believes it will take far longer than Tepco's goal of two years to repair all the holes in the reactors. The plant also would have to deal with contaminated water until all the melted fuel and other debris is removed from the reactors — a process that will easily take more than a decade.
He described Tepco's road map for dealing with the problem as "wishful thinking," adding that "the longer it takes, the more contaminated water they get."
PROGRESSIVE NEWS NETWORK - Listen Here
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)